According to comments made by Furukawa during Nintendo’s recent shareholder Q&A, the plan is to utilise the existing Nintendo Account system to make the jump to the next generation as smooth as possible for customers. Here’s part of what Nintendo’s president had to say, courtesy of a translation by Twitter user Genki:
Shuntaro Furukawa: “As for the transition from Nintendo Switch to the next generation machine, we want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers, while utilizing the Nintendo Account.”
Sounds like backwards compatibility is a lock—not that it’s a huge hurdle for today’s machines—since most of the account features involve software and save data. The retro game archives will probably make the jump too, since keeping them locked behind a paid membership is probably more lucrative than the Virtual Console ever was.
Anyone who has ever transferred their account to a new Switch knows how easy it is, for the most part. The biggest chore is redownloading software data, so maybe Nintendo will allow full game data to transfer over via SD card this time.
I just hope it’s fully backward compatible, and they keep the hybrid design. I love it. Rest they can play around as they like.
The hybrid design is probably the way they’re going to go. I’d love a higher spec one that isn’t though, even if it’s just a pipe dream. The ideal set-up for me personally would be:
“New Switch Lite” - Undockable, permanently handheld, like the Switch Lite but with better hardware.
“New Switch” - Dockable, again like the Switch, but better hardware.
“New Switch Pro” - Undockable, permanently docked, better hardware than the New Switch.
New Switch obviously not the best name, but my creativity is bankrupt. At least it’s not Switch U.
Just saving this comment for when “Switch U” is officially announced in April 2024 😅
It is Nintendo after all
They lost 90% of their sales the last time they added that letter, I doubt the would do it again.
Switch V.