Nintendo is banning some third-party Switch 2 consoles, but doesn’t explain why

Nintendo recently released an update (21.0.0) for its system Switch 2 console That in addition Some small changescausing some third-party platforms to stop working as intended. In the first weeks and months of the console’s availability this summer, Companies competed To figure out the right commands, the right power draw, and the right chips to use to trick the Switch 2 into thinking it’s connected to the real thing — Nintendo’s Dock, which is included with every console. Now, some of them will have to figure out how to do it again.

You’re not alone if you think Nintendo did this on purpose. But did you do it? According to Nintendo, not exactly. Games website My city It posted a new statement from the company saying it has “no intention to obstruct or invalidate third-party legal compliance.” Read Somehow, it seems Nintendo didn’t intend to cause these issues with its latest update. Read another way, Nintendo appears to have proven that there is both a legal and an illegal way to make a third-party Switch 2 console, and it appears that much of it was made illegally.

Without more details from Nintendo, it’s hard to know what this means for the future. Are there more sidewalks on the sidewalk chopping block? Is it reconfiguring its Switch 2 dock handshake to leave third-party dock makers constantly scrambling? Will it develop (or has it already developed) something similar to Apple’s MFi certification program to allow companies to pay a fee to pledge out-of-the-box support using its closed port?

Whatever the answers, it’s only natural that Nintendo would want to push consumers toward using its expensive dock, and push third-party companies away from trying to design duplicate hardware at a fraction of the cost. This means that the next couple of months are interesting for third-party makers, including the likes of Jinki and JSAUXwhich will launch compact power adapter-sized docks later this year. Switch 2 support is on every one of their feature lists, but we’ll see if it remains a selling point closer to their launch.