While some console manufacturers had offered the “free bundled game” prior, Nintendo themselves popularised the initiative with the Nintendo Wii and the ever-popular Wii Sports. Building upon the newly introduced WiiMote and Mii systems, its quintet of sports offerings was enough to make the system a seller in its own right. The objective was not just to entertain but also to showcase what the console and its new peripherals were capable of. The free offering was, unfortunately, a one-time deal for Nintendo, with the subsequent Wii U offering a paid but still enjoyable gaming experience known as Nintendo Land. However, following the inclusion of Astro’s Playroom with the PlayStation 5, which was a stellar homage to the brand’s history and later netted a fully-fledged game that won Best Game of 2024 at The Game Awards, there was curiosity around whether the Nintendo Switch 2 would offer a similar game that would provide that combination of tech demo x fun gaming experience for players. Enter the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a relatively inexpensive experience that doesn’t elevate anything beyond the concept of a tech demo and, given past experiences, is likely to be very underwhelming.
At its core, the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is less a conventional video game and more an interactive orientation session for your console. Whether you see it as yourself being shrunk down to the size of a thumbtack or you are navigating yourself around an impossibly large Nintendo Switch 2 console, your avatar jogs the facsimiles of the console’s internal and external facade, pressing glowing podiums for stamps that stand in for buttons, vents and hidden compartments. Each collected stamp unlocks a new part of the console to explore, starting with the left joycon, moving to the screen and beyond, all the while friendly NPC staffers cheer you on alongside quizzes and museum-guide enthusiasm. The framework is clever in theory: by physically guiding players over every ridge and recess of their new hardware, Nintendo hopes the knowledge will stick far longer than any manual ever could. This is arguably the strongest element of the game – while perhaps aimed at a less experienced market, the experience around showcasing the console’s design itself is unique and definitely something that sticks out early on.
Where Wii Sports once showcased motion controls with gamification, and Nintendo Land added a carnival-like showmanship to doing so, the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour doesn’t provide actual gaming experiences that you will find yourself wanting to play again and again. While navigating the museum, you can learn about the console, collect stamps in an elementary format and undertake quizzes on each peripheral. However, rather than drawing amply from their library of first-party IPs and creating some WarioWare-esque experiences, the crux of the gameplay – Tech Demos and Minigames – are mostly soulless, uninspired, and could use a lot more creativity and sophistication. Each encounter lasts a few seconds, hands you a medal, and then sends you back onto the carpeted path, making the whole package feel closer to a pre-launch convention booth than the software you’d return to for sheer enjoyment. At its core, this is a guided tour, with Nintendo’s marketing team holding the flashlight the whole time. Granted, the game isn’t expensive, but $10 can get you a lot more on the Nintendo eShop.
This is a shame, as aesthetically, the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a polished experience, at least in terms of being a virtual showroom. The design relies on clean geometry and a restrained colour palette that replicates the colours of the standard Nintendo Switch 2 console, and the user interface is clean and crisp. Yet, for all its technical sheen, the world feels clinical: NPC staffers repeat a handful of canned poses, and environmental props never move outside their simple idle loops, so the space can look less lively than it could have been. Meanwhile, on the audio front, the music backing is lobby-style: clean but forgettable, as if you were walking around a museum where the music was just there to lighten the otherwise silent atmosphere.
After several hours in this virtual showroom, I left with the determination that Nintendo, once unrivalled at turning hardware demos into living‑room phenomena, has delivered little more than a glossy brochure. A handful of tech tricks briefly sparkle, but the spark that made Wii Sports a ritual and Nintendo Land a celebration of the brand’s history is absent. What remains is a prodigious checklist of chores – minigames measured in seconds, quizzes that feel like corporate onboarding, and medals locked behind add‑ons many owners won’t buy – wrapped in museum lighting and a $10 price tag. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour lands as a hollow experience, destined to be ticked off once and forgotten, as players move on in search of a real game that proves what the Nintendo Switch 2 can do, for which there are many given the console’s rather enjoyable launch line-up (Check back in the coming week for more reviews on them!).
Final Score for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
This review was conducted on a digital copy of Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. The game is now available to purchase via the Nintendo eShop.
