Nintendo is unlikely to announce its next console in 2024, but a flood of leaks and rumors have kept us occupied in the meantime. The latest rumor comes from Matt of the Install Base forums, who was described as a “trusted developer” on Reddit. Matt’s comments suggest the Nintendo Switch 2 might be even more powerful than we were expecting.
“Both Nintendo and third parties see Switch 2 AAA titles as a big potential growth driver,” wrote Matt in response to a comment about The Witcher 4 and Grand Theft Auto 6 presumably being unable to run well or at all on the Switch 2 hardware.
“The hardware is very capable,” he added.
Given that the Switch will be eight years old in March—and wasn’t very powerful even back in 2017—it would not take much to provide substantially improved performance. That said, Matt’s comments seem to imply that more third-party developers already see the Switch 2 as a home for their AAA games than ever did with the Switch.
“I’m not at all saying it’ll get everything always,” he said further down in the thread, “but I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised.”
Another user compared the Switch 2 to the Xbox Series S, assuming that the two will be about as powerful as one another. Matt called the comparison “incredibly misplaced” and said that the Switch 2 will attract a massive 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 added the following in one of his final posts: “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.”
