The Leaked Switch 2 Specs Are Nothing to Panic About

While we’ve now seen an official Switch launch trailer, it’s entirely devoid of technical specifications. As you might expect, some gamers can’t wait to see the numbers under the hood of the Switch 2, and so “leaked” specs have been floating around the internet with rather mixed reactions.

The Leaked Switch 2 Spec Sheet Is A Little Underwhelming

I should foreground this by saying that any specifications that are floating around on the internet for the Switch 2 before an official announcement from Nintendo should be taken with a giant grain of salt. my arguments around these specs are based on the assumption that the leaked number are real, or close to real, but obviously it’s pure speculation at this point.

Data miners have purportedly found specifications for the Switch 2 and shared them on forums like Famiboards. You have likely also seen this image doing the rounds on social media.

There’s some weirdness here that already casts doubts, such as the CPU frequency in docked mode being lower than handheld, but the most divisive numbers are the teraflop counts at the bottom.

First, teraflops are a bad way to express GPU performance, but taken at face value this puts the Switch 2 in handheld mode right between a base PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro. Just marginally ahead of the Steam Deck. To be honest, this sounds about right for what we could realistically expect from a Nintendo handheld that needs to be priced to sell, but clearly some fans had higher hopes.

The leaked numbers also suggest that the Switch will fall noticeably short of the Xbox Series S, a console that I don’t recommend people should buy anymore. However, even if true, these numbers don’t actually tell us what gaming on the Switch 2 will be like, and once you factor in gaming in the real world, there’s lots to be optimistic about.

A Fixed Platform Can Punch Above Its Weight

DOOM 2016 on the Switch is a famous example of a “miracle” port.

I have had several handheld PCs and Switch consoles over the past few years, and while the PCs are significantly more powerful, it’s rarely possible for me to get the most out of them. With a fixed hardware platform like the Switch 2, developers can aim for maximum optimization, because they only have to develop for one specific set of hardware, and they know every feature that’s available to make things run and look better.

So, if the Switch 2 has specs on par with a Steam Deck, I expect the Switch 2 to outperform the Steam Deck in like-for-like situations.

Don’t Forget About AI Upscaling

Equipped with NVIDIA RTX technology, the Switch 2 will almost certainly make use of NVIDIA’s DLSS technology. Games have to be developed to take advantage of this tech, bust since every Switch 2 will have it, all games will likely make use of it unless it’s really not necessary.

This means an even larger performance multiplier, since games can be rendered at much lower resolutions and then scaled up to the internal screen or your TV’s resolution. I expect this to be the Switch’s big ace in the hole, and AI upscaling is also the killer feature on the PlayStation 5 Pro, rather than raw performance increases.

Nintendo Doesn’t Need Horsepower to Win Races

Metroid Dread

The most important point of all is that Nintendo simply does not need a lot of raw horspower for the Switch 2 to be a roaring success. Through careful art direction and efficient programming, most first-party Switch games look and play phenomenally.

Similarly, there are plenty of amazing third-party ports of games on the Switch, even from the PlayStation 4, such as Nier Automata and Witcher 3. While these games didn’t look nearly as good compared to the original platforms, they looked more than good enough, and honestly were not miles away.

With a big dollop of base performance improvement and various efficiency tricks, such as AI upscaling via DLSS, the Switch 2 is likely to impress in handheld mode, and be just fine hooked up to a TV. I’d be willing to bet that its perceived technical shortcomings will do exactly nothing to how much fun people will have with the system.