Nintendo has unveiledEverybody 1-2 Switch, the sequel to one of its worst-rated games of all time. Its polarizing announcement arrived shortly afterNintendo revealed new Switch Joy-Con colorstoo, giving fans quite the shock therapy.
As far as major game developers are concerned, Nintendo has a better track record of consistently putting out quality releases than most. Yet1-2 Switchis a clear aberration from that trend; released in March 2017,1-2 Switchwas universally panned by criticsand was widely considered to be not just the worst Switch launch title but one of the most underwhelming games Nintendo ever put out. As of 2023,1-2 Switchhas a Metacritic score of just 58, which is almost unheard of for a first-party Nintendo title.
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None of that dissuaded Nintendo from developing a sequel, which is slated to release on June 30, the company said.Everybody 1-2 Switchwill retail at $29.99, which is $20 lower than its predecessor’s day-one price. The brief Nintendo Store description of the title doesn’t reveal much about its actual contents beyond stating that players can expect party mini-games featuring everything from “balloons to aliens.” Its ESRB rating also mentions alcohol references, which weren’t present in the original but didn’t affect the upcoming game’s suitable-for-all-ages classification.
And while many fans took to social media to express their befuddlement with the fact that Nintendo is doing a follow-up on1-2 Switch, the game was actually a long time coming.Rumors of a1-2 Switchsequelfirst surfaced in early 2022 as part of a report that claimed the game was heavily disliked by playtesters and localization teams alike. This is eventually said to have culminated in massive internal pushback against its release, with numerous employees reportedly raising concerns thatEverybody 1-2 Switchwill damage Nintendo’s reputation as a high-quality game developer.
All of that ostensiblymade Nintendo unsure of what to do with the1-2 Switchsequel, which is believed to have gone gold around a year ago. While it’s possible that the Japanese developer reworked and refined the game in the meantime, the $29.99 price tag doesn’t exactly inspire confidence thatEverybody 1-2 Switchwill improve on the experience of its $50 predecessor.
What it does suggest, however, is that the game was likely cheap to make relative to the costs of a typical first-party Nintendo project. And since poor reviews didn’t stop the original from hitting some 3.5 million in lifetime sales, Nintendo is plausibly going through with releasingEverybody 1-2 Switchbecause it decided that doing so is a low-risk, high-reward kind of situation.
