Well a successor is a lot more than two years off. Two years would be cutting the Switch off very early. Even 3 years would be cutting it off a bit early.

And um yes Nintendo's audience cares about graphics. I mean yeah you're right not in the way PSXbox audience does where they seem to take graphics as the most important thing sometimes, but just because its a handheld doesn't mean people don't want good graphics, good resolution, good fps. We just know its a handheld, so great graphics on the Switch are gonna be not quite as great as those on home systems. Also absolutely Nintendo audience care about third party games are you kidding. I'm sure a lot of the audience would love to have full good versions of AAA third party games on the system. The fact that those games barely ever make it to the system is not at all the same thing as not wanting them on the system. AAA ports don't sell the Switch because they don't (or barely) exist on the Switch and when they do they are either a generation old or degraded versions from more powerful hardware. First party is what sells the Switch because Nintendo is the only company that makes new AAA games for the system. Obviously if third parties actually built new AAA games for the Switch there would be a lot more interest. The main reason to not do a mid generation upgrade is because it'd split the userbase, because nobody wants that.

My suggestion was more if they did a mid gen upgrade to a bit more powerful version that could play current gen games decently without a lot of changes and graphical sacrifices needed, that would maybe get more developers taking the leap to port AAA games to Switch, but those games just wouldn't run great on the original Switch systems so they'd be better on the upgraded model but obviously they'd still have to run on the standard power systems, meaning there would be no split of userbase, but you just had to buy the upgrade if you wanted to get the best AAA experience.

Anyway, no doubt much more likely the Premium Switch whenever it comes out will be at best a slight power boost and then bigger screen and whatnot, like Nintendo always does with its upgrades. Late 2021 or early 2022 I think would be about right timing for another version, as that gives it at least a couple more years to sell before next gen.

I didn't mean two years from now, but rather two years later than a hypotheical 2021/2022 Switch Pro.

And I didn't say AAA games don't or can't sell on Switch. I said they're not what's selling the hardware, not the primary reason people buy a Switch, as evidenced by Switch being one of the fastest selling systems in history despite having few AAA third party games.

A Premium or Plus Switch model nothing to do with this job listing though, this is clearly for a next generation game console that utilizes DLSS 2.0 or better according to the listing. It says so right in the job listing. 

That's not going to be a "Switch with a bigger screen and Bluetooth", you don't hire a senior graphics engineer who specializes in A.I. neural processing and needs to work with DLSS 2.0 for that. 

DLSS 2.0 requires RTX Turing based architecture at minimum, Turing based architecture is basically the PS5/XBSX (RDNA 1.5/2) tier of architecture (better actually). They're not kidding around when the job description says "next generation graphics". 

My guess would be they are customizing a DLSS solution for Nintendo on the Switch 2 chip, something that might be able to reconstruct images from really, really low resolutions like 320x240 and move them up to 720p-1080p for example. That would make sense for a Switch successor (not so much a PC card) and they need more people trained in A.I. reconstruction to squeeze more out of the DLSS 2.0 standard they've set. Copying and pasting the existing DLSS 2.0 would massively benefit a Switch 2 to begin with, but if you can really crank it and focus on really low native resolutions, that would be extremely beneficial to Nintendo (especially in undocked modes). 

Would already be too low in my opinion to be honest.

What I not only expect but demand from a switch two is to deliver the same performance or more than the rumored XBox Lockhart when docked,

and around halve undocked.

HOW it is done doesnt matter much to me, as long AS it is done.

This could also mean, that the hardware inside the switch two alone is not capable of doing so, but combined with suplementary hardware inside the dock

it would work. (Which would make the Switch 2 an actuall hybrid btw, unlike Switch 1)

With Lockhart, Nintendo has the unique chance of getting full 3rd party support (not just indies and medium japanese games)

despite having compearativly much weaker hardware. And Nintendo would be stupid to pass up on this upportunity.

The only way its coming close to this whilst having  battery life and actually having Switch form factor is through DLSS. So essentially the raw power of the Switch 2 would be closer to 1/3 docked, 1/6 undocked. But DLSS takes internally rendered frames from 240p-560p, and adjusts its up to 720p-1080p. For exclusives it will work natively from 1080p+ and upscale to 4k. 

Mobile tech will always be a generation behind in raw power, DLSS will cut a few years from this. Ultimately Nintendo will still be Nintendo, so the machine will at least break even at launch and not cost more than $399

Or, they may be starting development right now.  We have no idea.  It is also possible that this has nothing to do with Nintendo at all. There are always rumors of new entrants to the console business.  

DLSS 2.0 can reconstruct 1440p even from only 576p quite well

https://imgsli.com/MTUwMDg/1/2

Compare the 576p DLSS mode to 1440p quality

You can see here 576p DLSS 2.0 compared to native 1440p and it does look a touch softer but not a big difference. According to the guy who posted these images in motion while playing the game he couldn't even tell see a difference.

Who knows DLSS 3.0 likely will be even better than this.

Let's not forget that the current Nvidia Shield uses the same specs as the switch outside of 4 gb of ram for switch and 3gb of ram for the Shield. The current switch revision and the lite uses the Tegra X1+ chipset. The Shield uses the same chipset but can utilize DLSS 2.0, Dolby Atmos sound, and HDR.

I would leave it to Nvidia to figure out how to have get ray-tracing features to work on a handheld device. They created a device as small as a raspberry pi that has tensor cores. Look up the Nvidia JETSON XAVIER NX, I wouldn't be surprised if the next switch had full on ray-tracing abilities. Would the future handheld ray tracing abilities be as good as a ps5 or series x probably not but it could potentially handle the ray tracing abilities to a smaller degree.

We probably see a big leap between the switch and switch 2 as arm architecture continues to mature.

I'm fine with ray tracing being left out or minimized at least for the first model.

THAT is an example of a feature that could be added to later Switch 2 models and not break compatibility between systems, you could have a Switch 2 Ultra or whatever that's capable of ray tracing but otherwise the game is exactly the same (or have a home dock that enables it).

You can cheat a lot with baked lighting solutions anyway to approximate something closer to ray tracing anyway. 

I also dont care much for Ray Traycing. It's not going to be the difference between what makes a game look good or bad