Nintendo Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility Leaves 1 Big Question Unanswered

Last Tuesday, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa offered a bit of rare news for the company’s next console, confirming that it will offer backwards compatibility with the current Switch lineup. That news came as a huge relief to most fans, but there was one bit of information that was not confirmed: whether this only applies to digital games, or physical ones as well. That’s an important detail, and one that fans are going to want confirmed given the huge collections of physical games many Switch collectors have amassed over the last eight years.

Video game companies have increasingly shifted away from physical game releases over the last few years, but Nintendo has no plans of doing just that. In a financial results briefing back in May, Furukawa confirmed that the company wants to continue maximizing both digital and physical game sales and “this policy will remain unchanged going forward.” Given that, we can assume Switch 2 will use physical media. That makes it a pretty safe bet that existing Switch cartridges will be compatible, but fans can’t be blamed for wanting to know for sure.

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When Nintendo has offered backwards compatibility in the past, it has never done so with caveats. The original DS featured backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance, which required an extra cartridge slot to accommodate for it. Things were a little bit easier for 3DS, which featured slightly larger cartridges than DS, but a slot that could fit either one. Ideally, that’s what we’ll see for Switch 2, and it could help the system’s success.

Since Nintendo Switch’s release back in 2017, the system has attracted a large number of physical game collectors. If you search for the console on social media platforms like X/Twitter or Bluesky, it won’t take long to find fans sharing massive collections of physical Switch games. While digital games can be really convenient, physical games have their advantages; people don’t have to worry about games being delisted and becoming lost media. Physical games can also be traded in or sold off when they become unwanted. Companies like Limited Run Games and Super Rare Games have greatly expanded the number of physical games available for the system, offering releases for indie games that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten them.

One of the biggest challenges facing Switch 2 is getting the current system’s user base to buy the new console. Nintendo has classically struggled with this; both Wii and DS were massively popular, but Wii U and 3DS attracted smaller audiences. Switch has seen more than 146 million units sold, making it one of the best-selling video game systems of all-time. Even if Nintendo sees some users lose interest, the company is going to want to bring over as many people as possible, from casual and younger players, to more hardcore ones. Big collectors of physical games definitely fall into the latter category, and it will be interesting to see if Nintendo can make them happy.

Over the last few years, backwards compatibility has gone from a nicety, to an important feature for a platform’s success. The reality is, fans build libraries on one system, and they like to continue on to the next one, rather than starting all over again. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has attributed Xbox’s struggles in the current console generation to the fact that they lost the previous one, claiming that PlayStation’s users have largely stuck with the platform they already had a library on. The same is often true for PC users; many prefer to stick to Steam, rather than using multiple launchers.