Analysis of leaked images of the Nintendo Switch 2 motherboard suggests the new console will be more powerful than it first seems. 2025 has continued just as 2024 ended: with endless Nintendo Switch 2 leaks, most of which appear to be real. There’s been a lot of focus on the new Joy-Cons but what was also leaked over the new year was images of the new console’s motherboard.
![[Nintendo Switch 2 leaked motherboard image]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_235252115-209b.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
According to the tech experts at Digital Foundry, the images are almost certainly real and so they and others have been able to make quite detailed estimates of the console’s power and what it can and can’t do. It is, as you’d imagine, all very complicated but the gist of it is that they estimate the Switch 2 will be roughly as powerful as a base PlayStation 4 (so not a PS4 Pro). However, that comes with a lot of caveats, and they also predict that many Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 games will be ported to the Switch 2, even if they don’t run quite as well on it.
On paper, it’s suggested that the Switch 2 seems to be less powerful than Steam Deck and other PC-based portable device, but Digital Foundry points out that raw tech specs are never a good indication of what a console can actually do. Importantly, they emphasise that, unlike the original Switch, Nintendo was directly involved in the design of the new hardware and so there will be lots of features and ‘secret sauce’ that will allow the Switch 2 to run games with better than expected performance.
It’s predicted that the new console will be able to make use of machine learning features, including upscaling tech like DLSS, as well as ray-tracing. And while the Switch 2 doesn’t seem to have a SSD, load times are expected to be ‘considerably reduced’ thanks to a custom decompression block.
