Nintendo briefed Activision on the ‘NG Switch’ in 2022, internal email shows

A newly released internal email thread has revealed that Activision met with Nintendo in December 2022 to be briefed on the company’s next Nintendo Switch console, referred to within the exchanges as the “NG Switch”.

As The Verge reports, the emails were sent between Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and other Activision executives, including the chief financial officer of Activision Blizzard, Armin Zerza, and the senior vice president of global platform strategy and partner relations at Activision Blizzard, Chris Schnakenberg. They’ve now been revealed via the FTC v. Microsoft case.

While most of the exchanges have been redacted, one section reads: “Given the closer alignment to gen eight platforms in terms of performance and our previous offerings on PS4/Xbox One, it is reasonable to assume that we could make something compelling for NG Switch as well.

“It would be helpful to secure early access to development hardware prototypes and prove that out nice and early.”

At the start of this month, it was reported that tech demos for the so-called Nintendo Switch 2 took place behind the scenes at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, in August. It was claimed that one of these tech demos was an improved version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which had been developed with the Switch 2’s specifications in mind. TRG sources confirmed these reports, but at the time of writing, Nintendo hasn’t spoken publicly about its next console.

In other news, more documents revealed via the FTC v. Microsoft case have revealed that an Xbox Series X console refresh is on the way, which will scrap the base console’s disc drive. It will instead have 2TB of internal storage, alongside other improvements.

If you’re looking for more games to play, look no further than our recommendations for the best Nintendo Switch games and the best Xbox Series X games.