3 days ago
Is ‘Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour' Really Worth $10?
In the 1990s, the immortal ad campaign once declared that 'Sega does what Nintendon't'. Fast-forward to 2025, and it's slightly different — Sony did what Nintendidn't by bundling Astro's Playroom with its PS5 to showcase its new tech, while Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is locked behind a $10 payment.
Still, I bit the bullet and bought it anyway — after all, this is a Nintendo release. There's bound to be plenty of value in there, and surely much more than the minuscule $9.99 fee suggests, yeah?
Well, no, not really. On balance, the pricing is accurate — the effort that went into this package was done with care. Still, it represents one of my biggest regrets as a day-one console owner, as playing Welcome Tour for this review means I've still not started Mario Kart World, which was the sole reason I ordered the damn Switch 2 in the first place.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour initially dumps you into a long queue ahead of the experience — think the job center scene in The Full Monty without the thrusting — in which you pick a character from a wide range of generic people. In the absence of 'balding and overweight' options, I opted for the closest resemblance to what I hoped I'd become by my late 30s.
As you ascend the escalator to what can only be described as 'clean Gamescom,' Welcome Tour quickly highlights a lot of strengths for the new console, which would be great if it were, by default, the first thing you'd play on the Switch 2.
First up is the quality of the console's sound — not only can it be loud and crystal clear, but there's also a real depth to the effects, particularly echoes. The 120fps quality is as clear as day, too, bolstered by the bigger screen and fancy, magnetic Joy-Con 2s.
Still, what becomes almost instantly clear is that you can't equate the Switch 2's technical genius with a $10 experience that explains why that's the case, especially one that goes to great lengths to make you feel like you're on a school trip. I'm not going to review the Switch 2, especially not through the lens of Welcome Tour's light propaganda.
You start Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour on the left Joy-Con 2, exploring its wonders. You need to collect all the stamps in your given zone, which pop up for every button or feature of that piece of tech, to move to the next area. Collecting stamps for the up, down, left, and right buttons individually feels like a chore, and they're right next to each other. There's no fanfare or fun animation for any of these — it's very much a case that these inputs exist, and you should be happy they exist.
In the spaces between these gatekeeping stamp plinths, there are fellow visitors to speak to, quizzes to take, minigames to play, and the occasional tech demo to enjoy. On the face of it, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour knows it could party, but the company's desire to teach you about the console through abnormally dull execution makes you soon realize it might not be money well spent.
There are nice flash points, to its credit. Early in the tour — and rightly so — the mouse controls are showcased in a minigame that proves a fantastic example of progress: this pioneering idea is incredibly responsive, with the added bonus that rare left-handed mouse users like me can accessibly adapt the tech, simply using your preferred Joy-Con 2 as standard. Sure, the analog stick is still a little uncomfortable in the mouse grasp, but it's a small price to pay for progress.
Still, even in light moments like this, there's also a shade, as another mouse game undermines the vibration technology that Welcome Tour tries to promote. To celebrate the Joy-Con 2's magnetic rumble function, you're presented with a two-way axis to detect where the strongest pulses are. For the life of me, I'll never get the double gold medal, because you need near-pinpoint accuracy to get within the margin of error, as it's not that obvious. Sure, I might have bigger hands than your average bear, but I can't recognize the most powerful tremors.
Otherwise, the minigames and tech demos are mostly standard fare. You shake maracas, make coin sounds with the vibration mechanism, shoot balloons, or play finger-Twister. Still, given Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour's focus on completionism, you mostly fly through them, shrug, and carry on, looking for the next thing to strike off your list.
There's also a ton of reading. As someone who thrives in European museums (most recently ticking off the unsurprisingly depressing Museum of Communism in Prague), even I struggled to work my way through the three to five information boards that popped up at every 'quiz' desk before taking a mind-numbing test. Sure, you'll learn about how the mechanics work, and probably learn a few pretty impressive things. Still, you're mostly rewarded with silly multiple-choice questions that even celebrity episodes of The Chase would be embarrassed to use.
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You're even asked to return lost property to the main desk. You can only hold one item of lost property at a time. I assume the idea here was to explain how fast travel works, but it's another tick-box affair that will leave you feeling deflated and annoyed.
Later, too, there are zones that apparently require you to use technology you might not have, such as the Switch 2 Pro Controller or camera. Luckily, they're optional, as Eurogamer's morse code guide outlines, and it's nice (and wholly unsurprising) that Nintendo offers this workaround.
Due to bad decision-making on Nintendo's part, Welcome Tour occupies the weirdest position for a paid 'game.' The only real way you'll appreciate Welcome Tour's content is to know that you have to buy and play it before whatever you've genuinely bought your Switch 2 for, such as presumed killer app Mario Kart World (which I don't know anything about because, like I said, I've still not even started it).
Given the outlay and practicality of the materials — and, let's face it, the obviousness and dullness of the execution — Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour should have been baked into the console. In a perfect world, it would have ditched the crap quizzes, streamlined the minigames and tech demos, and introduced itself as part of the installation and syncing process to get you excited for the games you really want to play.
At the very least, this should've been a freebie for pre-orders to sweeten the deal, especially given all the flak Nintendo has received for the pricing of Mario Kart World (which, if I'm being honest, isn't something I agree with). Hell, bundle it in with Nintendo Switch Online — given the depth of additions going on there, specifically the GameCube expansion, it's a surefire winner, and I'd wager that it would've earned better long-term income for Nintendo.
But for $10, is the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour worth it? Objectively, yes — a lot of effort has been put into it, and there are five or six hours of play time if you want to complete it fully. Nobody's expecting another Wii Sports, but if you're going to show off all the hard work you've put into your hardware on such a technical level — and with broadly forgettable rewards — the experience should be part and parcel of receiving your Switch 2, especially when you realize, after around an hour, you'd have so much more fun playing Mario Kart World instead.
Not that I can confirm that, of course. I still haven't played Mario Kart World.
