One can only speculate why Nintendo has not yet gotten around to formally introducing its promised Switch successor, which we’re calling the Switch 2 until told otherwise. If the increase in leaks is any indication, however, a launch is not far off. The latest leak purportedly gives us several views of the upcoming handheld’s motherboard and accompanying hardware bits.
The photos were posted to Reddit by user MHN1994. There are three photos in all, including the low resolution one above and the two higher resolution pictures that we’ve clumped together below. Have a look (and click/tap to enlarge for a closer inspection)…
Since then, Nintendo has casually mentioned its next console on occasion, including in November when Furukawa confirmed on X/Twitter that there will be some level of backwards compatibility with the current-generation Switch lineup.
Beyond those nuggets, we’re mostly left to scrounge for morsels of information from leaks and rumors. This latest one that shows the next-gen system’s motherboard seemingly confirms that Nintendo will stick with NVIDIA’s Tegra system-on-chip (SoC) for at least one more round. That makes sense, given that backwards compatibility has been promised.
Rumor has it the Switch 2 will employ a custom NVIDIA Tegra T239 chip based on the company’s Tegra T234 silicon for automobiles. Assuming the past leaks are correct, it will be a slimmed-down variant with eight Cortex-A78 cores and 1,536 CUDA cores based on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture.
This would potentially represent a solid performance boost over the Tegra X1 with Maxwell-era graphics in the current Switch. We could potentially see real-time ray tracing and DLSS support in the next Switch.
Hopefully we’ll have official clarity soon enough, but that’s obviously up to Nintendo.