
Nintendo Says Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility is the 'Best Direction' for Consumers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 18 January 2025 / 5,852 ViewsNintendo during the week officially announced the successor to the Nintendo Switch is called the Nintendo Switch 2.
The company in a statement sent to Game File explained why the console is backwards compatible with Switch 1 games.
"Nintendo Switch is played by many consumers, and we decided that the best direction to take would be for consumers to be able to play their already purchased Nintendo Switch software on the successor to Nintendo Switch," said Nintendo.
"As a result of that thinking, Nintendo Switch 2 plays Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive games, as well as both physical and digital Nintendo Switch games. Certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2. Details will be shared on the Nintendo website at a later date.
"We have nothing more to announce on this topic. For more details on Nintendo Switch 2, please tune in for the Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 – 4.2.2025, which will air on April 2, 2025."
Nintendo in the first-look trailer for the Nintendo Switch 2 said that some Nintendo Switch games may not be supported or fully compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will launch in 2025. Visit the official Nintendo Switch 2 website here.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Hopefully they stay this course for the future. It'd suck if Switch 3 or whatever succeeds Switch 2 has no backwards compatibility.
i feel like if you are Nintendo, it only makes sense to always aim for BC. If NSW2 lacked BC, then all the sudden ppl wanting to play SSBU or Zelda BotW, for instance, will need NSW, thereby creating competition…that’s the way I see it, at least.
That or if it had limited to no BC you make native Switch 2 ports of those games to not only target new buyers of the game but some double dippers.
Look at all the ports/remasters in the early PS4 and Xbox One games because PS4 never got BC and Xbox didn't get it until 2015.
Wii U ports have been very lucrative to Nintendo, mainly because Wii U sold so poorly. But a little bit of that is because there is no BC for obvious reasons and thus you also sometimes get some double dippers from Wii U.
BC should be a standard across any industry.
People who go “but what about muh BC” in re:Nintendo tend to forget that Nintendo has always done BC where it was feasible to do so. They even wanted to make the SNES BC with the NES because they didn’t want people to lose their NES games, but increased competition from Sega and Hudson, which was proving to be a strong competitor in Japan, forced them to abandon the idea so they could make the SNES strong enough to compete with the PC Engine. The handhelds were always BC to the previous generation, the Wii was BC with Gamecube, and the Wii U was BC with the Wii. With the Switch, it wasn’t feasible to include an optical drive - ask Sony how that worked with the PSP.
Speaking of which, the Vita couldn’t play UMDs and even some digital PSP titles. Sony started dropping BC on PS3 to cut manufacturing costs and completely stopped PS2 BC in later models. The PS4 was a complete reboot of the PlayStation line with no BC to any previous generation. Now that Sony is using mainstream architecture instead of trying to develop expensive proprietary hardware like EE or Cell, that should continue.
Xbox was always scattershot with BC. That was actually one of the selling points of the PS3 over 360, until Sony decided they couldn’t afford to keep making Emotion Emgines for the PS3. Then it became a punchline for Xbox to use against PS.
Don't forget, the DSi removed the GBA slot, nuking BC. Gamecube BC was also removed from the Wii late in its lifecycle.
I never had a DSi. I had an OG DS (that got broken) and a DS Lite. Also didn't own the Wii refresh. I'm guessing they figured that very few people were playing Gamecube games on Wii by that point, but I can't imagine that it was that expensive to have GC on Wii to begin with. Maybe the costs of having GC controller ports was more than they felt it was worth. With the DSi, it looks like Nintendo dropped the cart slot to produce a slimmer profile. Never got one for that reason. The DSi's digital library didn't justify a purchase for me.
I really dislike Microsoft, but after Xbox 360, their backwards compatibility has been really strong and something I appreciate. If only Xbox had something to offer me... On the other hand, as someone who's owned consoles almost exclusively from Sony, I've been extremely disappointed by how Sony's been handling BC since PS3. My guess is that it'll be BC for one generation back for Sony and Nintendo.
Part of the reason why BC was so difficult in past generations was because Nintendo, Sony, and MS formerly used wildly variant architectures in their systems. The CECHA-series PS3s had backward compatibility because they included the complete hardware set from the PS2 in addition to the PS3's hardware. The next round of PS3s dropped the EE but kept the GS, and used software to make up the difference. Those old CPUs cost money and resources to manufacturethat Sony deemed to be better used for moving forward. Replicating the Cell on the PS4 would have been a nightmare, so Sony decided on a complete reboot. Now that they're using more mainstream architecture, I don't anticipate BC being a big problem for them going forward, as long as they don't make a major change. They made sure that the PS5 was an iteration on PS4. That's also going to become a bigger deal as game libraries are increasingly digitized, as much as I love physical media.
My wife got me a PS4 in launch year. However, I actually played on PS3 more than PS4 in 2014 than in 2013, because my PS3 games didn't carry over and the PS4 got off to a slow start for me. Now, most of the stuff I loved on PS3 has been ported to PS4/5 and Switch. A lot of the stuff I loved on PS1/2 likewise. And now I'm going to get to play Lunar 1 and 2 on PS5 and Switch, the two games I loved most on PS1 that didn't have the words "Final" and "Fantasy" in their names. So I've pretty much laid the pre-PS4 generations of Playstation to rest. I can play the classics I loved plus the new stuff. Only things on PS3 I wish I could still play on PS5 are Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
Nintendo is also committed to their chosen architectural platform, at least for the time being. Nintendo understands very well that people don't want to give up their old library. That's part of why the SNES took so long coming out. They understood that people had huge libraries of NES games and they thought upgrading would be less of a bitter pill if they could play their old games on the new hardware. Nintendo wanted to make any successor to the NES backward compatible, but it didn't work out that way. It was actually competition from Hudson, rather than Sega, that convinced them that hanging onto the NES jeopardized their market position. With the Switch, an added bonus was that they had a ready-made library of games that nobody played on Wii U, games that arguably got a second life on Switch. I myself have bought more games on Switch than on any single other system I own, and I appreciate that I can look forward to a smooth transition to Switch 2.
With Microsoft, their glory days were on the 360, and so they had an incentive to make sure that at least their big 360 titles were still good to go on Xbox One and Series. They got roasted pretty hard because the 360 could only play certain Xbox OG games. Of course, the tables turned later on when Sony had to eliminate PS2 BC. Doesnt hurt that MS is an enterprise PC software company first and foremost.
I was hoping it wold be backwards compatible, and for this I am very thankful.
Do we have any ideas of games that could be incompatible and why ?
True, but that's no major loss for Switch 2.
It was clear from the beginning that Switch 2 will be BC. No surprise here. All Nintendo handhelds where backwards compatible.
They knew it would be a big mistake if they didn’t make it backwards compatible!!!
I remember when Sony said something similar before PS3 launched. I think it was Kaz, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, they said BC will be in every console of theirs until the end of time. Then, like a year later, it was gone lol. Hopefully, Nintendo doesn't do the same. I know their handhelds have always had it, and since this is a handheld, I have faith. I just hope none of MY games are on the can't-run list.
Sony dropped it because the PS3 was prohibitively expensive enough to damage its market share, and "backwards compatible" meant that they essentially had to build a PS2 into every PS3. They had to manufacture two consoles for the price of one, and the market rejected their attempt to pass this cost onto the consumer. It was Ken Kutaragi that made that promise. He also said the PS3 was worth working two jobs to pay for. Sony basically started over with the PS4 by using a more common, unified architecture instead of proprietary hardware like Cell, which pretty much necessitated them abandoning the PS1/2/3.
Nintendo is trying to be iterative with the Switch 2, which means that backward compatibility shouldn't be an issue. However, I could see a Switch 2 "digital edition" being released that doesn't have a cartridge slot, though a cartridge slot is a lot cheaper to manufacture than an optical drive.
We'll see if Nintendo keeps their word for Switch 3. Nintendo seems to have BC up to the last gen usually at best until they decide to remove it. So I also wouldn't be surprised if Switch 3 can play Switch 2 games but not original Switch games.
Console generations are officially over. Now we just get a beefier version of the previous thing like with PC and Phones.
Isn't that what Sony does since PS2?
Ideally, the biggest money maker for the big three is software, not hardware. Backwards compatibility means Switch 2 owners have a huge library of games to buy.