Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Review

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2

If you’ve been anywhere near Nintendo forums or comment sections lately, you’ve probably seen Welcome Tour popping up, often alongside some pretty strong opinions. Is this a proper game? A glorified instruction manual? Or just another oddball Nintendo side project? Before we get into the details, full disclosure: I was offered a review code for Welcome Tour, but I chose not to accept it, as this release already has plenty of skepticism swirling around. This review isn’t here to tear the game down or defend it blindly. The goal is simple: to figure out what Welcome Tour actually is, who it’s for, and whether it really earns the price on the box. What’s it Like? Setup your console, throw out your instruction manual, and prepare for exams as we review Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.

What’s Actually Here?

At its core, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a playable user guide for your Nintendo Switch 2 hardware. Think of it as an interactive manual dressed up with bright visuals and light mini-games, designed to ease new users into the system’s features. The game, or app, depending on how you want to label it, is split into sections. Each one teaches you about some part of the hardware: controllers, screen settings, rumble, and so on. But before you can move to the next section, you need to collect stamps and complete tasks, almost like ticking off a checklist in a training course. Honestly, there were times when Welcome Tour felt less like a light-hearted introduction and more like paying for the privilege of sitting an exam on your own console. The quizzes, the lost-and-found item collecting, the stamp requirements, these stretch out the experience that makes it feel more like work, rather than play.

While there are mini-games scattered throughout, they don’t offer much staying power. They’re small distractions that offer a momentary break from completing the checklist, but nothing you’d boot up for fun later. If you rush through and do the bare minimum, you could probably clear the main tour in under 6 hours. That includes the exams, quizzes, and tracking down the lost items hidden in various areas. Oddly, the lost item system has a weird limit as you can only carry one at a time. Forget to hand it in at lost property and stumble across another? You’ll have to backtrack to hand one in, in order to pick up the other. It’s a strange, old-fashioned design quirk in a product meant to ease you into modern hardware.

But Wait… Some Content Requires Extra Hardware

Speaking of hardware, one of the more baffling choices here is that not all of Welcome Tour is playable out of the box. Some mini-games and demonstrations require additional hardware, things like a USB camera or a 4K 120hz television. For bundled software, that might be understandable. After all, you’d assume not every user has every accessory. But when you’re asking people to pay for this experience, locking parts of it behind extra hardware outside of Nintendo’s ecosystem feels like an odd, and bold move. While there are ways to skip these sections, it’s odd that having a 4k 120hz TV should be a requirement for a mostly portable system. The result is that unless you have a very specific setup at home, parts of Welcome Tour are simply unavailable. It’s not a huge chunk of content, but it’s enough to make you pause and wonder why these weren’t designed to be universally playable, or at least clearly marked as optional bonuses.

Who Is This Really For?

This all leads to the real problem with Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour… it feels like it doesn’t quite know who it’s for. On the surface, the package seems aimed at beginners or a new user who’s picking up a game console for the very first time. Maybe a child, maybe a parent or a grandparent who’s never touched a Switch before. The mini-games are simple, the explanations are clear, and the whole thing is built to ease someone into the Switch 2’s features without overwhelming them.

But then you hit the technical requirements.

As mentioned, some mini-games and demonstrations need extra hardware like a USB camera or a 4K TV,  things that only the more serious, tech-focused players are likely to have hooked up. The same crowd who buys capture cards, tweaks settings, and cares about refresh rates. So you’re left with a strange mismatch: simple, child-friendly gameplay design layered on top of technical content that only a hardcore enthusiast would care about. It’s hard to imagine either group being satisfied. My own kids, for example, would probably try this for ten minutes before asking to play Mario Kart or Fortnite, which is something fun and familiar. Why bother sitting an exam on your new toy when there are actual games waiting? Could it be for collectors or Nintendo oddity fans? Honestly, I don’t think there’s enough novelty here even for them, and I spent $160 on an Alarmo. This isn’t Wii Play or Nintendo Land, which offered quirky, replayable experiences that you might fire up now and then for fun. It’s a training tool. Once you’ve done the tour, there’s little reason to come back. So, who is the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour for? Right now, it feels like the answer is… almost no one.

The Price Problem

To be fair, Welcome Tour isn’t going to break the bank. At $15 AUD, this isn’t some premium-priced launch title or a major investment. But the price isn’t really the issue, it’s the principle.

Why is this being sold separately at all?

On other platforms, onboarding tools like this are bundled for free. PlayStation 5 owners got Astro’s Playroom, which was a fully-fledged, charming platformer that also showcased the new hardware’s features. The original Wii came packed with Wii Sports, a simple but endlessly replayable game that introduced motion controls to the world. Welcome Tour feels like it could’ve been Nintendo’s equivalent for the Switch 2… a quirky, optional extra for curious or enthusiastic owners who wanted to explore the system’s new capabilities, but instead, it’s been carved out as a paid standalone app, and not a particularly exciting one. For a system already facing plenty of online discourse about pricing, hardware choices, and software strategy, Welcome Tour doesn’t help the conversation. If anything, it adds fuel to the fire. That $15 price tag isn’t outrageous, but it raises a bigger question: Why wasn’t this simply included?

Functional, Polished… and Probably Not for Me

I can see what Nintendo was going for with Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. It’s clean, polished, and does exactly what it sets out to do by guiding new players through the ins and outs of the Switch 2. The problem is… it just wasn’t for me. As someone who already knows their way around a console and who prefers to actually play games rather than pass quizzes or collect stamps, Welcome Tour felt more like sitting through a Switch 2 exam rather than discovering something fun. The mini-games were fine for what they were, but they won’t hold anyone’s attention for long, and the strange mix of beginner-friendly tasks with enthusiast-level hardware requirements left the whole experience feeling oddly unfocused.

That said, I can’t tell you not to try it. If you’re the kind of player who wants to deep-dive into every feature your Switch 2 has to offer, or you’re setting up the system for someone brand new to gaming, maybe Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour will be worth the $15 price. But, for most players, I suspect Mario Kart or Tears of the Kingdom will be calling long before this tour is done.

So, What’s it Like? Welcome Tour is like an expensive user manual…

What do you think? Should onboarding tools like this be free? Or is there value in having an interactive guide, even as a paid extra?

Let me know, respectfully, in the comments below.

Enjoyed our Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Review?

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