Nintendo Hints at DS and 3DS Support for Switch 2

If you've been holding out hope that your favorite DS or 3DS titles might one day be playable on modern Nintendo hardware, you're probably feeling a little more optimistic right now. During a recent investor Q&A session, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked point-blank whether DS or 3DS games would be made playable on the Switch 2, and while he didn't give a direct yes, what he said was pretty telling.

Furukawa's exact response was that while he couldn't answer specifically, Nintendo is actively working to make its back catalog playable on current hardware wherever possible. That's about as close to a confirmation as you're going to get from a company that rarely tips its hand ahead of announcements. In fact, the fact that this question was asked at such an event makes it all the more intriguing.

Questions and answer events like these often reveal hidden clues, even if the questions and answers have been meticulously planned out. A look at how long an executive hesitates before answering or what they choose not to say can reveal just as much as their answer, which is precisely why people hope Nintendo will start live-streaming these events.

Now, look at what Nintendo has already done with the Switch 2's backward compatibility rollout.

DS and 3DS being added to the lineup feels less like a question of if and more like when. The company already brought Virtual Boy games to the platform, which required a specific headset accessory to play. Before that, GameCube support landed with no extra hardware needed, and Game Boy Advance titles worked the same way.

So Nintendo has shown it's willing to go in different directions depending on the system, and DS and 3DS would require a bit of creative thinking given the dual-screen setup. Here's where it gets genuinely interesting for Switch 2 owners.

Nintendo already sells a grip accessory for the Switch 2, and there's a real case to be made that a portrait-mode, vertically oriented configuration could simulate the dual-screen experience that made the DS and 3DS so iconic. If you flip Switch 2 sideways inside a grip designed for it, you've essentially got your top and bottom screens stacked the way they would be on a 3DS, minus the fold.

Throw in a compatible stylus that tucks into the back of the grip itself, pair it with the Switch 2's capacitive touchscreen, and you've got something that actually functions a lot like the original hardware experience. It's not going to fold in half, obviously, but for most DS and 3DS games, the functionality would be there.

The Switch 2 is more than capable of handling the technical side of things when it comes to running that software.

And for DS titles specifically, there's no real reason that couldn't work on the original Switch either. The timing of all this also lines up with something else worth paying attention to. Nintendo has been raising hardware prices, and Nintendo Switch Online is likely to follow with a price increase at some point.

Adding DS and 3DS libraries to the service would give Nintendo a very easy way to justify that bump. The playbook is pretty straightforward at this point: keep stacking more systems and more games into the subscription until it feels like an obvious value, then raise the price while people are still riding the high of new additions.

Whether it's DS and 3DS together, or maybe DS alongside Wii, the goal is to make the catalog feel so loaded that paying more feels reasonable. So while Nintendo hasn't made anything official yet, Furukawa's comments during that investor session made one thing pretty clear. The DS and 3DS aren't being forgotten, and Switch 2 owners might have a lot more classic content headed their way sooner than expected.