Nintendo Switch 2 Finally Confirmed, And It's Releasing This Year
Nintendo has finally put an end to speculations and given us our first official look at the upcoming Switch 2 handheld console. Today, the Japanese company has released a short teaser video for the second-generation console, while hyping up the upcoming Nintendo Direct event scheduled for April 2, 2025. As for the market launch dates, we are still in the dark and will only hear about those plans during the event. If you are excited by the reveal, Nintendo will be hosting experience events across North America, Europe, and Asia, as well. In the U.S., Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas will be the lucky spots, starting in the first week of April.
Coming to the console, the looks are familiar, with a recognizable accent work, but the overall profile is slightly more rounded on the Joy-Con controllers. The kickstand has received a bit of an aesthetic refinement while the USB-C port has been moved to the top edge. The input layout is a familiar affair, with the only change being a new physical button on the right-side controller, right below the Home button.
Nintendo's design team also seems to have given a size boost to the shoulder buttons, which is definitely a welcome change. As far as games go, Nintendo assures that backward compatibility will be on the table, though there will be a slate of games exclusive to the Switch 2, unsurprisingly. A slate of exclusive titles that struck a chord with gaming enthusiasts is what made the original Switch one of the best-selling consoles of all time, so it's not surprising to see the company walk that path, once again.
What to expect from the Switch 2?
Nintendo is, as usual, tight-lipped about what we can expect from the console, especially regarding the innards. But there definitely are a few leaks that paint a rather optimistic picture of the successor. ZachyCatGames, a data miner on Famiboards (via Beebom), recently shared some intriguing details about the Switch. The processing unit will reportedly be headlined by Arm's Cortex-A78 cores (clocked at 998.4 MHz) in an octa-core configuration.
In docked mode, the CPU is rumored to cross the 1GHz frequency threshold, as will the GPU, while supposedly reaching an output worth over 3 TFLOPS. On the graphics side, an Nvidia T239 GPU (based on the Ampere architecture), which is claimed to offer 1,534 CUDA cores, six texture processing clusters, 48 third-generation Tensor cores, and a couple of ray-tracing cores. The folks over at DigitalFoundry (via GameSpot) also claimed that we are getting Nvidia's T239 graphics engine aboard the next Switch. There will be 12GB of LPDDR5 memory onboard.
Those are some serious upgrades across the graphics and memory boards, and almost too good to be true, so take them with the proverbial pinch of salt. With the Switch 2 enthusiasts, are expecting a serious upgrade, unlike the OLED model, which merely offered a nicer display to gaze at, as its core selling point. So, it won't be surprising to see Nintendo delivering a knock-out punch with the generation-over-generation Switch refresh.