According to the recent rumors, a new Nintendo Switch model could be on the horizon, and that model could have possibly already been spotted in the filings at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States.
Nintendo issued an official letter to the FCC, including all the changes applied to a new model, technically a hardware revision, that it is about to start selling.
The changes won’t impact the external design of the console but could be coming as a preparation of the Switch Pro model that should be available in early 2021.
“This is to request a Class II permissive change for FCC ID: BKEHAT002, originally granted on 04/18/2017 and all its permissive changes. We changed the following points from the original model,” the letter says, with the points being:
- Change of SoC
- Change of Memory
- CPU Board is changed due to the above two components
“Since there is no change in shape of the enclosure and the component layout related to RF characteristics including the antenna between the original model and the new model, the SAR testing on the new model is not required and is waived,” adds the platform owner.
The document was filed on August 23, just a few days before the latest rumors started to pop up on the Internet. This could both mean that the new model is not a Pro version but just one with slight hardware changes, or that this is not related to the higher performance SKU on its way soon.
Also, with new SoC, memory, and CPU board, it’s not to be ruled out that this could work as some kind of preparation ahead of the release of the new model.
The so-called Nintendo Switch Pro is aiming, according to reliable sources, at 4K resolution and a better display, and should be up to the challenge when it comes to next-generation graphics. The production should be about to start, while a release is expected to happen in Q1 2021, slightly later the holiday season where PS5 and Xbox Series X are launching.
