SciresM doesn’t believe newer Switch units (codenamed “Mariko” will see the ability to run Atmosphere, according to a quote from his livestream earlier this month:
“It will surprise me if we manage to hack Mariko. Our hacking Mariko is not something that I’d expect. I expect that we will glitch it and get the keys but I am not expecting for users to have the ability to run Atmosphere on Mariko. If we can, that would be awesome, but I don’t think we will.”
The Nintendo Switch got hacked “beyond repair” last year when hackers released Fusee Gelee, a hack relying on hardware flaws of the device (specifically its Nvidia SoC). Software updates are not possible to patch this issue, and it was known that only a hardware revision would prevent hacking the console.
The original unpatched models are set to become even more rare, with the increasing presence of Mariko & the release of the upcoming Nintendo Switch Lite. For those who haven’t bought a Switch yet and expect to grab an unpatched version, it appears checking the serial number on the box remains a semi-valid way of knowing what you buy today.