During its latest financial results, Nintendo revealed some more details about the successor to the Nintendo Switch. Specifically, Nintendo confirmed that people will be able to play their Nintendo Switch games on the new system.
“This is Furukawa. At today’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night. “Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its compatibility with Nintendo Switch, will be announced at a later date.”
Nintendo elaborates on this further in the future outlook section of its latest financial results. It explains that “the introduction of Nintendo Account made it possible to tie consumers’ history to their personal account, enabling Nintendo to maintain a continuous relationship with consumers across platform generations.” Essentially, Nintendo’s account system is better structured to transition between console generations than before. While Wii U games like Xenoblade Chronicles X had to be remastered to be playable on the console, now it seems that players will be able to access and download their Nintendo Switch games on the system’s successor as long as they are using the same Nintendo account.
These financial results did not give us more details on other information about Nintendo’s next system, such as its name or release window. Nintendo previously committed to unveiling the successor to Nintendo Switch sometime this fiscal year, and it has given us no reason not to believe that. Now, we must wait for that “later date” that both Furukawa and Nintendo’s financial results referenced to learn more about Nintendo’s next piece of gaming hardware.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?