In a recent interview, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser did not comment on the rumours, but suggested that the new Nintendo Switch would be backwards compatible. Although those words were not used, Bowser stated that the transition between generations will be easier thanks to Nintendo’s account.
The information is not necessarily a surprise. Among the various rumors about the new console, many have already pointed to the Switch 2 – and its prototypes – running current-gen games, such as a demo of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hopeat E3 2021, and recently the new The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom Tears.
Secure launch catalog
One problem with the cross-generational transition between PS4 and PS5, for example, is that not all games across generations were immediately compatible. In some cases, PS4 game owners had to pay an additional fee to upgrade their game to the PlayStation 5 enhanced version.
The games themselves ran natively on the new console, but with limited graphical resources. Nintendo itself has had issues with this in the past, and asked about a potential drop in sales during the transition cycle between the Nintendo Switch and the new console, with Bowser stating that “the goal… [da Nintendo] It is to minimize the decline in sales between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next cycle.
“Creating a Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players when and if we move to a new platform to ease this transition.”
Again, given the Nintendo Switch’s hardware profile and architecture, it is expected that, at the very least, users’ game catalog will be ported over to the new console. However, it remains to be seen whether upgrades will be necessary to unlock more performance, as is the case with PS5 games, or whether these improvements will be automatic.
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