27 June 2023 , 18:00
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As part of a recent shareholder Q&A, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa went into further detail about how the jump to Nintendo Switch 2 will be handled.
Long-time Nintendo players will remember the frustrations that came in the jump from Nintendo Wii U to Nintendo Switch. Sure, the latter was a far better Nintendo console by a country mile, but it was gutting to learn that all your digital purchases made on the Wii U eShop wouldn’t carry on over to the shiny new console. Well, Nintendo is seemingly intent on resolving this issue from happening again by the time Nintendo Switch 2 arrives, as revealed in a recent shareholder Q&A.
It was during this shareholder Q&A where Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukwa was asked about the transition from Nintendo Switch to its successor. Furukawa responded that the company is doing “as much as possible in order to smoothly transition” (thank you to @Genki_JPN for transcribing and corroborating). He went on to say that the Nintendo Account system is at the core of while this will be easier than last time.
Furukwa doesn’t explicitly state in what form or shape this ‘smooth’ transition to Nintendo Switch 2 will take, but we can assume due to how the Nintendo Account system works that this means digital game purchases will carry over. Backwards compatibility has been a hot topic of debate for a while now, with Sony and Microsoft ensuring that PS4 and Xbox One purchases carried forward to PS5 and Xbox Series respectively. Nintendo until now has been somewhat of an outlier, so Furukwa’s comments to shareholders should be quite the relief for players.
Switch it up
As someone who’s proud of the digital game collection he’s cultivated on his Nintendo Switch, it’s heartening to hear that my financial investment is safe and primed to transition to Nintendo’s next console. If this wasn’t the case, I’m sure there’d be fan outcry. There’s no way that Nintendo players should be expected to double dip and re-purchase digital games all over again.
Nintendo Switch 2 release set for next year as Zelda ushers in the end of Switch
If there’s one frustration that remains from even the Wii U era, it’s Nintendo’s decision to not make its classic library of NES, SNES and Game Boy games outright purchaseable. Because whereas on the Wii U this was possible, playing them on Nintendo Switch means you never truly own them – you simply have to stay subscribed to the Nintendo Switch Online service to maintain access. If only that transition could have been made smoother.
There’s still no official word on when Nintendo Switch 2 will be releasing, but the recent June Nintendo Direct ’s lineup of remastered first-party titles would indicate that the well is running somewhat dry. One thing is now almost guaranteed, at least: when the successor to Nintendo Switch does release, a lot of players will already have built up a giant game library to dive into.