Years ago Nintendo distanced itself from the race for power, but this decision ends up taking its toll halfway through the cycle of each console, and more especially among those that end up coming to fruition on the market. The Nintendo Switch has already sold more than 100 million units in these five years of life, but its players demand more graphic power after having seen games like Pokémon Legends: Arceus. What should the Big N do for a new generation? Is it true that the Switch has 5 more years left?
Nintendo has players, but no power. here we go again
The life of Nintendo is the whiting that bites its tail. Their consoles do not usually sell well in the first years of life because they do not have a good catalog. And they don’t have a catalog at the beginning because they don’t have players. Once the console ends up having a good user base, the Japanese hit the graphics barrier . And start again.
We all agree that the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic console, but equipping the Nvidia Tegra X1 SoC was a long shot. It was obvious that it would become obsolete in record time, then. It was already a couple of springs in 2017. During these last two years, it seemed logical that Nintendo would release a more powerful version of its console. However, the only thing they did was launch the OLED version , keeping the same hardware as its predecessors. Meanwhile, the president of Nintendo continues to reiterate that the hybrid is in the middle of its life cycle , something that he was already saying at the end of 2020.
Nintendo Switch has followed in the footsteps of 3DS, but at a faster pace. The dual-screen laptop got off to a timid start, but when it finally garnered a good player base, hardware became a limiting factor . Nintendo would end up releasing New 3DS, but the problem was still there. However, with Switch they will have it much easier .
Backward compatibility, the key to a Switch Pro or Switch 2
Nintendo made a masterful move in 2017 by unifying its desktop and portable market . However, the operation is a double-edged sword. If they make a false step with a future console, they will fall into the void. Therefore, it makes sense to think that the company has a well-organized plan for the future to speak so confidently about Nintendo Switch.
If the president of Nintendo has been telling us for so long that Switch is for a while, he will be right. No one knows more about his company than he does. So… what are they telling us between the lines?
Nintendo needs its own “Xbox One X” concept
The Big N has already experimented with mid to late generation consoles such as the DSi or the New 3DS. The game with Nintendo Switch should be similar, but giving it a more similar approach to what Microsoft does . The company’s next hybrid console should allow games to be played at higher resolution and quality, coexisting with the models we have right now and making it clear to players that their catalog is not going to disappear as it is going to happen with the Nintendo 3DS eShop and Wii U.
There are already some keys that invite us to think about this long-term plan of the company. For example, Nintendo Switch Online has been a strong bet that has been in constant evolution. The new Expansion Pack of the service or the Missions and Rewards system that have just been released are several proofs that Nintendo has plans to stretch Switch for many more years.
What we know from the Nvidia leak
On February 26, chipmaker Nvidia was hit by a cyberattack that exposed some sensitive information. As TechPowerUp was able to analyze, there is leaked data linked to Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) AI technology that suggests that they are working on a new project for Nintendo with Ampere graphics.
NVIDIA leaks have “nvn2”, which seems to be the graphics api for the Switch Pro, based on Ampere with ray tracing support and DLSS 2.2 pic.twitter.com/k6nEr31CcY
— Nikki™ 🌹 (@NWPlayer123) March 1, 2022
The Nintendo Switch would greatly benefit from this technology, which would relieve the graphics card in rendering tasks and significantly increase the number of frames per second. Some analysts indicate that the launch of the Switch OLED could have been due to a shortage of chips , and that Nintendo would be delaying this next version of Switch backwards compatible while waiting for the semiconductor market to return to normal.