Nintendo has joyfully refused to give any information about the Switch 2 all year long, always making it clear they would not be talking about it with any new presentation. So, naturally, there have been a million different leaks about what it looks like, and how it will perform.
The latest chatter (with admittedly nebulous sourcing) that is being virally debated on social media, is that the Nintendo Switch will run at PS4 Pro levels of power, a significant leap from its current capabilities that are more stuck in the PS3 era. Of course that’s still a generation behind, but given how the performance gap has narrowed between console generations, that would still be extremely impressive, despite the Pro being a decade old.
The catch, however is that the mode most people play the Switch in, handheld, would not have these same capabilities. The PS4 Pro idea is for the Switch when it is docked, not when it’s in handheld mode, and that’s close to base PS4, allegedly. Some are saying this is bad and it…is not bad. And it ignores what we just witnessed for this entire console generation.
The Switch’s power has come into play when it comes to some third party ports or things like the Pokemon series failing to even attempt to look good on the platform. But overwhelmingly power has not mattered for the Switch when its stylized visuals on mainly first party games do the trick. As such, the “underpowered” Switch has now become the third best-selling system of all time with 146 million units sold, just 14 million away from the PS2 at #1.
There is no reason to imagine that the Switch 2 will not be a massive hit at really any somewhat significant power upgrade level. I think the only issue might be if Nintendo fails to differentiate it from the current system, running into a Wii/Wii U problem if they just call it the New Nintendo Switch Plus or something confusing. If they do a full-on push explaining clearly that it’s an entirely new system for an entirely new console generation after nearly a decade, that’s all it would need.
Even if these reports are off and the capabilities are “just” PS4 level, that is back in an era when the leap from PS3 to PS4 was more significant that 4 to 5, as we’ve seen. And there are only so many ways to say that the success of the Switch is not dependent on power, as has been true with essentially every Nintendo console for four generations now.
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