We have some interesting rumors about the Nintendo Switch 2 and its potential ability, from a source that will be a real deep cut for gamers who were in online communities before kpop groups that debuted this year were born.
As shared on the Switch 2 subreddit by user Future31, a ResetEra user simply named Matt joined a new forum called InstallBase to share his thoughts on the Switch 2’s power, and more importantly, its potential library. Matt says he was the same Matt who has been posting in ResetEra since 2000. If true, this Matt was verified to be an active game developer in ResetEra, and while he hasn’t shared direct rumors and leaks, his vague statements about the last two generations of game consoles have turned out to be mostly accurate.
Matt has a lot to say about what he’s heard about the Switch 2. We decided the best way to do those comments justice is just to quote them directly below.
This is the comment that first got attention:
“Both Nintendo and third parties see Switch 2 AAA titles as a big potential growth driver. The hardware is very capable.”
He then followed up with this teaser:
“I’m not at all saying it’ll get everything always, but I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised.”
Matt shared this argument for why he and many others (such as DFC Intelligence) believe the Switch 2 will be a success:
“The Switch 2 is going to sell incredibly well for the same reasons the Switch did. It will, no matter what they do, have a huge user base that third parties, both for technical and current market reasons (more dollars need to be squeezed out of their smaller pipelines in a more difficult economic situation) will be far more inclined and able to harness.”
Matt said this about the diversity of games and gamers who are on Switch, and are expected to also go to Switch 2:
“First of all, there is a lot of crossover. When dealing with a 100 million+ user base, every kind of person owns the system, but the one biggest trait they all have in common is they want to have fun, and that fun can come from a dark FPS or a party game. The Switch already has an incredibly diverse user base, and the Switch 2 has been explicitly designed to expand that even more by being able to much better serve all sorts of games on a technical level. This is besides the fact that tastes can develop over time, and a 12 year old with a Switch 2 in 2025 will still own it when they are 16 in 2029 and the system is still going strong.”
He also dropped these allusions to those rumors about Switch 2 hardware that come all the way back from Nintendo manufacturing partner Hosiden:
“Secondly, enough fairly accurate information on the Switch 2’s hardware has leaked for anyone to know it is very capable, and Nintendo, who has always prioritized cost, is comfortable with how much they will be charging for it. So we don’t need to treat these things as great unknowns.”
Finally, he shares these opinions about the system’s potential pricing:
“Only Nintendo knows the price and I’m not going to speculate….but we know Nintendo has no fear of, and saw success selling, a $350 barely updated model 5 years after launch. For a brand new system that will have no issue selling for years no matter the cost, I see the general expectations of those who have have considered the leaked specs as very reasonable.”
Some of these things are safe guesses assuming Nintendo does have continuity with their prior strategies. For example, no one expects Nintendo to price the Switch 2 at $ 700, and then tell their fans to get a second job to be able to buy one.
In regards to the Switch 2’s power, Matt is actually vague on this point. He has made it more of a point that 3rd parties will want to get their games running on Nintendo’s new console, which may mean those developers will put more work to optimize performance on its hardware than those same games got on Ryzen 2 and the Proton translation layer for the Steam Deck.
As best as we can tell, the best analysis we found on how well the Switch 2 could perform was this video by Digital Foundry. By trying to match the rumored hardware to a commercially available mobile Nvidia GPU, they found that they could compel this hypothetical Switch 2 equivalent to run eighth and ninth generation console games, at low settings and using Nvidia’s bag of optimization tricks, especially DLSS.
That may give us a ballpark figure of what’s possible, but the Switch 2 could perform better or worse than what they found, in scenarios where it is docked, undocked, and if the rumors are true, undocked but wirelessly displaying to a nearby TV or monitor.
Digital Foundry emphasis that it is really important to set reasonable expectations (a lesson Nintendo fans should learn from Sony fans), and that developers will work hard to customize their games for the Switch 2, in the same way they do so for those same games on PlayStation and Xbox.
Our hopes are high that the Switch 2 may finally be the Nintendo console to break the curse of missing out on third party AAA titles, but above everything else, I know everyone just wants to finally see the thing.
