Whatever the Switch 2 end up as, I think people may be disappointed. Without some huge leap in battery and power efficiency, it’s going to be hard to keep something slim and relatively small while also making it much more powerful and having decent battery life. Just look at the handheld PC market. You can make something more powerful, but other things will suffer (size of you’re the Steam Deck, battery life and thermals if you’re the Ally). You could certainly make a more powerful Switch, but if keeping it small and somewhat battery efficient is important, the improvements to power wouldn’t be earth shattering unless Nintendo is sitting on some battery tech no one else has.
The thing is that the people that buy Nintendo they don’t care about the performance of the console, they care about the games, and those you can only get on Nintendo consoles (yes, you can emulate games but emulation is a very niche thing that most people won’t bother doing)
Chip design, especially ARM, has come a long way in 7 years. Nintendo will have to try really hard to find a chip that isn’t significantly more powerful than the garbage they put in the Switch.
Phones are more powerful than the Switch these days, it doesn’t need to be the most powerful handheld, just more modern performance with an affordable price tag. It’s won’t be trying to run Steam games, it will be running Switch games which are specifically optimised for it.
Whatever the Switch 2 end up as, I think people may be disappointed. Without some huge leap in battery and power efficiency, it’s going to be hard to keep something slim and relatively small while also making it much more powerful and having decent battery life. Just look at the handheld PC market. You can make something more powerful, but other things will suffer (size of you’re the Steam Deck, battery life and thermals if you’re the Ally). You could certainly make a more powerful Switch, but if keeping it small and somewhat battery efficient is important, the improvements to power wouldn’t be earth shattering unless Nintendo is sitting on some battery tech no one else has.
The thing is that the people that buy Nintendo they don’t care about the performance of the console, they care about the games, and those you can only get on Nintendo consoles (yes, you can emulate games but emulation is a very niche thing that most people won’t bother doing)
Chip design, especially ARM, has come a long way in 7 years. Nintendo will have to try really hard to find a chip that isn’t significantly more powerful than the garbage they put in the Switch.
Phones are more powerful than the Switch these days, it doesn’t need to be the most powerful handheld, just more modern performance with an affordable price tag. It’s won’t be trying to run Steam games, it will be running Switch games which are specifically optimised for it.