Plus, the Nintendo 3DS was compatible with original Nintendo DS games, and in turn, the original DS was able to play GameBoy Advance games. There isn’t any definitive word on whether Nintendo’s next hardware will be backwards compatible but it’s at least comforting to note that the company has a strong track record in this department.įor obvious reasons, the Nintendo Switch wasn’t backwards compatible with the Wii U considering their wildly different controller schemes and the former's lack of a disc drive, but the Wii U was capable of playing original Wii games (Both physical and digital titles), and the Wii was able to play GameCube games. Will Nintendo Switch 2 be backwards compatible?

And in the case of the Switch, it would be a great shame to see the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey and Metroid Dread being forever stuck on a single piece of hardware and becoming virtually inaccessible to a future generation of players. There’s nothing worse than a quality game getting essentially locked to a single system. Speaking from personal experience, after blasting through PS5 launch titles like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I was able to use the console’s backwards compatibility features to enjoy PS4 games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Persona 5 Royal as I awaited more next-gen exclusives - which eventually came in the form of Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.Īnother, often overlooked, benefit of backwards compatibility is that it’s important for game preservation. This is exactly what happened with the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X in November 2020. Essentially, it ensures you’ve always got something worthwhile to play from day one. This gives early adopters plenty of old favorites to replay or catch up on while new software slowly trickles out. Backwards compatibility allows gamers to access literally thousands of titles at launch. It’s also important to remember that whenever new hardware hits the market the library of software is typically pretty small and then grows over time.

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