What Are “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” Games? – Editorial

The wildest Nintendo leaks are the ones they leak themselves, such as in the fine print in the official Nintendo website detailing how the company’s new Virtual Game Card sharing feature works. Despite the company’s conscious and clear effort to focus on the original Nintendo Switch for now (until next week’s planned Nintendo Switch 2 Direct presentation), that official website includes the text “Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive games and Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games can only be loaded on a Nintendo Switch 2 system.”

What are “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” games? Will they be a significant part of next week’s Nintendo Switch 2 presentation? Does this bode well for brand new titles coming to the Switch 2, or do we brace ourselves for launch year full of ports and remakes of older games?

In truth, one might expect to see a lot of answers next week at the Switch 2 Direct. However, that’s not guaranteed. We don’t even know the Switch 2’s official launch date yet, and Nintendo may want to stretch out the information sharing for their new system over time if they have it, instead of info-dumping everything at once.

(Should we consider Nintendo marketing as thoughtful for not overfeeding us with too much news at once? Or should we yearn for older and less-controlled ways of revealing and discovering the company’s plans?)

With the truth so close, one thing does at least seem a sensible take-away: it sounds highly likely that Switch 1 games will be re-released in a form where they can benefit from the Switch 2’s stronger hardware. The Switch 2 is already confirmed to be backwards compatible, but maybe if a game wants to run at a steadier, or even higher, framerate, have further draw distances, or faster loading, then Nintendo could require you to buy a “Nintendo Switch 2” version of it.

Here’s another question: Will the Nintendo Switch 2 rely heavily or in part on ports and remakes? Nintendo has a history of porting older games to newer systems – often in order to pad out release schedules and avoid release droughts, or to give older games a chance to gain new audiences. And we have to consider the modern day trend for extended cross-generation videogame console transitions – Newer consoles like the PlayStation 5 are now taking longer to gain truly exclusive titles, and instead padding out their libraries with “better” versions of games released simultaneously on older consoles. Nintendo has history here, and developing brand new videogames is taking longer and longer, so it’s a question to ponder.

To that point, could Metroid Prime 4 be the headlining example of a “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” release? Given the game’s long development time into the original Switch’s final years, and given the prestige the name carries and the Metroid Prime franchise’s reputation for graphical excellence, it always seemed a shame for so much investment to be stuck on the Switch 1 at the dawn of newer and more powerful hardware. But maybe the game pulls a “Breath of the Wild” and released in both a Switch 1 AND Switch 2 version. It could certainly go some way in explaining the subtle lack of fanfare that Nintendo gave Metroid Prime in the March 27 Nintendo Switch 1 focused Direct… they could be planning to talk about the game in a Switch 2 context very soon and at that time give it the spotlight it deserves.

Certainly there’s a list of other questions where speculation will run rampant. Will these cost as much as full priced games, or be a discounted upgrade? Will they be released in physical copies you can buy at stores, or only digitally on the eShop? Does this mean that ordinary Switch 1 games running on Switch 2 via backwards compatibility won’t show any performance improvement at all?

We’ll know more next week. But we are still on the very first steps of a journey to discover everything about the Switch 2, so maybe we won’t know everything just yet, and we’ll have to continue to speculate until these sorts of games are finally in our hands and on our screens.