From the first announcement of the Switch 2, it’s been a pretty universal assumption that the Nintendo Switch 2 would be backwards compatible with games from the Switch. Similar to the DS and 3DS, or Gamecube and Wii.
While we now know officially that this is the case, it’s more nuanced than that, and it’s not a given that all your current Switch games will work on the Switch 2, or they’ll look or run better if they do.
How Does the Switch 2 Play Switch Games?
The Switch 2 can play Switch games downloaded from Nintendo’s online store, and it can play physical Nintendo Switch cartridges. However, it’s not compatible with the microSD cards used in the Switch. You’ll need to invest in a microSD Express card instread, though the upside is that loading times should be much better across the board.
Samsung 256GB microSD Express Card
It would have been nice to have the option to port our old SD cards forward to the new system, but Switch 2 games need much faster storage, so regular microSD was never going to cut it.
Not All Switch Games Will Work
In a developer interview it was made crystal clear that the Switch 2 cannot play original Switch games natively. At least not entirely so. Nintendo’s Takuhiro Dohta explains:
…we did something that’s somewhere in between a software emulator and hardware compatibility.
The practical effect of this is that Switch 2 compatibility is imperfect. Have a look at this official compatibility chart updates on April 1st, 2025.
While virtually all first-party games have passed “basic compatibility testing”, only a small percentage of third-party games have that same status. The vast majority of third-party titles work, but have issues according to this data. Of course, this is going to change, and the compatibility list will evolve over time, but don’t list your old Switch for sale just yet.
Some Games Will Play Better As-Is
Due to the much higher performance level of the Switch 2, particularly in the graphics department, some Switch games will simply run better without any modification. In particular, games that have unlocked frame rates or use dynamic resolution scaling, will likely have much faster frame rates and higher resolutions on average.
Unfortunately, very few Switch games have unlocked frame rates, and those that shipped with 30fps caps will retain those 30fps caps unless there’s some sort of modification or intervention. The good news is that quite a lot of Switch games make aggressive use of dynamic resolution scaling, and so I expect them to look much sharper compared to how they usually run on the original Switch.
Even games with a 30fps cap should benefit from a more stable frame rate, and I expect games to have less asset pop-in thanks to faster storage as well. So even though you may get no more than 30fps, you should hopefully get no less than that either.
Nintendo Is Charging for Next-Gen Add-Ons
While unmodified Switch games may or may not run better on the new hardware, Nintendo’s so-called “Switch 2 Edition” versions of games have been ported to the new hardware to run as native software, which also means the developers have the opportunity to modify the game to take better advantage of Switch 2.
These games are sold at full retail price, but if you own the Switch version you can pay a smaller fee to upgrade your existing copy to the Switch 2 Edition.
The exact improvements will differ from one game to the next, but in general these versions of the game should have faster loading times, higher resolutions, and better frame rates. They might also have better textures, or higher levels of effects such as real-time lighting or better shadow quality. These are effectively remastered versions of Switch games, but until we see these games in action, it’s too early to know exactly what sorts of improvements are possible.
DLSS Is Not Automatically Added to Games
NVIDIA has confirmed in a blog post that the Switch 2 has DLSS technology. This allows for hardware-accelerated upscaling of images to higher resolutions. DLSS has been a resounding success on PC, and the Switch 2 is the first example of DLSS coming to consoles, though the PlayStation 5 Pro is the first to use AI upscaling, but of a proprietary nature.
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Having DLSS built into the Switch 2 is a major advantage, and could bring visual quality closer to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, but there’s no guarantee that every game will implement it.
In fact, as of this writing there’s no conclusive evidence that any showcased Switch 2 game is using DLSS. It’s also highly unlikely that DLSS could be applied to Switch games that are running unmodified, since DLSS usually requires integration into a game engine to work correctly.
DLSS upscaling still has a performance cost, so don’t expect a lot of 4K 60fps games thanks to the technology, but I would not be surprised if we saw a good number of 30fps games upscaled from 1080p or 1440p to 4K.
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Some Developers Could Patch Their Switch Games for Free
Now, to be clear, this is pure speculation on my part. However, there’s a good chance that some developers will opt to patch their original Switch games to take some measure of advantage of the Switch 2 running in backward-compatible mode. Specifically, they may simply add the option to unlock the frame rate on those games, or lift the maximum resolution.
I suspect that most developers won’t find it financially feasible to develop a special Switch 2 Edition of their games, so making a few tweaks to the original code in order to remove limits suitable for the original Switch could be a more practical way to incentivize Switch 2 owners to buy those games.
I also foresee developers making changes to their original Switch games to make them run without bugs on Switch 2 hardware, but this will likely be a pretty long process that will persist past the official launch of the console to the public.
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So, for now, the bottom line is that you should not expect that all games will run correctly on Switch 2, or that they will run any better than on the original Switch. Which is a good argument for keeping your old console handy in case you need to split games to run on the best option of the two generations.
