Switch 2 is crunch time for Nintendo and backward compatibility
polygon.comNintendo has not yet announced whether its next console — which we’re calling “Switch 2” for now — will be backward compatible. Its silence on the issue doesn’t signify anything, necessarily, since it hasn’t made any public comment about the console. But it has to be backward compatible, right? There’s no way Nintendo’s engineers can release a console in 2024 without backward compatibility… can they?
In all likelihood, yes, the Switch 2 will be backward compatible, meaning it can play games from previous console generations. But anyone with an awareness of console gaming history knows this is not a given. There are several reasons why Nintendo’s record on backward compatibility is spotty, as is every console manufacturer’s. And while the feature has always been near the top of players’ wishlists, it has only very recently become an expectation — something that it would be inconceivable to live without.
Related
Although there are some examples of backward compatibility going back to the 1980s, in the early years of the console industry, the feature was very rare. The constant changing of physical features made sure of that. It seemed reasonable that your console wouldn’t play the same games because the cartridges didn’t fit in the slot, and indeed, the software delivery format is one of the two principal technical hurdles to backward compatibility.
The other is how you run the games on the hardware at all, and there are three ways to do it. One is software emulation, where a more powerful processor runs a program that allows it to pretend to be an older chip running a years-old game. This was beyond the capabilities of most console chipsets until the 2000s. The second is to simply include another chipset to run the old games on. While older components are often a lot cheaper by the time their successors come around, they still add a fair amount to the cost of building a console. The third is to base the new chipset on the architecture of the old one so it can run
Read more on polygon.com
