Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Nintendo has had a trend for the past couple decades of releasing "sequel" consoles that are essentially a modernized version of the old one with extra features, compatible with everything that released on the predecessor.

With all three major console manufacturers prioritizing backwards compatibility, and the rise in PC gaming (universally backwards compatible), people are starting to catch on to the fact that old games don't "expire" after 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised if backwards compatibility just becomes the standard for all gaming consoles going forward.

Tangential, but I'm also interested in seeing how games that released on old consoles and are continued to be played, like Fortnite, will support aging hardware. I don't like that Epic can one day announce the game just no longer works on that console, rendering your purchases null and void until you upgrade your hardware, but I can't expect them to update that version of the game forever.

Games don't have the generational differences they used to. They're mature now. Tech is rarely the blocker anymore. The Switch was "underpowered" at release and is even more underpowered now but the space of "games that would run well on the Switch" is still fairly unexplored, not because anybody is bad but because the space is so big now.

That hardware can no longer compete with platforms that don't throw away their entire library on every release is probably one of the first impacts of games finally maturing. My "next console" was a Steam Deck for partially this very reason, the fact that it came preloaded with years of previous acquisitions.

We're also just seeing the leading edge of the game industry having to deal with the fact that it now has to compete against itself. There's been a number of articles about how $NEW_GAME never even reached a peak player count of something like Skyrim. I think that's currently being written as a sort of a "ha ha, that's sorta funny", but it represents a real problem. It is not unsolvable; Hollywood has always faced this issue and it has historically managed to make money anyhow. But I think AAA gaming is only just beginning to reckon with the fact that they aren't going to get a "free reset" on every console generation. $NEW_GAME really is is competition with Skyrim now, along with a lot of other things. It's not a joke, it's an emerging reality the industry is going to have to grapple with.

Either that, or you've gotten older. The young always want to play that one specific NEW game. Currently that usually means PS5, either Fortnite or Call Of Duty (and yes that one specific version). PS5 only has PS4 backward compatibility, and it isn't going to be emulated any time soon.

Fortnite and Call of Duty are not great examples given they both still run on the PS4. Even the latest Call of Duty iteration that launched barely two weeks ago still runs on last generation consoles, because there's still so many players who haven't felt the need to upgrade to the successor generation after four years.

I don't think there's ever been a console generation before where the last generation was still getting big new releases this deep into the next one. The PS5 Pro is out now and the PS4 is still getting new games.

From what I've heard only about 4% of CoD: BO6 buyers were on PS4. It might finally be getting to the point where it just no longer makes sense to craft an entirely different version for the older consoles. Perhaps Switch 2 getting CoD will keep the PS4 version on life support however.

I wonder how much effort it really takes to release a game for both PS4 and PS5, especially if you're already building it for Xbox and PC. PC requires you to support a wide array of performance capabilities, at least in theory making it easy to scale back performance to a previous-gen console; and they're probably still using an evolution of the same engine they were using for PS4, so at least to my mind it's a checkbox, some performance tuning and a bunch of QA. (at least in theory). maybe some different servers to support multiplayer - but since CoD supports cross play maybe not even that.