2021 could be the year we finally see a significant revision of the Nintendo Switch, but we don’t yet know what to expect out of it. Let’s talk about what we’d like to see in a potential Switch Pro.
In 2021, the Nintendo Switch is turning four years old, and many would argue that the hardware is starting to fall behind in terms of its capabilities, design, and more. A couple of weeks ago, I took a look at what we expect from Nintendo’s hybrid, and one of the things mentioned there is a hardware revision for the console. The timeline makes sense and an improved model could reinvigorate consumer interest in the console, but what would it look like? We’d like to hear from you regarding what you want the most in a Switch revision, but I’ll start things off with my own wish list. There are certainly many things that can be improved with the Switch, but it’s worth keeping in mind that Nintendo would want its hardware to remain relatively affordable while also maintaining a decent profit margin, so I’ll try to stay grounded as much as possible. I’ll list the items in the order I find them to be most important, so be sure to let me know if you think I’m wrong.1 – Faster storage Faster speeds and heavily reduced loading times are, in my opinion, the biggest advantage of the new generation of consoles, and the thing that users will probably notice the most comparing the Switch with its rivals. The current Switch model is still using eMMC storage, and that’s just no good anymore. Some titles, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, have incredibly long load times on the platform, so improvements are definitely in order. Some have suggested full-blown SSDs for the system, but really, we wouldn’t need to go that far. If Nintendo wants to stick with low-power mobile technology, UFS 2.1 was introduced in 2016 and is much faster than eMMC 5.1 In fact, Huawei faced some backlash in 2017 when its P10 flagship come with different storage variants with radically different performance, so we can get a good look at how much of a speed improvement that transition could bring. Of course, UFS 2.1 storage may be more expensive than eMMC, but being that it’s almost five years old and has already been superseded by UFS 3.0 and 3.1, I imagine it isn’t that expensive. In fact, Google had used eMMC 5.1 for storage in 2019’s Pixel 3a, but switched to UFS 2.1 in this year’s Pixel 4a, and even with a bunch of other upgrades thrown in there, the 4a was cheaper than its predecessor at launch.
