Nintendo Switch 2 finally officially revealed

A Direct is announced for April 2nd to cover the games.

Was kinda hoping for specs. I like the design upgrade, though.

Much like the rest of the announcement, the specs actually got leaked a few days earlier: https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears-to-have-leaked/

TL;DR: 12GB of RAM, GPU that’s roughly on par with the Steam Deck. It’s not the most powerful handheld out there but surprisingly not bad for Nintendo standards.

Especially considering it has access to DLSS, I‘m looking forward to see what Nintendo‘s first party studios can cook up with these specs. But I‘m waiting for the OLED model sometime in the future.

Wow, Nintendo really stepped up the game here.

Interesting, since we now know the size I would not have expected it to be on-par roughly with the Deck while being so much thinner and a bit smaller. Hrm.

No wonder they successfully stopped ongoing development of switch emulation on steam deck.

GPU that’s roughly on par with the Steam Deck.

…when comparing TFLOPs, and that’s not comparable across architectures (by different companies as well!).

If we take similar-performing (in rasterization) Ampere and RDNA 2 cards (say a 3080 and 6800 XT), we can see the 3080 has 29.77 TFLOPs and the 6800 XT has 20.74 TFLOPs, an RDNA 2 FLOP is worth about 1.4x as much as an Ampere FLOP.

So extrapolating the 1.6 “RDNA 2 TFLOPs” of the Deck we get 2.24 “Ampere TFLOPs” and that’d make the Deck quite a bit faster than the Switch 2 in portable mode, but slower than the Switch 2 in docked mode.

This is obviously all just wild and silly speculation, but I doubt the Switch 2 will match the Deck in portable mode. Samsung 8nm would just eat too much power for this to realistically happen in a handheld form factor.

I wonder if they’ve fallen into the same trap with not making the console powerful enough. The first switch was also not that powerful when it came out, and it’s really struggled in the end of its lifecycle. A lot of first party releases in the last couple years run like complete shit. They probably missed an opportunity here to stash an eGPU in the dock to provide a more modern experience while playing on the big screen.

That hardly seems necessary when the rumored specs have the the GPU nearly doubling in speed and memory bandwidth when it’s docked

Let’s go! I’m excited for hardware that will run Pokemon Violet/Scarlet at a non-dog shit framerate (other than pirating).

Are you prepared to have to buy the game again to do that? I don’t know it for sure, but it’s how I expect Nintendo to operate.

They are claiming backwards compatibility, and I assume that means for physical copies as well. If not, eh we’ll see!

There’s a disclaimer that says not every Switch 1 game will work, but I think it will play on the new Switch with the same lousy performance it has now unless you buy the Switch 2 version.

Hoping they add Hall effect sensors and eliminate drift once and for all

It looks like the controllers attach to the screen magnetically, which may interfere with the sensors of Hall Effect sticks

I’m not a scientist but I’m pretty sure theyd be able to calibrate the sensors to ignore the magnetic force of the attachment points

Maybe, I got the Pimax Portal a while back and due to their magnetic attachments Hall Effect sticks wouldn’t work. I’m sure Nintendo would have a better time solving this issue than Pimax would though

That Doesnt affect Hall & Oates sensors, though.

Hall effect sensor expert here! No, the magnets in the joycons that are used to attach to the display/body of the Switch 2 would not interfere with hall effect analog sticks.

Two reasons:

The magnets are too far away (sensors are usually only sensitive to magnets within 10-12mm directly above/below)
The mounting/attachment magnets would be perpendicular to the magnets in the analog sticks (if you imagine the flux lines they wouldn’t cross the sensory boundary).

Regardless, it would be trivial to place a tiny little piece of ferromagnetic blocking tape wherever necessary to prevent interference.

Would the NFC system in the stick interfere with hall effect sensors?

The joy cons were awful for that.

I updated my Joycons to the hall effect sticks and they’re awesome. No drift after several months.

Rumors/Leaks had them and they were right about what we see in the trailer so hopefully. I’m hoping yes, nintendo must be tired of repairing joycons ^^

I prefered colorful joycons, but I’m also glad that, there is audio jack port.

So much for Nintendo’s previous naming conventions. I was really hoping for the New Super Nintendo Switch U.

They wanna make it very clear that this is their best-selling console ever but better, I would‘ve been surprised if they didn‘t just slap a 2 on it. There‘s so much riding on this for them.

I don’t think Nintendo have ever done a Console 2 before though. I was hoping for Super Switch but as ever Nintendo absolutely refuse to be predictable!

Yeah, I get that, I was just trying to say that the above is probably their reasoning in my mind. They‘re scared shitless to fuck the transition up, calling it „The Stuff You Guys Loved 2.0“ is the lowest risk move.

I like your Super Switch though lol