Nintendo Switch 2 Could Retain Backward Compatibility with The First-Gen Console

[AleksandarK]

Reports are circulating online that Nintendo's upcoming successor to the Switch console, tentatively referred to as the "Switch 2," will offer backward compatibility for physical game cards and digital purchases from the current Switch library. While Nintendo has yet to officially announce the new console, speculation points to a potential reveal as early as next month for a 2024 launch. The backward compatibility claims first surfaced last year when Nintendo America President Doug Bowser hinted at supporting continuity between console generations to minimize the sales decline when transitioning hardware. New momentum behind the rumors comes from gaming industry insiders Felipe Lima and PH Brazil, who, during recent podcasts, stated the Switch 2 has backward compatibility functionality already being shared with game developers.

Well-known gaming leakers "NateTheHate" and others have corroborated that testing is underway for playing current Switch games on new hardware. If true, this backward compatibility would be a consumer-friendly move that breaks from Nintendo's past tendencies of forcing clean breaks between console ecosystems. While details remain unconfirmed by Nintendo, multiple credible sources point to the upcoming Switch successor allowing gamers to carry forward both their physical and digital libraries to continue enjoying this generation's releases. If the compatibility remains, the hardware platform could stay in the playing field of the same vendor—NVIDIA—who provided Nintendo with Tegra X1 SoC. The updated version of the SoC could use a fork of NVIDIA's Orin platform based on Ampere GPU with DLSS, but official details are yet to be seen.



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[londiste]

As long as the ISA of SoC stays the same - and there have been no indications that they would want to move away from ARM - even resorting to emulation on a fixed platform like that should be a relatively trivial undertaking. Right now, Xbox and Playstation both have backwards compatibility making it a must-have feature.

 

[aktpu]

Switch 2 release will be far more exciting than any cpu/gpu in years

 

[lexluthermiester]

Nintendo Switch 2 Could Retain Backward Compatibility with The First-Gen Console

What's this "could" nonsense?? They damn well better! It's expected.

 

[JIWIL]

Definitely buy one of these if it's backwards compatible.. and I haven't bought a console since the PS3 (mostly for the bluray functionality), prior to that a Dreamcast and PS1. I feel kinda guilty for emulating a certain WII-U game that recently got a sequel, make it happen Nintendo.

 

[ilyon]

This one will be the most powerful consoles of all and all time, due to RTX™ and DLSS™.

 

[konga]

Apparently, Switch games made use of Maxwell-specific shader code that wasn't directly compatible with Ampere shaders, but I'm guessing it was just a simple matter of developing a wrapper that makes it all work on the new SoC. And since it's just Arm to Arm and Maxwell to Ampere, hopefully it's fast and issue-free.

 

[londiste]

Switch 2 release will be far more exciting than any cpu/gpu in years

Why?

 

[theouto]

It should, otherwise it would be incredibly disappointing.

 

[Daven]

The fact that two otherwise identical consoles can break compatibility harkens back to the days when every console changed physical media shape and format to force buying new hardware. Even worse, each new generation was faster performance wise so playing previous generation would seem easy to implement.

Consoles really are just a big scam even though I loved playing on them.

 

[Chaitanya]

What's this "could" nonsense?? They damn well better! It's expected.

Still it wont have local save capabilities and will have whole bunch of shitting on customer treatment sprinkled all over the place.

 

[Logoffon]

Still it wont have local save capabilities and will have whole bunch of shitting on customer treatment sprinkled all over the place.

As if the competitors are any better in the latter regard.

 

[konga]

The fact that two otherwise identical consoles can break compatibility harkens back to the days when every console changed physical media shape and format to force buying new hardware. Even worse, each new generation was faster performance wise so playing previous generation would seem easy to implement.

Consoles really are just a big scam even though I loved playing on them.

Simply being faster does not make backwards compatibility easy. In the era before software emulation, the only thing you could do to enable backwards compatibility was essentially have the old hardware included with the new, which was not always cheap. Nintendo actually did occasionally do this—the Game Boy Advance was backwards compatible with the GB and the DS was backwards compatible with both of those, and the 3DS was backwards compatible with at least the DS (not sure about the game boy systems). This was because Nintendo was carrying forward old processors to the new devices. They'd be used as coprocessors for new games and for backwards compatibility for old games. But including NES hardware in the SNES and SNES hardware in the N64 would likely have been too expensive to justify their inclusion, especially because those chips would not have had much utility in the new systems aside from BC. And I would hardly characterize the move from cartridges to discs as just a ploy to force buying new hardware. Optical media came with many obvious benefits, and once we entered that era, BC became more common with home consoles.

 

[freeagent]

I would imagine it would be backward compatible.. just bought Mario Kart for our Switch and my saved progress was there from the WiiU lol..

 

[aktpu]

Why?

CPU and GPU releases have been iterative (except maybe 3d cache, but that's not interesting for work workloads) and the prices are bonkers

 

[Noyand]

The fact that two otherwise identical consoles can break compatibility harkens back to the days when every console changed physical media shape and format to force buying new hardware. Even worse, each new generation was faster performance wise so playing previous generation would seem easy to implement.

Consoles really are just a big scam even though I loved playing on them.

You have to take into consideration the hardware used for the older console as well. Sony had a good backward compatibility until the PS4, and that's mainly because the PS3 was just a weird console, with a complex CPU. waaay too complex for its own good. PS3 emulation wasn't easy to pull off, even on CPUs much more powerful than the Jaguar cores. Emulation is also a bitch when it comes to compatibility. If you don't use native/similar hardware, some games are just not going to run, or will run poorly with visuals artifacts. Sony even went as far to implement the older chips in some version of the new consoles to avoid that headache ( and they eventually removed PS2 emulation on consoles that didn't have the native hardware).

Xbox went from x86, to RISC to x86 again, they would have had to deal with the headache of emulation compatibility.

Nintendo consoles cartridge were just too exotic relative to their predecessor to run native, and some cartridge had a coprocessor inside that allowed the game to go beyond what the base console could do, so I guess that making the whole thing work reliably was going to be a pain. The GameCube also ditched the cartridge format that was just not viable against optical media in terms of storage capacity and cost, so yhea.

Nintendo has been fairly good when it comes to their portable consoles back ward compatibility. The Game Boy color could play Game Boy games, the GBA (besides the micro) could play all previous GB/GBC games, the DS could play GBA game. But that's also because the hardware was very similar, and the GBA had dedicated hardware to run the older games. The 3DS also had hardware dedicated to run DS games. The 3DS was just too exotic as a whole, most people will tell you that getting a used 3DS is better than emulating on a mono screen device.

TLDR; consoles makers don't like emulation since it's often imperfect and not efficient. So they would rather use special hardware for it. Otherwise, handling angry customers who don't understand why some games don't run well is something that they don't want to deal with.

Now, I don't understand the "forcing to buy new hardware" thing. Having to develop games for two platforms with a big imbalance in capabilities isn't good. Games that are cross generational often ditch support for the older platform if they want to make the game bigger, more complex, since the older console just can't handle it. The fact that we have currently games like Hogwarts legacy running on 10 years old consoles is a bit of an outlier, and even then you see people complain that those games are being held back by the older consoles

 

[darakian]

As long as the ISA of SoC stays the same - and there have been no indications that they would want to move away from ARM - even resorting to emulation on a fixed platform like that should be a relatively trivial undertaking. Right now, Xbox and Playstation both have backwards compatibility making it a must-have feature.

From what I've read the issue isn't the CPU ISA but rather the GPU ISA. MVG did a video on it here

tl;dr is that gpu ISAs change constantly and drivers are bundled into each game. In theory a binary for the gpu is not compatible with any other gpu. I'm sure nvidia and nintendo can figure out a compatibility layer though.

 

[trsttte]

I'm surprised by the lack of words like "live service" or "subscription" in this news post. It better be direct compatibility but I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to charge a subscription for the privilege

As if the competitors are any better in the latter regard.

Actually they are. I can export my PS5 saves do a usb drive and move them to a different console without any issues and without having to pay for any specific subscription. Pretty sure Xbox has a similar feature.

mainly because the PS3 was just a weird console, with a complex CPU. waaay too complex for its own good. PS3 emulation wasn't easy to pull off, even on CPUs much more powerful than the Jaguar cores. Emulation is also a bitch when it comes to compatibility. If you don't use native/similar hardware, some games are just not going to run, or will run poorly with visuals artifacts. Sony even went as far to implement the older chips in some version of the new consoles to avoid that headache ( and they eventually removed PS2 emulation on consoles that didn't have the native hardware)

The original PS3 had an original PS2 mips chip to handle that. But anyway, that's their problem not mine. Emulation is not exactly easy but it's not as hard as we often make it out to be, it's hard for open source projects trying to reverse engineer the console architecture, sony has more than enough resources to do it much more easily. Take the ps3 example, they later removed the chip and used software emulation, before removing the feature entirely even though it's easy to enable it if you install custom firmware on the console

 

[Upgrayedd]

Not even remotely interested in Nintendo until they add all the handheld classics from Gameboy through 3DS. It's gotta be OLED as well.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I feel kinda guilty for emulating a certain WII-U game that recently got a sequel

Well, if you hop on Ebay and by a copy of it, then emulating it is perfectly legal and there would be no reason to feel guilty. Just a friendly thought..

Still it wont have local save capabilities

Moose muffins. Not only does that make no sense whatsoever, it's so far beyond the scope of reasonable logic and practical usability that I can't help but ask: Where you sober typed that out?

I'm surprised by the lack of words like "live service" or "subscription" in this news post.

I would be. Nintendo knows better than to try and pull any goose-stomping crap like that. If they ever attempt it, entire swaths of the gaming public will tell them to go boil their heads.

 

[trsttte]

Moose muffins. Not only does that make no sense whatsoever, it's so far beyond the scope of reasonable logic and practical usability that I can't help but ask: Where you sober typed that out?

If you buy a second switch for whatever reason you shouldn't need a nintendo subscription to copy stuff over, currently you do.

I would be. Nintendo knows better than to try and pull any goose-stomping crap like that. If they ever attempt it, entire swaths of the gaming public will tell them to go boil their heads.

Aren't wii and older games only accessible through a live service right now?

 

[lexluthermiester]

If you buy a second switch for whatever reason you shouldn't need a nintendo subscription to copy stuff over, currently you do.

That has nothing to do with game-saves..

Aren't wii and older games only accessible through a live service right now?

That has nothing to do with the game-saves, which is what the above user is talking about.

 

[Noyand]

The original PS3 had an original PS2 mips chip to handle that. But anyway, that's their problem not mine. Emulation is not exactly easy but it's not as hard as we often make it out to be, it's hard for open source projects trying to reverse engineer the console architecture, sony has more than enough resources to do it much more easily. Take the ps3 example, they later removed the chip and used software emulation, before removing the feature entirely even though it's easy to enable it if you install custom firmware on the console

From what I've heard, even Sony couldn't make sure of a perfect compatibility of all games with the software emulation. Heck, they can't even do it with the ps5 to ps4 backward compatibility

 

[trsttte]

they can't even do it with the ps5 to ps4 backward compatibility

Of course they can't, with the vast library of ps4 games of course there will be exceptions that for one reason or another refuse to play nice. But has that been a problem?

Same thing happened with ps3 and ps2, not everything worked but it was mostly ok and close enough to perfect.

 

[Noyand]

Of course they can't, with the vast library of ps4 games of course there will be exceptions that for one reason or another refuse to play nice. But has that been a problem?

Same thing happened with ps3 and ps2, not everything worked but it was mostly ok and close enough to perfect.

It's probably a problem for a few insufferable clients. Sony is being fairly nice about it though, they do give a warning that games may not behave as expected. That kind of stuff however isn't really on brand for Nintendo, Time will tell, but all sign point to the switch 2 being another Nvidia collab with a joint effort to make sure that backward comp will be as perfect as it can be.