As the world changes, so do console generations. The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old and it’s time for a refresh. Rumors of a Nintendo Switch 2 have been circulating for years, but they’re really heating up now. A sequel to Nintendo’s most successful home console in history is on the way, and it’s probably coming soon.
Will this be a true sequel to the Switch, with updated specs while maintaining the same hybrid functionality, or will Nintendo come up with a weird name? Maybe it’ll be called Switch 2, or something like Super Switch or New Nintendo Switch? With Nintendo, it’s hard to say. Maybe it’ll be called Switch U.
In any case, the past few weeks have seen frenzied speculation about every aspect of the upcoming console. However, it’s important to keep in mind that very little information has been confirmed by Nintendo; the company operates on its own schedule. That being said, here are all the rumors that are most likely to come true, based on industry analysis:
When will the Nintendo Switch 2 be announced?
As mentioned above, Nintendo moves at its own pace. It’s not clear exactly when they’ll hold an event to announce their console, but many people are predicting it will happen sometime this month. Why? According to Kotaku, the company recently changed the schedule of its usual Nintendo Direct to allow them to announce something in September. September is also a key month in the Japanese video game calendar, with the Tokyo Game Show scheduled for the end of the month.
Many media outlets have also heard “industry whispers” about a September launch event, including Christopher Dring, head of GamesIndustry.biz, who hinted that something Switch 2-related will happen this month. Andy Robinson, editor-in-chief of VGC, said: Agreed “A lot of media outlets are listening to this,” but he said he was “not going to bet my house on it.”
No one seems to notice that Nintendo’s assembler, Hosiden, is investing 2 billion yen in production equipment and 1 billion yen in automation for their major amusement industry client (Nintendo) in the fiscal year ending March 2025. I expect the next device to be announced in September with a release date in March 2025. pic.twitter.com/APGEGGSyS8
— David Gibson (@gibbogame) September 4, 2024
Even Nintendo has a hard time keeping a major console launch a secret: Parts have to be sourced and shipped. A senior analyst at MST Financial pointed to a surge in spending on production equipment by Nintendo assembler Hosiden and predicted a September announcement date.
When will the Nintendo Switch 2 be released?
Again, this is more or less a mystery. It’s not completely unknown, but it’s mostly rumors and speculation. One thing we know for sure is that Nintendo will unveil the Nintendo Switch 2 (or whatever Nintendo calls it) by March 2025, as the company confirmed back in May. Some are saying the release date will be in March, which makes sense considering the OG Switch launched on March 17, 2017. However, other reports have put the console’s release window in late 2025.
A lot can be inferred from the announcement date: the original Switch was officially confirmed in October 2016, so if the console is announced this year, it will likely be in March. If the announcement doesn’t happen until next year, the launch will likely be April or later.
Will it be a proper Switch sequel?
Nintendo has a strange track record in this regard. The baffling Wii U followed up on the massive success of the Wii, which itself was a more traditional successor to the GameCube. In other words, it could be something unexpected and not a true sequel to the Switch. That probably won’t be the case this time, though. While I’d love to see some wacky VR glasses or totally outlandish console concepts, everything points to a more traditional approach.
Developers have already seen the hardware, but in a fairly early form, and it looks like a regular old console. Nintendo hasn’t confirmed any hybrid functionality, but considering the absolute economic storm that the Switch has been, it would be a strange omission. We’ve also heard rumors of a mini-LED display following the hybrid console, which would likely be a bona fide Switch 2 or something similar, reminiscent of the Super Nintendo.
Is the Nintendo Switch 2 backwards compatible?
If it’s a Switch sequel, the next question is about backward compatibility. The Switch library is huge and growing, so gamers would naturally be upset if they couldn’t play Tears of the Kingdom on their new next-gen console. There’s good news on this front.
Multiple sources say the console will likely have full backward compatibility, which is great. This should apply to both digital versions and physical cartridges. Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser also seemed to hint at this in an interview last year, saying the company’s goal this time around was to “minimize the dip that we typically see at the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.” Backward compatibility would certainly achieve that. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa also told investors that the company’s revamped account system will make the transition from Switch to its successor smoother than previous generational leaps.
What are the specifications?
Rumors about specs are flying all over the place, so it’s hard to pinpoint them. One thing’s for sure: it’ll be more powerful than the old Switch hardware, which was already outdated in 2017. An analyst reportedly obtained a spec sheet from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, which states that the Switch 2 will have an octa-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal eMMC storage. This makes sense to me, because these specs would make the original Switch just as underpowered in 2024 as it was in 2017.
Another source said the 8-core CPU will be housed in a Tegra239 SoC (system-on-chip) from NVIDIA. This makes sense, since the current Switch runs on NVIDIA’s chip. The CPU will be more powerful, but the big differentiator for the Switch 2 will be the new GPU. It’s almost certain that the Switch 2 will support DLSS (NVIDIA’s “Deep Learning Super Sampling” upscaling tech), which will allow the console to output high-resolution images while rendering games internally at a lower resolution. (Fun fact: we actually wrote about how DLSS would be a great fit for the Nintendo Switch 2 when the tech was announced alongside the RTX 20-series in 2018.)
Questions still remain about the Switch 2 and DLSS: Will the system support new DLSS features like frame generation? Will existing games be automatically sorted by NVIDIA’s algorithms? Regardless of the exact implementation, DLSS upscaling will be a big step beyond the basic tech available to Nintendo Switch developers.
There are a lot of conflicting rumors when it comes to the display. Early reports from reliable sources suggested that the Switch 2 would have an 8-inch LCD display, while there were also rumors about a 7-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Some analysts suggested that this would be an OLED screen, while others said it would be a mini-LED display. A mini-LED display is essentially an LCD display with a backlight made of mini-LEDs rather than edge-lit (surprise!). This allows for local dimming and makes the blacks blacker. I’m spreading my bets here. I think it will be a standard LCD to cut costs, with an OLED or mini-LED model coming later. However, mini-LED screens are slightly cheaper than OLED displays, so that’s certainly a possibility at launch.
How much does the Nintendo Switch 2 cost?
There isn’t much information on pricing, but there is plenty of history. The original Nintendo Switch launched for $300, which is pretty much the “magic number” when it comes to Nintendo console launches in recent years. The Wii U was also $300.
However, there have been plenty of rumors floating around that Nintendo may increase the suggested retail price of the Switch 2, with many outlets reporting that it could be priced at $400 or even higher. However, the same analysts who said the console would be $400 were pretty confident it would be released by the end of 2024, which apparently isn’t going to happen.
Looking back at history, there’s precedent for prices going up: the GameCube was $200, the Wii was $250. The Wii U and Switch have risen to $300, but numbers are going up. A $400 price point would make it almost as expensive as the PS5 and Xbox Series X. It would also be the same price as a 256GB LCD Steam Deck.
Do we know anything about the game at launch?
No! But it’s been a while since we’ve had a proper 3D Mario adventure, right? If so, it’ll be a huge system seller. The rest is pretty much what you’d expect. Once you get past the prologue, we can expect more unconventional titles from Ubisoft, like 1-2-Switch.
If the console has any gimmicks or tricks, it’s likely that a game will be released that takes advantage of them – perhaps even a simultaneous release of Metroid Prime 4, as was the case with Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess before it.
That’s everything we currently know about the Nintendo Switch 2. This article will be updated based on reliable rumors and information gathered directly from sources. Any changes made after the article was originally published will be noted below.
