Thousands of games will be backwards compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2 — but streaming apps are getting left behind.
Ahead of the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch on June 5, players are keeping an eagle-eye on Nintendo’s compatibility page, which lists how many games have been tested for compatibility with the new console.
As of May 27, the vast majority of Nintendo’s own games, and its third-party games, will be playable on the Switch 2 — great news for players who have built up a library of Switch games, but are ready for a console upgrade.
What’s not making the leap are streaming apps like Crunchyroll and Hulu, as well as the comics reader Inkypen. These apps aren’t compatible with the Switch 2, and it’s not immediately clear if new versions are in development.
Nintendo committed to making its games backwards compatible months before the Switch 2 was even announced. In an “Ask the Developer” interview on Nintendo’s site, senior director Takuhiro Dohta and general manager Tetsuya Sasaki discussed the process. They said that because the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2 don’t share any hardware, the team has had to find creative solutions to backwards compatibility.
“If we tried to use technology like software emulators, we’d have to run Switch 2 at full capacity, but that would mean the battery wouldn’t last so long,” Dohta said. “So we did something that’s somewhere in between a software emulator and hardware compatibility.”
“We weren’t so confident at first, but as we tested games one by one, we found out that some issues could be solved by making improvements,” said Sasaku. “This process helped us build confidence that, while we might not be able to solve everything, we can work it out for many games.”
We reached out to Nintendo, Hulu, and Crunchyroll for comment on whether or not Switch 2 versions of streaming apps are in the works, but we haven’t heard back at the time of publication.
