When you first set up your Nintendo Switch to connect to your TV, you may have been aware of the dock’s limitations when it came to connecting the necessary wires.
Looking at the base from the back, the ‘AC Adapter’, ‘HDMI Out’ and ‘LAN’ ports all face left. If your TV has its connections on the right side, that means you either have to wrap the wires to the right to connect them, or strategically place your connection point to the left of the TV to alleviate the problem.
Well, this could be a thing of the past if it is recent patent from Nintendo eventually comes to fruition (it’s also just as likely that it won’t, by the way). Date April 2, 2024 and posted on reddit ‘GamingLeaksAndRumours’ page, the patent is essentially a rotating I/O (input/output) panel designed to allow you to place the dock’s ports on the left or right side.
As Nintendo themselves state, this is theoretically a simplified cable connection from the dock to the TV; something he describes as potentially ‘problematic’ with the dock ports currently locked to one side.
The images below show the solution in action, showing what Nintendo describes as a ‘swivel block’ that rotates 180 degrees to allow the ports to switch from left to right. The two USB ports are also on the opposite side, so they would also be reversed accordingly. As you probably already know, the USB ports on the current dock are on the right outside (again, looking at it from the back).
We should stress that the likelihood of this ever becoming a reality is somewhat slim, at least with current Switch models. The console is now more than seven years old and probably nearing the end of its life cycle (it sold more than 139 million units), so Nintendo should produce a solution like this now it seems a bit unnecessary.
As for the eventual successor to the console..? Well, who knows. It seems like an elegant solution to a very specific problem, but how ‘Switch 2’ will actually work is anyone’s guess now.
