After confounding leakers by not even mentioning the Switch 2 throughout August to October, Nintendo has finally shared an update.
Matching information that he already revealed in the company’s latest financial meeting, Nintendo Co. Ltd. President Shuntaro Furukawa shared this statement on Twitter:
“This is Furukawa. At today’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well.
Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its compatibility with Nintendo Switch, will be announced at a later date.”
This is welcome news, but as far as these things go, it’s a minor update on Nintendo’s upcoming console. Furukawa revealed in an investor Q&A in June of last year that they intended to use the Nintendo Account system to “smoothly transition our customers” between the two console generations.
And it’s easy to take this for granted, since Sony and Microsoft had already been offering such continuity with their account systems for decades. But if you remember that Nintendo’s DSi, 3DS, Wii, and Wii U did not have a proper account system to carry over games between generations, you may now realize that this is the first time Nintendo has offered such a feature.
No doubt, this is one of those cases where Nintendo deserves criticism for being too late to the party. While the Wii U user base was comparatively low to those of other Nintendo platforms, there was considerable friction in convincing Wii U owners to abandon those libraries that they had already built up, to start over with the Nintendo Switch.
We reported on the introduction of Nintendo Accounts in 2016, a full year before the release of the Nintendo Switch. Back then, Nintendo Accounts could be used to play Miitomo, a now defunct social mobile app where you could make or carry over your Miis.
So the Nintendo Account system was not particularly tied to the Nintendo Switch console itself from the start. It’s clear that Nintendo intended for the account system to be something that could be used on multiple platforms. It’s also used on Nintendo’s existing mobile games and apps.
Nintendo, thankfully, did not build this system on their own, but worked with e-commerce and mobile company DeNA. DeNA has the capability to make it so Nintendo users can play their games on their original Switch and the Switch 2, the way they can have games on different Switch consoles they own, and also in the way they can share games through Family Accounts.
It would definitely be disappointing if Nintendo built the system in such a way that users would have to move from the Switch to the Switch 2 completely, but then, the Nintendo Account system was created to resolve this issue completely. At the very least, we expect Nintendo will implement some kind of online check, the same system users with multiple Switch consoles deal with now.
As for more Switch 2 news, it seems we are entirely at Nintendo’s mercy on this one. Some fans may speculate that holding back that announcement has been a mistake, but we think Nintendo has calculated that they are better off holding off on the announcement and launch, until when they are definitely ready for every contingency.
