What to make of Nintendo’s mention of new “Switch 2 Edition games”

When Nintendo finally officially revealed the Switch 2 in January, one of our major unanswered questions concerned whether games designed for the original Switch would see some form of visual or performance enhancement when running on the backward-compatible Switch 2. Now, Nintendo-watchers are pointing to a fleeting mention of "Switch 2 Edition games" as a major hint that such enhancements are in the works for at least some original Switch games. The completely new reference to "Switch 2 Edition games" comes from a Nintendo webpage discussing yesterday's newly announced Virtual Game Cards digital lending feature. In the fine print at the bottom of that page, Nintendo notes that "Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive games and Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games can only be loaded on a Nintendo Switch 2 system [emphasis added]." The specific wording differentiating these "Switch 2 Edition" games from "Switch 2 exclusives" suggests a new category of game that is compatible with the original Switch but able to run with enhancements on the Switch 2. But it's currently unclear what Switch games will get "Switch 2 Edition" releases or how much developer work (if any) will be needed to create those new versions.

We’ve seen this before

Nintendo is no stranger to the idea of single game releases that work differently across different hardware. Back in the days of the Game Boy Color, developers could create special "Dual Mode" cartridges that ran in full color on the newer handheld or in regular grayscale on the original Game Boy. Late-era Game Boy cartridges could also be coded with special enhancements that activated when played on a TV via the Super Game Boy adapter—Taito even memorably used this feature to include a complete SNES edition of Space Invaders on a Game Boy cartridge.

More recently, this kind of cross-generational game support has become rather standard on home consoles. In 2017, Sony's PS4 Pro allowed developers to code game-specific patches for "PS4 Pro Enhanced" games. Later, the company added automatic "Boost Mode" enhancements to certain older PS4 titles running on the PS4 Pro, presaging similar enhancements offered across both the PS5 and PS5 Pro. With the launch of the Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft also made a big push for its "Smart Delivery" system that can give players differentiated versions of the same game that are tuned for performance on their particular Xbox hardware. We'd expect Nintendo's "Switch 2 Edition" games will be broadly similar to the systems set up by Sony and Microsoft in recent years. We'll likely find out for sure when Nintendo reveals many more details about the system in a livestreamed video presentation planned for April 2.