These Collected Switch 2 Rumors Paints A Picture Of What Developers Know

There’s an interesting new forum post that paints a particular picture of where the Nintendo Switch 2 has been in the past few years.

 Famiboards user fwd-bwd, who most recently revealed that Foxconn alluded to the Switch 2 to investors in their latest earnings report, is our source for these rumors. Fwd-bwd tags this as a post they made ‘for entertainment purposes only’, but even if this thread is only partially true, it tells us quite a bit about how the Switch 2 has looked for third party developers for some time now.

Fwd-bwd got this post from someone they claim is a known insider, on a Chinese Switch 2 forum. This known insider made it clear they themselves were only sharing what they heard, and so they can’t confirm all of it is true.

We’ll just share what fwd-bwd posted as is below:

• “Major devs have access to dev kit for close to two years, and indie devs slightly more than one.
• Dev kit is only a tablet. Joy-con rails are sealed. The poster thinks that it is an early version.
• Joy-Cons are not included. Devs use Switch 1 Joy-Cons for testing.
• This suggests Joy-Con BC.
• They think that the major devs probably received Switch 2 Joy-Cons.
• Although the Switch 2 dev kit supports analog trigger, devs don’t believe that it’d actually be used.
• This is because Switch 1 dev kit already supports it (for GameCube controllers), but was never used.
• The touchscreen seems more sensitive than before.
• According to some indie devs, the system workload when running their games is slightly worse than the PS4 Pro dev kit. They also admitted that they didn’t do enough optimization.
• The poster emphasized that these indie devs don’t know or care much about the hardware specs (such as process node). The above was their unscientific observation.
• Some of the indie titles made with the Switch 2 dev kit have already been released for Switch 1.
• The eShop submission page for Switch 2 is the same one as Switch 1.
• This suggests the same eShop for both.
• There are some outsourced assets that look like kart with a driver seat and a platform for another person to stand on.
• They speculate that this is for a new Mario Kart, with one person driving and one person attacking.
• The poster warned that it could be for a different game, such as a new Sonic Racing.
• Someone overheard that for a new Mario 2D game, there’s an attempt to recreate a scene from the Mario movie, in which one player is in the foreground and another player (local or remote) in the background to fight through a stage together.
• There are some outsourced assets that seem to be for Monolith Soft’s Project X Zone, with Nintendo characters.
• It is speculated to be a Smash-like concept.
• The dev team of ARMS seems to be working on a Custom Robo sequel.
• Assassin’s Creed (no details given)
• No Virtua Fighter 6 for Switch 2
• Someone spotted a game that looks like P5R or P5S.
• There was a Capcom internal demo of Resident Evil 7 for Switch 1, but it was eventually canceled.
• The poster speculated (or hinted?) that the RE series should come to Switch 2.”

“P5R or P5S” refers to Atlus’ Persona 5 Reload and Persona 5 Strikers, respectively. On the third party game end, we also reported on a rumor that Ubisoft has major plans to bring nearly the entire Assassin’s Creed library, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, to the Switch 2. We don’t think anyone expected Virtua Fighter 6 to come to the console, but it would be nice if Sega finally brought any Virtua Fighter games to Nintendo’s platforms.

While it’s funny to read indie devs complaining about making their games for the Switch 2, this may be an indication that some of those developers were given dev kits far in advance. So Nintendo may have already prepared for major indie support for the Switch 2 at launch as well as all these rumored big name 3^rd party games.

We won’t comment any further on these other claims here, but one can imagine that these were the things developers who were preparing Switch 2 games for launch were telling each other through the grapevine, in what would at least have been the last two years, and probably longer. With the console’s announcement looming, everyone’s hopes are high that if it can’t meet the fanboys’ wildest fantasies, it will do enough to make gamers and the industry excited for the future.