Early this morning the Wall Street Journal posted a report that hearing from industry "suppliers and others with direct knowledge of the plan" that we could be seeing a new iteration of the Nintendo Switch before summer of 2019. At the moment there is very little more information available.
Aside from teasing that it will be a thing the only other information that WSJ revealed from their sources were that the majority of hardware specifications are still up in the air and while they're looking to improve the screen don't expect to see anything like the OLED panels used on the new iPhone X. While it's good to know that Nintendo is still looking at what they can do to make improvements on a system that many have already been heavily praising.
Originally released in March 2017 if we were to think we could see this updated Switch between June - September 2019 that would put the console at a little over two years old. In terms of Nintendo's history of handhelds, excluding outliers like the original Game Boy to the Game Boy Pocket, the shortest gap between handheld iterations is between the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Color, less than a year, while the longest gap of over 3 years goes to the DSLite and the DSi. Sitting around this two-year mark for the Switch will put it in the company of the GBA SP to DS, as well as the 3DS XL to the New 3DS XL. At this point, I think we're all just hoping that it isn't going to be announced as the "New Switch"
ResetEra members have found that in the version 5.0 of the Switch there are references to "Mariko" a new hardware specification. What has been found so far is the support for more RAM as well as a new Tegra chip. This could either be something as big as a more powerful Switch to run more games going forward or it could just be Nintendo's reaction to the first generations overheating issues. Moving to the Tegra 214 would also help deal with some of the homebrew and hacking scene on the Switch, something Nintendo has attempted to address to date with updates.
What updated features would you like to see on a New Nintendo Switch? Could the screen be a little bit bigger or are you happy with it as it is? Let us know in the comments below
