Is Nintendo working on the Switch 2? This is the million-dollar question that’s been on everybody’s mind for the better part of the past few years and you can’t exactly blame fans for speculating, especially in light of the recent revelations. From the presumably legitimate leaks to insider information and accidental reveals, all signs point towards the upcoming Nintendo platform being a suped-up variant of the Switch. Now, just weeks after Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, claimed that the next Nintendo console will be on par with the PS4 and the Xbox One in terms of power, Microsoft has just revealed it’s working on a new Call of Duty for an “in-development Switch model.”
The information comes from the ruling by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, as part of Microsoft’s triumph over the FTC, which effectively paved the way for its acquisition of Activision Blizzard as soon as it can come to terms with a compromise with the Competition and Markets Authority, the UK’s regulatory body.
With back-to-back bombs from persons of authority, you can’t help but wonder when Nintendo will make things official.
New Switch Model In Development according to Microsoft.
by inGamingLeaksAndRumours
In the meantime, gamers are, understandably, busy speculating about this forthcoming device’s capabilities. Insights drawn from available public information, including those from court documents, suggest that comparing the power of the console to the PS4 and Xbox One downplays its performance. While the Nintendo Switch was criticized for being “underpowered” at the time of its release, a closer inspection shows that the hybrid platform housed one of the most powerful chips available back then without compromising battery life.
What’s clear, however, is that the new Switch will feature a significant power jump compared to the now-outgoing model, which makes sense a lot of sense after Microsoft signed a deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms for the first time in roughly a decade.
It makes a ton of sense for Nintendo to go with whatever it wants to name the “upgraded” Switch console. In the past, the gaming giant alluded to worrying about a smooth transition for its user base from the current Switch to its successor. This, at the very least, guarantees that the successor will bare a familiar nameplate, allowing existing users to ease their way into the upgrade.
Of course, this brings us to the problem, just how much more powerful is the Nintendo Switch 2 going to be?
Enhanced visual fidelity is to be expected if not demanded, but we’re talking about subjective terms here. We still don’t know just what kind of resolutions the console can support. Can it play 1440p when docked and 1080p in handheld mode? Or will it retain the same resolution and even display of the Nintendo Switch OLED model albeit with a significant hardware upgrade? Focusing on performance would indeed result in graphical improvement, giving the in-house development teams and third-party developers more room to work with.
As a bonus, retaining the Switch OLED’s display quality and resolution while housing better hardware could result in better battery life, which is always a plus for gamers on the go.
Nintendo’s strength lies in its strong first-party offerings and its most recent pivot towards unique offerings. The Switch’s sales, which is now third all-time, prove this. Maintaining the current trajectory and reaffirming the proven winning formula is the best way to go, at least in the meantime.
Bigger, better, and more powerful consoles haven’t been Nintendo’s thing for a long time, and they shouldn’t start doing it again. Besides, developers are starting to realize that they’re better off spending more time optimizing their games for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S/X, drawing as much performance as they can from the current-gen flagship consoles. The growing number of games that are being ported to Nintendo consoles suggests that the Switch 2 will benefit from this as well, rendering the supposed performance gap between it and its competition relatively moot.
In any case, the specifics of the new console don’t matter as much now. The one thing that’s certain is that the gaming world will be in for quite the treat as soon as it’s announced.
