The Switch 2 reveal on Thursday didn’t tell us much, but the one thing Nintendo was quite particular about showing was the suite of I/O options on the console. I’m pleased to see we’re getting an extra USB-C port, but nothing could compare with the joy of seeing a real, proper headphone jack highlighted so prominently in a 2025 hardware reveal.
Headphone jacks still prominently feature in many of the best gaming handhelds, including modern devices like the Steam Deck OLED, as well as standard PS5 and Xbox Series controllers. But ever since 2016, when Apple declared its own “courage to move on” from analog audio output in favor of Bluetooth, I’ve been increasingly nervous that other tech companies would start to crawl in the same direction.
nintendo is incredibly pragmatic… is it because of battery life?
I think that is one of the reasons, but the main one is probably interference from controllers.
When they added Bluetooth audio to the original switch, they had a limit on the number of controllers you could have connected at the same time (I think it was like two?). So it’s probably the same for switch 2, they just don’t want to deal with it
latency can be a problem, too
doesn’t matter much for calls and music, but timing of gameplay can be harmed with audio lag
Definitely matters for calls, most wireless headphones lower quality for decreased latency when the microphone is on.
At least that’s my understanding
No, that’s because the Bluetooth spec (or codecs, or something) only allow for lower-bandwidth audio in order to support bidirectional streams.
Like if you’ve got a limited bandwidth, you can run any two of high quality audio, stereo audio, and microphone input. There’s not enough for all three.
That’s simplified and probably not 100% accurate, but you get the idea. (Latency probably figures in there too, but it’s not the primary reason, as far as I know.)
This was immediately obvious to me once I tried playing a rhythm game with bluetooth headphones. Never again.
