Nintendo’s Bill Trinen has defended the price of Welcome Tour on Switch 2, saying the amount of work that went into making it justifies the cost.
Welcome Tour breaks down the Switch 2’s features, explains to the player how everything works and demonstrates this through a series of mini-games.
Nintendo has confirmed that Welcome Tour will be a paid download at launch costing $9.99, a move which has drawn criticism from some players who feel it should have been included for free with the Switch 2 console itself.
In an interview with IGN, Trinen – Nintendo of America’s vice president of product and player experience – said that $9.99 “is not an exorbitant price” in his eyes, and that it’s “a pretty robust piece of software” with “a lot of great detail in there”.
Trinen explained that rather than a simple tutorial showcasing Switch 2’s features, Welcome Tour goes into more detail in explaining the system’s inner workings, and that in his eyes the amount of work that went into creating the software justifies charging for it.
“For some people – I think there are people who are particularly interested in the tech and the specs of the system and things like that – for them I think it’s going to be a great product,” Trinen said. “It’s really for people that want more information about the system rather than necessarily a quick intro to everything it does.
“And for that reason and just the amount of care and work that the team put into it, I think it was decided that: ‘Yeah, this feels like $9.99 is not an exorbitant price. It feels like a good value for what you’re getting out of the product.’”
VGC recently attended a Switch 2 event in Paris, where a number of Switch 2 games were available to play, including Welcome Tour and some of its mini-games.
One of these mini-games, called Guess the Frame Rate, shows a ball travelling across the screen. Players then have to guess what frame rate the ball is moving at. The questions get progressively more difficult as the game goes on, initially making the player choose between 20fps and 120fps, and eventually building up to 60fps vs 120fps.
Another mini-game is called Super Mario Bros 4K Demo, and tasks the player with completing World 1-1 of the original NES version of Super Mario Bros. The twist is that the game is presented in its original resolution of 256×240, meaning it appears as a tiny square on the screen. As you play through the level, it reveals itself on the screen, in a ‘fog of war’ style, eventually demonstrating that the entire World 1-1 stage can fit on a 4K resolution display.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour will feature additional minigames and tech demos for players that own the Nintendo Switch 2 Camera, or a 4K TV. The game will launch alongside the console on June 5.
