Nintendo today finally revealed the latest in its family of Switch hardware, the Switch OLED. This update to the now four-year-old basic Switch has a bigger screen, better sound, and adds a few new features to it. It’ll launch later this year, on October 8. And yeah, this is the Nintendo Switch Pro we’ve heard so much about.
This new Switch base model upgrades the regular Switch, with a 7-inch OLED screen (hence the name), a wider kickstand, and enhanced speakers. It also has a wired LAN port in the dock and 64 GB of internal storage. It will not be able to output at a higher resolution than the existing Switch models, with the resolution being 1080p while docked and 720p while in handheld mode. Sorry, everyone, no 4K here.
In case it’s not already obvious, this rather unobtrusive device is most likely the Switch Pro that everyone couldn’t stop speculating about for months and months. All the rumors and hype that we got surrounding this thing — if you believed all of it, the Switch Pro would have been a console to rival the PS5 and Xbox Series S in power — and what we’ve got is a decent, if a fairly unremarkable upgrade. Had we not been hearing about it for months, I wonder how many gamers would even be interested in this news.
At any rate, Nintendo is making it as easy as possible to upgrade. All current Switch Joy-Con and games will work with the Switch OLED (and, on that note, I sincerely wish they’d actually called it the Switch Pro, because “Switch OLED” is very awkward to both write and say). It’ll come in both the basic red/blue Joy-Con and a very clean black-and-white model. It may not be as powerful as the early rumors would have had you believe, but it still looks like a solid upgrade to the Switch.
Source: Nintendo
