It’s something we’ve all been wondering about for a while now – will Nintendo’s newest machine allow us to use all the old Switch cartridges we’ve been collecting since 2017? Well, now we’ve had an answer from Nintendo HQ, and things are looking positive.
While we’ve had no definitive information from Nintendo before now, looking back at past consoles made us 90% certain that this would be the case. The Gameboy Color played DMG carts, and the GBA played both carts that came before it. The DS allowed us to play GBA games (until the DSi at any rate), and the Wii U played Wii games.
The GameCube was the only exception; no one wants to see their N64 carts spinning around a disc drive – that’s madness! Still, the Switch 2 could pull a GameCube-style trick and go back to using a CD format. In fact, that might still be the case – perhaps we’ll use our old cartridges alongside new media like I guessed in my recent article.
While we don’t know for sure what the game media style will be, but we now have concrete evidence in the form of a Tweet on X from Nintendo’s Shuntaro Furukawa that the Switch will be backward compatible. The news came from a Corporate Management Policy Briefing, a meeting which also brought news that Nintendo Switch Online is coming to the new console aswell.
As I’ve already said, these are pieces of news that we were pretty sure were set in stone already, but it’s nice to have some actual news on the new console and Nintendo’s plans straight from the horse’s mouth. As to when the console will be released, well that’s still up in the air. It’s been given a release year of 20XX, which is information that is as useless as a chocolate teapot. Still, at least they’ve given us something, and now that Nintendo Switch sales are starting to drop, perhaps an announcement will be soon to follow.
