You can always count on Nintendo for a surprise. This is the company that followed the Game Boy with a strange dual-screened handheld and broke out of its GameCube slump with a console focused on motion controls.

The announcement doesn't come as a surprise—especially in the wake of CES 2025, where several peripheral makers were bold enough to display replicas of the unrevealed hardware to showcase their Switch 2 accessories—but you might be shocked at just how closely the upcoming Switch 2 sticks to the form and function of its predecessor.

Switch 's online gaming service, ostensibly Nintendo's answer to PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass. It began as a subscription that lets you play multiplayer titles via the internet, enable select cloud saves,