Will The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 launch on an as-yet unrevealed Nintendo console? Some tech experts are theorizing that could be the case based on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2's most recent round of footage.
Over on Digital Foundry (first reported by GamesRadar), Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Alex Battaglia dissected the most recent Breath of the Wild 2 footage, pointing out a couple of details that suggest the next big Zelda game might be too big to perform on the current Switch hardware.
"This trailer was interesting because the image quality seemed quite good, I think," Linneman said. "I was a little bit surprised by how sharp and clear this looked compared to the original in general."
Battaglia dove into specifics, saying that the "volumetric clouds" present in the footage would be hard for the current 2017 Switch to pull off, while camera cuts with perfect anti-aliasing are something even the Xbox Series X struggles with.
"It could be the next Switch, it could be just that they rendered out a trailer on higher resolution and higher settings," Battaglia said.
However, the guys were quick to point out that Nintendo generally doesn't release trailers at a higher quality than the final product, with one exception being the draw distance for the original Breath of the Wild.
It's worth noting that the original Breath of the Wild was developed as a Wii U game, so a visual bump can be expected for the sequel, which is currently only slated for Switch. That being said, it wouldn't be the first time a major 3D Zelda title launched across platforms, with Twilight Princess coming to GameCube and Wii, and Breath of the Wild serving as the swan song for Wii U and the killer launch title for Switch.
Switch Pro rumors have been swirling on the internet for years. Still, since the original Switch launched in 2017, Nintendo has not released a more powerful model of the console. The biggest update came with last October's Switch OLED Model, which served as an upgrade for players who primarily use handheld or tabletop mode.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 was recently delayed to Spring 2023. When announcing the delay, Zelda Producer Eiji Aounuma said "in order to make this game's experience something special, the entire development team is continuing to work diligently on this game, so please wait a while longer."
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.