Nintendo Switch Successor with Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.2 Support Possibly Spotted in Recent Nvidia Leak

The Nintendo Switch is five years old (or will be tomorrow), and ordinarily, you would expect a Nintendo console to be nearing the end of its life at this point. The Switch, however, still has incredible momentum even with over 103 million units sold, and has a healthy lineup of major games launching in the future, so it doesn’t seem like that momentum will die down anytime soon. Nintendo, too, has insisted time and time again – including as recently as earlier this month – that the hybrid platform is still just at the midpoint of its life cycle.

That said, even though we might not see a new Switch releasing anytime soon, it’s sort of a given that a successor is in the works at Nintendo- and a recent leak may have uncovered some interesting details about what it will entail. The source code for Nvidia’s DLSS technology was recently leaked, and as it turns out, of the many things that leak has spilled the beans on, evidence pointing to a Nintendo Switch 2 might also be included.

Users have been digging into its files, and have found repeated mentions of “.nvn2”- which seems to be the graphics api for the Switch successor, seeing as the original Switch’s api is simply “nvn”. Interestingly, the leak also seems to suggest that the hardware is built on an Ampere GPU architecture, and will feature support for ray tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS 2.2.

Reports of a Switch hardware revision featuring DLSS support were doing the rounds frequently in the early months of last year, and though the rumoured Switch Pro never got announced, subsequent leaks have suggested that those earlier leaks may instead have been referring to a full-fledged Switch successor inadvertently.

Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls believes that a Switch successor isn’t going to launch until at least 2024- read more on that through here.

NVIDIA DLSS Source Code Leaked https://t.co/5n2yJ7q9ic pic.twitter.com/X8m0p8s4uN

— TechPowerUp (@TechPowerUp) March 1, 2022

NVIDIA leaks have "nvn2", which seems to be the graphics api for the Switch Pro, based on Ampere with ray tracing support and DLSS 2.2 pic.twitter.com/k6nEr31CcY

— Nikki™ (@NWPlayer123) March 1, 2022