The Switch is still going strong, and I doubt that Nintendo has any plans to launch a brand new console any time soon. What’s more likely is a revision of the existing hardware. With the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 now entering the picture, Nintendo might want to switch things up (pun totally intended, and I’m not sorry). While it is still safe to speculate, we curated 5 things we would like to see in an upgraded Switch.
1. More Power
The console is actually quite powerful for its size, but there could be room for improvement. Some games that have a bunch of things going on on-screen tend to have dips in frame rate. For instance, Korok Forest in Breath of the Wild seems to bring the Switch to its knees, and the loss in frame rate is very noticeable. There have been reports of the upcoming Age of Calamity having some hiccups in frame rate as well. This doesn’t seem to be poor optimization from developers as even brand name Nintendo titles have seen this issue. The Switch is just struggling to run things. A little more power under the hood would help with this. The company did this in the past with the New 3DS XL and New 2DS XL and they could do it again.
2. Less Fragile
I baby my Switch when I’m handling it because it feels like it could break with the slightest mishap. I’m not sure what happened because Nintendo products have been known as being indestructible in the past. There is a Game Boy in the Nintendo New York store that survived an explosion in a war. The company kind of fixed this with the Switch Lite, which I’ve heard feels much more durable, but I would like to see the same things happen for a dockable Switch revision.
3. Better Ergonomics
While the Switch Grip has been fine as my main controller while playing games docked, handheld and tabletop mode without the grip is another story. I do not have baby hands, and the Switch just feels awkward to hold, and my hands end up cramping before I can get far in a game. The Satisfye Grip has solved this for many people, but I don’t want to have to buy a third-party accessory just to be able to play comfortably. I understand why Nintendo made the system the way they did as far as ergonomics, but there is room for improvement for people with adult-sized hands.
4. Better Dock
One of the first things that I bought for my Switch was a dock sleeve because I heard reports that the front piece of the dock was scratching the screens of people’s consoles. For the most part, it does the job, but I just wish that it was designed better. Perhaps they can give it Thunderbolt support so that it can act as a secondary GPU to enable the Switch to produce 4K resolution. There have been reports that Nintendo has been telling publishers to get their games 4K ready, and this could be one of the ways that Nintendo could do it.
5. Larger Screen/Smaller Bezels
The Switch looks a bit outdated compared to current smartphones and tablets due to its large bezels and small screen for a tablet. Making the screen larger and shrinking the bezels would not have to make the overall form factor of the console any different, so the current Joy-Cons could still work. There is a rumor that a new version of the console could use a new screen technology called Mini-LED. Since Mini-LED screens act like OLED panels and only light up pixels that are displaying color rather than black, a larger screen may not affect battery life.
Could this be what a Nintendo Switch Pro would look like?
The Nintendo Switch is now almost four years old, and I have little doubt that we will see a revision sooner rather than later. With new consoles from both Sony and Microsoft now on the market, all eyes are on the other teams. The console is still doing incredibly well, but I think that Nintendo has more up their sleeves to ensure that remains the case going forward.
