The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Nintendo is planning to release two new Nintendo Switch models possibly as early as this summer. One of the new Nintendo Switch models will be an enhanced and more powerful unit than the current Switch model you can purchase today. It won’t be as powerful as a Xbox One X or a PlayStation 4 Pro, but basically more powerful than the current model.
The second model will be a cheaper unit with an emphasis on handheld play and portability. Nintendo apparently sees this unit as a successor to the Nintendo 3DS. The Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki says that he has been told that the designs of these two new Nintendo Switch systems are “different from the original and you’d be surprised.” Nintendo has obviously made no comment as of yet.
“Premium And A Cheaper Portable Model”
What a tricky way to get people to want to buy multiple Switch consoles. Nintendo has a bad habit of doing this.
It hasn’t been officially announced by Nintendo so don’t take it seriously. It’s just a rumor.
I think this is 100% a good thing. More options for different people with different willingnesses to pay. I’m willing to pay quite a bit for a pro, so the option is a great thing for me, while others are not willing to buy the current Switch, but would totally pick up something a bit cheaper. For people who want neither… fine, keep your standard Switch. I’ll never complain that a company is creating something that I WANT to buy.
And two versions definitely mean both will run every game that comes out, but the pro will have better performance, so buying a pro won’t be necessary to enjoy any game.
Unless they do what they did with the New 3DS and make games only it can play
I don’t understand this at all. If they’re gonna offer two difference systems with one being more powerful than the other, then why divide that solely on willingness to pay and not by play style?
If they had a stand alone handheld held and a stand alone console that ran the same games then they could have still had a version of “play your console games on the go” while distinctly offering different experiences. Then developing for them would be easier than developing for the Switch and people would have a reason to own both.
By releasing a new, more powerful SKU with the same concept, they’re just making a product that people will choose over another SKU and developers would have to develop a game for 4 different performance profiles just to support one ecosystem.
@myownfriend Firstly the handheld model would have the same performance as the standard Switch, so we’re only talking two performance profiles. Secondly Switch games scale seamlessly based on performance – a “Switch Pro” will already produce better looking games running the current Switch library of today. Meaning devs don’t really have to do anything different.
I like how you pick out Nintendo. Literally every company that makes any product does this. Video games, computers, cars, phones, beds, tools, toys. You name it. Always improving products and giving different options. Not necessarily for our benefit, but they do it.
XBox One => XBox One X
PS4 => PS4 Pro
What’s your problem with Nintendo?
There’s no satisfying this one. its his way or NO WAY!
I think this is the reason why Nintendo released that video back in 2018 about how to trade-in your Switch for another one…. It makes sense to think that
Pinch of salt for now and see what happens.
Nintendo can’t do anything too powerful just yet. There would be no point as it’s not like they can produce any games that would only work on the newer premium model with so many current switches not long been sold.
Maybe, but would it be cost effective enough or would it be best to wait a while.
The Tegra P1 Chip is currently rocking 2.5TFlops, and this is what the Tegra X1 Gen 2 chip can do inside the Switch, but obviously Nintendo had to nerf it due to heating concerns. If the Switch Premium is using the Tegra P1 chip, we could be seeing a games running smoother and 1080p being more possible.
I doubt we’ll ever see a ‘4K Nintendo Switch’ Console, anytime soon.
There is no Tegra P1 so I have no idea what you’re talking about. They have a Tegra X2 which has like 50% more graphics performance but not 2.5 TFLOPS. There’s the Drive PX series but they aren’t chips, they’re boards made for cars with one or more Tegra chips and sometimes some discrete GPUs.
They also have the Xavier chips which has like twice as many GPU cores, completely different CPU cores but runs at a much higher power usage and has a bunch of other shit that wouldn’t be beneficial to the Switch like Tensor cores, on-chip 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet, 16 camera interfaces, etc.
They can always increase the RAM/memory.
In fact early rumors suggested it was going to have more memory to help increase functionality so devs would not have to cut so many corners to make their games work.
The current CPU/GPU are pretty capable, but with lack of memory the games don’t run as well as they could.
But i guess we’ll see in due time.
To clarify, when I mean by “P1”, I’m talking about the Tegra X2, not the be confused with the Tegra X1 Gen2 inside the current Switch Model.
P1 wa a nickname given to the chip during development, I forgot that they had changed the name to Tegra X2 during development. Also, it is true that the Gen 2 X1 inside the Switch is capable of 1.5TFlops, however, due to the heat output of the chip, I doubt Nintendo would want to keep using it as the new Parker variant is more powerful, energy efficient and is least likely to overheat when docked. Again, a mistake on my end.
Also, I believe the Switch Premium will hit 1.5TFlops when docked, but portably I see it sticking to around 700GFlops to maintain the performance portably and it can still run games pretty well as hackers have found DOOM (2016) on Switch ran smoother portably with 700 GFlops than it did with the 300 GFlops the base Switch Model uses when in handheld mode.
Finally, I doubt they’ll use the Xavier Chip as it’d be too expensive to produce for the Switch system, where as the Tegra X2 chip would be much easier to produce and manufacture, also the Xavier is actually weaker in terms of TFlops as the Xavier only produces 1.3TFlops vs the Tegra X2’s 1.5TFlops, which is on the same level as an Xbox One S.
If they called the Pro model of the Switch the “Nintendo Switch Premium”… I’ll buy 12
Probably just New Nintendo Switch tbh
I would hate it so much, but this is what they’ll most likely name it.
I feel like rumors like this are a great way to test market interest. Expect this to be released no earlier than 2021, although I didn’t see anything coming until 2022… Maybe the cheap “portable only” version first if so.
Actually don’t like the sound of this if true. Fair enough if they want a slightly more powerful one with a minor design change but I will be pretty angry if after just two years they have a major redesign and potentially all the joy con I’ve bought suddenly don’t fit or something. I’m jumping to conclusions obviously but something about them saying it is very surprising is concerning to me.
I wouldn’t mind a more powerful system, but I think it’s still kinda early for this sort of thing. The 3DS was around a bit longer before they re-released enhanced/cheaper variants of it and even then, only game I can think of that really needed the power was Xenoblade chronicles. Tl;dr: I’m down for buying it if they change some stuff up like the flimsy kickstands and better battery life but I think it’s waay to early for them to be on this sorta kick
3DS came out in 2011 and the 2DS came out in 2013.
I’m guessing it’s to do with the fact that the PlayStation 5 and next Xbox are coming next year and no doubt they will be graphical powerhouses. Summer seems very soon but we shall see what happens!
Sounds good, but it is a shame that they will launch a new Switch revision before launching new joycon revisions… What about a dpad oficial Joycon??
I just hope that the new version work with the previous toaster and that they are sold without the toaster.
I like the idea of a cheaper version, so long as it could play the Switch games with no issue and also if it could run 3ds games. Well then that would be dope!
Wouldn’t that cost More though?
Probably but i don’t see how Nintendo can just bring in the 3DS crowd (people like me who didn’t see the appeal of Switch as a stand alone console) without letting them play the games they’ve been collecting on Switch also.
trade out the rumble feature for a 3ds slot, the games are cartridge based now anyway, how could it not work?
my 3ds has 30+ games Installed alone, not buying them again just to play them on a “superior” console, not again.
The annoying things is that the cartridge pinouts are nearly the same between the 3DS and Switch, both use ARM CPUs, the Switch OS has similarities to the 3DS OS, and the 3DS’s GPU could be easily emulated by the Switch’s GPU.
It would have been very easy to do, but of course they changed the cartridges and got rid of the second screen. And actually, the form factor that worked for the having two screens is kind of incompatible with the idea of removable controllers. And fixed controllers means that games like Super Mario Party or most of the 1-2 Switch games which don’t support the handheld mode, won’t work.
I agree that, as a standalone portable, the Switch isn’t really very appealing compared to the 3DS as the Switch though. It really doesn’t have any features that would allow a game to take advantage of it’s portability which is why I think the Switch was such a mis-step.
The Smash bundle should’ve come with this “Pro” Switch, a bit unfair as I bought it 3 months ago :(
Nintendo didn’t even announce anything yet. This is just a rumor, I’m pretty sure we aren’t getting a new model until the holidays at the earliest. But this feels like a 2020+ type of thing.
Take my money ! Wait…. I have no money 😥
If Nintendo wants the 3DS to be the family of systems… why the hell not the Switch?
Good thing I’ve been saving up then! Nice of Nintendo to just be able to stick your user and save data on another console no problem! If this is true, can’t wait!
If they do release a premium switch I hope they bump up the internal memory. Even if it’s optional. 32, 64, even 200 like they do with phones.
I’ve gotta 200gb in my switch and the way things are going that’ll be rinsed by the end of this year. And I buy physical whenever poss.
If true, looks like I’ll be disconnecting my Nintendo Account from my current Switch so I can reset the thing to factory settings then take it to GameStop to trade it in for store credit so I can get the upgraded Switch for less than what it actually costs. Since I now got save data cloud storage, I don’t have to worry about having to restart Smash Ultimate from scratch. (Haven’t played the other 4 games I got on Switch so that’s just one game I have to redownload the save data of.)
Did you enjoy that lame Sony direct, lol?
it’s surprising how you haven’t damage controlled that comparing it to nintendon’t failures.
Honestly, if these are as described then I may want *both* of them. Of course then I understand there’s some complicated stuff involving “primary consoles” if I want to play my downloadable games on both. Guess we’ll cross that bridge if and when this actually becomes a thing!
Just want to point out that this is the same guy that said NX would have “industry leading chips”.
Why make it more powerful if it is still not as powerful as PS4 and Xbox One!?!?!?!?!?!
This part is the one that doesn’t make sense to me, especially with the successors to both Xbox One and PS4 coming soon. You’d think Nintendo would want a console at least as powerful as the current competition so when the new consoles come they aren’t two generations worth of power behind and are only one generation behind.
It says it isn’t as powerful as Xbox One X or PS4 Pro. It may roughly match or exceed Xbox One/PS4 though. So it would be one generation behind PS5 and whatever they call the Xbox.
Hmmm…
If true… There’s going to be an abundance of accessories to accommodate each model. I get the feeling it will all be a convoluted mess because there will surly be a scarce amount of accessories with actual backward compatibility across the models — it will be even worse and more confusing if the names of the consoles are as stupid as “NEW Switch” or “Switch XL”; just more confusion inducing if there is not a clear indication of each model…
Not sure if I am reassured enough to believe Nintendo can name them properly… we all know the many issues they have with their naming of stuff lately…
This makes too much sense, just as the 2DS was a cheap 3ds for people who wanted to play Pokemon, this cheaper lite switch seems to be the cheap alternative to the switch for the new pokemon game.
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