Feature: The Results Of Our 2024 Switch Summer Survey Are In

A couple of months ago we reached out to Nintendo Life readers with our Switch Summer Survey, a chunky questionnaire designed (with your help) to assess the state of all things Nintendo and Switch as the console cruises through its eighth year – and as our thoughts inevitably turn to its successor.

This 70-question blowout covered everything from the Switch eShop to Joy-Con drift, your past Nintendo consoles to your hopes for the future, not to mention a selection of posers about your favourite Nintendo-focused website. Since summer ended, our data monkeys have been crunching the numbers and it’s time for the results!

All questions were optional and not everyone who participated answered every single one – responses ranged between approximately 6,000 to 10,000 unique people, so a big thank you to everyone who took the time to answer.

Let’s dive into the data, shall we? Starting with you.

You & Your Gaming Habits

In terms of location, just under 50% of you are in the US with 20% of you residing in the UK which leaves around a third of you living outside the US/UK. There were 52% of you having at least one child in the household of which 25% of you said you play Switch games together co-op, nice.

When it comes to weekly gaming time, roughly 33% of respondees play up to five hours of games a week, slightly more play between six and ten hours, with the remainder going well into double figures.

Action, Adventure, Platformer, and RPG are the preferred genres, with 61% saying they play mostly single-player Switch games. Breath of the Wild (18%), Animal Crossing (15%), and Tears of the Kingdom (12%) take the podium for Switch game with the most hours logged.

17% of respondees are rocking a gaming PC, while 15% supplement their Switch with a PS5 versus 12% with an Xbox (Xbox Series X: 7%, Series S: 5%). Only 0.3% have never owned a previous Nintendo system (the most popular were Wii and 3DS).

Switch – Games, Online, Hardware

Focusing on the Switch experience, of all the Switches you own, 56% are ‘Standard Switch’, compared to 16% ‘Switch Lite’ and 27% were ‘Switch OLED’s.

The most popular micro SD Card was a measly 128GB with 256GB coming a very close second. Only 18% of you have a card with 1TB or more capacity. Time to upgrade when Switch 2 comes along?

Looking at the eShop, ‘Adequate’ is the most common description of the eShop browsing experience, followed by ‘Poor’, so there’s definite room for improvement there, Nintendo. 99% of respondees have a Nintendo Account, with 17% having them in multiple regions.

A quarter of respondees make their own lists or spreadsheets to keep track of upcoming games, with 19% turning to good ol’ Deku Deals and 16% making use of Nintendo Life’s Games Collection functionality.

Turning to Nintendo Switch Online, one in five respondees don’t currently subscribe to NSO. Of those who do, 23% don’t play retro games via the apps at all, with just 20% playing once a week or more. People generally agree that Nintendo Switch online represents good value, though.

Moving on to the hardware — and controllers specifically — a whopping 53% have had Joy-Con drift troubles, with loose Joy-Con rails affecting 16%. Just 20% said they’d had no Switch hardware issues whatsoever. Regarding pad preferences, 64% prefer the Pro Controller over Joy-Con (22%), with the remainder liking third-party alternatives better.

Over half, 51% of you, said that Switch’s battery life was ‘Good’ with 16% saying it was ‘Excellent’ and only 5% rating it ‘Poor’. Additionally, 55% of you play Switch mostly ‘Docked’ and 44% in ‘Handheld’. Nintendo really did get the balance right with this one didn’t they?

Apparently, between all of you lovely readers, you own a staggering 93,196 loose amiibo and 22,714 boxed amiibo. Won’t somebody set them free?!

Of the 600,000+ games that you own, 58% were purchased digitally via the eShop and 42% were purchased as physical games. When asked about their preference over physical games, the highest factor was having a hard copy of a game that can’t be removed from the eShop.

1 in 20 respondees say that they have experimented with modding their system’s firmware in some way. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the survey is that only a paltry 0.6% have ever taken their Switch to a rooftop party. Scandalous!

You & Nintendo (Life)

Getting the latest news, reviews, and previews — in that order — are the three top reasons you lovely people frequent nintendolife.com for all your lovely Nintendo-related content needs, with our features just behind them. 54% of you use Nintendo Life as your primary source of Nintendo info, with YouTube taking up another 25%.

With regards to the effect of our reviews, 30% of you said that our reviews ‘Often’ influence your buying decisions and a further 47% said ‘Sometimes’. Only 8% of you said our reviews ‘Never’ influence you.

When it comes to your favourite Nintendo series, The Legend of Zelda (39%) won by a mile. Super Mario (14%) took silver, with Pokémon (9%) in third place and Metroid (6%) and Xenoblade (5%) — which is also people’s favourite series they’ve been introduced to on Switch — bringing up the rear. Of course, the correct answer was F-Zero, which just 0.8% of you picked.

Star Fox, Kid Icarus, and Wario Land are the series without a Switch entry that you most want to see return, and as expected, a brand new Mario or Zelda would be most likely to make you pick up a Switch 2 on day one. Speaking of which, let’s look to the future…

Switch 2 & The Future

31% would like to see Game Pass come to Switch. The same percentage of people (though not necessarily the same people, of course!) said they wouldn’t be interested in having streaming apps on Switch, although Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video were the top picks for everyone else.

Asked about your most desired feature for Switch 2, better performance in docked and handheld modes were the most common responses, with the closely related ‘Better ports of multiplatform games’ coming in third. 7% are hoping for the return of the glorious StreetPass, while 11% want a totally new unique feature thrown into the mix.

And Finally…

Our thanks to all who responded, especially those who answered the tough questions. Things like ‘Do you play your Switch on the toilet?’ to which 55% responded “Never!”… although we’re not sure we believe them. A shockingly untrustworthy 71% of respondees said they hadn’t ever licked a Switch game cartridge, either. How could anyone resist that delicious, bitter twang!

And there we go – an intriguing glimpse at the Switch lover’s gaming history and habits as we stand on the cusp of the next generation!