Switch 2 Tutorial Game Welcome Tour Costs $10, Nintendo Explains Why It's Not a Free Console Pack-In

Amid the furore astir the $449.99 terms of the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World's $79.99 terms tag, determination is daze astatine Nintendo’s determination to complaint for the console’s tutorial game, Welcome Tour.

Nintendo revealed Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour during its Nintendo Direct. It’s a crippled acceptable to motorboat alongside the Switch 2 successful June that offers a guided circuit of the console itself successful video crippled form.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is described arsenic a "virtual exhibition" of the caller hardware. Per Nintendo: "through tech demos, minigames and different interactions, players volition get to cognize the caller strategy wrong and retired successful ways they whitethorn ne'er person known astir otherwise."

The Nintendo Direct showed footage of a tiny subordinate avatar exploring a super-sized Switch 2, speechmaking astir the antithetic features and facts astir the console. It besides includes mini-games specified arsenic Speed Golf, Dodge the Spiked Balls, and a Maracas Physics Demo.

IGN tin present corroborate that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour costs $9.99 and is simply a digital-only product. That’s importantly cheaper than different Switch 2 games, but IGN has already reported to the complaints from immoderate Nintendo fans that Welcome Tour costs wealth astatine all, with galore saying it should beryllium Switch 2 pack-in, arsenic DualSense tech demo crippled Astro's Playroom was for PlayStation 5.

IGN interviewed Nintendo of America's Vice President of Product and Player Experience, Bill Trinen, astatine a caller Switch 2 preview lawsuit successful New York, and asked him if Nintendo discussed making Welcome Tour a pack-in game, and wherefore the institution made the determination to terms it arsenic a abstracted integer product.

We request to constituent retired present that our interrogation with Trinen was conducted connected April 3, 2025, anterior to Nintendo’s announcement astir delaying Switch 2 pre-orders successful the U.S. owed to the imaginable interaction of tariffs, and consequent interest that Nintendo whitethorn rise the terms of the console and its games further arsenic a result.

Trinen said there’s much to Welcome Tour than it appears based connected the showing during the Nintendo Direct and adjacent during caller hands-on opportunities the media had entree to. Based connected what’s really successful the game, Nintendo decided $9.99 “is not an exorbitant price,” helium continued.

“It's an absorbing product,” Trinen began. “We're really getting acceptable today, we're going to beryllium doing immoderate Nintendo Treehouse Live segments and covering a batch of games successful detail. That's 1 of them. And I deliberation radical volition beryllium capable to spot done Treehouse Live astir apt a small spot much possibly than you were capable to spot connected the amusement floor. It's a beauteous robust portion of software. There's a batch of large item successful there.

“For immoderate people, I deliberation determination are radical who are peculiarly funny successful the tech and the specs of the strategy and things similar that, for them I deliberation it's going to beryllium a large product. It's truly for radical that privation much accusation astir the strategy alternatively than needfully a speedy intro to everything it does.

"And for that crushed and conscionable the magnitude of attraction and enactment that the squad enactment into it, I deliberation it was decided that, 'Yeah, this feels similar $9.99 is not an exorbitant price. It feels similar a bully worth for what you're getting retired of the product.' "

Welcome Tour is of people conscionable 1 portion of Nintendo’s next-gen propulsion to go embroiled successful controversy, and we’ve besides got Trinen’s effect to questions surrounding the company’s determination to spell for $80 Switch 2 games, arsenic good arsenic going for $450 for the Switch 2 itself.

Be definite to cheque retired IGN’s interrogation with Bill Trinen successful afloat to find retired more.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].