Nintendo Confirms Switch 2 Will Support Backward Compatibility with Switch Games

Following its recent Corporate Management Policy Briefing, Nintendo took to Twitter to confirm that games designed for the Nintendo Switch will indeed be playable on its upcoming console, which many are referring to as the Switch 2.

The in-depth briefing, available on Nintendo’s website, delves into the company’s current stance in the console market. It reveals that an impressive 146 million units of the Nintendo Switch Family have been sold, and the Switch has seen more software activity than any other Nintendo system to date. The comprehensive 59-page document goes into considerable detail about sales stats and historical insights. It also confirms that Nintendo’s Switch Online service, among other features, will carry over to the new console.

For those familiar with the gaming landscape shaped by Sony or Microsoft, this kind of backward compatibility might come as no big shock. Microsoft’s Xbox, for instance, has long been lauded for its backward-compatible features, allowing older games from the original Xbox and Xbox 360 eras to be played on newer systems like the Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X, often with enhanced graphics and performance. While Sony’s PlayStation approach has been more conservative since the PS3 era, the PS5 does manage excellent backward compatibility with PS4 titles, and some classics from the PS2 and PS1 days can be enjoyed via emulation. However, PS3 games remain confined to cloud streaming, much to some players’ dissatisfaction.

Looking back, Nintendo has generally done a fairly commendable job with backward compatibility—until the advent of the Switch. The Wii U could handle discs from both the Wii and GameCube, also offering a Virtual Console service to cater to most other historical library gaps. Meanwhile, the 3DS allowed play for Nintendo DS games, though it couldn’t support Game Boy Advance games or earlier handheld titles.

The Nintendo Switch broke from this tradition, completely forgoing backward compatibility as it integrated Nintendo’s handheld and home console lines and shifted to Arm CPU cores from PowerPC. But, it seems that the success of the Switch and its Nvidia-powered hardware has encouraged Nintendo to stick with this winning formula, meaning gamers purchasing titles now can confidently expect to play them on the Switch 2.

Hopefully, this forward-compatibility also implies that games notoriously hampered by the original Switch’s limitations, like the visually ambitious Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, can achieve smoother performance without resorting to third-party emulations. Because while tools like Dolphin replicated GameCube and Wii experiences, an unrestricted Switch emulator might well emulate the Switch 2.

So, here’s to the future of Nintendo gaming, looking both backward and forward, ensuring access to a beloved library of games on the horizon of a new era.