I’ve visited Target in three of my past four weekend shopping trips. A peculiar sight has greeted me each time – a fresh batch of Nintendo Switch 2 consoles.

Nintendo, master dickerer of gauging supply-and-demand to build FOMO hype, has filled store shelves with adequate stock. With a device that should be the most in-demand piece of electronics launched in 2025. What timeline is this?

I’m a crusty old bastard of a gamer now, and yet I fully acknowledge that I can be manipulated. The Switch was a perfect example – since I already had a WiiU, I didn’t jump out on launch day to buy the new kid on the block. Breath of the Wild ran just fine on the sad old lump sitting next to my television. And yet…the pull was there. The Switch was novel, a little daring, and something I couldn’t easily get my hands on. Sitting out launch only meant that my desire to have one grew and grew, manifesting in a frustrated series of hunting trips for the shape-shifting trickster. Landing one felt like an accomplishment.

The Switch 2 is providing none of that kid-like, under-the-tree magic. It’s right there waiting for you, next to the section filled with socks and underwear. It’s less Christmas-time-in-August for adults, more oh-yeah-that’s-a-thing-now for olds.

This strange new paradigm is further compounded by the safest, least daring, most inoffensive piece of hardware design Nintendo has ever made. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that an iterative update was the smart play here. After the runaway success of the Switch, they could not abandon this form factor. But did they have to do it so…clinically? Visiting a kiosk and holding the Switch 2’s mighty 8-inch screen filled me less with joy and more with resigned apathy. It is, I imagine, the type of thought process that methodically blooms into the foggy, waking consciousness of the PlayStation faithful.

“I’m gonna have to buy one of these in the next year or two, I guess.”

And I’m a mark! A bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool gaming Calvinist, predestined to keep on pumping money into this hobby for the rest of my godforsaken life. How the hell did Nintendo, with 8 stinking years of development time, turn in…this? It’s like an Eric Clapton album from the 80s. Slickly produced, competent, underwhelming, but with enough hits to convince you to buy a ticket for a live performance where you might hear the right version of “Layla.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be a fine device. So long as a Switch 2 remains the only place one can play new Nintendo games, it’s eventually going to be worth the exorbitant asking price. And similar to any perfectly cromulent Sony-fied product, its likely-Highlander-ish life cycle will ensure that it’s worth buying at nearly any point. You will not feel like you aren’t getting your money’s worth if you wait a few years – there will still be plenty of value waiting for you.

And yet…I can’t help but pine for the magic.

It’s impossible for me to look at the most creative minds in gaming and be happy that they’re settling for more of the same. The same designers who basically turned the idea of a WiiU inside-out and showed us exactly what we were all missing are sitting on their hands, passing off GameChat (an idea that seemed like a good idea during lockdown, re-purposing WiiU Chat to a more ambitious degree) as a cool, generation-defining feature for the youths. They can do better.

The same developers who put out a murderer’s row of heavy hitters for Switch’s launch year – Zelda, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, ARMS, Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, and Xenoblade 2 – are still sitting in their cubicles and dreaming. We all know that Bananza is the tip of an iceberg, and that they have more than Drag X Drive up their sleeves. They can do far, far better.

And they will. But presently, the Switch 2 feels about as exciting as a sad trip down a dark alley to find an agreeable sex worker to have your needs discretely met.

Just take my $500 and get it over with.