The GameFreak leaks have unearthed some rather interesting information regarding the Switch successor.
The massive GameFreak leak that I still refuse to link to directly (but you can read more here), has unearthed a plethora of information about everything Pokémon — from beta-mon to incredibly weird "fan fiction", over to upcoming projects in the Pokéverse.
But the one piece of news that piqued my interest the most, is the following tweet below.
Centro Leaks shared on Twitter (X) that the next Nintendo console uses the same ROM format as the current Switch.
While I'd take this with a mountain's worth of salt, it looks like the successor to the Nintendo Switch will still use the NSP format for its games. The same format that the current handheld uses — which has been cracked, thus allowing for emulation.
This might be why Ryujinx and Yuzu had to die. If the upcoming console does indeed use the same ROM format, all hackers would have to do is extract the encryption keys, and boom, emulation would be one huge step closer. It's very obvious why Nintendo wouldn't want that. Update: Thanks to some feedback (that I had to nuke because people clearly can’t behave), I learned that more is needed than just extracting the encryption key. But if the Switch 2 indeed uses NSP files, the chances are high that fewer steps would be involved to make emulators work on the Switches successor, as developers are used to work with that file format.
On the opposite side, using the same format likely means that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with all our current Switch games — and that's some pretty good news!
