New year, new Switch 2 leaks. While Nintendo’s plans for its Switch successor remain officially under wraps, a patent from the company has surfaced detailing plans to use upscaling technology to cram games with up to 4K textures onto physical game cartridges.
The patent describes technology similar to Nvidia’s DLSS, or PlayStation 5 Pro‘s baked in PSSR, to upscale images using AI. A key advantage listed here is to decrease the size of games that would otherwise include hefty 4K-native assets. This helps keep download sizes small, and also allow for these games to fit onto moderately-sized physical media.
Nintendo’s patent dates from July 2023, but was only published publicly this week. As highlighted by industry consultant Laura Kate Dale, the patent suggests “a game with native 4K textures might need a 60GB download, but a 1080-native version might only need 20GB (which would allow it to fit on a 32GB Switch cart, the current max size)”.
The news comes as a fresh leak shows our best look yet at what appears to be the Switch 2’s internal components. The images tally with what we know about the size and internal makeup of the device already from past leaks – including an earlier glimpse at the Switch 2’s motherboard, and the suggestion the console will have a second USB port at the top of the device.
Nintendo has previously said it will announce Switch 2 before the end of its current financial year, on 31st March. But much of the console’s design can now be assumed – all signs point to it being a slightly larger version of the current Switch, with magnetic Joy-Con and a mysterious new “C” button on the right Joy-Con.
“Nintendo will not have much time in January, so a potential announcement early in the month could make sense,” industry analyst Serkan Toto told Eurogamer last month. “You can bet that Nintendo is aware of all the leaks and not happy about them, even if some of them will turn out to be made up. It is actually getting so bad with those leaks that they might cause Nintendo to release information earlier than planned.”
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