According to a rumor, the Big N doesn’t want to change much of the tried and tested formula, so it’s possible that Switch 2 (not an official name, as the platform hasn’t even been announced yet) will be easy to run on PC…

Perhaps the reason why Nintendo has taken a more serious stance against Yuzu and Ryujinx emulators this year is that the Switch’s successor hardware could follow a similar path and be emulated on PC soon after its release, much sooner than the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series (although they are also based on x86-64 architecture, and Intel and AMD are trying to protect it together…).

Ounce (Switch 2) seems to use the same tools and ROM format Nintendo currently uses for Switch 1 (ROMs are still NSPs), but obviously they have new encryption keys that only Nintendo has

— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) October 17, 2024

The attack on Game Freak has led to a lot of leaks about the studio behind Pokémon. It’s been confirmed that the Nintendo Switch 2 is codenamed Ounce, and according to Centro Leaks, the ROM format and devices are all the same as those currently in use, but the encryption keys will only be known to Nintendo. That’s why, even though it’s been more than seven and a half years since the Switch was released and the two emulators have been running for several years, the Big N has stopped development on both Yuzu and Ryujinx. (Although the reasoning doesn’t always hold up: if you buy a game and then emulate it on a PC, you can still legally play it as a backup, even if you download it in pirated format…)

Not much is officially known about the Switch’s successor. If Nintendo were to follow the Switch’s timeline, it would have to unveil the platform in the next week or so, as the Switch was announced in October 2016 and became available in March 2017. The big N has previously stated that it doesn’t want to run out of stock this time around, and may be preparing ahead of time with a larger kit. We’ve also heard that it will be available in the second quarter of 2025 instead of the first, meaning from April.

But this is not official.

Source: WCCFTech