I have been anticipating the Nintendo Switch since the first rumors of NX were announced. I didn't buy a Wii U when it launched because I couldn't afford it at the time, and I never got around to getting one because there was never a good deal at a time when my budget would allow a purchase. But I miss Nintendo games on the big-screen (I have a 3DS), and I found the idea of a unified Nintendo platform with all their games on it extremely appealing, so my hype levels on the NX console were pretty high. Even when the (low-powered) specs more or less leaked it didn't kill my excitement because I don't come to Nintendo for cutting edge graphics and the idea of the unified platform was still extremely appealing. After Nintendo more or less took 2016 off on the Wii U, and didn't put out much for the 3DS that year, I got excited because I thought about all the awesome things they would be cooking up for the Switch and the plethora of great Nintendo experiences I could look forward to in 2017

I watched the teaser announcement and it looked good, and then I sat down to watch the full reveal, excited to see everything Nintendo had in store and...

Zelda looks amazing. Mario looks fantastic. Splatoon 2 seems like an enhanced version of the original from what people are saying. Arms...well given that Jeff said he never felt the need to play it again after trying it I am not too hopeful. 1, 2, 3 Switch looks really dumb and I would be very surprised if there are more than 20 microgames (Which is what those things are) on that $50 disc.

And that seems to be it other than a port of Mario Kart 8. So 1 game they were already making for Wii U, 1 enhanced version of an old Wii U game, 2 originals that look decidedly B-team and 1 Mario game that looks amazing, but isn't coming out until the end of the year.

This is the bounty that the combined development focus on one system gets us?

In the first year Wii U had Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Wii U, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101 (second party, but still), Wii Sports Club, Wind Waker HD, and Super Mario 3D World (slightly after first anniversary.) Now maybe there will be a bunch more Switch stuff announced this year (such as at E3) but the Switch lineup definitely doesn't seem much better than the Wii U lineup, and it's not like the Switch seems so much more powerful that the argument of "Well the development teams had to be much bigger" makes a lot of sense.

It just seems like the benefits of combined development...don't exist? Now maybe this is because Nintendo is still supporting the 3DS (even though they are impossible to get in North America) or maybe it's because Nintendo is looking down the line and prepping stuff for 2018, but my Switch hype levels have fallen off a cliff. I want to play Zelda and then...there's nothing I'm excited about until Mario (which I'm really excited about but is at the end of the year if it doesn't slip.) They haven't even leveraged the Wii U library by porting over stuff like Bayonetta 2 and Smash Brothers, and my secret hope of a robust and awesome virtual console system (Which I would happily spend HUNDREDS of dollars in) doesn't seem to be happening.

Plus paid online. Plus expensive accessories...

But more than anything it's the software lineup that has me disappointed and confused. If you're a Nintendo only gamer who has stuck with them through the Wii U's shameful last year you have to be looking at this and just hoping that Zelda lasts you basically a whole year.

I'm still hoping the Switch succeeds. I have one pre-ordered and I really want to play Zelda and am very excited about that Mario game. I even hope that Arms is cool, even though it looks...dumb. But I also have an Xbox One and a PS4, and my gaming slate is full of exciting releases this year and I have a massive backlog. I'm not relying on Switch for anything, it's just an added bonus at a time when I have a good amount of money lying around and no Wii U to play Zelda on. If Nintendo wants to make this thing something other than Wii U 2.0 it needs to step up its development and give us something more than 2 games to be excited over.

Oh, and 3rd Party development so far is...unexciting. There are some decent RPGs coming at some point, but most of the third party stuff is either small scale/ports (I can't wait to play an inferior port of Steep on my Nintendo Switch!) or just weird. I mean they announced a version of Street Fighter II for this thing. Street Fighter II! I'm sure it will be cool and I might even get it, but when one of your big third party titles in 2017 is Street Fighter II you know you're reaching like one of those Arms characters.