The Nintendo Switch 2, the long-awaited sequel to the original Nintendo Switch system is due very soon this year. Naturally with the next generation arriving, most third party developers are prioritizing the newer, more powerful system, with potential ports of games that were designed with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X in mind.

But what about the original Switch? After all, the Switch had become pretty notorious throughout its life for "impossible ports", IE, versions of games that upon first glance, don't look like they can run an under-powered hybrid, yet translate surprisingly well all things considered. Even in just the last few months, developers are still challenging themselves to see what can still run on the now 8 year old hardware. Recent ports of Stray, and Guilty Gear Strive show that while the Switch is obviously a grandpa at this point, it can still pull off more than people expect. So going into Switch 2, will we continue to see "impossible ports"?

I imagine that a few games that have PS4/XBO versions which are slated for Switch 2, might also be cross-gen with Switch 1 as well. So come the April Direct or whenever, we'll probably see some Switch 2 ports announced that also have Switch 1 versions. And there's still plenty of the PS4/XBO backlog to toy around with for either Switch system.

The recent announcements for Switch show that while support is obviously waning, it's not looking to outright crater anytime soon either, so devs still have plenty of Switch 1 stuff coming.

"So going into Switch 2, will we continue to see "impossible ports"?"

No....

Devs will rightfully go... the sacrifices to the game, and the work needed to do this, aren't worth it to get it running on the Switch 1, this is one is switch 2 only."

When they have no choice, they do it, as soon as the Switch 2 starts selling.... that goes away.

"I imagine that a few games that have PS4/XBO versions which are slated for Switch 2, might also be cross-gen with Switch 1 as well."

The thing is docked, the Switch is maybe half the cpu grunt of the PS4, and the gpu is 392 Gflops (compaired to the 1843 Gflops (1.8 Tflops) (1/5th).
Its harder to a port a demanding game onto the Switch, than it is the PS4. You need to do more optimization and more sacrifices in graphics to get it running.
The switch only has 4 GB of ram right? that alone is a tough thing to work around.

I think its much more likely these types of games (that are demanding) just from now on, skip the Switch 1.

And honestly... maybe that's a good thing.
Alot of these impossible ports, end up looking and running subpar compared to how they run and look on other systems.
To the point where you have to ask yourself if its worth playing like that.

There are still a couple in the pipeline like Little Nightmares III and Amnesia: The Bunker, so yes.

After Switch 2 releases? Probably not in terms of really technically ambitious conversions, though it will still likely get ports of a lot of less advanced AA/indie games for the next year or two just due to its enormous userbase.

Well.
The AMD A4-5100 @1.55ghz with it's quad-core Jaguar setup is able to match ARM A57 Quad-Core @1.8ghz in Geekbench.

Decrease the A57 clockspeed by 70% and keep the core count at half of Jaguar and things start to look pretty favorable for the PS4 which had the slowest CPU out of the 8th gen home consoles.

I wouldn't be surprised to see differences of 3x, especially when you start to leverage SIMD instructions in the x86 cores.

The Gflops is once again a useless metric and isn't a benchmark or a real world number.

Most Switch games use 16bit FP due to how fast and how power efficient it is... Which is NOT comparable to the 32bit FP that the 8th gen home consoles used.
FP16 mode with full throughput would equate to:
Cores * 2 instructions per clock * clock = 393Gflop. - But pack twice the math and it becomes 786Gflop. (And this is why people shouldn't use Glops without understanding the ramifications.)

Keep in mind that only 3GB of that is usable by developers... Which makes efforts such as the Witcher 3 and Doom more impressive.

******

I would hazard a guess we will see a fairly rapid transition to Switch 2.0 as there is definitely some pent up demand there from a development side of the coin.

Who would count "Amnesia: The Bunker" as impossible port?

It's minimum specs are much much lower than of Doom 2016, The Witcher 3 and similiar games:

The same goes for Little Nightmares 3, if it needs similar specs as part 2.

I think the impossible ports are already pretty few and far between, so no. Maybe Split Fiction later in the year but I don't expect much else.

Few if any are left. It's time to move on from an 8-year-old mobile device especially since there is little chance of Switch 2 struggling.

Switch will get support till 2026 and beyond (march 2027). We already have Inazuma Eleven 1 Remake announced for summer 2026. So software support will continue for Switch 1 in any form for sure. Heck, there will even be some cross gen games in 2025, maybe even 2026 from Nintendo themselfes.

Technically none of the ports that made the jump are "impossible" since, well, they did in fact turn out to be doable.

Both Amnesia and Little Nightmares are clearly built to a significantly higher technical standard than the Switch hardware itself is designed for, so while they're not as ambitious as something like Kingdom Come Deliverance or Hogwarts Legacy, they're still likely a challenge for developers to get running in a decent state.

By the way, a bit off topic but Switch just reached its 8th Birthday today (someone could make a threat)! Tomorrow Switch will start in its 9th (!) Year on the market!!