Hackers might have just unearthed our first real evidence of Nintendo Switch Pro

(Image credit: Nintendo)

published 3 March 2022

As much as I love the Nintendo Switch, it's five years old tomorrow and starting to show its age – and while the Switch OLED was a useful improvement thanks to its excellent screen, it was hardly a great leap forward in any other respect. So I'm always interested in any sign of a next-gen Switch, whether that's a Nintendo Switch 2 or a Nintendo Switch Pro. And this week some hackers may have unearthed evidence of it.

There's a long tradition of things being accidentally leaked because they were referred to in program code, and this Nintendo Switch leak appears to follow in that tradition: a leak of code from Nvidia appears to point to a new Nintendo.

Is NVN2 a second Switch, or a delayed Switch Pro?

I'm basing this on some posts by Yakumono, aka @luigiblood on Twitter. In the Nvidia code Yakumono spotted "nvn2" in a screenshot; as they explain, nvn is Nvidia's graphics API for the original Switch, so you don't need to be Scooby-Doo to wonder if "nvn2" is a big old clue.

The posts have since been replied to by Nikki, aka NWPlayer123, who appears to have found further evidence that points in the direction of a Switch Pro: "There are some 2022 headers in here, so this archive is still up to date... devtools haven't been touched since some time last year though." That would chime with the idea that the Switch Pro was in late stages of development but was then pushed back due to COVID and the semiconductor shortage: console makers work to long timescales and the hardware details of the next Switch would have been nailed down long before now.

Maybe the whole thing is too good to be true, but I hope not: as someone whose Switch is permanently hooked up to the TV the OLED improvements weren't a consideration for me, and the Switch that Nintendo sells now is the same console it's been selling for quite a long time now. There are some brilliant Nintendo Switch games coming to the Switch this year. Wouldn't it be great if there was also some brilliant new hardware to play them on?

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).