A new leak may reveal a substantial Nintendo Switch 2 feature that the current Switch does not have. Rumors about the Nintendo Switch 2 have flooded the internet the past few months in the build-up to the console's reveal, which is expected to happen sometime soon, possibly before the end of the year. Ahead of this, the files of the Nintendo Switch may reveal what is in store for Nintendo fans.

Dataminers have been picking through the files of the latest Nintendo Switch firm update. In the process of reverse engineering this update -- version 18.0.0 -- dataminers noticed a few interesting strings of code that contain instructions that seem to indicate Nintendo is preparing its operating system to identify the compatibility of games between consoles. In other words, the strings of code hint at both retro and backward compatibility.

This wouldn't be surprising because Nintendo has suggested/teased in the past that its next console will be backward compatible with the current Switch. Meanwhile, previous reports, have made the some claims about the upcoming Nintendo console. Whether the backward compatibility will extended to Nintendo consoles beyond this -- such as the Wii U, Wii, GameCube, N64, SNES, NES, and all the handhelds from the Game Boy to the 3DS -- probably not. This would require a massive engineering effort and is probably too much for the Switch 2. Further, this has never been in the Nintendo playbook, and would undercut Nintendo Switch Online, which lives and dies by its retro games catalog.

For now, take everything here with a grain of salt. While the files seem to point to Nintendo working on some backward compatibility, there is nothing concrete and nothing that explicitly points to the Switch 2. The implications are this is for backward compatibility for Switch 2, but this is not explicitly clear.

At the moment of publishing, Nintendo has not commented on this datamining discovery nor the speculation it has created. Nintendo rarely comments on rumors and speculation, so we don't suspect this to change, but if it bucks expectation and does provide some type of comment or statement, we will update the story accordingly.

Posted: Oct 02, 2024 9:55 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/nintendo-switch-2-games-backward-compatibility/