For video game fans, it was a good night — a definite improvement on last year — with decent variety and a nice balance of small, large, and enormous games. In fact, while watching the presentation and noting the fleeting Switch mentions as they came and went, we had just one question running through our minds: Will Switch 2 be able to run any of this!?
As the show went on, it felt like we were seeing trailers for the next five years of Switch ports and we’d love to think that the next machine will be capable of running things like Split Fiction, the latest co-op adventure from Hazelight (It Takes Two). But are we expecting too much?
Well, devs these days factor in scalability more than ever, with not only Switch but the more modest Xbox Series S hardware and mobile platforms to consider when making a cross-platform title. Things like Witcher 4 are being developed in Unreal Engine 5 and this gen we’ve witnessed some real porting miracles. Rumours that Nintendo’s next console may use Samsung’s upcoming micro SD card tech for faster transfer speeds also give hope that, while not able to match PS5 levels of lightning-fast memory access, advancements in this area should aid Switch developers in the years to come.
There’s already a backlog of potential ports on our Switch 2 wishlist (we’d love to see Elden Ring or Baldur’s Gate 3 give the Switch successor its ‘Skyrim moment’) but it feels like many studios are only now getting into the swing of things on PS5 and Xbox Series X. The supply of port fodder certainly isn’t going to run out soon, if Nintendo’s hardware is beefy enough to handle them. Worryingly, we’ve seen diminishing returns on the current model, with the huge work required to turn in a good port simply not worth the investment in a market that’s absolutely flooded with software.
Nintendo’s involvement in this year’s TGAs was limited to a short trailer carrying a message thanking players for their support and looking to the future. There are exciting times ahead and there’s no shortage of questions from Nintendo fans as we head into 2025 awaiting the official reveal of the gaming industry’s worst-kept secret. But for those of us watching last night’s show without the necessary hardware to play the vast majority of those games, you wonder how many will grace a Nintendo platform in the future.
Our gut feeling? Quite a few, but we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, let us know what you thought of the tenth TGA show in the poll below and head to the comments to discuss if Nintendo gamers have a hope in hell of playing anything we saw last night.