Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

Genre: Tech Demo / Educational

Players: 1

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Review:

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a Tech Demo and Educational game (sorta’) released at launch alongside Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025. And I’ll get this out of the way right now – yes, this should have been included with the system for free. That was the immediate reaction that people had upon seeing it revealed, and it has proved to be true now that I’ve gotten my hands on it. In fact, even more than you may think.

The premise of Welcome Tour is that you’re a visitor to a sort of museum or exhibition shaped like a building-sized Nintendo Switch 2. As you visit different parts of the exhibition, you’ll find informational displays about the Nintendo Switch 2, other guests talking about the venue, and a few minigames and demonstrations of the Nintendo Switch 2 tech.

Ah, did you just see that word “game” there? Don’t get too excited – these are pretty rudimentary minigames that are generally more interested in displaying system features than actually providing fun. They can be fun, such as one minigame that has players using mouse controls to move a flying saucer to avoid falling spike balls, but only of the mild sort that you won’t likely want to play for much longer than it takes to complete the in-game goals to win the game’s medals and move on.

That said, when it’s at its best, it can be a good demonstration of the Nintendo Switch 2’s features, such as one demo that lets players test out the HD Rumble 2 by shaking in-game maracas using gyroscopic motion-control, letting you feel the ball bearings or rubber ball inside them. However, I found that the game often missed opportunities to demonstrate things it was trying to teach, such as videos demonstrating how the rumble works that don’t actually rumble.

This is all packaged within a piece of software that has a visually clean look using mostly 3D visuals, but is pretty devoid of the flashiness you would hope to get from a new game console launch title. This is joined by the sort of light, plunky elevator music you might expect from a Brain Age game, and no voice or anything like that.

While this may already seem dull, it’s made worse by the fact that the game gates you off from accessing different areas until you walk your character around to observe podiums at points of interest throughout the area you’re currently in, and you cannot see these podiums until you’re right next to them, meaning that unless you know what you’re looking for, you may find yourself stuck. In a similar manner, you’re gated off from later minigames until you earn enough medals in earlier ones.

As if that wasn’t restrictive enough, you can’t even play every minigame and demo unless you have the equipment it uses – the entire game isn’t even playable unless you have a Nintendo Switch 2 camera and Pro Controller 2. What’s more, if your TV doesn’t support 4K, HDR, or 120FPS, you can’t play minigames associated with those. And this would actually be perfectly understandable – you can’t demonstrate a feature if you don’t have hardware that can use that feature… except then you won’t be earning medals in those minigames that you’ll need to play later minigames.

And here’s where I feel like Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour needs to be a free pack-in title even more than most people suspect. While I was streaming my playthrough of this game, I encountered a problem. The game was telling me that my TV didn’t support 4K, 120FPS, or HDR, and this shocked me because I have a Samsung OLED 4K S90C Series Quantum HDR TV, which is easily capable of supporting all of those things. But thanks to Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, I discovered I have a problem – even though my TV supports those things, my video capture card doesn’t, and it was throttling my video output. Thanks to Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, I found out about a problem that’s going to affect the performance of games on the entire Nintendo Switch 2 platform… that sounds like something that’s a bit too important to put in an optional paid piece of software, doesn’t it?

But it’s not a pack-in game, it’s not free. It’s $10. Which is absolutely absurd. Not only for its niche but important utility. Not only because as a game it is boring, poorly-designed, and not at all concerned with actual fun. But because it runs completely counter to the entire idea of a game that’s designed to familiarize people with their new piece of hardware. Charging for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is like charging for an instruction manual – it makes zero sense, makes the product the manual is for worse by its absence, and besides, no one is going to want to spend $10 on an instruction manual.

tl;dr – Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a Tech Demo and Educational Game that is designed to show off the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware. Unfortunately, it’s poorly-designed, tedious, has no interest in actually being fun, and the fact that it costs $10 and isn’t included with the Nintendo Switch seems almost like an insult. There is some utility to this application, but I don’t recommend you buy it. This is not the sort of nasty money grab you want to encourage by paying for it.

Grade: D

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Winner:

Most Overpriced ($10) – A $10 game doesn’t seem like it should be considered the most overpriced game of the year, but once you place it in context, it’s hard to see this as anything more than pure greed. It’s coming in the midst of an already-pricy launch for Nintendo Switch 2, when people are suffering due to the poor economy. It’s also not even really a game, it’s a tech demo, or as some have put it, a glorified instruction manual. It’s literally called a “Welcome Tour”, for goodness sake! How Nintendo thought it would make sense to charge for this instead of including it with the Nintendo Switch is just mind-boggling. What’s more, if we want a comparison, we have only to look to the PlayStation 5 and its absolutely stellar Astro’s Play Room, a game that came free with that console and that is arguably one of its greatest games. That Nintendo could charge for this snoozefest of a “game” while Sony gives Astro away for free really makes Nintendo look even greedier than they already do.

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