Nintendo Could Make a Switch 2 Home Console – But Should They?

The Switch and Switch 2 are, famously, convertible consoles that work well as both handhelds and living room consoles hooked up to a TV. However, the Switch 2 is a much better home console than its predecessor, as its more powerful internals and DLSS upscaling allow it to actually deliver a picture more suitable for 4K TVs - something the original Switch struggled to do. We previously saw Nintendo deliver a Switch Lite that went all-in on the handheld side of the equation, so could Nintendo go the other way with a dedicated Switch 2 home console?

There are certainly some merits to the approach. Beyond being just better suited performance-wise to existing as a pure PS5 and Series X/S competitor, the Switch 2 HC could have a simpler design. After all, there's no need for a screen, internal battery, magnetically-attached controllers, super-dense cooling solutions or a separate dock if you're shipping a console-style cube. That would allow for a lower bill of materials cost, and ultimately a lower price for consumers.

There's also an argument to say that the Switch 2 HC could have more power on tap than the existing model, as the chipset is capable of higher clock speeds than the Switch 2 actually delivers in docked play. With effectively unlimited power from the wall, Nintendo would be able to bump up clocks considerably - they list a 1.7GHz maximum for the Switch 2, though the performance mode used when docked tops out at just over half that, 998MHz. You can imagine boosts to memory bandwidth and GPU clocks would also be theoretically possible with sufficient thermal management and power delivery. These advantages would allow for higher frame-rates, better frame health and/or the use of full-fat DLSS in scenarios where "tiny" DLSS or FSR 1.0 is used instead.

It's a compelling package, but ultimately we don't see Nintendo going down this route. After all, the company's core strategy is built around hybrid play and child-friendly portability, rather than the traditional monolithic living room box. It's easy to imagine the Switch 2 HC sitting on store shelves and causing chaos amongst less-engaged buyers, who bring the console home only to discover it's not the pass-around-and-play portable machine depicted in the commercials. Nintendo faced a similar scenario with the Wii U, which many parents assumed was an add-on to the original Wii - and I don't think they'd forget that lesson quickly.

The cost savings argument also may not hold up to scrutiny. While eschewing many components from the Switch 2 design would make for a cheaper box to produce, those savings would be undercut by the design work and production costs of a dedicated cooling solution, a new enclosure and potentially a different board layout as well. Once all of these costs are accounted for, is there still a $100 or $150 in savings to pass on to consumers? Let's also not forget that a standard joypad would still need to be bundled.

We can apply the same thinking to a PlayStation 6 take on the Series S - a console launched alongside a new full-fat model with cheaper components and a smaller design; a PlayStation 6 S, if you will. Conceptually, it's easy to imagine that the "Canis" chipset slated for the PS6 handheld could be put into a traditional living room box instead, providing a lower-cost alternative to both PlayStation 6 variants and even the ever-more-costly PlayStation 5.

However, the PS6 S concept faces even harsher criticism than the Switch 2 HC, with the mooted lineup being three PlayStation 6 consoles alongside the existing PS5 and PS5 Pro - that's simply too much to juggle for Sony's designers, marketeers, developers and publishers.

A "PS6 S" based on the Canis chipset would struggle to outperform the existing PlayStation 5, muddying the waters for consumers who would expect any new console to outperform the prior generation base machine. Similarly, developers might find that the console is sufficiently more powerful than the PS6 handheld to justify different settings, increasing QA load substantially and undermining the efficiency of a single shared architecture. And of course, any new product would require its own production lines and industrial design work, again diminishing any bill-of-material cost savings.

Ultimately, while both concepts are technically plausible, it's hard to imagine them coming to pass when market realities and brand identities pull in different directions.

What do you think of these concepts? Have we missed something in our analyses? Let us know in the poll above and the comments below.