Nintendo announced the successor to the second-most-popular game console in the United States, and it’s called the Switch 2.
A teaser trailer about two minutes long released Thursday morning revealed a console with a similar form factor of the 2017 handheld, retaining its hybrid format as a portable machine with a dock that connects to TVs and monitors for home console play.
The trailer is sparse in details. Maybe the most important one, besides the teased release date this year, is that the Switch 2 will play games from the first Switch console, including physical cartridges, with a disclaimer that certain games may not be supported or fully compatible.
The trailer featured no other information on future games (as games media have reported ahead of Thursday), but instead showed clips from a Mario Kart game, with little details hinting that it might be the follow-up for the original Switch’s best-selling game, “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.”
The Switch 2 again features Joy-Cons, the motion-tracking controllers that can clip to the side of the console or detach and work independently. The controllers are bigger to match a bigger screen and base console, which is reported to be an LCD screen, as opposed to the original Switch’s OLED line that boasted true blacks and sharp colors.
The machine itself is all black, with hints of the original console’s blue and red controllers now showing through its seams and under its joysticks. The button layout is largely the same, including a disconnected direction pad. The dock, which connects the portable machine to bigger screens through HDMI connection, is more rounded and boasts a large 2 above the Nintendo Switch logo.
It’s rumored that the Switch 2 will boast graphics horsepower just under the PlayStation 4 Pro, released in 2016. That may seem like old technology, but the original Switch used a mobile chip set older than anything in 2017. The portable and still-slim form factor would not be able to house the kind of power seen in the PlayStation 5, Xbox or desktop PC machines. It might be comparable to Valve’s Steam Deck, a portable device that plays PC games through the Steam operating system.
With more than 146 million units sold since its release in 2017, the Switch is the third-best-selling console in history, and the second-best-selling gaming device ever in the United States. It was so successful, it led Nintendo to its most profitable era in video games.
The Switch’s success surprised many analysts at the time. Developers of virtual reality technology, which has struggled to see mainstream appeal, marveled that a single piece of software, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” was so compelling that it moved hardware. At the time, the game sold with the console at a one-to-one rate.
Nintendo promises more information April 2, with hands-on events to try the system to be announced at a later date.
