This Is How the Nintendo Swap 2 Could Obtain 4K

The beginning gun for 2025 additionally marked the footrace towards the Nintendo Switch 2, which has entered its ultimate lap dash. Leaks of the Switch 2’s motherboard, mixed with a just lately revealed patent, supply a touch of the hand-held’s energy and present us the way it could lastly hit the fabled 4K resolutions with out maxing out your arduous drive house.

The Nintendo Swap 2 has lengthy been earmarked for a brand new, particular Nvidia chip. This was supposedly the T234—although modified to suit the smaller Nintendo chassis—and renamed to T239. Primarily based on these rumors, chip aficionados speculated this might be equal in energy to the PlayStation 4 technology of consoles.

Photographs posted to Reddit Wednesday present what may very well be the motherboard for Nintendo’s upcoming console, together with the CPU socket, perhaps. The chip doesn’t point out any naming for the T239, however the SOC might use a distinct serial quantity or codename.

The unique Swap was based mostly on the Nvidia Tegra X1 SOC. Even for its time, again in 2017, the console felt old-fashioned by way of graphical efficiency. Because of its versatility and portability, it has change into one of the crucial common gaming units. Nonetheless, when docked and related to a TV, the console would solely output in 720p in handheld mode and a max of 1080p. To realize 4K, the Swap sequel would want to have the ability to output a decision 4 occasions that of the unique Swap.

For those who bear in mind your console historical past, the unique PlayStation 4 didn’t help 4K. It wasn’t till the PS4 Professional arrived in 2016 that we noticed help for larger resolutions. We don’t know sufficient about Swap 2’s chip to understand how effectively it performs at larger resolutions. Nevertheless, a patent filed by Nintendo final yr proposes an answer within the type of AI upscaling.

Nintendo filed the patent for “Techniques and strategies for machine studying picture conversion” in July 2023, although the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace revealed the doc on Dec. 31, 2024. The paper describes a system for changing photographs with AI to upscale them to the next decision. Upscaling is now prolific among PC games, with firms resembling Nvidia DLSS (the corporate could reveal DLSS 4 this month), AMD, and Intel providing completely different sorts of upscaling tech.

AI upscaling is making its strategy to consoles. The PS5 Pro presents its own blend of upscaling, dubbed PlayStation spectral super-resolution, or PSRR. The tech converts each body performed at a decrease decision to the next decision, letting you retain the efficiency of the unique picture.

Sport journalist Laura Kate noted this on Bluesky. The patent references permitting them to suit video games on “smaller capability bodily media.” If you may get 4K out of your moveable console with out maxing out restricted drive house, Nintendo—and I, for that matter—would name {that a} win. Kate famous that the patent notes upscaling from 520p to 1080p and 1080p to 4K.

Nintendo’s first 8-inch handheld could certainly be extra highly effective than the 2017 rendition, however Nintendo has confirmed it is going to additionally be backward compatible to some extent. Which means it might want to work with cartridges. The leaked motherboard for the Swap 2 reveals it features a USB-C port and a slot for Nintendo’s slim bodily media. That poses an issue when the information on the cartridge is proscribed. It’s why even if you purchase a disc for a recreation these days, you continue to must obtain tens or lots of extra gigabytes of information not included on the disc.

The legacy Japanese console maker previously said it plans to disclose the Swap 2 earlier than the tip of its fiscal yr, which ends in March. We’re crossing our fingers for a January reveal, but when all these leaks are actual, it reveals that Nintendo is already effectively into full-scale manufacturing.