Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-switchs-successor-will-be-backwards-compatible-with-switch-nintendo-confirms/With all three major console manufacturers prioritizing backwards compatibility, and the rise in PC gaming (universally backwards compatible), people are starting to catch on to the fact that old games don't "expire" after 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised if backwards compatibility just becomes the standard for all gaming consoles going forward.
Tangential, but I'm also interested in seeing how games that released on old consoles and are continued to be played, like Fortnite, will support aging hardware. I don't like that Epic can one day announce the game just no longer works on that console, rendering your purchases null and void until you upgrade your hardware, but I can't expect them to update that version of the game forever.
That hardware can no longer compete with platforms that don't throw away their entire library on every release is probably one of the first impacts of games finally maturing. My "next console" was a Steam Deck for partially this very reason, the fact that it came preloaded with years of previous acquisitions.
We're also just seeing the leading edge of the game industry having to deal with the fact that it now has to compete against itself. There's been a number of articles about how $NEW_GAME never even reached a peak player count of something like Skyrim. I think that's currently being written as a sort of a "ha ha, that's sorta funny", but it represents a real problem. It is not unsolvable; Hollywood has always faced this issue and it has historically managed to make money anyhow. But I think AAA gaming is only just beginning to reckon with the fact that they aren't going to get a "free reset" on every console generation. $NEW_GAME really is is competition with Skyrim now, along with a lot of other things. It's not a joke, it's an emerging reality the industry is going to have to grapple with.
I don't think there's ever been a console generation before where the last generation was still getting big new releases this deep into the next one. The PS5 Pro is out now and the PS4 is still getting new games.
Microsoft and Sony have demonstrated that hardware security can be more or less perfected, neither of their systems have been compromised via hardware attacks for several generations now.
[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unpatchable-hardware-exploit-l...
[1] https://gbatemp.net/threads/scanned-drilling-template-16d4s-...
A decade ago the engineers designing these chips knew there were several angles of attack but there just wasn’t enough resources put into closing these holes.
Now every know angle of attack is closed. Even if you delid the chip and reverse engineer every single gate and can probe individual metal wires on the chip, it’ll still be nearly impossible to break the hardware security. Power supply and EM glitching is also protected against (can’t speak for Switch 2 but I’m speaking in general about chips going forward)
Could be bugs and mistakes that allows someone to bypass security, of course. Both in hardware and software. But I don’t think there will be general purpose angles of attack that can be used to bypass security going forward.
- Almost every first-party multiplayer Nintendo game on the Switch that I know of has offline local multiplayer. The only exception which comes to mind is Splatoon.
- The Switch has a cartridge slot, and leaks suggest the Switch 2 will too.
- And you can connect two (possibly more with a hub) Pro controllers with a true wired connection: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
Fingers crossed that the Switch 2 maintains this pattern.