I know this has been talked to death but this is really of a concern for many Switch v1, Switch OLED v2 whom owns many games and can't just go merely and purchase the same game at higher cost just to use Switch 2. I do hope it does come out with BC because if not I have 300+ games EN, JPN games that would suffer greatly and will hurt future plans to own a Switch 2. As I will still keep my Pokémon, TOTK, Splatoon OLED as they are keepers but I want to use the Switch 2 to upgrade gameplay as well.
@SwitchForce You don't need to worry. Nintendo's talk about Nintendo Accounts has already signaled that they want to maintain their ecosystem across systems, but leaked info for the Switch successor indicates its cartridge slot is built to support Switch and Switch 2 games, and there's no way they wouldn't maintain digital backwards compatibility after DSiWare and WiiWare carried over to 3DS and Wii U
@PikaPhantom Problem is they haven't come out and just plainly make a statement clearly stating that the unit Next Gen console will have Backward compatibility. I don't think that isn't that hard of a statement to make? Leak info doesn't confirm or deny anything until they make Official statement of such BC that I've see nor can anyone at this point clearly state them saying so.
If Switch 2 has backwards compatibility, the benefit to me would be that even if my kids want to play an OG Switch game, they can do that on the Switch 2, while I grab the OG Switch to try to finish off some games I started on it. LOL.
Another benefit of backwards compatibility is to draw in new users that don't already have a Switch, but have been thinking about it.
They may have an Xbox, or PS, or nothing at all, and have been looking at the Switch . . . there are a few games they'd like to take on, but now that the Switch is 7 years old, they don't think it makes sense to pick one up.
But if a Switch 2 comes out that is backwards compatible, they can get in on the ground floor (so to speak) of the Switch 2, and still have the ability to get to those games already out for the Switch they have had their eye on for a while.
From now on, it's really just about the details. I don't think we can necessarily expect that every game will get a free upscale to 4K and a boost to a solid 60fps, but it's certainly a possibility for some of them. We're also not necessarily guaranteed a free update if something gets an enhanced port either.
Still, the worst case scenario is that you get to play your old games as is, and that's a decent starting point.
At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well.
That says software it never indicate physical cart games? Where did he say physical cart games can be used in the successor?? Software and Physical cart games are two different animals here. How hard was it to say software and physical cart can be played on the successor???? We have to be clear and concise about the semantic here.
That says software it never indicate physical cart games? Where did he say physical cart games can be used in the successor?? Software and Physical cart games are two different animals here. How hard was it to say software and physical cart can be played on the successor???? We have to be clear and concise about the semantic here.
Software is software, it does not suggest digital distribution only. It has never meant that
To get all historical Computer Science etymology nerd on your for a second lets wind all the way back. The term hardware came first, before software. Hardware was first used centuries ago to describe hardened tools. As a compound word, literally hard wares. You'd go to the blacksmith, you'd get some hardware. Naturally it became very popular amongst the military to refer to swords and similar tools of battle and over time eventually cannons, guns, tanks, other machinery. It's still very, very widely used in this space
Because computing early on was expensive machinery? Well, a lot of it was government contracted stuff. Again, heavy military use. So naturally they started to refer to computers as computer hardware. Because hardware by this point was just a word you'd use to refer to expensive military equipment. Was an easy word to adopt and spread fairly quick
Software on the other hand wasn't used until a fair bit later. The 50s was when it was first used and it was used to refer to the instructions you would feed into the computer. At this time via trays of punch cards. The instructions were not hardware, it wasn't the paper it was punched into, it wasn't the equipment used to load it. It was the structured text itself. It wasn't "physical", even though you could print it out and distribute it on a media, but it still had value and was required in order to make good use of the hardware. So the term software was coined to refer to those instructions
Software is a set of data and instructions used to run a program. Nothing more. There's no meaning of the word that does or has ever meant digital distribution. A game on a cartridge is software, a game on an optical disc is software, a game on a cartridge is software, a game on a hard drive or sd card is software, a game streamed over the internet and run in a web browser is software, a game on punch cards is software. It doesn't matter how you get it, if it's instructions run by a computer then it's software. End of story
So when Nintendo, a video game software company, says that the Switch successor will run Switch software? They mean both physical and digitally distributed software. If they meant to say otherwise they would have specified otherwise
/annoyed software engineer that this conspiracy is being picked up at all
I agree that there's little cause for concern that cartridges will not be BC. As far as I'm aware Nintendo have never had digital-only BC - in fact the only instances I can think of where BC was digital only for any platform are the following, and they generally have a good reason:
1. PS Vita, because UMDs were clunky and PSP Go had already set the precedent for a digital-only PSP.
2. Xbox Series S / PS5 Digital, for lack of disc drive.
That says software it never indicate physical cart games? Where did he say physical cart games can be used in the successor??
It doesn't work like that. Where did they say physical games can't be used? Don't go looking for things that aren't there. And if we are talking about context, physical games in Japan are more popular. So it doesn't make sense to make such a statement about backwards compatibility and then rule out physical games afterwards.
Clearly wrong either they say Physical cart can be used in Switch 2 or not. Just saying software can be used in Switch 2 tells nothing and is what expected of a PR response.
Clearly wrong either they say Physical cart can be used in Switch 2 or not. Just saying software can be used in Switch 2 tells nothing and is what expected of a PR response.
I would argue the English word software doesn't make the distinction you are trying to make. But also... you are trying to make a very subtle linguistic argument regarding a sentence translated imprecisely from Japanese. Furthermore, there was another sentence in the same Nintendo published report which simply said consumers could play their already purchased games on the successor (just the general word games in that sentence, not software).
Clearly wrong either they say Physical cart can be used in Switch 2 or not. Just saying software can be used in Switch 2 tells nothing and is what expected of a PR response.
Software is software, they didn't specify digital distribution only so it's both. Simple as that. You're getting worked up over nothing
And in any case, the thing that's difficult about backwards compatibility is not the physical reading of the cartridges themselves. Physically reading the cartridge is trivial. It's also a fairly cheap thing to add, physically. I can't see a rationale for going to all that effort to make it backwards compatible and then just skipping cartridge compatibility
Clearly wrong either they say Physical cart can be used in Switch 2 or not. Just saying software can be used in Switch 2 tells nothing and is what expected of a PR response.
@Matt_Barber
i am hoping there is some kind of boost to things like performance, while from what i gather things like making a game which is capped at 30 run at 60 or upgrading resolution would require a patch (kind of like the ones on xbox) i imagine things like smoothing out frame drops or improving load times could be done without needing to patch (the latter i guess depends on how a game handles loading since running ps4 games on ps5 with its SSD has some games load much faster)
i am also curious about the handling of cross gen ports as you mentioned and whether things like free upgrades would be available (depending on publisher)
@Mgalens Yes, in order for everything to work, they've got to be quite conservative with across the board upgrades, and most games would just run as they would on a Switch.
Speeding up loading is a pretty safe bet, because Switch games already have to deal with differences between cartridges, internal storage and SD cards. Loading faster still is unlikely to break much.
Similarly, any game designed with a capped frame rate should reach it more often, and games that use dynamic resolution scaling should typically maintain higher resolutions. This might have to be tempered with battery considerations in handheld mode though.
However, increasing the frame rate cap or running the game at higher resolutions than originally designed for may have unintended consequences, such as lock-ups, glitching or playing too fast. If you've ever tried to do it with an emulator, you might have seen such things happen. Things like that would need to be patched in by the developer, although they're not necessarily a huge amount of work.
So far as cross-generation ports go, they've been handled in a lot of different ways on other platforms, so it's anyone's guess for what Nintendo might do. Sometimes you might get them for free - and even old Switch physical media might let you download the Switch 2 game - or pay a small fee for the upgrade.
On the other hand, Nintendo just charged everyone who wanted to play their Wii U games on Switch twice for them, so I don't think we can rule that out either. At least, with backwards compatibility, you should at least be able to play the original version without enhancements, if nothing else.
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Topic: Backward Compatibility? This could be a BIG factor!!!
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