[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Leaker-shares-mounting-Nintendo-Switch-Mini-or-Switch-Pocket-evidence-offers-up-release-date-and-price-predictions.775242.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Leaker-shares-mounting-Nintendo-Switch-Mini-or-Switch-Pocket-evidence-offers-up-release-date-and-price-predictions.775242.0.html)
“*A Nintendo Switch Mini or Nintendo Switch Pocket handheld console could be in the pipeline according to a popular X-based leaker. It seems the source has dug up numerous patents that point to a miniature Switch, although patents often lead to nothing more than the public description of an idea. However, this hasn’t stopped the leaker predicting a price and release date for a Switch Mini.”*
It definitely a possibility, though the timeline seems a little too soon. I’m super-excited about the possibility, though!
What do you think? Is there any merit to the prediction?
by jkibbe
33 Comments
The Switch Lite is already as small as I would want a Switch to be, and it’s still an issue with readability at its size. So no, I don’t want a Switch Mini, and I hope they really aren’t doing one.
Why? We already have the Switch lite.
So, a Game Boy.
It would be completely unnecessary. Soooo we should probably brace ourselves for it to be true lol.
Until Nintendo officially announces something, it’s nothing but speculation. I don’t put any merit into rumors or speculation until something is official.
Doubt it
Getting it smaller would be nice for pocketablity but then you’d just want to use your phone. Also, just having a patent doesn’t mean much. Fun but nothing burger.
There’s tons and tons of patents that never resulted in something you could actually buy. I wouldn’t put much stock into them leading to new products.
Day one, it’d be awesome if they could make it the size of a Retroid Pocket 3 (a bit bigger than a Vita?).
I’d keep it as my portable Switch even after Switch 2 comes out.
people are always complaining that the switch somehow isn’t portable enough so I could see this happening. I never play games outside my house so this isn’t for me though
Yeah you know. Subjectively spoken, 90% of all Nintendo leaks in the last 4 years were false…
But, why? The Switch Lite already exists.
If anything, a switch lite OLED would make more sense.
How small do people want the switch mini to be, like a psp go or 3ds size? As long as it’s backwards compatible I would be ok with it but if it loses to many options like backwards compatibility or battery life I won’t consider it.
Text is hard enough to read in the switch for these old eyes, a smaller screen aint gonna help in that regard.
Ignoring the fact that we already have a Switch lite, the gameplay quality would be lower insuch a system.
Let’s assume the best and say that this system will have the same graphical capacity and inner hardware as the previous models. Let’s say this model will even have a better LCD screen and a longer battery life.
There is a major problem they are yet to address though: Screen size.
I am a lite-only switch user. Switch games and ports have a problem where some of their UI and HUD is too small for handheld mode. As someone who owns almost all handhelds ever made, this is a problem unique to the switch. When I play my PSP, I don’t feel the same issue.
This issue was multiplied with the release of the lite, as lite offers an even smaller screen than the OG switch. Some UI elements, are just too small for switch.
Now this problem will be multiplied further by presumably an even smaller screen. None of those games were ever made to be played in that much of a small screen. Their HUD and UI will be too small.
My first thought was “Wait! We already have a Switch Lite!” Then I remembered that this is the same company that brought us the Gameboy Micro out of the blue after the DS had already been released. Not complaining, because I love my Micro, but Nintendo does weird things.
If true, my hunch is that they’re trying to squeeze the last bit of life out of the Switch to maybe dethrone the PS2 as the best selling console of all time before announcing the next generation.
I mean, if Nintendo’s figured out a way to bring the Switch’s hardware down to the size of a premium smartphone, I could see the logic in making it the last version of the Switch that releases shortly before the Switch 2. That way, it’s super cheap and easy to bring gamers into the Nintendo ecosystem and makes the Switch attractive as a true pocket portable even after the Switch 2 launches.
This is what Sony did when they released the Playstation One (a much smaller revision of the original Playstation console) shortly before the launch of the PlayStation 2. The Playstation One ended up outselling every other console the year it came out, even the brand new PS2. Pretty impressive considering it launched in July. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nintendo try the same strategy.
>However, it’s worth remembering that leakers who are based on X (formerly Twitter) often have to resort to sensationalism and hyperbole to attract followers, so a pinch of salt is definitely required in this instance.
Good point. As others have pointed out, readability is already a factor on the switch lite, so an even smaller switch seems ficticious to me.
But in the far-flung future, a foldable switch akin to samsung’s fold, that’ll be interesting imo. Patents sometimes aren’t used for ages afterall.
Not again…
Some games are hard enough to read as-is…
> In addition, the source expects cartridge support to be available and that the miniature Nintendo Switch should be able to handle up to 12 hours of gaming in terms of battery life and come in a choice of colors.
Just based on that sentence, I wouldn’t pay much heed into this. Seems like just another sensationalism post.
omg, I already find playing on the OLED Switch tough enough with it’s “small” screen. I am PRAYING they make a larger one! Or that these damn game developers stop just flat porting games and actually make text size READABLE!
THERE IS NO SWITCH 2
I play lots of side scrollers with little sprites in big levels…not sure my aging eyes would be able to handle it the shrinkage.
Switchy
They just need to do an oled lite if it’s not the switch 2.
Love how these articles have started to acknowledge that patents mean essentially nothing when it comes to predicting future products actually coming to market, then proceed to speculate wildly anyway. Clickbait at its best/worst.
How credible is this website?
I don’t think the switch hardware can physically take getting any smaller than the switch lite
My switch mini is the 3DS
I’ll wait for a more reputable source other than ‘notebookcheck’.
Highly doubtful that this is true in the first place.
Clamshell switch lite+ please