Nintendo finally confirms Switch 2 backward compatibility

Nintendo has at long last confirmed that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible and able to play all Nintendo Switch games. Nintendo Switch Online will also continue forward to the Nintendo Switch successor, including the broad library of retro games.

The news came as Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa gave a Corporate Management Policy Briefing, with the company looking forward to the next generation of console.

“Nintendo Switch is currently being played with by many customers so we decided it would be optimal for them to be able to play their Switch software on the successor model,” Furukawa said.

“Customers will be able to enjoy the games they own and choose their next title from the lineup of games already on the market. Offering backwards compatibility could help encourage consumers to transition to the new device and boost the appeal of existing software.”

While Nintendo is still being very cagey about what the Nintendo Switch successor will be called – everyone is just calling it Switch 2 as shorthand – and still holding off on the console’s reveal, they have stated repeatedly that it will be announced before March 2025. The confirmation of backward compatibility is actually the first concrete detail about the console that we’ve had from Nintendo.

There’s a lot that we can infer from this announcement, such as the likelihood that the Switch 2 will stick with an ARM-based mobile chip and Nvidia graphics, just like the original, making it much simpler to support backward compatibility. This is something that’s widely been expected and rumoured, but Nintendo had avoided confirming this until now.

However, we don’t know more about how backward compatibility will really work. One of the best things that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles have been able to do is to have both a dynamic, on-the-fly backward compatibility improvements and to have games patched with support for the higher spec consoles. The Switch 2 should definitely help improve on dynamic resolutions and unsteady frame rates of certain Switch games, but depending on the built-in screen and TV outputs, developers might do well to add specific Switch 2 performance profiles as well.

Source: Reuters

Tags: Backward Compatibility, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch Online