Repackaging tech demos and putting them on sale is nothing new to the game’s industry, but Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour has proven controversial to say the least, though mainly for the fact that there’s a price tag – any price tag – for its collection of informative mini-games, quizzes and other little tidbits.
That price tag is, admittedly, only $10. The first thing that sticks out is the presentation, with Nintendo clearly having put a lot of thought and effort into how to draw all the disparate ideas and information together. The isometric view, the scale of the tiny people walking around the gigantic Nintendo Switch 2, the way that different parts of the console have been repurposed into museum stations – the analogue stick being an info desk, for example – all of this is absolutely on point. It’s exactly how you might construct a science museum… if you had an infinite budget, that is.
Across the left Joy-Con 2, we quickly ran up to the first little mini-games, which look to showcase two of the key features of the controllers. Mouse mode is front and centre here, with a spiked ball-dodging minigame where you move a little UFO through the free space between dropping balls, trying to survive for as long as possible. Right next to it was an HD Rumble 2 minigame, where you try to pinpoint the exact spot on a frequency finder where the rumble is at its strongest – my best effort was just 3 points away, but I’m sure I could nail it with another couple of goes.
It’s not all minigames on here, though. Talking to people milling around give you little tips on how to get the most out of Welcome Tour, like telling you how to run, and there’s more basic show-and-tell style demos, like using HD Rumble to simulate the feel of bead-filled maracas and a maraca with just one single ball in it. You can shake them around, switch modes, and shift from a full 3D model maraca to a wireframe that shows the innards.
And then there’s the most directly informative elements, little stations that you can visit and break down the specifics of how the HD Rumble works, how magnets are now used to lock Joy-Con 2 into place, how the optical sensor on each controller works with a view of the surface its tracking that’s lower resolution than even a Game Boy Camera, but which polls this a thousand time each second. Oh, and yes, there absolutely is a test on all of this, with quiz stations dotted around the embiggened console.
This is, admittedly, all a bit rote. HD Rumble isn’t new technology, and it was popularised under a different brand with the iPhone 7’s Taptic Engine, optical mice are decades old, and magnets? Look, magnets are pretty darned neat, but…
We’ll have to wait and see just how far this invention goes in the full game. Our time ran out just as we reached the frame rate test, with the Switch comparing different frame rates together and getting you to pick which is higher, but there’s also one with demos including what a pixel-perfect Super Mario Bros. would look like on a 4K screen – hint, it’s tiny – how the mouse can be combined with gyroscope, and more.
You don’t have to look too far back in time to find similar tech demo-like bundles with 1-2 Switch or PlayStation VR Worlds, and those were priced a good bit higher than the $10 that Welcome Tour will cost. Even so, the question will remain if Welcome Tour is worth it?
Ultimately, that will be up to you. Even though Astro’s Playroom was bundled in for free with the PS5, setting the bar for pack-in game experiences, there will have been millions upon millions that never even loaded it up. On the other end of the scale, there will be those who are fascinated by how technology works, all the thought and effort that goes into putting them together, and this more museum-like approach that provides plenty of reference and framing for will be right up their alley.
