Nintendo Switch 2 developers confirm ray-tracing is available

Nintendo Switch 2 developers have sat down for an interview to discuss the upcoming console's hardware capabilities and what game developers will have at their disposal when it comes to building games for Nintendo's latest platform.

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Kouchi Kawamoto and Takuhiro Dohta from Nintendo's Entertainment Planning and Development Department, and Tetusya Sasaki from Nintendo's Technology Development Division spoke with IGN, who asked several questions about what is under the hood of the Switch 2. Nintendo was asked if the Switch 2 is running a NVIDIA Tegra SOC (System on Chip), and what graphics architecture the chip is based on. Nintendo slightly deflected from the question by saying that "a lot of details" will be discovered in "NVIDIA's information they've shared."

Additionally, Nintendo was asked what kind of upscaling the system uses, and if it's AI upscaling. Nintendo responded by saying, "I think probably the main kind of easiest upscaling to use is the DLSS that NVIDIA provides. So from that standpoint, I guess you could say this AI." Nintendo added that its planning on rolling out "other options of upscaling through software" that include both AI-based and non-AI-based upscaling.

Nintendo gave some information that wasn't included in the Direct focussed on the new console, which is the confirmation that even though there is upscaling, "there's also the option to not upscale and just output natively. So that's also an option that developers can use."

IGN: What about ray tracing? Is that something that your team experimented with?

Nintendo: Just like DLSS, that's when we're kind of making the graphics of a game. We consider ray tracing as just another tool to do that - it's not that we're going to try to use ray tracing on everything, but really trying to figure out what types of graphics, what types of screens, what types of situations are best suited for ray tracing, and then trying to apply that. That's the approach we took when we did all of our researching and experimenting.