Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch

And this reveals the real reason Nintendo came after Switch emulators - to buy some extra time before Switch 2 gets properly emulated.

The hard part of emulating the Switch 2 probably isn't going to be the actual emulation, but breaking the security so that the games and firmware can be extracted and decrypted. Nintendo pretty much nailed their software security with the Switch 1 but were undone by catastrophic hardware bugs, so we'll have to see how well they learned their lesson on the hardware front next time.

Microsoft and Sony have demonstrated that hardware security can be more or less perfected, neither of their systems have been compromised via hardware attacks for several generations now.

The main hardware security bugs[0] were very low hanging fruit associated with taking over the boot chain at ring 0- it's more likely that Nintendo themselves were in a rush to get the product on the market after the perceived failure of the Wii U. Even with a secure software stack, people found a way to defeat the Xbox 360 hardware[1] by physically drilling into a chip that enforced a software lock, and George Hotz became known for his work in finding ECDSA flaws in the PS3. Companies can design these locks to last for a few years of a console's lifespan, but I think people now are determined enough to dive into these difficult problems that they're unlikely to be secured forever.

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unpatchable-hardware-exploit-l...

[1] https://gbatemp.net/threads/scanned-drilling-template-16d4s-...

There's a reason why you have to go back to the 360 and PS3 for those examples, Sony and Microsoft stepped up their hardware security dramatically after that generation. Neither the PS4, PS5, Xbox One or Xbox Series systems have ever been compromised via hardware attacks, and those earlier ones are over a decade old now.

The Xboxes have held up extremely well on the software front as well, and although the Playstation software isn't so robust (they use FreeBSD and routinely get owned by upstream CVEs) their secure boot has never been broken, which limits how much you can do with a software jailbreak. PS3 jailbreaks had continuity where you could upgrade an exploitable firmware to a non-exploitable one while retaining a backdoor, but the PS4s secure boot put an end to that.