Nintendo, notoriously secretive, has up to now stated nothing — or virtually nothing — on the document about its subsequent recreation console. As Nintendo Swap approaches its seventh birthday in March 2024, questions on how for much longer it should final are pure: Seven years is a typical lifespan for a console era, Swap gross sales are falling quick, and the know-how powering the console is displaying its age. However Nintendo has flatly refused to have interaction with these questions.
Behind the scenes, nonetheless, Nintendo is gearing up for the discharge of its new machine, briefing its companions, and releasing improvement kits. Info has began to leak, and an image of what type the console will take has begun to emerge, in addition to after we can anticipate to listen to about it and after we can anticipate to purchase one.
It’s no shock that Nintendo is treading rigorously. The Swap has been an infinite success — it’s the third-best-selling console of all time, behind solely PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s personal DS handheld — which presents each an enormous alternative and an enormous threat. Traditionally, Nintendo has struggled to comply with its hottest codecs: Wii and DS have been adopted by the flop of Wii U and the relative disappointment (in gross sales phrases) of 3DS. Nintendo’s traditional insistence on {hardware} innovation has confirmed as prone to alienate its viewers as to discover a new one. Will Nintendo break with its personal custom and comply with the Swap with a extra highly effective tackle the identical method, or will it strive one thing completely different?
What’s the newest Swap 2 information?
Stories sourced from peripheral and accent producers recommend the Swap 2 will function Pleasure-Cons that connect to the console magnetically, and have further buttons not featured on the unique Pleasure-Cons. Regardless of this, the console will likely be absolutely backward-compatible with Swap video games and even some {hardware}, together with bodily recreation cartridges and current controllers. Learn our full report.
Will Nintendo’s next-gen console be known as Swap 2?
Concerning its identify, the reply is that we don’t know. It’s price noting that Nintendo has by no means earlier than named its consoles in numerical sequence, even once they have been direct follow-ups to a earlier era, such because the Tremendous Nintendo Leisure System, Recreation Boy Advance, and Nintendo 3DS. Tremendous Nintendo Swap (or Tremendous Swap!) has a sure ring to it, when you ask us. However for now, “Swap 2” is a serviceable shorthand, and what we’ll use on this article.
Will Swap 2 be a hybrid handheld console, like Swap?
The reply right here seems to be sure. Reporting by VGC, citing a number of sources after dev kits arrived at associate studios, stated that the console “would be capable to be utilized in moveable mode, just like the Nintendo Swap.” This was later corroborated by Nikkei.
Reporting suggests the console will function removable Pleasure-Con controllers just like the Swap, this time with a magnetic attachment system, plus a dock just like the unique Swap’s. There’s no world on whether or not it should have a handheld-only variant just like the Swap Lite. However early indicators are that Nintendo is eager to comply with carefully within the footsteps of the 130-million-plus-selling Swap.
It may be a bit larger, although. A 2024 report from a Japanese analyst suggests the console may have an 8-inch display screen, in comparison with the unique Swap’s 6.2 inches and the Swap OLED mannequin’s 7 inches.
What’s Swap 2’s launch date?
Nintendo hasn’t formally indicated when the Swap 2 will likely be launched, however we now have a couple of clues.
Initially, a number of sources reported that the console was deliberate to debut within the second half of 2024. Nevertheless, it now seems that Nintendo is focusing on a March 2025 launch date.
Brazilian video games journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe initially broke the information of the slip to 2025, saying that a number of sources stated they have been engaged on video games which can be set to launch alongside the Swap 2. Each Eurogamer and VGC heard comparable claims from their sources. Nikkei then reported Nintendo was focusing on March 2025 in an effort to keep away from {hardware} shortages and guarantee a powerful lineup of video games — however famous a slip past March was nonetheless attainable.
Whereas that is later than we beforehand anticipated, it suits in with an October 2023 interview with Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, who reiterated that the corporate would stay centered on Swap till the top of Nintendo’s present fiscal 12 months in March 2024, and added that it might proceed to help Swap with new titles within the following fiscal 12 months. The shift from “focus” to “help” for the Swap implies {that a} new console will launch in Nintendo’s subsequent fiscal 12 months — so, between April 2024 and March 2025.
This additionally traces up with what we learn about declining Swap gross sales, the stage Nintendo is at within the improvement of the console, and the discharge schedule for Swap video games. Nintendo beforehand dominated out releasing a brand new console earlier than the top of March 2024, and it now has Swap video games scheduled by summer time 2024; the most recent launch on the present schedule is Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which has been given a summer time 2024 slot. (It’s additionally price noting that the not too long ago introduced remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Yr Door doesn’t have a extra exact launch date than “2024.”)
This does imply the Swap 2 will miss the 2024 vacation season, but it surely’ll give the corporate extra time to stockpile some first-party titles, in response to VGC sources.
Will Swap 2 be backward-compatible?
That is the massive query, with many customers hoping — or outright anticipating — to hold ahead their recreation libraries to Nintendo’s subsequent console, as has develop into the norm with the most recent generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The reply stays unknown, and it’s not straightforward to foretell, both.
VGC’s report stated that the backward compatibility of the machine “stays unclear.” Some third-party publishers have been stated to be fearful concerning the potential influence on gross sales of next-gen titles if the machine is backward-compatible. For its half, Nintendo has (in a uncommon on-the-record remark) stated it hopes to deliver Swap customers over to the brand new platform with their Nintendo accounts; if the Nintendo account system persists, that may in principle make it straightforward for customers to entry earlier purchases. However that’s not the identical factor because the console being technically able to it.
Nevertheless, later studies, sourced from peripheral producers, recommend that the Swap 2 will likely be backward appropriate with Swap video games — together with bodily cartridges — and equipment, together with the Professional Controller and Pleasure-Cons.
Nintendo has an honest, if not flawless, document for supporting backward compatibility. The Wii performed GameCube video games, and the Wii U performed Wii video games; the Recreation Boy Advance was backward-compatible with the Recreation Boy, and the 3DS with the DS. However the Swap, with its new recreation cartridge format, enforced a clear break with the previous, and Nintendo has made a mint from rereleasing Wii U video games on the machine, notably the 55-million-selling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
On stability, so long as the machine makes use of the identical format for bodily releases (see beneath), Nintendo’s document suggests that it’s going to make the Swap 2 backward-compatible. Nevertheless, there stay technical hurdles to implementing backward compatibility, and far will rely upon the chip structure Nintendo has chosen for the Swap 2, which isn’t presently identified.
Will Swap 2 be digital-only, or will video games be bought on cartridge (or disc)?
Of all of the console producers, Nintendo’s ties to the retail business are maybe the strongest — stronger even than Sony’s — so Nintendo is extraordinarily unlikely to go digital-only for the Swap 2, even when this would appear to make sense for a transportable machine.
Certainly, VGC’s report included the element that the brand new console may have a cartridge slot for bodily releases. That is as near a useless cert as we will get with the Swap 2 — and it additionally occurs to help the machine having the identical or comparable type issue because the Swap, in addition to rising the probability of backward compatibility.
How highly effective will Swap 2 be? Will it be capable to play new AAA video games?
Due to Microsoft’s authorized battles over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and studies of demos given by Nintendo to companions at Gamescom, we’re starting to get a way of how succesful the Swap 2’s {hardware} will likely be.
Inner emails launched as a part of the FTC v. Microsoft case revealed that Activision executives met with Nintendo in December 2022 to debate the console, and got here away with the impression that efficiency could be near “Gen8 platforms” — in different phrases, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick later stated that he had not seen tech specs for the machine, nonetheless.)
If something, the “Gen8” comparability sounds as if it would undersell the Swap 2’s capabilities. In response to Eurogamer’s and VGC’s reporting on the behind-closed-doors Gamescom demos, Nintendo confirmed {hardware} focusing on the specs of the console operating The Matrix Awakens’ Unreal Engine 5 tech demo with ray tracing enabled and “visuals corresponding to Sony’s and Microsoft’s current-gen consoles.”
This doesn’t imply that the Swap 2 will likely be as highly effective as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X. As a substitute, Nintendo is probably going utilizing intelligent methods to scale back the demand on a much less highly effective graphics processor. VGC reported that the demo ran utilizing Nvidia’s superior DLSS upscaling know-how, which makes use of AI to upscale the decision of the picture, making it simpler for builders to optimize efficiency and visuals on weaker {hardware} by reducing the inner decision settings.
Nonetheless, the point out of Unreal Engine 5 — which is establishing itself because the business commonplace engine, focusing on present console {hardware} — together with DLSS and ray tracing means that Nintendo is eager to get nearer to PS5 and Xbox Collection X when it comes to efficiency, and maybe make it extra possible for builders to port their residence console releases on the Swap 2. Reporting by Reuters and Digital Foundry suggests the console will use a customized Nvidia chip that will likely be able to each ray-tracing and DLSS.
Additionally at Gamescom, a particular, improved model of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was proven, operating at increased decision and body price than it does on Swap.
The Swap 2 will function one tech downgrade, nonetheless: Reportedly, the console will function an LCD display screen, not like the OLED display screen seen within the present top-of-the-range Swap mannequin, as a cost-cutting measure.
What video games will likely be obtainable for Swap 2?
Talking of the improved Breath of the Wild demo, sources have been eager to level out that there was no suggestion that an enhanced model of the total recreation would develop into a industrial product — though it wouldn’t be altogether stunning if it did.
The foremost candidate for a Swap 2 launch recreation might be Metroid Prime 4. Of the beforehand introduced in-house Nintendo video games, that is the one one with out a suggestion of a launch date, and Nintendo has been very quiet about it of late. Provided that, a launch earlier than the second half of 2024 appears unlikely. Maybe Nintendo will make it a cross-gen launch for the Swap and its successor, because it did with Breath of the Wild for Wii U/Swap, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for GameCube/Wii.
Aside from Metroid Prime 4, there are two obtrusive gaps in Nintendo’s lineup: a brand new Mario Kart, and a 3D Tremendous Mario recreation. There hasn’t been an all-new Mario Kart in over 9 years, and other than making add-ons for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Mario Kart improvement group has been quiet because the launch of Arms in 2017. Deluxe has bought so persistently over the Swap’s lifetime that Nintendo hasn’t had an incentive to launch a sequel, however a brand new platform would appear to current the proper alternative for Mario Kart 9.
Equally, there hasn’t been a brand new 3D Mario recreation since 2017’s Tremendous Mario Odyssey. It’s a on condition that there will likely be one on Nintendo’s subsequent platform; the one query is when. Odyssey, like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, appeared throughout the first 12 months of the Swap’s life; maybe we will anticipate a repeat of that for the Swap 2.
Polygon will proceed to replace this story as new particulars develop.
