A patent published by Nintendo on December 31, 2024 describes the techniques that will certainly be used on the Switch 2 to improve the console's performance through AI.
This is perhaps one of the most interesting new features promised to the Nintendo Switch 2. By migrating to an Nvidia Ampere architecture (GeForce RTX 3000), the chip of the future Nintendo console has access to ray tracing, but also to cores dedicated to AI, allowing DLSS to be activated.
This is all on paper, but we wondered if Nintendo was really going to integrate these technologies into its new console. A patent published by the Japanese console manufacturer suggests that this will indeed be the case.
A DLSS with Nintendo sauce: what for?
The document of this patent filed in the United States in July 2023, and published on December 31, 2024, is available online. It describes the same operation as Nvidia's DLSS.
This technology is a very effective image upscaling technology using AI. This has become one of the star functions of the GeForce, which has been imitated by AMD with the FSR, Intel with the XeSS and more recently Sony with the PSSR.
Since we can use AI cores to increase the rendering definition, we can afford to ask the GPU for lower rendering, and therefore increase performance.
In other words, rather than asking the GPU to directly calculate a 900p or 1080p image, Nintendo describes how a console could calculate a 540p image and then enlarge it to 1080p.
This is precisely the expected definition of the Nintendo Switch 2 LCD screen: 1920 x 1080 pixels. With a more efficient processor, faster RAM and an updated graphics chip, we can imagine Nintendo's next console reaching 60 frames per second more easily thanks to this improved 540p rendering.
Nintendo also imagines applying its system several times to an image if necessary. The patent gives the example of a 1080p image enlarged to 4K, then this 4K image in turn converted to 8K. We imagine that this example will be especially useful when the console is in dock mode, connected to a 4K or 8K television.
Saving space for games
Another advantage given by Nintendo in its patent: reducing the size of games on storage. If a game is designed for 540p or 1080p, rather than native 1080p or native 4K, then data such as textures may also be reduced.
Very concretely, Nintendo gives the example of a game designed for 4K rendering whose requested size would be 60 GB. The size of this game could be reduced to 20 GB if we optimize it for 1080p, then that the we use Nintendo's AI technique to go to 4K.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of this, after a lengthy read, is that one example use case given is explicitly to reduce overall game sizes, to fit a modern game onto “smaller capacity physical media”, e.g. Switch carts, which get exponentially more expensive for larger cart capacities.
— Laura Kate Dale – LauraKBuzz (@laurakbuzz.bsky.social) 2025-01-01T13:41:57.130Z
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As journalist Laura Kate Dale points out on Bluesky, this is a very important issue for Nintendo. Switch games are stored internally on the console, or on cartridge.
However, unlike Blu-ray discs for Xbox and PlayStation consoles, high-capacity cartridges are very expensive to manufacture.
Nintendo therefore has every interest in maintaining a minimum storage size for Switch games. The patent example is far from trivial.
The brand will officially communicate on the console before the end of March. Rumors point to a conference as early as January.
