On a Nintendo careers page, software engineer Matsumoto revealed that in 2018, he came up with the idea of moving the non-game audio (e.g., HOME menu sound) from the sound processor to a different processor (probably the Cortex-A57 CPU core reserved for OS), to free up more sound processing resources for games.
According to Matsumoto, the development was difficult:
- Wide-ranging changes needed to be made, from low-level OS to high-level software features
- Coordination across departments and partner companies
- Various issues to address, such as audio noise occurring when the processor load spiked
Matsumoto stated that it was successfully released (mostly likely via a firmware update), but didn’t mention in what year. Looking at the austere Home screen on Switch 2, it’s apparent that their ethos of lean system continues. The Wii menu soundtrack is unlikely to come back anytime soon.
[Originally posted on 2025-12-28 Pacific Time]
