Has Nintendo Switch Pro been secretly canceled?

According to the new Digital Foundry podcast, the updated Nintendo Switch Pro has been canceled, meaning that the next hardware generation of the Nintendo product won’t be available next year. The reasons for this are not entirely clear.

During a Q&A on a Digital Foundry podcast, host John Linneman claimed that the Switch Pro was canceled by Nintendo at the last minute. He also said the successor to the handheld hybrid console won’t appear next year.

Switch Pro is unlikely to launch

Speculations about the Switch Pro have been around for two years, however, Nintendo has only unveiled the updated Switch OLED, which will be sold alongside the regular Switch and Switch Lite. But according to John Linneman, Nintendo planned the Switch Pro as a mid-gen release.

This would have lined up with products like the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, which offer more performance towards the end of the console family’s lifecycle because of reduced manufacturing costs. Linneman said that he knows from talking to various developers that an update was planned for the mid-gen Switch, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

“So it’s pretty clear that what they do next is going to be the actual next-gen hardware.” Bloomberg also revealed that according to the developers, the hardware already existed because they were already developing games for it.

The podcast also speculated that Nintendo is worried about the jump between the Switch and next-gen hardware. Every big leap since the Nintendo 64 hasn’t gone as well as expected. The Wii U and Gamecube sold poorly compared to expectations and the competition. Digital Foundry also says they don’t expect Nintendo’s next hardware to come out next year.

More rumors about Nintendo

There are several other rumors regarding Nintendo, for example, that the next hardware will still use Nvidia chips. That’s probably still the case, but which version of the Tegra chip will be used is not yet known. Digital Foundry suspects that it may be based on the chip in the Jetson Nano, a single-board computer manufactured by Nvidia for development and industrial use.

It could offer twice the performance of current Switch hardware. However, as Digital Foundry points out, it’s a stripped-down version of a more powerful chip. There is also speculation that Nintendo will use Nvidia’s DLSS supersampling. This will allow them to achieve 4K and better performance over the long term while allowing the hardware to last longer than normal.

The current hardware in the Switch is seven years old and only has a GPU with 256 CUDA cores. The Jetson Nano can house 1024, and another Nvidia chip from the same family can hold double that. Once released, the Switch Pro’s potential would rival handhelds such as the Steam Deck.

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