Nintendo Switch 2: Everything we know about pre-order plans, specs, pricing, games and more

The Nintendo Switch 2 will arrive in 2025, over eight years after its predecessor. Nintendo officially revealed the successor to its best-selling home console in a brief trailer on January 16. Now it's time for the other shoe to drop: A special Nintendo Direct streaming on YouTube at 9AM ET on April 2 is expected to reveal the price, release date and pre-order details — and maybe even show off some new games, too. 

Thanks to the January teaser trailer, we already know quite a lot about Nintendo's new console, however. The Switch 2 looks functionally very similar to the original system, albeit with a larger display, magnetic Joy-Cons and a sleeker design. The company also reaffirmed that the upcoming console will be backwards compatible with Switch games. 

As we continue counting down the hours until Nintendo's big Wednesday reveal, Switch 2 anticipation is appearing in unusual places. Take the Seattle Mariners' jerseys this year — Nintendo and the MLB team announced they'll have a Nintendo logo on the sleeve of the home jersey and a Switch 2 logo on the away jersey. 

Looking to catch up on everything we know — or think we know — about the Switch 2? Read on. 

The Nintendo Switch 2 was announced on January 16

The rumor mill had heavily suggested that Nintendo would pull back the curtain on the Switch 2 on January 16, and that turned out to be the case. 

The company hasn't changed the core form factor. It's a portable console with detachable Joy-Cons. The Switch 2 can be placed in a dock for big-screen gaming. There are some significant differences from the original console, however.

The most obvious one is that the next-gen Joy-Cons will no longer slide into place mechanically. Instead, they appear to attach to the main unit magnetically. There is a small connector that's likely used to charge the controllers. It's unclear at this point if Joy-Cons from the original system will be compatible with the Switch 2.

One other big (and very welcome) change is the addition of a second USB-C port on the top of the device. That should make it much easier to plug in accessories while the Switch 2 is docked. FCC filings suggest that you'll be able to charge the console using either USB-C port, which is another nice quality-of-life change.

It's great to see that Nintendo has kept the headphone jack as well. Let's just hope that Bluetooth headphone support is live from the jump this time and Nintendo doesn't leave everyone waiting four years for that feature.

The kickstand is getting an upgrade. As with the Switch OLED, it spans the length of the console this time around. But, according to the reveal trailer, this one looks fully adjustable, so you can tweak the viewing angle to one that works for you. 

There are still a great many unknowns regarding the upcoming console. We don't really know the specs yet, or what type of display it uses. We also don't know anything about battery life, the UI or launch games. We'll surely learn a whole lot on April 2. 

When will the Nintendo Switch 2 come out?

2025. That's all we know for sure at this point. 

It's highly unlikely that Nintendo will release the console before the dedicated Direct on April 2, and not only because that's at the start of Nintendo's next financial year. Accessory manufacturer Genki, which had been a major source of leaks before Nintendo's January reveal, claimed the console would be released in April. Other reports have pegged June as the release window, as have several analysts. 

In any case, we should learn the release date during the April 2 Direct. 

When can I pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2?

As with the release date, we expect clarity on this during or after the April 2 presentation. A Best Buy Canada post spotted on Reddit (since deleted, but archived) states that pre-orders will open on that day, but that has yet to confirmed. 

When can I try the Nintendo Switch 2?

Nintendo is planning a worldwide roadshow to let gamers go hands-on with the console. These events start in New York and Paris on April 4-6, with others taking place throughout the following two months. That lends credence to some suggestions that Nintendo will release the Switch 2 in June. 

Ticket registration for many of the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events has closed, but waitlists are available. However, given that Nintendo is taking a first come, first served approach, your chances of attending the roadshow if you don't already have a ticket (or unless you signed up for the waitlist immediately) seem very small at this point.

The full list of Nintendo Switch 2 Experience dates is as follows:

North America:

• New York, April 4-6, 2025

• Los Angeles, April 11-13, 2025

• Dallas, April 25-27, 2025

• Toronto, April 25-27, 2025

Europe:

• Paris, April 4-6, 2025

• London, April 11-13, 2025

• Milan, April 25-27, 2025

• Berlin, April 25-27, 2025

• Madrid, May 9-11, 2025

• Amsterdam, May 9-11, 2025

Oceania:

• Melbourne, May 10-11, 2025

Asia:

• Tokyo (Makuhari), April 26-27, 2025

• Seoul, May 31-June 1, 2025

• Hong Kong, To be announced

• Taipei, To be announced

Will the Nintendo Switch 2 have some weirdness? 

Everything we've seen and so far about this console has been fairly, well, traditional. It looks like the original Switch, but better. That's awesome, but will there be any of that unpredictable Nintendo magic? Maybe! There are two puzzling additions that folks can't make hide nor hair of. 

Keen eyes will have noticed a new button on the bottom of the right Joy-Con. Promotional images for a new app called Nintendo Today!, which the company says will provide users with daily news updates about things like games and the Switch 2, confirmed that it is a C button. 

However, it is not yet clear what this button does. Could it initiate voice chat during gameplay? Could it calibrate the controllers? Could it create a room-sized hologram of Bowser in your living room? We'll have to wait and see.

Now onto the updated Joy-Cons. There appears to be a new sensor on the connecting side of each controller. It looks a whole lot like an optical sensor, which is what a computer mouse uses. This has led to speculation that players will be able to flip the Joy-Con over and use it like a mouse. Of note: the trailer shows the Joy-Cons moving along a flat surface, connector side down and looking suspiciously like a mouse.

But why would anyone even want this? We can think of three words. New Mario Paint.

Mouse control isn’t the only “too strange for any company but Nintendo” rumor floating around. A patent filed by the company suggests you can swap the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons, snapping them onto either side of the console. That would align with the magnetic Joy-Con attachment scheme.

But much like the weird mouse rumors, it doesn’t necessarily align with, well, any logical reason for why you’d want to do that. The patent suggests it could allow for more user choice in where the headphone jack is. But since it’s Nintendo, the company that brought us Labo cardboard peripherals and the Game Boy Advance e-reader attachment, we have to wonder if there are… quirkier designs at hand.

Is the Nintendo Switch 2 backwards compatible?

The company confirmed in November 2024 that the Nintendo Switch 2 will be backwards compatible. It will also feature access to Nintendo Online, so users will be able to play all of those old retro titles. 

In the initial Nintendo Switch 2 press release, Nintendo reiterated that physical and digital Switch games will work on the new system. However, it noted that "certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2." More details about which games those are will be revealed later.

During a Nintendo Direct on March 27, the company revealed a new system for loaning digital Switch games out to friends and family members. Virtual Game Cards are designed to make it easier to start a game on one console and continue on another as well. Although Nintendo's approach to this is not as simple as it perhaps should be, Virtual Game Cards will also be available on the Switch 2.

Will old games be enhanced in any way? 

The original Switch has, to put it mildly, struggled to run some of the late-generation software that's come down the pike. Could these games be enhanced to take advantage of the increased horsepower of the Switch 2? We have no idea. We also don't know if any of these releases will receive graphical upgrades, perhaps taking advantage of upscaling tech. 

What will the cartridges taste like?

You may remember that the original Switch cartridges taste absolutely awful. This was on purpose, to discourage folks from putting the games in their mouth. Will the successor follow suit and continue to dip cartridges in a foul-tasting bitter coating? Only time will tell. 

What about specs?

The rumors regarding specs are all over the place, so it’s tough to pin down. We know one thing for sure: It’ll be more powerful than the ancient Switch hardware, which was already antiquated back in 2017. One analyst allegedly got a hold of a spec sheet from the Korean United Daily News that said the Switch 2 would boast an eight-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 8GB of RAM and 64GB of internal eMMC storage. This tracks, as these specs are about as underpowered now as the original Switch was in 2017. However, some reports do indicate that the console will include 12GB of RAM. 

Another source suggests that the eight-core CPU will be packaged inside an NVIDIA-produced Tegra239 SoC (system on a chip). Given the current Switch runs on an NVIDIA chip, that makes a lot of sense. The CPU will be more powerful, but it's the Switch 2's new GPU that will be a major differentiator. It's all-but-confirmed that the Switch 2 will support DLSS, NVIDIA's "deep learning supersampling" upscaling tech, which would allow the console to render games at a low resolution internally while outputting a high-resolution image. (Fun fact: We actually wrote about how perfect DLSS was for the Nintendo Switch 2 when the technology was announced alongside the RTX 20 series back in 2018.)

There are still questions about the Switch 2 and DLSS: Will the system support newer DLSS features like frame generation? Will existing games be automatically tidied up by NVIDIA's algorithm? Regardless of the exact implementation, DLSS upscaling will be a huge leap over the rudimentary techniques available to Nintendo Switch developers.

As for the display, there are many conflicting rumors. Early reports from solid sources suggested the Switch 2 would have an 8-inch LCD screen. The Switch 2's display certainly looks larger than that of the original Switch in a side-by-side comparison in the reveal trailer. Some folks have worried that the Switch follow-up may actually be too big, especially for kids. 

Certain analysts have suggested this would be an OLED screen, while others have said it would be a Mini-LED display. A Mini-LED display is basically an LCD display that has a backlight made of (surprise!) mini-LEDs rather than edge lighting. This allows for local dimming, making the blacks more black. 

We're hedging our bets here. We think it’ll be a standard LCD, to cut costs, with an OLED or Mini-LED model coming later down the line. However, Mini-LED screens are slightly cheaper than OLED displays, so that’s certainly a possibility at launch.

As for resolution, recent reporting suggests that the console will output 1080p in handheld and 4K when docked. That's much better than the OG Switch. 

More tenuous “leaks” have intimated that the Switch 2 could also support a faster microSD card standard known as microSD Express. This allows for significantly faster transfer rates than the common UHS-I cards supported by the Switch today. It’s technically been around for several years, but we’ve only recently started to see microSD cards that take advantage of the spec hit the market.

We actually tested