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Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch

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361 points ashitlerferad | 2 comments | 06 Nov 24 14:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | source
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LinAGKar ◴[06 Nov 24 17:02 UTC] No.42065332[source]▶
It would really be surprising if it wasn't backwards compatible. The Switch breaking backwards compatibility was exceptional, apart from that every Nintendo console since the Wii on the stationary side and the GameBoy Color on the handheld side had at least one generation of backwards compatibility.
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BHSPitMonkey ◴[06 Nov 24 17:19 UTC] No.42065641[source]▶
That's an oddly cherry-picked version of a pattern. There was no compatibility between the NES, SNES, N64, or GameCube. Wii and Wii U each supported their predecessor's games, but the Switch did not. Those 2 out of 7 were outliers
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1. echelon ◴[06 Nov 24 18:58 UTC] No.42067426[source]▶
CPU and GPU architectures used to wildly change from one generation to the next. Backwards compatibility wasn't always practical or feasible.

Now we've arrived at a fairly locked in set of architectures.

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2. toast0 ◴[07 Nov 24 06:01 UTC] No.42073855[source]▶
The SNES architecture looks pretty similar to the NES architecture in a lot of ways. It might have been possible to make it work, if it was a design goal. The PPUs are similar, the CPU has a compatability mode for the NES CPU, the controller bus is the same with a different connector.

Sega does what Nintendon't, and their 16-bit system was backwards compatible with (one of their) 8-bit systems, if you got the adapter that adapts the slot and includes a boot rom.

Apple also did it; the 16-bit Apple IIgs used more or less the same CPU as the SNES, and used the CPU compat mode to run regular Apple II software.

Sega