A third, more powerful version, of the Nintendo Switch console could be coming. Although it’s important to say upfront that this could all just be another false rumor. The sources on this are very shaky, and it would be wise to wait for an official announcement before celebrating.
Nintendo has yet to comment on the supposed leak, but it does kind of make sense. The company clearly wants to capitalize on the success of the first three years with new models. The V2 Switch was first, featuring improved battery life. Then came the Switch Lite, stripping away features for a cheaper portable model. Now we could get a more expensive model capable of running more complex games.
The rumors of a Switch “Pro” circulated months ago, but were disproven by Nintendo—after YouTubers and social media did what they do best—running with the unsubstantiated rumor and causing a firestorm of hype online. This could well be another instance of that, considering how little information there actually is The source? Economic Daily News, a Taipei-based financial news website, and it mentions “unidentified people in the supply chain.”
No specs or other details have been revealed. This is by no means the first time we’ve heard these rumors, as they date all the way back to 2018, and remain untrue to this day, so take this with a big grain of salt. If they do turn out to be true, there will likely be a new chipset used as the core of the console. The current crop of Switches use an Nvidia Tegra X1 as the main CPU, supported with a custom video chip. Whether we could see a new overclocked revision is unknown, or if Nintendo would go with a newer chipset.
The release of the more portable Switch Lite has caused a big stir. Though it was never designed to replace the mainline unit, it sold pretty well. In May 2020 the console became the 7th best-selling Nintendo console, with sales up 60% year-on-year, with 55.77 million units sold since 2017. This put it ahead of the much older Xbox One on the hardware sales front, a fact that Microsoft has mostly shrugged off.
“Through Nintendo Switch, we’ve made many discoveries about where a dedicated video game platform can fit into a consumer’s daily life,” said director and senior executive officer Ko Shiota in July.
“We see scenes on social media of children and their families sitting around a game console to play, which gives us a renewed sense of the value of our dedicated video game platform. We will utlise these experiences in carefully considering the form our future game consoles will take,” he concluded.
