Mere days into the New Year, Nintendo fans are hungrier than ever to get their first look at the Switch 2, and many are convinced that newly surfaced images supposedly depicting one of the console's controllers are legitimate.
As highlighted on Reddit by user SwordfishAgile3472, it's claimed that the images in question originate from Chinese forum site Baidu Tieba, and they show the side and back of what looks like a left Joy-Con. Its black and blue design is reminiscent of the black and blue New 2DS XL, and there are some obvious visual differences setting it apart from a regular Switch Joy-Con. For a start, it seems to be larger, and the SL and SR buttons are bigger.
New Joy-con Photos from Chinese SNS from r/NintendoSwitch2
However, many fans aren't focused on the features of the controller itself but rather on a bit of information printed onto it. Notably, if you zoom in and squint your eyes, there appears to be a 14-digit number running down the side of the controller, which fans have found to actually fetch a result if entered onto Nintendo's official 'Check Warranty Status' page, rather than an 'invalid serial number' error. With that said, while some are suggesting that this proves beyond doubt that we're looking at a legitimate controller, this isn't necessarily the case.
As others on Twitter have pointed out, it's rather easy to get the website to accept a completely made-up serial number – after a bit of testing, I was able to get it to work on multiple series of letters and numbers I entered at random. Although it didn't work every single time, it's fair to say that avoiding the error isn't that difficult.
the Switch 2 Joy-Con leak is legit, but people claiming it's real simply because the serial number works on Nintendo's Check Warranty Status tool is a little sillyhere's a Very Fake™ serial number that "works" pic.twitter.com/WMIhNLOYpfJanuary 5, 2025
Needless to say, do take this all with a pinch of salt for now – chances are, we're going to see more and more supposed leaks appear online until Nintendo finally unveils the console, and fakes will likely become increasingly common. At the very least, the end is in sight for when we can expect the company to give us some legitimate information – it was previously confirmed that an announcement will happen within the current fiscal year, which means we can expect something to happen before the end of March. It's been a long time coming, but hopefully the new console will be able to meet expectations – so far, we already know that it'll be backwards compatible with current Switch games, which means it'll have a massive game library from the get-go.
