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If you’re a dedicated handheld gamer, you’ll want to keep an eye on Nintendo Switch 2 rumors as the mill is circulating again. While an official announcement or release date still evades us, we know that one will be made during this fiscal year, meaning by March 2025.? With all said, here’s what we know about the Switch 2 in detail.
From a claimed 8-inch 1080p display to potential ray tracing capabilities, there are many Nintendo Switch 2 rumors to be excited about, as the hype has never been higher. The original Nintendo Switch console is now showing its age, with how it struggles with some third-party and even first-party games, so the time could be right for Nintendo to lift the veil on its hotly anticipated successor.
- Show Full Guide
When is the Nintendo Switch 2 Release Date?
Expected Release Date: March 2025
Initially targeted for a late 2024 launch, recent reports from Asian publication Nikkei suggest a delay, pushing the release to March 2025.
Renowned Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, known for accurate reports, suggested the same in February 2024, hinting at a potential official announcement from Nintendo during the summer gaming news season, possibly in June 2024.
His hopes have since been dashed, but at least we all have something to go on. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa name-dropped the Switch successor in an X/Twitter post, promising a reveal before March 2025.
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct…
— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報?IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) May 7, 2024
Note that this is only a date for a reveal — but Eurogamer and Bloomberg both quote sources, including third-party game publishers who expect a Q1 2025 launch.
Nintendo has reportedly communicated with publishers, informing them of the revised Nintendo Switch release date, aimed at fortifying the console’s launch lineup — a good spread of launch games can make or break a console’s sales.
Lastly, a Brazilian channel that has a previous form for accurate Nintendo news also places?March 2025 as the release month.
New Switch 2 leaks, via Brazilian tvPH. This is the same person that originally correctly leaked the internal delay of the console to next year.
– Switch 2 planned to release on March 2025.
– Expecting more information about the console in fall.
– More remasters will be revealed…— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) May 7, 2024
What Is the Nintendo Switch 2 Price?
Expected Price: Starting at $299.99
Reports or thoughts on a potential new Nintendo Switch price prove elusive. Perhaps Nintendo will track the first Nintendo Switch launch price point of around $299.99 in the United States, ￥29,980 in Japan, ￡279.99 in the United Kingdom, and A$469.95 in Australia.
While an OLED screen looks unlikely, if the new Nintendo Switch 2 did include an OLED (like later versions of the first Switch), you might expect a price bump of $50 to $100.
Kantan Games CEO Dr. Serkan Toto, putting on his predictions hat in a chat with GamesIndustry, speculated a $400 price point and suggested that games may hit the $70 mark.
Dropping bombs quite happily, he said: “The time is finally here for a Switch successor, even though I can say a ‘Pro’ model actually did exist, and certain developers were already working with the dev kit.
“I believe the next hardware will drop for $400 [in 2024]. There is a high chance that games will cost more, too: $70.”
The Nintendo Switch 2, costing $400, would track the trajectory of the current console generation while still undercutting its rivals. Nintendo could put its successor hardware out cheaper than an Xbox Series X or PS5, which would offer enough under the hood to keep up. However, the specs are rumored to be underpowered in comparison.
What Are the Rumored Nintendo Switch 2 Specs & Features?
Expected: 1080p Resolution, Magnetic Joy-Cons, 4K via Dock
Reports surfacing at the end of April suggested the Nintendo Switch 2 display could be an 8″ screen with a resolution of 1080p, with other features including magnetic Joy-Cons, backward compatibility (including with accessories), a powerful Nvidia?chip based on the advanced Ampere architecture, and 8K resolution when connected to a new-generation dock.
A leaker who scoured connections between Nintendo and its hardware suppliers suggests we could be looking at 12GB of RAM, along with 256GB storage, which will give game developers plenty to play with.
Internal communications stemming from the FTC v. Microsoft case initially suggested performance levels similar to those of PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
Even better, other Nintendo Switch 2 rumors paint a potentially different picture, indicating a more robust hardware setup that could rival current-gen systems from Sony and Microsoft. This advancement would be bolstered by the adoption of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology, which promises enhanced performance and visual fidelity.
In other Nintendo Switch news, the demonstration of an improved version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at Gamescom, running at higher resolutions and frame rates, adds weight to the speculation surrounding the Switch 2’s capabilities.
However, it’s worth noting that cost considerations may lead to the adoption of an LCD screen instead of OLED for the Switch 2. The speculation stems from Sharp revealing it was preparing LCD screens for “an upcoming gaming console”.
One issue with a 1080p resolution is that, while backward compatibility is expected, it could play havoc with games built for 720p—blurring could be a problem that needs to be solved at the software level. We could see a level of AI-powered upscaling using a hand-tuned algorithm to clean the picture quality.
Meanwhile, could Nintendo surprise us? A Nintendo patent filing suggests a different Nintendo Switch 2 concept could be on the cards.
Place your expectations on the low end for this, but the device would be clamshell, much like a Nintendo DS? — the two screens could be detached from each other, leading to instant multiplayer.
That said,?Nintendo seems to?file?a patent every other Thursday, so there are no guarantees that this will come to light. It could mean that further down the line, we could see dramatic changes. All current Nintendo Switch 2 leaks suggest iteration over innovation after all; why would the Japanese hardware giant fix what isn’t broken?
What’s most exciting about the potential Nintendo Switch 2 hardware is how much has changed since the original’s launch. The Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, MSI Claw, and others have innovated in the mobile hardware space with superior performance, faster displays, and better battery lives. Nintendo could learn a thing or two from the current crop of handheld PCs with its new console.
Latest Nintendo Switch 2 News
The latest Nintendo Switch 2 news alleges that renders have surfaced online, which supposedly detail the company’s upcoming console.?The leak includes a specs sheet and a few disassembled parts, which align with some of the Switch 2 rumors we’ve reported above.
Originating from a Famiboarads thread, the source claims the Nintendo Switch 2 console could feature an 8-inch display with two USB-C ports and magnetic Joy-Cons. From the render, the attachment rails appear to be gone, supporting the narrative of the new alleged controller’s magnetic functionality. Aesthetically, this machine is strikingly similar to Nintendo’s current-generation console and appears to be a more credible supposed leak than some others we have seen.
More interesting than the leak’s proposed Nintendo Switch 2 design is the reported specifications, however. The alleged specs sheet (via Reddit)? infers 12GB LPDDR5X memory clocked at 7,500 MT/s, backed by Nvidia’s T239 SoC, and 256GB NVMe storage. Now, this isn’t the highest amount of RAM or storage we’ve seen from a handheld, but it’s the Tegra chip inside of the console that earns our attention, forgoing tried-and-true conventions of AMD hardware such as the Z1 and Z1 Extreme found in today’s handheld PCs.
Nintendo Switch 2 rumors featuring the Nvidia T239 are nothing new; they have been circulating for nearly a year now, but it’s the implementation of this chip that could make the system surprisingly powerful. As?Digital Foundry Technology Editor Richard Leadbetter touched on, the T239 is based on an octa-core ARM A78X CPU with integrated graphics based upon Nvidia’s Ampere architecture.
With 1,536 CUDA cores on a 128-bit memory bus, the GPU found on the T239 isn’t going to frighten the best graphics cards or even challenge mainstream discrete laptop graphics; however, even with its quoted 102GB/sec bandwidth, there’s a ton of potential especially when compared to the first Nintendo Switch’s Tegra X1, which was already aging by the time it was put into the handheld. The Nintendo Switch GPU is a GM20B processor with only 256 CUDA cores and 4GB DDR4 RAM on a 64-bit memory bus with a mere bandwidth of 25.60 GB/sec (via TechPowerUp), so we’re talking about a massive uplift in performance potential between the two machines.
Here’s how the alleged T239 hardware compares against GM20B in detail:
| Specification | T239 (Rumored for Switch 2) | Nvidia Tegra X1 (Nintendo Switch) |
|---|---|---|
| CPU Architecture | 8x ARM A78C | Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 |
| GPU Architecture | Ampere (Samsung) 8nm | Maxwell 2.0 (TSMC) 20nm |
| CUDA Cores | 1,536 | 256 |
| Memory | 12GB LPDDR5 | 4GB DDR4 |
| Memory Bus Width | 128-bit | 64-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 102GB/sec | 25.60GB/sec |
In terms of real-world performance, we could see the Nintendo Switch 2 confidently delivering 60fps at a native 1080p resolution, especially if the SoC utilizes Nvidia’s DLSS AI-upscaling, which is almost a given considering how hard the company has pushed this tech in recent years. This could empower developers to dynamically upscale their games for high framerates without a loss in resolution, something not possible on the original Nintendo Switch hardware.
Moreover, there’s enough under the hood with the Switch 2’s alleged specs to make a 4K output a possibility. It doesn’t seem likely, but similarly powered Ampere-based machines can do 1440p, so we could make Quad HD resolution possible through upscaling when docked. Again, this is pure speculation on our part, though.
Nintendo Switch 2 Games: Lineup Expectations
Metroid Prime 4, Maybe New Mario?
Among the rumored flagship games, beloved franchises like Pokémon and Metroid are expected to take center stage, drawing eager fans to experience these iconic series on a new, more powerful platform.
In particular, Metroid Prime 4 stands out as a prime candidate for the Switch 2 launch title. Despite lacking a clear release date, its status as the only previously announced in-house Nintendo game without recent updates fuels speculation about its potential as a cross-generational release, spanning both the Switch and its successor. Reports in 2023 also suggest Luigi Mansion 4 is also reportedly in the mix “for a 2025 launch”.
However, there are noticeable gaps in Nintendo’s lineup, including the absence of a new Mario Kart installment and a 3D Super Mario game. With no new Mario Kart title in over nine years and a lack of fresh 3D Mario adventures since 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey, fans eagerly anticipate announcements for these highly anticipated titles.
At the same time, the success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey on the original Switch suggests that the arrival of a new platform could provide the ideal opportunity for sequels, further enhancing the appeal of the Nintendo Switch 2.
Nintendo Switch 2 Competition & Potential Impact on the Gaming Industry
Welcome to the Next Round of Console Wars
The Nintendo Switch 2 could significantly affect the world gaming scene. Its touted backward compatibility feature is expected to allure gamers and facilitate a smooth transition from its predecessor.
However, in a world where Sony and Microsoft are already ahead in terms of specs, concerns arise regarding the console’s graphics upscaling and resolution capabilities, which may pose limitations for enthusiasts seeking high-performance gaming.
Additionally, its architecture, rooted in Nvidia’s mobile ARM platform, could pose challenges for developers tasked with porting titles.
Nonetheless, a Switch 2’s triumph could redefine the industry’s emphasis on graphical advancements. Ultimately, the impact of the Nintendo Switch 2’s arrival will depend on its ability to strike a balance between performance, compatibility, and user satisfaction.
Nintendo holds dear the same values as most gamers—it’s about gameplay. Ray-tracing and processors can take a backseat to the best, replayable, multiplayer gaming experiences.
Until the retail boxes hit the stores, stay tuned for more updates and Nintendo Switch 2 news as information continues to unfold.
The Bottom Line
The Nintendo Switch 2 is arguably the biggest secret in gaming right now, but we are one step closer to an official reveal by the company’s own admission. While many details and supposed leaks have drummed up interest, we won’t know the cold hard truth until the lid is lifted, and when it does, we’ll be here for every single detail of it.
