Nintendo Switch 2 launch, after an 8 year wait, draws big lines
TOKYO — Eager customers lined up outside electronics stores hours in advance in Tokyo on Thursday to collect their pre-ordered Nintendo Switch 2 video game consoles.
The much anticipated Switch2 is an upgrade to its eight-year-old predecessor with new social features meant to draw players into online gaming. The new consoles were sold through a competitive lottery system that Nintendo said got about 2.2 million applications in Japan alone.
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Visual accessibility in focus A major theme that emerged from this year's showcase is color blind considerations. The showcase kicked off with ChromaGun2: Dye Hard by Pixel Maniacs, a first-person color-based puzzler. In its color blind mode, colors are paired with symbols for better parsing and those symbols combine when colors are mixed. A similar spirit is echoed in Sword and Quill's Soulblaze, a creature-collecting roguelike that's a bit of Pokémon mixed with tabletop RPGs (dice included). It also pairs colors and icons, adding a high level of customization to color indicators, difficulty, and an extensive text-to-speech function that supports native text-to-speech systems and NVDA. Later, Gales of Nayeli from Blindcoco Studios, a grid-based strategy RPG, showcased its own color blind considerations and an impressive array of visual customization options. Room to breathe A welcome trend carried over from last year, games continue to eschew time pressure and fail states. 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Infiniti Unveils Full-Size Luxury SUV QX80
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