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The Nintendo Switch is a brilliant bit of kit. It’s small, can be made even more compact, and feels ergonomic in your hands. I love the Steam Deck too, but for different reasons. Where Nintendo’s handheld struggles for power and fidelity, it pulls the wool over Valve’s eyes in terms of simplicity and charm. To me, those two words ooze the language of Nintendo’s design philosophy, and it’s also why the Switch is the third best-selling console of all time.
In the past, I’ve written multiple times about why I think the Switch 2 is so desperately needed. But with hindsight, I’m not entirely convinced by my past thesis that more power equals better. Rumours suggest that DLSS (Deep learning supersampling on Nvidia chips) will be the focal hardware upgrade with the Switch successor, a prospect that I am no doubt excited by. At what cost though?
There are no handhelds sporting DLSS or native FSR at the moment. You can hack open-source FSR 3 onto your ASUS ROG Ally; a device already beyond the constraints of reasonable performance in relation to the battery-life, comfort, and the ergonomic experience it can provide, but there’s a reason it’s not natively offered. For one, the chips needed to run FSR and DLSS are expensive, even the mobile versions of them. Similarly, power-draw increases drastically, alongside the need for more physical space to accommodate for extra battery and airflow. This isn’t a hit piece against upscaling. Instead, it’s an expression of fear that should Nintendo try to one–up the Steam Deck and its peers in terms of performance, it’s going to have to sacrifice the Switch’s most attractive qualities.
Forgive me if I disappear on a tangent here. I see Nintendo as a very similar entity to LEGO. Simplicity and a focus on a streamlined experience are sentiments echoed across both brands. In fact LEGO’s inventor, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, developed a set of rules called Systems of Play, essentially a doctrine enforcing that the fundamental design of the building brick toy can never change. It’s partly why it is the only profit-turning toy brand in the world now. Nintendo has a similar doctrine, less so that nothing can change, but more so that simplicity must be how the company keeps its position within the industry. It’s why Nintendo has yet to release an absolute bomb of a live-service shooter, like its peers PlayStation and Microsoft, and instead releases games developed with realistic goals in mind.
I am well aware of the – sometimes stupid – gimmicks that make Nintendo’s consoles a bit nutty: dual screens, nunchucks, 3D, dual screens again, and removable controllers. However, the Switch and Switch Lite suggest that Nintendo has realised that subtle gimmicks are the way forward, and I anticipate that the Switch successor will actually be as gimmick-free as possible. If the rumours suggesting that the Switch 2 will feature a DLSS compatible Nvidia chip are true, I hope that it isn’t a devastatingly loud and power-hungry machine. We have those already.
Nintendo’s games are going to sell the Switch 2. It has what the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally could never offer – a curated ecosystem. 2017’s Nintendo might not be able to keep up in terms of frames and resolution, but the next Zelda game is probably going to wedge itself among the best games of this year, and it’s going to do it on an seven year old hunk of mediocre hardware. Let the handheld gaming PCs worry about maximal performance and let Nintendo focus on what it does best: handheld games consoles. We’ve needed one for years.
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