Our Switch got here 14 hours early—here's what early adopters will see.
As we've mentioned previously, Nintendo did not see fit to provide press with early review hardware for the Switch 2. Today, though, with the June 5 launch of the Switch 2 having already arrived in regions like Japan and Australia, the ever-efficient UPS driver delivered final retail hardware straight from Nintendo of America to the Ars Orbiting HQ.
The 14-hour lead time between our receipt of the hardware and the midnight launch of the Switch 2 on the US East Coast isn't close to enough time to put together a comprehensive review. For now, though, we thought we'd take you through a pictorial journey of our unboxing and initial setup process, ahead of much more coverage to come.
And while you peruse the images, we recommend listening to the absolute bop that is the Switch 2 setup music, which we've embedded below:
The first thing we saw when powering on the Switch 2, after a Nintendo logo, was a short animation showing us how to attach the new snap-on Joy-Cons (which are packaged separately in the box). After that, the system confirmed our language, region, and time zone before asking to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi to download an update. We didn't see any option to skip this download, making it unclear what, if anything, you can do with a brand-new Switch 2 that doesn't have access to an Internet connection.
