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Nintendo Switch 2 may have a dual screen you can split in half suggests patent-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro
A newly spotted patent from Nintendo could be the company’s answer to getting DS games working authentically on modern hardware.
![Nintendo Switch 2 may have a dual screen you can split in half suggests patent-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/nintendo-console-patent-6b8b.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024)
This thing looks a little too much like the Wii U GamePad for our liking (Picture: WIPO)
A newly spotted patent from Nintendo could be the company’s answer to getting DS games working authentically on modern hardware.
Say what you will about Nintendo, but you can always count on it to be experimental with its hardware. Sometimes it pays off in a big way, like with the Wii and Switch, and sometimes it backfires horribly like the Wii U and its ill-fated GamePad.
With the Nintendo Switch still selling well, despite being over six years old, it’s unlikely that its successor – dubbed the Switch 2 for now – will be such a radical deviation. The last thing Nintendo wants is another Wii U situation, that confuses and scares away customers.
It’ll probably be a while until Nintendo actually shows the thing off but, in the meantime, some insight into how Nintendo approaches console development has been shared courtesy of a newly discovered patent – one that depicts a dual-screen console that looks a lot like the DS or 3DS.
The patent was filed in November of last year but was only published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) earlier this month, and first spotted by Game Rant.
It doesn’t have a proper name beyond ‘Electrical Apparatus,’ but it’s clearly meant to be a foldable gaming device that features two screens.
What makes this especially fascinating, however, is that unlike the DS handhelds, when the device is folded, the screens still face outwards, allowing you to continue interacting with it.
Plus, the device is comprised of two sections that can be split apart and operate independently of each other. They can also connect wirelessly so, hypothetically, two people could play games together using each section separately.
Being able to split this thing in half would be a fun way to prank people into thinking they’ve broken your new console (Picture: WIPO)
If this were to be the design for the Switch 2, it’s been suggested that this could serve as Nintendo’s answer to getting DS games working on it via its online service, which has been adding retro games from its older consoles.
Some DS games were ported to the Wii U via its Virtual Console and you could use your TV and the GamePad as separate screens to replicate the DS’ dual screens. The downside was that this required using the GamePad.
Although that’s probably just a side benefit of the design, since Nintendo isn’t going to let a 20-year-old portable dictate the design of its new mainstream console.
It must be stressed that this is all hypothetical. Given Nintendo’s love of secrecy, it’s hard to believe it’d allow the design of the Switch 2 to be so easily found by the public.
As with any patent there’s no guarantee that what’s designed will become a real product but, also, patent diagrams are always purposefully bad, so as to give away as little as possible. So while the basic functionality, of a device that splits in two, may be real the actual console – if it exists – probably looks very different, and nothing like a DS.
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As for when the Switch 2 could be shown officially, it’s suspected to happen in early 2024, considering it’s widely assumed that the console will launch towards the end of next year.
It’s also claimed that some studios have already received dev kits. Don’t expect any of them to leak out images of the console though, since doing so would ruin their relationship with Nintendo.
Maybe don’t go expecting the Switch 2 to look like this (Picture: WIPO)
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