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An unannounced 1-2 Switch sequel struggles to find the fun

Jesse Lennox
By

An unannounced sequel to one of the Switch’s launch titles, 1-2 Switch, is reportedly stuck in development hell after poor testing.

The story was broken by Imran Khan of Fanbyte, who previously leaked Strangers of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin and spoke to multiple credible sources about this Nintendo title. 1-2 Switch was a financial success for Nintendo, being one of the two first-party games launched with the system, but by no means a critical hit. Most considered it a poor substitution for the Wii’s launch title, Wii Sports, which was included with the console for free, while 1-2 Switch was a separate, full-priced title. Still, its success inspired Nintendo to start work on a sequel.

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Fanbyte’s sources say that this sequel to the Nintendo Switch launch title is called Everybody’s 1-2 Switch, but has failed to impress testers and is stuck without a public announcement or release date as a result. Like the original, Everybody’s 1-2 Switch features short-form party games, although it also has a game-show style theme which would allow for a wider variety of game types and for more players to participate at once. New games mentioned in the report included Musical Chairs, Bingo, and a twist on Spin the Bottle where players would compliment the person chosen.

1-2-Switch Overview Trailer - Nintendo Switch

The host of the game was a bipedal horse-man simply called “Horse” and he would commentate over the games in the way the hosts in Jackbox Party Pack titles do. Unfortunately for Nintendo, playtesters apparently hated the games and new host. It was so poorly received that internal developers at Nintendo called the game “horseshit” as shorthand and even warned the company that releasing the game in its current state could harm Nintendo’s brand as a whole.

The fate of this project remains up in the air, with some sources reportedly saying that higher-ups still want to make it a full-priced release as cases for a physical release have already been produced for it. Meanwhile, others think Everybody’s 1-2 Switch would be better served as an addition to their Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscription service as it won’t draw as much criticism that way. It remains to be seen if Nintendo will ever publicly announce or release the game.

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Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo
Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward. 
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?  
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened. 

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Nintendo Switch Online expands with Game Boy and Game Boy Advance Titles
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During the February 2023 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced that it is adding Game Boy and Game Boy Advance Games to its Nintendo Switch Online service. Game Boy games will be available for basic subscribers, while the Game Boy Advance games are available for those who are subscribers of the premium Expansion Pack.

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