Games Inbox: What will the battery life of the Nintendo Switch 2 be?

The Friday letters page is concerned that Sony is being encouraged to be complacent about the PlayStation 6, as one reader is curious about Avowed’s review scores.

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Shortened life
I know there’s a lot of questions that are yet to be answered about the Nintendo Switch 2 but one I haven’t seen mentioned even once is the battery life. I’m sure someone, somewhere has talked about it but I’m already worrying that it will be very bad if Nintendo are trying to make the console more powerful.

We hear a lot of stories about third party support for the console, which does make it sound like it’ll be quite a step up, but the problem for that is it’s going to take a lot more battery power, as is a bigger and brighter screen. We all want a more powerful console but if that means it’s only going to stay working for a couple of a hours in portable mode I don’t think it’s worth it.

This is why I’m not sure what Xbox and PlayStation are planning with their hinted at portables. I’m not aware of any major improvements in batteries lately that would make it possible to make a console much more powerful and not draw a lot more power. If the Switch 2 doesn’t last at least three hours at a time it will be a disaster.
Coolsbane

Passive success
I’ve seen a lot of criticism of the State of Play but I think as a Direct style showcase it was unquestionably a good one. Not very well paced, maybe, but there were a lot of games I was interested in and a lot of new announcements, so I don’t think in terms of an event it can really be called that bad.

The problem is that it still showed minimum effort Sony is full effect. It’s good to know Housemarque aren’t making a live service game, and I’ll be there for the follow-up to Returnal, but it was just one game in a 50 minute long show, at the start of the year. That may not even count as minimum effort, especially as Saros won’t be out until next year.

And then we find out that sitting around doing nothing has been a huge success for Sony over Christmas, with sales up even when they had no new games to push. Like you say, what incentive have they for doing more? The smart business decision at this point is to do nothing. The less games you announce and release the better you do, apparently.

This is clearly because PlayStation 5 is the only real choice now for most people, now that Xbox Series X/S has collapsed, but it’s infuriating to see a company be rewarded for literally doing nothing.
Ansel

PlayStation 3 Part 2
The thing that worries me about the PlayStation 5 doing so well, now that the Xbox Series X/S is dead, is how this is going to affect the PlayStation 6. If Sony seems lazy and disengaged now, how are they going to be when they think they’ve got a clear field to play?

We know, actually, just look at the PlayStation 3. An overly expensive console with too few games, sold by a Sony so arrogant it refused to accept there was any problem until the Xbox 360 started to dominate and execs started to lose their jobs.

I know it’s too much to ask that anyone learn anything from history, but I can see all this happening again. We need Xbox or some other rival to keep Sony in check. And that’s not Nintendo. Whether their consoles sell or not they’re not similar enough for Sony to see them as a competitor and that’s always been the case.
Focus

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Easy money
Great interview with Josef Fares, GC. I’ll be honest; I thought he was a bit of a crazy after his outburst at The Game Awards but he actually gave some very thoughtful and, in my opinion, accurate answers to your questions.

I was particularly interested in his comments about developers being just as unoriginal as publishers, which is not something you hear a lot. You can kind of tell, given how so many indie games are just clones, but when you’ve not got so much money what can you do?

But I remember hearing that a lot of the live service games we’ve seen over the last few years were the developer’s idea not a publisher’s. Concord was something Sony took over once the developer had already started, for example.

Everyone wants money and I’m sure developers want to make it as easily and quickly as any publisher. As usual, we’re just looking at the 10% of anything that is actually any good.
Star-Lord

GC: Thank you.

Won’t someone think of the children?
I don’t understand why Sony ever stopped making family games in the first place. Did kids stop liking video games all of a sudden and I didn’t notice? I guess maybe around the end of the PlayStation 3/start of the PlayStation 4 is when mobile gaming was at its peak, and looked like it may take over, but that was still no reason to stop completely.

I think the popularity of ‘sad dad’ single-player games must’ve seemed like too much of a sure thing, but considering things like Astro Bot are a lot cheaper to make it still seems short-sighted. Hopefully the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake means Ape Escape will be back soon.
Peabody

Good State
I’ll state that I wasn’t in the very least disappointed in yesterday’s State Of Play. I am very tickled, to see many people were unhappy and, as is such tradition, set their expectations to abnormal levels. You can’t teach those who fail to learn from their mistakes. Two games caught my attention. Tides Of Annihilation is an interesting reveal. It looks grandiose and is brimming with efficacious scale. But it may be a while off. Since we’ve yet to see a concrete release date, nailed down.

Saros was the closing act and what an act it was. Housemarque has awoken from their slumber and whilst it was a shame Harry Krueger, who directed Returnal, has left the company, from the minute long revelation announcement it could very well serve as a perfect continuation of the roguelike series. I’m only hoping it’s less of a challenge this time around and you aren’t bumped back to the beginning. There’s no positive spin to such a death penalty.

On a final note, I took the liberty of GC’s recommendation. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Metaphor: Refantazio are in my Steam Library. Judging by the reviews, Avowed will not be joining them.
Shahzaib Sadiq

Bad omen
Why is it that as soon as that Borderlands 4 State of Play was announced I immediately thought of Suicide Squad? That also had a State of Play that was almost entirely only about it, and it not only seemed to go on forever but the game looked so bad it got delayed for a year and earned a terrible reputation that it never got over (because it was terrible).

I’m not saying Borderlands 4 is going to be the same, but its name has been mud ever since that movie and I don’t think anyone liked the third one nearly as much as the second. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t be surprised if the game was a dud and it’d be a weird coincidence if it all starts with a State of Play.
Bloomich

Critical divide
It’s always interesting when a game has a mixed reaction and as many readers have noted in the past, it’s very easy to guess who will be scoring high and who will be going low. Avowed has an 80 rating on Metacritic, although as usual that flatters it given most of the big scores are from no-name sites I’ve never heard of.

There’re almost no serious sites with a score above 70, with IGN giving it a 70, and then GC, TheGamer, The Guardian, and GameSpot all giving it 60. I think we can all agree that these are the more reliable sites out there and not But Why Tho?, Checkpoint Gaming, and Gameliner – whoever they are.

Some proper sites did like it, most obviously Eurogamer and VGC, but it seems to me that the 80 average is well above what the consensus amongst serious critics implies. I know it doesn’t really matter but if anyone out there is using Metacritic to make £70+ buying decisions I really think they’d be better off picking a few sites they trust and going with their opinions alone.

Since it’s on Game Pass I’ll be giving the game a try but it’s going to have to be a very wet weekend for me to feel the urge (unfortunately I doubt there’ll be any shortage of those).
Benson

Inbox also-rans
I’m anticipating Nintendo’s marketing team telling us to ‘Switch to Nintendo’ before the ‘to’ morphs into a ‘2’ and the words rearranging themselves to read ‘Nintendo Switch 2’.
Bad Edit

I had a horrible dream that I wasted 50 minutes of my time watching a State of Play and the big finale (and only first party studio game) was a cinematic scene from a game coming out in 2026.
Adam_Lion_23 (PSN ID)

GC: Whatevs. We thought it was a good one.

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