During the recent Take-Two Interactive earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke about the Nintendo Switch 2, and the publishing company’s relationship with Nintendo. When asked by analyst Cory Carpenter about how Take-Two would be expanding its relationship with Nintendo going forward, Zelnick responded that, since the Switch, Nintendo consoles aren’t just looked at as being geared towards younger audiences.
“Look, we’ve had obviously a long-standing relationship with Nintendo,” responded Zelnick. “And we’ve supported the platform when it made sense for the individual release. There was a time when Nintendo platforms were really geared at younger audiences as reflected in our release schedule.”
Zelnick went on to talk about some of Take-Two’s own titles coming to Nintendo consoles, especially noting the recently-released Civilization 7 as one of the big examples. He stated that Take-Two will continue to release its titles on Nintendo’s platforms. He also pointed out the yearly releases of games in the NBA 2K franchise also being released on the Switch.
“And that – now today with Switch and potentially with Switch 2, the Switch device can support any audience,” said Zelnick. “And as you note – as you may have noted, Civilization 7 is available now on Switch. So, while we have nothing specific to report, we actually would fully expect to support Switch. And Karl is going to comment on your question regarding which elements of NBA 2K really have excited the consumers this time around.”
Nintendo unveiled the Switch 2 just last month with a video presentation that gave us our first look at what the new console will look like. While further details will be revealed during a dedicated Direct slated for April 2, the company did mention that the new console would support backwards compatibility for Switch games, both for digital copies and physical copies.
Talking about the Switch 2’s backwards compatibility, Nintendo referred to the move as being the best one for consumers. In a statement, the company said that it wanted Switch players who already owned several games on the platform to be able to bring their game libraries forward onto the new console.
In the meantime, Nintendo is currently getting ready for its Switch 2 Experience events and has started sending out confirmation emails to those that registered for the events. The Switch 2 Experience events will occur in different cities worldwide starting April 4. The last of these events is scheduled for June, with events in Hong Kong and Taipei slated for later.
When it comes to the raw power under the hood of the Switch 2, Nintendo has yet to reveal any details. The closest we’ve gotten to concrete details is from one of the company’s patents, which indicated that the console would feature neural net hardware to make use of AI upscaling technology like Nvidia DLSS. This would allow the console to display games at higher resolutions than internally rendered without too much of a loss in quality.
More recently, Nintendo has also seemingly patented mouse support for the Switch 2’s JoyCon controllers.