From the moment Nintendo announced it was going to make a follow-up to the Switch consoles, speculation about what its name could be had been rampant. One of the most common expectations for what we now know as the Switch 2 was that it would be called the Super Switch, following the naming structure established with the update from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
In a long interview on Nintendo’s website with producer, entertainment planning and development department Kouichi Kawamoto, senior director entertainment planning and development department Takuhiro Dohta, and general manager technology development division Tetsuya Sasaki, Kawamoto explained the naming decision.
“There were a lot of ideas for the name, and we really struggled to find the right one,” Kawamoto says in the interview. “We even considered ideas like ‘Super Nintendo Switch.’ However, Super NES, which came out after the NES, couldn’t play NES games. Since Switch 2 can play Switch games, it didn’t feel right to use the same naming convention as Super NES. Switch 2 is a new system with improved performance, but we’d like players who get their hands on it not to focus on the specs, but rather to think of it as the latest system developed by Nintendo.”
You can read the full discussion that dives deep into all things Switch 2 right here.
