Nintendo has had a rough go of things. After the commercial failure of the Wii U, Nintendo needed a console that had the appeal of the Wii without the clunk and confusion of its successor.  The Nintendo Switch’s hoped to become the home and portable replacement for Nintendo’s two consoles, the Wii U and the 3DS, for the price of an XBOX.

After tepid reviews from websites worried about the connection issues with the left joy-con, Nintendo’s day-one patch fixed that issue for most users. Akin to XBOX’s infamous “red-ring of death” that rendered the console virtually unusable and the PS4 shipping dead systems, Nintendo’s launch day came with its own problems: lack of supply. It has been almost a month out from launch, and Switch consoles are still hard to come by. Fans are mad, and eBay scalpers are getting almost $200 more than the asking price of $299, which, to be fair, is a relatively moderate price point.  

However, that doesn’t mean that the Switch is cheap. When somebody gets the incredibly hard-to-find console, they have to be willing to shell out another $69 to get a game, $70 to get a second, gamer-friendly controller, and $80 to get another set of joycons. This brings the actual price of the Switch up to $518 without tax and shipping. Expensive, yes.

While the CPU within the system is not as powerful as the PS4 or XBOX One, the issue of dropped pixels and incredibly slow frame-rate has been widely overhyped. In game areas that require quite a bit of movement, such as “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s” Great Plateau, there is a slight drop in frame-rate, but the overall quality is superb, especially compared to the Wii U.

The newest issue with the Switch is that it can bend. No, it’s not supposed to bend, but many users are finding that their console is becoming slightly warped after being in the dock for an extended period of time. Nintendo has yet to release an official statement on this issue, but people believe that the heat the console generates can cause the metal to become warped. While this issue has run rampant on the internet, I have yet to experience this issue despite using my Switch almost everyday. It may just be internet hype, or it may be a real problem, but until concrete evidence comes out, it should taken with a grain of salt.

Overall, despite its flaws, the Nintendo is leaps and bounds above the Wii U. As long as good first and third party titles come to the console, and Nintendo works out the minor kinks, the Switch will become a solid and respected console. However, it isn’t worth the price the scalpers are charging, so checking verified retailers for when it goes back on sale is the best bet.