Nvidia appears to be in discussion with Nintendo over its next console i.e. the Nintendo Switch successor, based on the latest rumor.
Zenji Nishikawa, a well-known Japanese science and technology writer, has revealed that he’s seeing some movement with regards to new hardware from Nintendo, possibly the Nintendo Switch successor, and that a “super VIP” individual belonging to a well-known semiconductor manufacturer, possibly Nvidia, will soon be visiting Japan.
Nishikawa mentioned that he happened to catch information regarding a “super VIP” from a global semiconductor manufacturer from the United States, who rarely visits Japan, was visiting Japan on some top secret business. According to him, this manufacturer has a history of working with Nintendo on its game consoles.
It certainly seems like he’s referring to Nvidia, as the chip maker was previously involved in the development of the Nintendo Switch. A Switch successor with a similar hybrid console/handheld design would likely be best suited to Nvidia’s Tegra chipset.
Previously, an Nvidia employee had confirmed the existence of the Tegra239 chip, which has been rumored since 2021 as the SoC being developed for the Nintendo Switch 2. According to the Nvidia employee, Nvidia has added support for the Tegra239 SoC, the likely SoC for Nintendo Switch 2, which has eight cores in a single cluster. In addition, the SoC manufacturer has moved num_clusters to soc data in order to avoid always over allocating memory for four clusters.
The claim made by reliable NVIDIA leaker kopite7kimi that Nvidia will use a modified version of its T234 Orin chip for the next-generation Switch is further supported by this revelation. Based on this information, it can be inferred that the Nintendo Switch 2 console will likely feature a T239 SoC with an 8-core CPU, an Ampere-based GPU that may incorporate some Lovelace features, and possibly DLSS 2.2 support.
The original Nintendo Switch game console was developed by Nintendo, and the chipset at the heart of the hardware was provided by Nvidia. It was released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017.
