Cool pads help old laptops that have a dead fan in them lol. Well at least from burning your hands and legs haha.

Yeah, costs will be the major factor here. I don't remember Nintendo presenting breakthrough tech that would make them lose money on each console unity sold. But Steam Deck levels of power is what I think should be minimum at this point: a tech piece that should be about three+ years old when the new Switch arrives.

The only thing I'm curious about is which Nintendo is going to emerge. The post-NES Nintendo where they simply take what works and add to it? Or the post-Gamecube Nintendo which attempted to redefine what Nintendo consoles were all about? Because at first glance, you'd think the former, since the Switch was NES-level successful. But then the Wii-U comes to mind (the Wii won its gen), and it all goes out of the window, and you're left with more questions than answers. 

We are in an interesting spot. Switch is only exceeded by the DS at this point as far as hardware sales go. And it's not crazy at all to think it could beat the DS, even if I don't think it will.

In the home console front you have a lot of interesting approaches. The SNES had a similar approach to the NES, but with a generational leap in specs and a better controller. The N64 is better than the PS1 and Saturn in specs (while of course not being a generation ahead of them) and way above an SNES. But the N64 was held back big time by bizarre and expensive cartridges. The load times were better for games, but the storage space was laughable. Not to mention a bizarre three-pronged controller with no X or Y buttons, and only one trigger. Nintendo's last time giving a darn about specs in the home console market is of course the GameCube. But again, they shot themselves in the foot with the media format used. The miniDVD capped out at 1.5 GB, and even 2 of them still fell short of single-layer and double-layer discs used by Sony and Microsoft. The only medium choice dumber than this in the sixth generation was using specialized CDs for the Dreamcast that capped out at a low 1 GB. But as we know, the Dreamcast hardware was dead before the GCN and Xbox even launched. 

Then comes the Wii and onward approach where Nintendo stopped caring about specs. The Wii had some great games but is very weak. The Wii U beat the next systems to the market by a year but did nothing with the head start. The Wii U would've been more successful with weak specs if it was easier to develop for and had more popular Nintendo games than it did. While the Switch is not a full generational leap from the Wii U, it is much easier to develop for and thankfully has double the RAM (thank you Capcom and other devs) and some other improved specs. 

It's time for another generational leap in specs for a Nintendo system, which could happen regardless of whether the system is full of gimmicks or not. In handheld mode, the weakest I would like the Switch 2 to perform is very close to an Xbox One. And in docked mode, I'm hoping for at least somewhere between PS4 and PS4 Pro. If Nintendo puts a lot of heft into their dock, there's no reason the dock of the Switch 2 can't boost the system to around Series S performance. And while this wouldn't be particularly cheap, I don't see why Nintendo would have to charge above $450 for the next system. What would the production costs be with a tablet and a dock this powerful? $350-$400? I think Nintendo would be able to break even on each unit sold even if they don't have a large profit margin. 

To me, a few of the worst-case scenarios for the next Nintendo system is...

-Splitting Nintendo in two once more and making a home console and handheld. Nintendo home consoles have a spotty sales record (the N64 underperformed, the GameCube straddled the line between an outright failure and a slight success, and the Wii U bombed), and I don't want to buy two systems again every gen to play their games. 

-Making another hybrid but filling it with some kind of motion or cheap VR gimmick and having the system in docked mode either barely match an Xbox One or even perform still worse than an Xbox One. And add in no backwards compatibility for an extra OOF. 

Is it possible? Certainly.
It is practical? No.

And the same reasoning I gave prior to the Switch being revealed, still holds true in 2023.

You would need to abandon USB on the bottom of the Switch as it lacks the bandwidth and has far to high latency for it to be feasible.

And then you have costs. - Adding an extra chipset and memory buffer to a dock is expensive, Nintendo isn't known for premium high-cost hardware, they are a little more conservative on this front.

I think the best we can hope for is increased clock-rate frequencies thanks to higher TDP's being viable...
The dock could in theory have an additional "blower cooler" to blow air through the Switch 2 in order to reduce temperatures and increase clockrates, rather than bolster the cooling in the handheld itself, keeping size and weight manageable for the successor.

But that is probably the extent of it.

In my opinion it's a missed opportunity not having a "Switch TV" or Switch fixed-home console with the Switch's internal components... Could be sold at a fraction of the cost by not having Joycons, Display, Battery, Dock and more.

The Switch could have been a series of devices and form factors all able to play the same games... They got half way there with the dedicated handheld.

I don't think Nintendo will go back to supporting Multiple different hardware platforms, it's logistically difficult... They are a mobile gaming company in my eyes now. (Which isn't a bad thing.)

The Wii was already practically dead when the Wii U launched and the Wii U's marketing was so horrible that many people didn't even realize it was a new console and not an add on and others (like me) never even knew of it's existence for at least the first few years of it's life. It also suffered from not getting enough first party games, having many long droughts and many of the games it got were subpar. Third party games were barely there at all.

The Wii's userbase consisted in large part from very casual players who moved on rather quickly or only cared about Wii Fit or other Wii brand games.

The Switch has a much more active userbase that buys a much larger variety of games and much more games in general. If the succsssor to the Switch doesn't launch to late, gets marketed properly and gets (just like the Switch) all of Nintendo's output and has a very solid first year and not to many droughts (everything unlike the Wii U) it will be more likely a huge success than not.

The Wii and Switch in that regard are in very different positions at this point in their lives. The Wii brand had fallen off in popularity and mindshare while the Switch brand is still very present and popular.

Man the fact that someone on here didn't know the Wii U existed for a long time is one of the better anecdotes I've seen for what a disaster it was.

Some configs of USB 4.0 are fast enough for an external GPU type set up ... it could use the same size connector, but it depends if Nintendo really cares to use something like that. 

I had been heavily invested the gaming industry at that point for more than fifteen years. Knew it inside and out. And even I had no clue what I was looking at when E3 rolled around and they unveiled it. I knew they were suppose to be showing their next console... yet I was confused. Wii U? Is this some kind of HD add-on? What exactly are they talking about? 

So yes, the warning signs were there from the start lol.

Impractical and unnecessary.

With the Switch Nintendo have already found their perfect place in the market with practically no direct competition. There's no sound reason for them to push for more than what they're already doing, so I'd only expect their next system to be a simple generational upgrade on the current Switch until there's reason to expect otherwise.

When NX was still in the planning stages, people went wild with theories and ballooning expections of what Nintendo could possibly push for with technology, and the result turned out to be modest and simple. Instead of going wild with over-active imaginations again, it's better to just keep modest expections leaving the possibility to be surprised if Nintendo actually do something crazy.