Nintendo confirms Switch 2 will play original Switch games

As US states were busy counting votes to confirm who would be the next president Tuesday night, Nintendo's Japanese Twitter account was busy confirming a key backward compatibility feature for the upcoming "Nintendo Switch successor," which is still only pre-announced, officially.

"At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch," Nintendo posted in a social media update attributed to company president Shintaro Furukawa. "Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well."

In the full policy briefing referenced in that post, Nintendo adds that it "believe(s) that it is important for Nintendo’s future to make use of Nintendo Account and carry over the good relationship that we have built with the over 100 million annual playing users on Nintendo Switch to its successor." The company also makes the (perhaps obvious) clarification that "in addition to being able to play Nintendo Switch software they currently own, consumers will be able to choose their next purchase from a broad selection of titles released for Nintendo Switch [on its successor]."

A crucial feature

Nintendo offered broad, vague hints on its next console's backward compatibility well over a year ago, saying at the time that "as for the transition from Nintendo Switch to the next-generation machine, we want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers, while utilizing the Nintendo Account." In recent months, we've gotten multiple reports that this kind of backward compatibility was already in the works via supply chain and game development sources.

In confirming backward compatibility for its next console before announcing any other details about the hardware, Nintendo is acknowledging that carrying over access to thousands of distinct Switch games is likely to be a decisive factor in the success of its next console. The fact that "more software has been played on Nintendo Switch than on any other Nintendo hardware," as Nintendo revealed in its policy briefing, may have something to do with why clarifying that compatibility is so important.

But Nintendo still has yet to clarify any details about how that backward compatibility will work, including whether or how it will extend to physical game cards. "Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its compatibility with Nintendo Switch, will be announced at a later date," Nintendo said.

Portable Nintendo consoles in the Game Boy and Nintendo DS/3DS lines have all offered full backward compatibility with the previous generation of hardware in a line stretching back to the 1990s. For console hardware, that line of backward compatibility extended from 2001's Gamecube to 2012's Wii U. Both trends were broken by the Switch, a console/portable hybrid that also cut off access to individual, downloadable Virtual Console games on the Wii and Wii U.

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