I Played Madden 26 On Switch 2 And It Didn’t Suck
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
I play hundreds of hours of Madden NFL every year, but one thing I haven’t done in nearly 20 years is play Madden on a Nintendo platform. To my recollection, the last time I played the series on a Nintendo system was Madden 08. After that, I switched to playing the game on Xbox consoles, and I’ve never looked back, as Xbox became my preferred platform. Just a few years after I quit Madden on Nintendo, EA Sports quit Madden on Nintendo, too. But the Switch 2 promises a new beginning for Madden on Nintendo platforms, and based on a Madden 26 demo I played on Switch 2, that future may be brighter than the pairing’s lackluster past.
The last Madden game released for a Nintendo device was Madden 13, released in August 2012 for the Wii and Wii U. After that, EA stopped supporting the platform with its American football game, seemingly because technical limitations made it untenable to continue. In the Wii and Wii U era, the games routinely underperformed critically, offered fewer new features than their counterparts on Xbox and PlayStation, and performed worse graphically. I played a game of Madden 26 on Switch 2 in handheld mode–I didn’t see it docked–and though it did look like a graphical step down from what I later played on PS5, nothing else about it felt compromised by the platform.
Even in the case of the visual downgrade, it was no different than what I’d expect if I were to play Madden 26 on my Steam Deck. Handhelds still come with the baked-in understanding that you’re losing a bit of luster for the convenience of the experience, and knowing that, I was able to enjoy Madden 26 on Switch 2.
