The Digital Foundry team at Eurogamer has claimed to have uncovered the specs of the Nintendo Switch 2, which has an imminent release of only a few more weeks. While both Nintendo itself and its tech partner, Nvidia, have given vague details as to what’s under the casing of the new system, Digital Foundry has declared its findings to be factual. Yet, it admits we’ll have to wait and see just how the system’s capabilities are truly demonstrated as time goes on.
“Power up, throw down”
That’s the tagline that Nintendo has been using across some newly-branded ads across metropolitan areas around the US. This is a nod to both the power-ups in marquee launch title Mario Kart World, and also points out that this is indeed a more powerful iteration of the existing Switch formula.
Thus, the new report from Richard Leadbetter, one of the heads at Digital Foundry, shines some light into just how much of an upgrade the Switch 2 is over its predecessor. In layman’s terms, she’s a feisty little thing.
Highlights of the Nintendo Switch 2 spec sheet include 12GB of RAM, with 9 being used for games and 3 reserved for the OS. For comparison, the original Switch possessed only 4GB of RAM, and 3.2 of that was used for games.
The Switch 2 is using more RAM just to run its OS than its predecessor. This is very curious given the fact that, as shown abundantly by Nintendo’s own marketing materials, the Switch 2’s OS is a mere notch above the existing Switch OS in terms of complexity.
Apparently, the extra overhead is being taken up by the new GameChat functionality, which allows Switch 2 owners to jump into voice/video chat sessions with friends. Gameplay can also be streamed to those in the session, and if a camera is connected, the user’s background will be precisely cut-out and overlayed on-screen.
Furthermore, audio processing is constantly being done to remove background noise from the system’s mic. All of these party tricks require processing power. Consequently, Digital Foundry reports that dev tools are actually able to simulate what kind of load these features are putting on the system, in combination with the demands of games. This allows devs to optimise their projects accordingly.
Other Nintendo Switch 2 spec details include mentions of all sorts of technical jargon, including the clock speeds, core counts, memory bandwidth and more.
To once again put it all in layman’s terms, the Nintendo Switch 2 is a much more capable system than its predecessor. It features far more cores, a beefier GPU and more complex CPU, resulting in improvements across the board.
Wait and see
Even for those who can make proper sense of all the different characteristics of this alleged spec sheet, even Leadbetter concludes in his report that time will tell when it comes to seeing just how developers will make use of the system’s capabilities.
Direct numbers-to-numbers comparisons to existing hardware are effectively “meaningless” says Leadbetter, as it will be up to devs to optimise their titles for the Switch 2. On top of that, the collection of launch day and launch window titles are just the beginning. As time goes on, the system’s capabilities will be put to even greater use with more complex projects—as is the case with every gaming system.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that feedback from third-party companies has been very positive so far. Not only does Nintendo have a number of high-profile partners on-board from the very beginning, but the overall complexity of their projects indicate that the system is poised to be far more future-proof than its predecessor was.
The original Switch effectively took a very power-efficient chipset that was never truly designed for AAA projects, (especially ones carrying into the 2020s) and squeezed every byte of data out of it. This has produced some impressive games for such a modest system, but its limitations and subsequent compromises have been unavoidable, as even admitted by the designers of the Nintendo Switch 2.
It will be very interesting to see how Nintendo and its partners will be able to make use of the Switch 2’s added capabilities. Particularly interesting it will be to see how it continues to fare against the current slate of systems as their games get more complex, and their successors inevitably arrive in a short number of years.
More from the world of Nintendo Switch 2:
Nintendo Switch 2 officially supports Unreal Engine 4 and 5 | High prices for Nintendo Switch 2 are an arguably necessary evil | GameChat revealed for Nintendo Switch 2
