 So over the last week we've been talking a lot about the Nintendo Switch 2 because frankly we have some legit reports or at least reports from reliable places in video game chronicle, Eurogamer, Go Nintendo, Nate The Hate all coming together to start opening the floodgates of the Nintendo Switch 2. And they're not the only ones opening the floodgates for Nintendo Switch 2. There's one part of those reports we haven't really dove into and I wanna dive into that today, but not only that, we also potentially have Nintendo themselves giving us some information through patents on a potential new feature for how this system might control. Now quickly before we get into this news, I just wanna say we're on our road to 150,000 subscribers and if you're really enjoying these updates and you wanna say it's as up to date on Switch 2 and Mario Wonder and the new 3D Mario game and Future Zelda games and pretty much all things Nintendo, why don't you go ahead and just drop a like, subscribe to the channel and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling so you can get notified of all of our videos. I wanna get into something that was brought up but I personally kinda glossed over it because I really wasn't sure what it meant but it actually could be something quite important both to the internal memory and storage on Switch which we talked about, you know, the 512 potential gigabytes of that storage and also for the cartridges. And that's because we need to go ahead and go back to this Go Nintendo article we referenced yesterday and there's this part here where it says the device will use a new cartridge format and this is that one thing that was really glossed over by myself because I really wasn't sure what it meant but then as I listened to people like Nate the Hate and Modern Mintage Gamer and RGT85 and then did some digging into some tech forums, I realized a few things are happening here that are really important to the future of this platform. So let's dive into what this really means by talking about NAND flash memory. Now look, the Nintendo Switch itself uses some form of ECMM memory and it could potentially switch over to NAND flash. That's obviously a discussion that is hard to know because when we hear about the internal storage of the Switch being 512 gigabytes, we really don't fully grasp what that is or what that means or what it potentially could mean in the future, it's just not something that we have a deep enough knowledge of at this point to see if they're going away from that to go with NAND flash but there is some reasons for that and in particular one thing we do know about the current Switch today is that the physical cartridges of the Nintendo Switch today use what's known as 2D NAND flash and the prices on 2D NAND flash haven't really gone down over the years. They're pretty expensive to make and obviously are limited in some ways. You guys see those super long load screens in some games that are slightly faster when you have a digital version in set installed on the internal hard drive? Yeah, that's one of the limitations is that while they're faster than disks, they're not so fast as to reducing load times in a meaningful way. But when we hear about the new cartridge format, some people might just go, oh, they're gonna reshape the cartridge so it doesn't fit in the old Switch. Sure, that's probably gonna happen. We saw that with 3DS. But what if I were to tell you that not only could we see a reshaping of the cartridge a little bit, maybe even just a notch, that they might change the entire internals of their cartridges moving forward to 3D NAND. So what does this mean? Well, we have this excellent article here that we're about to go over that will show you about 2D versus 3D NAND and it's an educational article. This is purely educational and here's the difference. Here's what we need to know about it and why 3D NAND should probably already be being used but maybe they needed to wait for a whole new platform to do it. So 3D NAND is the latest version of NAND technology. So it's usually preferred over 2D. NAND flash storage technology uses cells stacked within the smaller chassis to give the users a small storage component with better performance. 2D NAND devices play storage cells side by side. 3D NAND actually just adds another layer in stacked cells vertically so you don't necessarily have to have modules next to each other. Now, yeah, you can still have modules next to each other of course, but they would be much larger modules due to the verticality with that extra layer. And by storing cells within the drives chassis, 3D NAND provides more storage at faster speeds. Now that all sounds good. More storage, faster speeds. This is gonna be more expensive, right? A 3D NAND flash storage device also provides more storage at a lower price than a 2D NAND device. In addition, the newer 3D NAND technology reduces power consumption and increases the speed at which a device can write data to cells. Now, write is one thing we don't know about read speeds. That's not really covered in this article. And for the purposes of loading times, read speeds are really what matters. But if the read speeds aren't any worse, but this storage can have more of it for cheaper with less power needed. That sounds like a go-to. And that's why I said maybe this is also a technology they might consider for the internals. If it happens to have lower power consumption than say an ECMM memory or whatever the heck they're using inside Switch right now. I don't remember those exact details and I'm sorry I don't have them on hand at the moment. But yeah, this is clearly going to affect their technology. This article basically concludes, you should basically just be using 3D NAND whenever possible. You really shouldn't worry about using anything else other than 3D NAND. And that makes a lot of sense for future cartridges. Now, are they gonna need different PIN readouts? Is this gonna mean backwards compatibility is going to end up being a problem because the way they design this means they can't accept the older cartridges. That is something that we're not sure about but is a distinct possibility and is something starting to come up in a lot of conversations where if there is backwards compatibility it might only be for digital libraries and that would probably upset some people. But also if they're using 3D NAND then it also makes cartridge sizes, not only able to get much bigger, right? Like right now we max out at 32, you could probably get a 64, maybe even a 128 out there with a new cartridge design although the 128 is gonna be quite expensive, still would be feasible and maybe closer to the price of what a 32 gigabyte cartridge costs now because again, 3D NAND is cheaper. It is interesting to see that this could cause them not to have cartridge compatibility. They could just put a second slot on there specifically for Switch games and maybe they do that at launch and eliminate that with future models. We've seen this, you know, where the Wii launch could take GameCube disks but later Wii models couldn't. So it is entirely possible that they include physical support at launch and then get rid of it with new models on the line. But at this point, look, this 3D NAND feels like a shoe-in. It just makes too much sense. Nintendo's gonna make cartridges cheaper. So your 4, 8, 16 and 32 gigabyte cartridges are all gonna be significantly cheaper than they were this generation and now you'll be able to get 64 and higher for maybe similar pricing to what we got for say the 16 and the 32. So that is really, really exciting and obviously the fact that their lower power consumption means, hey, you know what? It does take some power to get the data off but these will take even less power than the current disk which will enable longer battery life when you're playing physically. So cool, that's really, really neat but that's not the only thing we're making this video for today because we have some information from patents from Nintendo. Now this first one that we're about to go over isn't necessarily, I believe, for the next switch. It could be for a future Pokemon game, however. And I figured with the Pokemon presents happening in a couple of days, maybe it's just worth glancing at this. So on this patent here, you'll see that it is an applied for Nintendo and you see the inventors here, both in Kyoto. But as we scroll down, you'll notice that this kind of starts to look like a Pokeball. Now you guys might remember the Pokeball controller they released with Pokemon. Let's go Pikachu and let's go Eevee. This feels like a more compact version. Now again, this might not even be for the Nintendo Switch for a future Pokemon game but it also might be, maybe it's something that's supposed to be compatible with their new Pokemon sleep app. I don't know, you have a spot here to put a wrist strap. So to me, it feels like something, it's not something you hold occasionally. It's something that you would probably just use throughout playing Pokemon. And then you have a button here and then you obviously have some sort of control stick there. You have your USB-C charging. You have on off switch here. And yeah, this might be a reset switch or a syncing button so you can sync it to your switch. And as you see, as we go down here, this kind of looks like it's just going to be a controller. You see how it's held. You see how you're meant to press the one button. You have your thumb on a center. Not really a traditional control stick as you're seeing here. You're seeing like this pad here on top of a pad then you see the four directions. So it could be a D-pad replacement or something like that. It's hard to really tell but it's not like a traditional control stick. Maybe it's meant to be a touch direction pad but it's obviously some sort of directional control there. And again, it looks very similar to how D-pads are usually set up as we're looking at all of these full breakdowns. So while this is probably not even related to Nintendo Switch 2, with it coming up, this upcoming Tuesday a Pokemon presents in the early AM, I just wanted to make sure that we at least show this off because this potentially could be something that's about to be announced. And again, you can clearly see this whole D-pad like module that they're working on here. So again, probably for a future Pokemon game if I had to guess. But yeah, and you can see the actuation and how that works or do you be pressing in different directions and it'll push down on the various touch points there on the pad. So yeah, that's cool but that's not what I really wanted to talk about today. Now this is the patent that I actually wanted to spend time talking about because this is the one that could be related to Switch 2. Now, let's back up a bit. Let's back out of the patent for a moment and just briefly talk about the efficacy of what patents really represent. So Nintendo often releases patents well before things come out. And these patents don't necessarily mean anything, okay? Nintendo's patents often come out for things that either already exist or are ideas that they scrapped. So I'm gonna warn this could be a scrapped idea but there are caveats to this. You remember the patents we got for Tears of the Kingdom? Well, those patents ended up showing us new features that were not shown off in Tears of the Kingdom yet and most of those features ended up coming true. Now there are specific parts of the patent that you can point to and go, oh, we can't quite do that in Tears of the Kingdom. So even those patents presented some ideas that didn't make it into the final game but other aspects of that patent were true. And this also technically happened with the Nintendo Switch. So if you guys remember the Nintendo Switch patent back in the day, back when we were still calling it NX and you had that screen that went around the control sticks and we had that fake leak out there where someone 3D printed a very convincing model of one. What was interesting about that patent when you dug through it is it included many things. Not only obviously that it's a handheld with a screen and controls but it was a USB-C. It could be technically plugged into your TV via that USB-C port. So it could be taken on the go or played on your TV. Naturally we didn't have physical buttons. We didn't have detachable controllers. So all of that required a separate control unit to do it but the point is there were some basic ideas there that showed you Nintendo was leaning towards making a hybrid system that was both handheld and could be used on your TV and used USB-C which Nintendo had never used at that point and obviously had a system with a screen on it. And while a lot of the design terminology completely went away and that was totally just a prototype they still ended up releasing a device that you could hold in your hand and this time through a dock use USB-C to use in your TV with detachable controllers. So it was one of those designs that was probably made on the way to getting to that final design of what the Nintendo Switch ultimately became. And so that is why when I say we're about to look at this patent remember everything in this patent might not happen but there are aspects of it that could and again this does affect how you would control the system. Now I wanna know there's gonna be a lot of speculation because we aren't exactly sure all this works. It's a very interesting design. So you can see that the United States patent application was filed on April 3rd of 2023 with a published date. Can't remember where the published date was. The published date was something like a few days ago I think it was August 3rd. Now way down deeper in this I don't know if we'll get to it today but deeper on it notes that they originally potentially filed this like way back in 2020. And again, Nintendo's always working on their next system. So this is an idea they've had around for a while. Just on April 3rd is where they actually wanted to publish it and like lock it in. They wanted just to get fully approved as of April which could be a sign that this is something that's going into the final design. The fact that they filed it in 2020 and then in 2023 they're like, hey, can we get this damn thing approved? Yeah, okay. So what are we talking about? We got this little button like device here that looks very interesting. It shows that there are multiple parts to it and it can move in six different directions and can spin. You see this where, oh, it can spin on the Z axis. It can spin on the Y axis. It can spin on the X axis. So you can move it in a circular motion while moving it in a direction. Now that is, it feels a little similar to the slide pad we had on the 3DS except obviously when you push the slide pad up to go forward or left, right, et cetera you couldn't then also spin it in that direction. So that is a very interesting design and I do see how this has the potential to become a possibly a new type of control stick and an innovation in a way that I don't think any of us were thinking about. And so keep that spinning motion in mind as we go down through the figures. So here's where you get your first look at this sort of looks like a little bit of a traditional control stick. Now, this is obviously pressed up and you're gonna see them over this whole thing. Here is what moves. But I do find this interesting in how this component works because if it just works like a traditional control stick that's totally fine. But now adding extra functionality to that including pressing down button click, right? We've been able to click in our sticks for a long time. But keep this in mind when we get to this really interesting upcoming image. And this is where we see what the top sort of looks like it's probably a bit exaggerated because if you see in this picture here it doesn't quite look that wide of a circle around it. So this is probably an exaggeration just to make a point that this can move independent of this as well in four directions. And this is the component that spins. This is what spins. That's why you see the arrow here. So keep this in mind as we look at this right here. So this looks like to me mostly a traditional control stick. Now you're seeing that it comes off of this, right? Off of this. I'm not so sure that the coming off of that is how the mechanic would work. But the way that I figure is that when you're using a control stick, you know, you press forward and it leans forward. You press back and it leans back, side and it leans side, right? So that's sort of like, hey, we're leaning forward, we're leaning backwards but also we could slide forward and we still have this device on top that we know can turn. So what if, you know, you could press down for a button press but what if you pushed a control stick forward and then you could spin your thumb a little bit and when you spin your thumb that's an additional control that spins this top little segment here and with that top segment spinning adds a whole new input device to a traditional control stick. That to me would be a total Nintendo innovation and if they ever brought this out, that would just be insane. Now it's also entirely possible in looking at this because if you remember up here it showed this top part here can move in four directions. It doesn't have the six direction or eight directions. It's got two accesses here and it can spin. What if in the final design Nintendo does away with the spin because maybe it's just too mechanical and maybe too flimsy and breaks but they keep the four directional slide. So you tilt the control stick forward and then there's that additional thing in the middle that you could just sort of nudge in four directions for an extra for essentially inputs, button inputs, directional inputs in addition to a single control stick. That would be quite curious if they would do something like this. Also it's possible that they only put this on one of the control sticks. So maybe like the left stick, might be your traditional movement stick and the right stick that we're usually pointing cameras and guns and stuff with maybe has this additional fine tune functionality to it. But we're just speculating because we don't really know what this crazy controller stick design is going to be. Is it a sliding stick? What are we talking about? We don't really know. All of this is just explaining the six access data storage and just basically the basic principles of how all of the directions and stuff and get into operation right here, the screen generation section. Like, hey, all your controls and then here's what happens on the screen. And again, you're just seeing sort of a side cut view of how it would be put into a controller. Which by the way, one thing I like noting about this part here is look at this curve. You see this curve? Well, let's say this was a vertical slice of the new controller. This curve suggests better ergonomics for the new controllers. If this, nothing else, you assume back here you're gonna have some triggers, right? You'll have your triggers back here. But when you see this curve, Nintendo might have actually made more ergonomic joy-cons or controllers or whatever they're working on for this thing. So in the end, what are all of my thoughts on this? I do think that obviously Nintendo's gonna go with 3D now. I don't even, I don't think it's a rumor at this point. It's cheaper. So you save money. It uses less power consumption. You get more in a very similar size package. Yeah, duh. They're clearly gonna use 3D NAND for their new cartridges, which unfortunately could mean, could, I'm not 100% sure, that they need a different pin layout. And with a different pin layout, that potentially might mean you can't just do a 3DS to DS situation where you plug in your DS cartridges in the same slot. Now maybe that's a non-story. Maybe they don't have to change the pin layout because you're just changing the chip that goes on the board and you can use the same pin layout and then they'll just have a little notch or something like that to make it so you can't put it into your Nintendo Switch and you move on with your day. So that is obviously entirely possible that you could still have that backwards compatibility. But unfortunately, I don't know enough about if you need to change pin layouts for this new style of NAND flash. And if you do, that to me puts some doubt at least in Nintendo supporting physical backwards compatibility. But that's obviously a conversation for another day. I feel like we're gonna hear a lot more about the physical backwards compatibility and just backwards compatibility in general after Gamescom. I think once developers get together and they cooperate their information, we're gonna start hearing if backwards compatibility is truly a thing physically and digitally. But then when we talk about this new patent on the controls, again, it could be nothing and this could be an entirely scrapped idea, but it also could be something or there could be aspects of this that make it into the final design, even if the entire patent doesn't. And again, I really do love that image. It shows we might have some more ergonomics to this. Like, you know, look, this is a very sharp cutoff. That's not what this one looked like. This one had more of a curve to it, a more of a curve, which feels a lot more ergonomic than what we have here, where right now, you know, my hand right here doesn't even feel the curve, you know, because it's too separated from it. So if there's a nice little curve here that you can sort of feel with the bottom of your hand, it just makes holding things more comfortable. So while they might not still be the most comfortable controls, it would represent a redesign that would show, hey, we do have a new type of Joy-Con. I wish the update I had for you is that Nintendo was gonna use Hall sensors for the control sticks. That would have been really the update I'd like to see, but anyways, that's not what that patent says. I actually read all of that billion, the bunch of text you saw. I read all of it just to see if Hall sensing was in there anywhere, and it's not. So anyways, guys, you guys, let me know what you think about this patent, what you think about the 3D NAND storage, if it's gonna impact, maybe some of you guys are more knowledgeable and you wanna educate me on if they'd have to change pin layouts because that would affect the ability to use old cartridges. I don't know, all I know is I wanna thank you guys for being here, and I'll catch you in the next video.