Nintendo did not forecast a big rise in profits this fiscal year compared to last, even though they will sell a ton of Switch 2 units at $499, that tells me that even though the Switch 2 uses a lot of old tech, they barely get much profits from Switch 2 at current price. Meaning, to release a handheld with only up to date tech, the cost would skyrocket while sales would collapse. It doesn't make sense for Switch 2 to try to match the Xbox ROG Ally, the sales potential goes down, while the cost goes up.

No one said that Nintendo *had* to go with an OLED panel and lose money.

Nintendo just needed a better panel than the cheapest garbage IPS panel they could absolutely find.
A quality VA panel can give you inky blacks, low input lag and VRR... And a bonus of zero IPS glow... And they are cheap.

Everyone expects an updated OLED revision at some point for a higher price, most of us who hate the current display will buy that and ditch the launch Switch 2 console and it's issues.

The other aspect is the shit-storm Microsoft and Sony have had to go through over the last 5 years, with crappy constant price rises on consoles and accessories.

Having a buffer in order to "smooth" that over to account for rising prices on components is a sound move, they won't draw the negativity of tech-outlets everywhere and tarnish the brand.

As for the SoC... I think the 8nm chip is fine for the most part, more is always better... However the real bottleneck is the CPU and the lack of RAM over the long term.
And Nintendo like I said it would before the unveiling... Would reserve a hefty chunk of the current RAM for the OS/Background tasks, which they did... 16GB should have been the targeted amount so developers had 13GB to play with to let the console breathe.
But we need to remember that Samsung 8nm node is actually a slightly enhanced 10nm, it's old and archaic by modern standards.

Going from 8nm to a REAL 7nm would have brought significant improvements in power and performance and would have not cost much more, but I think Samsung wanted to win contracts as it's older fabs are underutilized, so likely made an offer to Nintendo that they couldn't refuse.
A fab not being used is a fab that isn't profitable in the end... And Samsung needs contracts to justify fab improvements on it's nodes.

Add on the fact that nVidia charges companies for changes to chips, sticking with the tried-and-true Samsung 8nm fab that nVidia used when they taped out the design made economical sense for Nintendo.

Switch 2 actually has multiple hardware advantages over the Series S.

RDNA 2 vs Ampere is a pretty lob-sided battle, nVidia on any given year has a significant architectural and feature-set advantage over AMD...

Nintendo lucked out as that helped close the gap between the current consoles and the Switch 2.
If AMD's GPU's weren't significantly behind, the landscape would probably look very different.

Thankfully that's not the case and Nintendo is in a fantastic position to receive ports this generation.

I read an article already I think on Gamespot about Madden 26 on Switch 2 having a preview in handheld mode. I was very surprised because I haven't seen anything but the article mentions it looks like a graphical step down (portable mode, they weren't able to play in docked) compared to the PS5 version but it had all the current features. Can't wait to give it a go!

One interesting thing to note on the technical front is that Nintendo seem to have rediscovered anti-aliasing on Switch 2.

Both Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza use it, whereas almost none of EPD's Switch 1 games did.

This makes me wonder if GTA6 is somehow possible on Switch 2. Based on what we heard the Switch 2 GPU wise may not have too much trouble running the game since it could have GPU performance similiar to the Series S with DLSS. However, the big hurdle would certainly be with the CPU where GTA 6 would likely need every ounce of CPU power to get it running in that huge world with a ton going on which may make it difficult, since the Switch 2's CPU is closer to a PS4.

Based on Rockstar's track record, they've have been porting to the Switch more than they ever have with any prior Nintendo console but none of the ports really been ambitous, and if anything they've been mostly the bare minimum. The GTA Trilogy ports ran embarrassingly bad especially for the Switch, couldn't even have the effort to run PS2 games in 60fps on Switch. The Red Dead port was just a basic 50$ port, absolutely nothing done to even take advantage of the Switch's extra horse power. So it doesn't seem likely out of the blue Rockstar would take more ambitious steps to get GTA 6 working on Switch 2, would love to be wrong tho and have GTA 6 on a portable.

Seems likely Red Dead 2 will come to Switch later this year tho. However, still perplexes me that GTA 5 hasn't even been considered at all, especially since the even Switch 1 could've ran it since it was an Xbox 360 game, and that the GTA Trilogy on Switch was the 2nd bestselling platform for that game only behind PS4. Now with Switch 2 people can't even use the excuse anymore that "Rockstar only wants to support the new gen versions of the games, not the 360 Switch version". At the very least i'd like to see that game come to Switch 2 if GTA 6 isn't coming.

It makes no sense either because a XBox ROG Ally isn't going to give you anywhere near 2x the performance. It's a moderate step up at best, the Switch 2 compares favorably enough especially dollar for dollar and watt for watt. 

I don't know, MKW looks fairly jagged on my kid's TV.

Can't say for DKB, he still didn't bought it ("next week").

Mario Kart uses a post-process AA pass in docked mode according to Digital Foundry: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2025-mario-kart-world-tech-review

DK uses SMAA.

DF review of DK Bananza.

Overall the game performs well though falls short in some areas such as resolution, image quality & shadows.

The most bizarre aspect is that rather than use DLSS they've gone with FSR1... WTF?

Nintendo have now released 2 games and neither use what is regarded as one of the system's, if not THE stand-out feature.

Maybe one of the more tech-literate peeps can suggest the thinking behind this, it seems like they've left a large amount of performance on the floor.

Higher resolutions, more stable frame rate & even headroom to improve shadows and other areas would have been a given surely?

I'm def gonna grab it though as it looks like a tonne of fun.

I feel like Nintendo not using DLSS is just one of those weird things they do, like how they didn't use anti-aliasing on Switch 1 despite the system being more than capable of a wide range of AA methods. (And plenty of other devs on the system using it)

Maybe they just don't like the artefacts it can cause, or maybe they just prefer to put the extra cycles it would cost towards other things.

I'm playing through DK Bananza now, and honestly, it looks quite clean and nice anyway at a native 1200p-1080p with SMAA, definitely much better image quality than their Switch 1 games which were typically 720p-1080p with no AA.