Nintendo Switch 2: everything we know so far

It’s been seven years since Nintendo released the Switch, turning the video game world on its head. Having ushered in a new era of handheld gaming, the hybrid is one of the most successful consoles of all time.

In May 2024, it’ll celebrate its seventh birthday – and the rumours and speculation about its successor are growing ever louder. In this article, I’ve summarised what we know about the Switch 2 so far.

Release date and price

It’s very likely Nintendo’s new console will be released this year. Analysts estimate Nintendo will sell significantly less hardware and software in the next financial year (April 2024 to March 2025). Hardly surprising given the Switch has already sold over 130 million units. According to consultant and industry expert Serkan Toto, releasing a new console is the only way to plug these losses in the next financial year.

Nintendo launched the first Switch in March 2017. It seems unlikely the Switch 2 will hit the market in spring 2024. Nintendo needs time to ramp up production of the new console so it can prevent supply bottlenecks at launch. Various anonymous sources told Eurogamer that the Switch 2 would be released in late 2024. The three Nintendo-made consoles before the Switch (Gamecube, Wii, Wii U) all hit shelves just before the lucrative Christmas season.

Toto anticipates the Switch 2 will cost 400 dollars at launch – 100 dollars more than the first Switch.

On the A Tech Affair podcast, I was bold enough to make an exact forecast, predicting 22 November as the console’s release date. Who knows whether that prediction will bear fruit.

Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa has vehemently denied rumours that a Switch successor is imminent, describing them as «inaccurate». In an interview with Nikkei, he confirmed the current Switch would be given new software by the end of the next financial year (March 2025).

The concept won’t change

According to VGC, the first development kits were sent to studios as early as July 2023. Anonymous sources from these studios claim Nintendo will be sticking with the Switch’s console-handheld hybrid concept. As a result, it’ll be playable in both a stationary dock and handheld mode. Various analysts agree on this too. According to Serkan Toto, the Switch 2 will be «an iteration rather than a revolution». He added that rather than expecting any crazy, new gimmicks, we should anticipate a consistent, more developed version of the Switch.

Hardware: significantly more performance

There’s all sorts of information circulating online about the hardware in Nintendo’s next console. For example, ex-Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was supposedly briefed on the Switch 2 as early as December 2022. Kotick says Nintendo’s next-gen hybrid has roughly the same performance as a PS4 or Xbox One. That’s according to leaked documents from the court case on Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Last year, several sources told Eurogamer and VGC that Nintendo had given closed-door demos of the Switch 2 at Gamescom. Developer studio representatives were invited to these presentations. The demos presented at the showcase suggest how powerful Nintendo’s new handheld will be.

Reportedly, the company demonstrated a souped-up version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. According to leaker Nate the Hate, the Zelda demo runs in 4K and at 60 frames per second. Impressively, there are no loading times in the demo – not even when fast travelling.

Nintendo also presented a demo of The Matrix Awakens for Unreal Engine 5. The graphically demanding tech demo will reportedly run on the Switch 2 with Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology in a high resolution. Due to «advanced ray tracing effects», the graphical level in general shouldn’t be too far from that of the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of The Matrix Awakens.

Thanks to a number of Nvidia leaks, we now also know what processor the Switch’s successor will have. It’ll most likely be a modification of Nvidia’s T234 chip – a Tegra product. These are primarily used in the automotive and robotics markets. The chipset adapted for Nintendo’s next-gen console is called T239. According to Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter, the T239 has an octo-core ARM CPU cluster, an Ampere-class Nvidia GPU with 1,536 CUDA cores, ray tracing capabilities and a file decompression engine for fast loading. Leadbetter has also heard from anonymous sources that the chip doesn’t have a deep learning accelerator. As a result, upscaling with DLSS would only be possible to a maximum of 1440p.

Digital Foundry has also tested what the specs of the T239 chip mean in-game. An ultra-low-spec Ampere GPU is used to simulate the Switch 2 chipset in the video embedded below. This makes it clear what level of graphics you can expect in various games. The first example, Death Stranding, begins at minute 12:37.

Screen: LCD instead of OLED?

Developer studio insiders told VGC that Nintendo will be using an LCD screen for the Switch 2 in order to keep the cost of the console as low as possible. The Switch 2 is already relatively expensive to produce without an OLED screen, partly due to its 512 GB internal memory. According to Nintendo leaker Nate the Hate, the display will be 8 inches. That’d be an increase on the 7-inch OLED model and the first Switch version’s 6.3 inches.

However, not all sources and rumours point to an LCD screen. Korean news outlet Chosun Biz reported Nintendo had commissioned Samsung to produce OLED panels, fuelling rumours that the Switch 2 could be available in two versions at launch.

Backward compatibility and physical games

VGC has reported that, like its predecessor, the Switch 2 will once again have a slot for physical game cards. In other words, Nintendo won’t yet be opting for a purely digital future with the next generation of consoles.

Though it’s unclear whether old Switch games will be compatible with the new console, statements made by Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa have ignited some hope. At last year’s investors’ meeting, Furukawa confirmed that current Nintendo accounts will also work on the new Nintendo console. The Japanese manufacturer wants to give customers the «smoothest possible transition» from the current Switch to the next generation of consoles.

Controller: an end to Joy-Con drift?

The analogue sticks on the current Switch controllers are notorious for their drift problem. Incorrect inputs are registered in-game as a result of wear and tear on the sticks. This is caused by the moving parts inside the analogue stick coming into physical contact with each other. The longer they’re used, the more they wear out over time.

In September of last year, Nintendo filed a patent for technology that could eliminate the annoying stick-drift effect. The patented analogue sticks are controlled by a «magnetorheological fluid» which changes its thickness to match the strength of a magnetic field. While this may sound complicated, it basically means moving parts in the stick have no physical contact with each other. Other manufacturers use a similar approach in producing their controllers – the Hall effect. In contrast to these controllers, however, the resistance of the sticks on Nintendo’s magnetic fluid version could, in theory, be dynamically adjusted. It’d be similar to the trigger tension on Sony’s Dualsense controllers, which adjusts according to the situation in-game.

It’s unclear whether this new technology or Hall effect sensors will actually be used in the Switch 2 controllers. But Nintendo is certainly aware of the problem and the criticism surrounding Joy-Con drift. By using new technology, the company could sidestep negative media coverage on the launch of its new console.

Leaks and rumours aside, I wrote about my own hopes for the Switch 2 here: