Someone asked recently, "what's the future viability of Fuze on Switch?" Which got me thinking, "what's the future viability of the Switch in general?"

Right now, it's not too difficult to just add dynamic resolution scaling and lower resolution textures to a game designed for the 1.3 teraflops PlayStation 4, and get it running on the 380-or-so gigaflops Switch, at 30 fps. But I can't fathom approximating even today's "Metro Exodus" as it runs on my RTX 2080, on Switch-- much less actual "next generation" games, which will be targeting hardware ray tracing and 12 teraflops as a minimum target.

Compounding the problem is the presence of the Switch Lite, which-- being handheld-only-- is limited to about 150 gigaflops. That's a gap of 80 times in terms of power, between the minimum PlayStation 5 and Switch baselines! There's no amount of resolution scaling which will bridge that chasm-- not to mention the Switch will no longer support the same minimum hardware features as its competitors, as it does presently.

The Switch's installed base is already huge, so I don't think it's going to become a third-party wasteland like the Wii U was. But I think the library will shift to lower-budget mid-tier games made specifically for the platform, versus it continuing to get ports of actual mainstream titles. I could see this result in a flattening out of sales growth, because the value of the Switch as providing mainstream experiences will be seriously compromised.

Of course, we don't know what the rumored "Switch Pro" will be.

My current theory is that it will be a TV-only version of the hardware, but with tech specs intended to catch it up to current platforms by providing a solid 1080p experience, with much less dynamic resolution stuff going on-- not be some kind of PlayStation 5 competitor. On that note, I'm skeptical they can even really go PlayStation 4 Pro-levels (4.2 teraflops), because it'll be difficult for the Switch Lite to run those same games with an even close to equivalent experience.

I'd been thinking that Nintendo could incrementally add cores and increase clocks to gradually and smoothly shuffle people along to newer Switch hardware. After all, that's one of the beautiful things about having gone with ARM.

But the more I think about it, and with the complete strategy divergence of the Switch Lite, the more I think they will need to make a complete "break" via a "Switch 2", which would drastically update the handheld baseline as well as the on-TV format. In other words, the dock-less "Switch Lite" may buy them some temporary sales and praise, but could wind up being a real messy "ball-and-chain" scenario for them down the road.