A U.S. legal patent filed by Nintendo in July 2023 and published on December 31, 2024 reveals an interesting new feature that may be available in the Switch 2. The console has yet to be officially announced, but it remains a major mystery. Video game industry, the ability to play games with higher visual quality and Performance will be even better if patented technology is implemented.
The patent relates to “systems and methods for machine learning image transformation,” which you might think sounds functionally similar to Nvidia's DLSS technology and PlayStation's PSSR upscaling technology. In layman's terms, this machine learning approach allows hardware to fill in the gaps in video game graphics. It can produce the visuals you see at higher resolutions without the hardware typically required for such visuals.
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The increase in visual quality also comes without sacrificing the performance you'd normally expect. So, all in all, this is a handy technology. The Switch 2 in particular – which is widely considered to be less powerful than modern rival consoles from Microsoft and PlayStation – could benefit greatly from squeezing more resources out of the processing power it does possess.
You can read the description and schematics of the patent itself, which is quite technical, here. However, if you take the time to read it, you'll find some interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout. As accessibility consultant Laura Kate Dale points out at Bluesky, the patent notes that the technology could shrink the size of games to better fit “lower capacity physical media.” Laura is properly connected to the Switch cart and currently has a maximum capacity of 32GB. Machine learning image transformations may allow “bigger” games to fit natively on smaller capacity physical hardware.
This isn't the first handy feature we know Nintendo is working on, either, as it has previously confirmed that the console will have backwards compatibility, which makes sense considering the Switch's massive library of exclusive games.
All that's really left to do is officially release the Switch 2 at some point. What else would you like to see in the Switch 2? Any dream features? Let us know!
