In Cologne last month, Nintendo's public Gamescom showfloor booth let you play Pikmin 4 and Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But behind the scenes, the company had more up its sleeves.

Developer presentations for Switch 2 took place behind closed doors, Eurogamer understands, with partners shown tech demos of how well the system is designed to run.

One Switch 2 demo is a souped up version of Switch launch title Zelda: Breath of the Wild, designed to hit the Switch 2's beefier target specs. (To be clear, though - this is just a tech demo. There's no suggestion the game will be re-released.)

Nintendo is yet to publicly discuss plans for its inevitable Switch successor, though its new hardware is widely-expected to launch at some point in 2024. Word that it is now being shown to external developers comes as details have begun to emerge around when we may see the system launch.

A recent report pinned Switch 2's arrival for the latter part of next year, with development kits now in the hands of some key partners. This chimed with what Eurogamer had also previously heard, though on timing I understand Nintendo is keen to launch the system sooner if possible.

Publicly, Nintendo has announced a strong line-up of games to see the current Switch through the rest of 2023 and into the start of next year, with the impressive-looking Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a Super Mario RPG remake and a new WarioWare all coming this side of Christmas.

2024 will bring a new Princess Peach game and a port of Luigi's Mansion 2. The long-awaited Metroid Prime 4, meanwhile, still holds a "TBA" launch date.

Nintendo did not comment when approached for a response.