Tuesday, February 13th 2024
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Nintendo Switch 2 Could Retain Backward Compatibility with The First-Gen Console
Reports are circulating online that Nintendo's upcoming successor to the Switch console, tentatively referred to as the "Switch 2," will offer backward compatibility for physical game cards and digital purchases from the current Switch library. While Nintendo has yet to officially announce the new console, speculation points to a potential reveal as early as next month for a 2024 launch. The backward compatibility claims first surfaced last year when Nintendo America President Doug Bowser hinted at supporting continuity between console generations to minimize the sales decline when transitioning hardware. New momentum behind the rumors comes from gaming industry insiders Felipe Lima and PH Brazil, who, during recent podcasts, stated the Switch 2 has backward compatibility functionality already being shared with game developers.
Well-known gaming leakers "NateTheHate" and others have corroborated that testing is underway for playing current Switch games on new hardware. If true, this backward compatibility would be a consumer-friendly move that breaks from Nintendo's past tendencies of forcing clean breaks between console ecosystems. While details remain unconfirmed by Nintendo, multiple credible sources point to the upcoming Switch successor allowing gamers to carry forward both their physical and digital libraries to continue enjoying this generation's releases. If the compatibility remains, the hardware platform could stay in the playing field of the same vendor—NVIDIA—who provided Nintendo with Tegra X1 SoC. The updated version of the SoC could use a fork of NVIDIA's Orin platform based on Ampere GPU with DLSS, but official details are yet to be seen.
Source:
via HardwareLuxx
Well-known gaming leakers "NateTheHate" and others have corroborated that testing is underway for playing current Switch games on new hardware. If true, this backward compatibility would be a consumer-friendly move that breaks from Nintendo's past tendencies of forcing clean breaks between console ecosystems. While details remain unconfirmed by Nintendo, multiple credible sources point to the upcoming Switch successor allowing gamers to carry forward both their physical and digital libraries to continue enjoying this generation's releases. If the compatibility remains, the hardware platform could stay in the playing field of the same vendor—NVIDIA—who provided Nintendo with Tegra X1 SoC. The updated version of the SoC could use a fork of NVIDIA's Orin platform based on Ampere GPU with DLSS, but official details are yet to be seen.
32 Comments on Nintendo Switch 2 Could Retain Backward Compatibility with The First-Gen Console
Consoles really are just a big scam even though I loved playing on them.
Xbox went from x86, to RISC to x86 again, they would have had to deal with the headache of emulation compatibility.
Nintendo consoles cartridge were just too exotic relative to their predecessor to run native, and some cartridge had a coprocessor inside that allowed the game to go beyond what the base console could do, so I guess that making the whole thing work reliably was going to be a pain. The GameCube also ditched the cartridge format that was just not viable against optical media in terms of storage capacity and cost, so yhea.
Nintendo has been fairly good when it comes to their portable consoles back ward compatibility. The Game Boy color could play Game Boy games, the GBA (besides the micro) could play all previous GB/GBC games, the DS could play GBA game. But that's also because the hardware was very similar, and the GBA had dedicated hardware to run the older games. The 3DS also had hardware dedicated to run DS games. The 3DS was just too exotic as a whole, most people will tell you that getting a used 3DS is better than emulating on a mono screen device.
TLDR; consoles makers don't like emulation since it's often imperfect and not efficient. So they would rather use special hardware for it. Otherwise, handling angry customers who don't understand why some games don't run well is something that they don't want to deal with.
Now, I don't understand the "forcing to buy new hardware" thing. Having to develop games for two platforms with a big imbalance in capabilities isn't good. Games that are cross generational often ditch support for the older platform if they want to make the game bigger, more complex, since the older console just can't handle it. The fact that we have currently games like Hogwarts legacy running on 10 years old consoles is a bit of an outlier, and even then you see people complain that those games are being held back by the older consoles
Same thing happened with ps3 and ps2, not everything worked but it was mostly ok and close enough to perfect.
I played GC games on my Wii
I played Wii games on my WiiU
I played DS/DSi games on my 3DS
Where is this past tendency for clean breaks between generations.