Nintendo has been no stranger to Switch 2 leaks this past year, and although we always recommend taking each new rumor with a grain of salt, we have some serious doubts about this latest one.
Universo Nintendo reported on a Facebook page posted three images on Thursday of a possible shell for the Nintendo Switch 2. Reportedly, these images are from a third-party accessory maker using a blue silicon exterior.
While this sounds fine on paper, investigating the images even a little reveals that there's more going on here than meets the eye, and it might even be that the leak is fake in its entirety.
These Nintendo Switch 2 renders look suspicious
The leaked Nintendo Switch 2 renders (shown below) clearly suffer from artifacts often found through AI manipulation, with many portions of the design looking muddied.
From a distance, these images seem like an inoffensive render of what we've seen and heard before regarding the Nintendo Switch 2. However, when zooming into any part of the console itself, the flaws of suspected AI generation quickly reveal themselves.
In particular, the Joy-Cons reveals that the details of the individual buttons are completely lost, to the point where the letters atop the face buttons are muddied, with the B button pretty much turning into an indistinguishable blob in every image.
The + button also becomes a total mess, losing its evenness and clearly suffering from the artifacts of image manipulation from AI. This is the case for every button in these renders.
This is also true for the bumpers and the top of the device, which simply lose all of their detail and look like they have random, indistinguishable marks where the "Game Card," "L" and "ZL" should be.
The obvious answer to why these renders look the way they do is that they're simply AI-generated and there's no validity to them whatsoever. However, there could be a few other things happening here.
It's possible that the aforementioned third-party accessory maker upscaled these renders using AI, causing the minute details to deteriorate.
Another possibility is that the third-party accessory maker simply could not render the accessory themselves and utilized AI for assistance. That seems a bit far-fetched, but it depends on how large the accessory maker is and whether or not it has the resources to create or source renders of its own.
It could even be possible that the person who leaked the renders couldn't use the original render images and utilized AI to create a rough mock-up of it.
There are plenty of legitimate explanations for why these renders look as suspicious as they do, but upon further investigation, it's more and more difficult to believe that these images are real.
These new Nintendo Switch 2 leaks don't add up with old ones
In September, the Nintendo Switch 2 saw its biggest leak yet, with claimed specifications and renders dumped onto Reddit. In these leaks, we saw every angle of the console, giving us a look at how the ports are aligned and how the new JoyCons are attached, alongside the presence of a new mysterious button.
Unlike the renders leaked this past Thursday, the images in this original leak aren't AI-generated, and the original Reddit post also claims that the renders were created with a shell model as a base from an accessory manufacturer.
No leak should be taken as fact, but this one seems far less suspicious than the latest one. Comparing the two models shows they're significantly different. In particular, the new leak has three vent sections, with one at the top and two at the bottom, while the older leak only has one at the top.
Due to the inconsistencies between the two renders, it's likely that at least one of these leaks is fake. My money is on the one that appears to have been manipulated using some form of AI tool. However, only time will tell.
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