Nintendo, in a hardware-centric roundtable Q&A, has revealed that the Switch 2 is capable of making use of Nvidia’s DLSS technology for upscaling images, as well as ray tracing. As caught by IGN, senior director of the Programming Management Group Entertainment Planning & Development Department at Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning & Development Division, Takuhiro Dohta, spoke about some of the capabilities of the con sole.
“We use DLSS upscaling technology and that’s something that we need to use as we develop games,” said Dohta, confirming that rather than making use of its own custom AI-based image upscaler, Nintendo is instead teaming up with Nvidia to use its well-developed and relatively mature technology.
Dohta does reveal that the Switch 2 is also quite a capable machine, since it can go all the way up to 4K resolutions on the right TV. This power, however, is up to game developers to use. It will also be up to the developers to figure out if they want to try and run at higher resolutions natively, or if they want to use DLSS.
“And when it comes to the hardware, it is able to output to a TV at a max of 4K,” Dohta continued. “Whether the software developer is going to use that as a native resolution or get it to upscale is something that the software developer can choose. I think it opens up a lot of options for the software developer to choose from.”
Dohta also confirmed that the Switch 2 is capable of hardware-based ray-tracing for improved lighting He does emphasise, however, that it will ultimately be up to developers to see what they can do with it when it comes to not only the technical costs, but also how it would help them realise their vision for their games.
“Yes the GPU does support ray tracing,” he said. “As with DLSS, I believe this provides yet another option for the software developer to use and a tool for them.”
When asked about more technical details on the Switch 2’s hardware, however, Nintendo’s Tetsuya Sasaki maintained relative silence on the matter, saying that the company isn’t yet ready to divulge more details on that front.
“Nintendo doesn’t share too much on the hardware spec,” said Sasaki. “What we really like to focus on is the value that we can provide to our consumers. But I do believe that our partner Nvidia will be sharing some information.”
Nintendo had previously confirmed through an update to its website that the Switch 2 is powered by a custom SoC (system on chip – includes CPU and GPU) developed by Nvidia. Previous rumours have indicated that this chip might be based on Nvidia’s Tegra 239.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will be hitting store shelves on June 5. For more details on some of the technical aspects of the console, check out the company’s engineers explaining what prompted the decision to give the Switch 2 an LCD display rather than an OLED one which we last saw on one of the later Switch models.