Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that the company's upcoming Switch successor will be backward compatible. But he did so without saying anything about what the Switch 2 will be.

That means the new Switch console, perhaps dubbed the Switch 2, will be able to play games from the older Switch that debuted in 2017.

The Kyoto, Japan-based company said it expects to announce the next device in the financial year ending March 31, 2025, but it did not say more.

"Nintendo Switch is currently being played with by many customers so we decided it would be optimal for them to be able to play their Switch software on the successor model," Furukawa said, according to Reuters.

Nintendo is definitely due for a new console, as the company just reported its revenues were down 34% in the first six months of its fiscal year. For the period ending September 30, Nintendo lowered its forecast for how many Switch units would sell by March of next year from 13.5 million to 12.5 million.

Backward compatibility

Backward compatibility used to be very hard to do with emulation technology. In older days, it was cost prohibitive. But it is much easier to do when there are big gaps in processing power from the older tech to the newer tech. And it's easier to do backward compatibility if Nintendo stays with its current hardware architecture, using the same key vendors such as Nvidia.

This is speculation, but to me that mea ...