The Nintendo Switch will have a tough year ahead, as it’ll have to compete against the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. As it stands, the Switch has inferior hardware compared to its direct rivals, but the vast collection of Nintendo exclusive games were enough to turn the device into a best-selling product. The fact that you can take it with you and continue to play your favorite titles on the go is also a considerable advantage over the PS4, Xbox, and more powerful tablets that will never run Nintendo’s Zelda or Mario games.
But the PS5 and new Xbox will significantly raise the bar when it comes to performance and gaming experiences with support for 8K resolution and ray tracing. Add to that super-fast SSDs, and the Switch will be completely outclassed. Unfortunately, Nintendo might not be ready to deliver a significant Switch upgrade anytime soon if a new rumor is to be believed, as the upcoming Switch Pro refresh might not even support 4K gaming.
A rumor a few days ago said that Nintendo will launch a Switch revision this year to help it compete against the PS5 and Xbox Series X. But that might not happen until much later this year, one leaker claimed.
According to this person, the new Switch will not feature the new Tegra X1+ chipset. Instead, it’ll feature custom NVIDIA processors, as well as a Volta graphics card. But even so, the console shouldn’t deliver significant performance improvements, and 4K support shouldn’t be expected.
Moreover, the production of these custom processors hasn’t even started, which means you shouldn’t expect the Switch Pro to launch anytime soon. At best, we might see it in stores in late 2020, which would be right in time for the PS5 and Xbox Series X launch.
It’s unclear what the source of the leak is, but WCCFTech claims the leaker can be trusted. While this is just a rumor, it’s not hard to believe that Nintendo isn’t necessarily in a hurry to match the performance of the PS5 and Xbox Series X anytime soon. As long as it can keep current owners occupied with new releases, and attract even more customers, hardware parity is probably going to be the least of Nintendo’s concerns.
