| Leynos said: Nintendo always in handhelds is BC at least 1 gen. |
Nintendo's BC solutions have typically consisted of "let's take the old chip and put it in the new product". GBA had an ARM7 and a the same Sharp CPU the GB and GBC had for backwards compatibility. The DS had two CPUs, one ARM9 and then the same ARM7, but with twice the clock frequency. The 3DS had an ARM11 with, you guessed it, an ARM9 with twice the clock frequency.
The issue is that there was a reason for all of these consoles to utilize multiple CPUs. The GBA used it for *some* sound processing, and the DS/3DS used it for rendering multiple screens. But the Switch is much more expensive than those products both at launch and currently to manufacture. Plus, cramming in another chip without much purpose aside from BC would almost double the size of the console for little worth.
Not saying there won't be BC. I sure hope there is...but we are in uncharted territory for Nintendo. They'll have to find a way to incorporate compatibility without relying on native hardware.
