I don’t believe the latest Nintendo Switch 2 leak and you shouldn’t either

Just like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I’m excited for the Nintendo Switch 2— perhaps even more so than most. I’ve been a Nintendo fan since I was six years old, and have owned every single Nintendo console that has ever existed, with the glaring exception of the Virtual Boy, which my parents believed would melt my eyes out of my skull. But all this to say, I follow Nintendo news pretty closely and am always on the lookout for credible rumors and leaks about Nintendo’s newest offering.

This is why it is so disheartening to me to see an almost certainly fake video being plastered all over my social media feeds and being reported on by legitimate media outlets as something credible when it very clearly isn’t.

What is the most recent Nintendo Switch 2 leak and where did it come from?

Here’s the TL: DR

If you’ve somehow missed it, the source of what some fans have dubbed the “potato quality leak” is a video that was posted on Chinese video site Bibli and was first spotted by Nintendo Soup. The extremely blurry and purposely obscured footage from an unknown, unreliable source appears to show someone removing an upgraded Joy-Con controller from the side of what could be a Switch 2 screen with a single hand motion. The Joy-Cons themselves are then shown with a slightly altered button layout, that notably includes bigger, trigger-like shoulder buttons protruding from the back of the controller.

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Why I don’t think this leak is legitimate

A blurry video and a truly insane button layout

At first glance, this leak appears to back up previous hints that the Switch 2 would have magnetic Joy-Cons and a more complex controller layout. However, here’s why I’m not convinced: the already-blurry footage is totally obscured at the beginning, which sends up my red flags immediately. While high quality leaks are few and far between, this purposeful distortion reeks of AI generation that has been masked with a filter to make it look legitimate.

Another sign that set off my alarm bells was the look of the supposed Switch 2 Joy-Cons themselves. Nintendo is, of course, no stranger to unique button layouts (looking at you N64 controller), but the triggers in that area on the new Joy-Cons would make almost no sense and would render the buttons useless when the console is being used in handheld mode, while still taking up valuable space at the back of the unit, making this particular button layout an actual downgrade from the current shoulder button layout.

However, this impractical design lends credence to my theory that the video is AI generated, as current AI software is often very bad at guessing dimensions and utility when it comes to real-life products. Just ask Google Gemini to generate an image of the next MacBook Pro if you want to see this phenomenon at work. The last time I tried to do that I got an image of a laptop with a backwards monitor. And when I asked the AI to create an image of the new Nintendo Switch, it produced a very long console, which would be pretty hard to hold, as you can see below:

Google Gemini

I get that excitement for the new Nintendo Switch is reaching a fever pitch as we head into the final weeks of 2024. The OG Switch was recently revealed to be on track to become the best-selling video game console ever, and expectations are understandably high for its successor. But next time you see a clickbait headline with some blurry footage claiming to show you an inside look at the new console, maybe scroll on past. T

hese videos are a waste of time, and though legitimate leaks have surfaced in the past, this doesn’t seem like one of those times. And it’s not like we have to wait too much longer for the reveal of the Switch 2 as Nintendo has promised to reveal its next console before the end of next March.

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