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.
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.)
Makes sense, thank you