Nintendo has developed its own Switch emulator for Switch 2
By ForGeeks Backwards compatibility was one of the main arguments in favor of the Switch 2, but Nintendo has said that the console won’t run Switch games. Instead, Nintendo has developed its own emulator to run original Switch games on the new console.
In the release of Ask the Developer Vol. 16: Nintendo Switch 2: Part 4, three Nintendo executives — Takuhiro Dohta, Kouichi Kawamoto and Tetsuya Sasaki — revealed how the decision was made. Kawamoto said: “From the beginning, we wanted to be able to play Switch games on the new system, but at the time we were told there would be technical problems.”
The team explained that Switch and Switch 2 are incompatible on a hardware level, but at the same time it’s not a full emulation either. Dohta says: “If we tried to use technologies like software emulators, we would have had to run Switch 2 at full power, which would have meant the battery wouldn’t last as long. So we did something in between software emulator and hardware compatibility.”
A detailed explanation would be too technical and beyond the scope of this article, but simply put, the Nintendo Switch 2 “translates” data from a Switch game in real time. However, the same hardware improvements that allow the Switch 2 to perform at a higher level than the original also create obstacles for some Switch games.
Nintendo warns that not all Switch games will be compatible with Switch 2, especially if those games were designed with the physical size of the Nintendo Switch in mind. Speaking about the Switch library, Sasaki said the number of available titles will be over 10,000.
Kawamoto added: “Even after all these checks, it may turn out that not all Switch games will work perfectly by the time Switch 2 launches, but we will make every effort to support as many Switch games as possible.” Of course, supporting some games, such as the Labo Toy-Con 04 VR Kit, which was designed with the Switch’s hardware size in mind, is physically impossible.
