It’s been greater than eight years since we had been first launched to the Nintendo Change. What was as soon as seen as a daring new idea and a reinvention of Nintendo’s console enterprise — a transfer that originally spooked traders — now feels fairly regular. Widespread adoption definitely helped. Since 2017, Nintendo has offered a staggering 150 million Change programs, and in 2025 the corporate hopes to maintain that success going with the forthcoming Change 2.
As we inch ever nearer to Nintendo’s large showcase for Change 2 within the type of a devoted Nintendo Direct, let’s look again at how the corporate initially pitched the Change and what guarantees it made concerning the system’s capabilities.
In October 2016, Nintendo lifted the veil on Change, which it had beforehand been referring to by the codename NX. The corporate revealed the system with a video that highlighted the Change’s most central characteristic: the power to play video games like a console linked to a TV and to play them on the go.
Nintendo’s reveal of the Change targeted totally on the console’s transportable nature, however a number of different options had been additionally highlighted. Pleasure-Con controllers could possibly be indifferent from the console, plugged right into a shell known as the Pleasure-Con Grip, and shared with a pal for multiplayer video games. As much as eight consoles may join to one another for native wi-fi play.
Different options Nintendo touted on the time included:
- A seize button on the left Pleasure-Con that “gamers can press to take immediate screenshots of gameplay to share with associates on social media.” That characteristic has since been downplayed considerably, as Nintendo pulled help for posting screenshots to X (previously Twitter) in 2024.
- An NFC touchpoint for utilizing amiibo figures in video games and an IR movement digital camera “that may detect the gap, form and movement of close by objects.” The IR movement digital camera wound up being utilized in a few dozen video games, like 1-2 Change, Nintendo Labo, Ring Match Journey, and WarioWare: Transfer It!
- “HD rumble,” which Nintendo touted as essentially the most lifelike delicate vibrations ever seen in certainly one of its controllers. “The impact is so detailed {that a} participant may, for instance, really feel the vibration of particular person ice cubes colliding inside a glass when shaking a Pleasure-Con,” Nintendo boasted. “With HD rumble you’ll be able to expertise a degree of realism not doable via sights and sounds alone.”
“Nintendo Change permits players the liberty to play nevertheless they like,” stated Reggie Fils-Aime, then-president and COO of Nintendo of America. “It provides recreation builders new talents to convey their inventive visions to life by opening up the idea of gaming with out boundaries.”
The corporate additionally teased the net multiplayer service that might later be revealed as Nintendo Change On-line, and a smart-device utility coming in summer season 2017 that might “let customers invite associates to play on-line, set play appointments, and chat” with different Change gamers.
Nintendo highlighted six video games as a part of its reveal, a mixture of first- and third-party software program: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, NBA 2K18, Tremendous Mario Odyssey, and Splatoon 2.
Fils-Aime confirmed off the Change on U.S. tv in December 2016, giving The Tonight Present host Jimmy Fallon a crack at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Fils-Aime advised an excited Fallon that he may “play the sport any manner you need,” bragging about Breath of the Wild’s “should you can see it, you’ll be able to go there” open world.
In fact, Fils-Aime additionally made a giant deal concerning the Change console itself, making a dramatic reveal of the power to play a recreation on a giant TV then immediately swap over to transportable mode and take it on the go.
Within the months main as much as the Change’s launch, Nintendo continued to beat that drum, explaining the system’s three play modes — TV, tabletop, and handheld. The next {hardware} overview video is a concise instance of Nintendo’s messaging: you’ll be able to “swap and play” video games with Change’s distinctive motion- and infrared-sensing controllers for distinctive experiences like Arms and for extra conventional video games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
After launch, Nintendo Change shortly proved itself and achieved “the best gross sales for any system in Nintendo’s historical past within the first 5 days after its launch,” in line with a CBS This Morning interview with Fils-Aime. In that TV look, Fils-Aime as soon as once more talked concerning the “recreation changer” for Change being that players may have that “big-screen expertise” but in addition play video games in “the taxi, the Uber, the subway, no matter it’s.”
However he additionally talked about Nintendo’s family-friendly technique and the long-standing mandate that the corporate makes video games for gamers “from the age of 5 to 95.” That mandate got here from the late Satoru Iwata, who instructed Nintendo’s recreation designers to cater to all doable gamers, not simply those that grew up with (and caught with) Nintendo from its 8-bit days.
Suffice it to say, the continued messaging that the Change could possibly be performed anyplace, any manner, and by anyone landed with customers. So far, Nintendo has seemingly cleaved to that very same strategy for Change 2, although tens of hundreds of thousands of followers have heard the message loud and clear by now. However Nintendo nonetheless has extra to say, and we’ll study quickly how the corporate plans to maintain curiosity within the concept of a console-handheld hybrid for years to come back.