Nintendo announced on Tuesday that Nintendo Switch software “will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch,” according to a message from Nintendo’s X account. The post, attributed to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, also confirmed that Nintendo Switch Online will also be offered on the new console.
As previously reported, the Switch 2 has a card slot, so this tweet confirms that it can play physical Switch games. Players can transfer their digital libraries to the new console using the Nintendo Account system.
Backward compatibility was considered a make-or-break feature for the Switch 2. While strong rumors swirled, doubts remained that Nintendo could pull this off if the new machine’s chip architecture was very otherwise, or if external publishers would object. The Switch itself was not backwards compatible with previous Nintendo consoles, and Nintendo made a lot of money from Switch re-releases of previous games, such as the 63 million sold Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
But consumer expectations around backwards compatibility have changed since Steam normalized the idea of a persistent digital library of games that works across devices. Notably, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series In this landscape, a console without backwards compatibility would have been a tough sell for Nintendo, especially considering it sold more than 140 million Switches.