Nintendo has confirmed that news about the Switch’s successor is finally on the way, though the exact timeframe is vague—and the Switch itself is far from dead.
During Nintendo’s May 7 earnings report, Nintendo finally dropped news about the company’s next console. According to Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, an announcement for the Nintendo Switch’s successor will be shared “within this fiscal year,” meaning we should hear about it before March 31, 2025, at the latest—which is when Nintendo’s current fiscal year ends.
This doesn’t mean the Switch is on the outs just yet. Furukawa also confirmed that Nintendo’s next Direct presentation in June will focus entirely on the current generation console and its lineup of games dropping through the end of 2024—and likely into 2025. No news about the “Switch successor” will be shared at that specific Direct, meaning it could be the final time we get a showcase solely focused on the current Switch and its upcoming titles.
In that same earnings report, Nintendo revealed that the Switch hit 141.32 million total hardware units shipped to date, putting it roughly 13 million units behind the Nintendo DS and 17 million units away from the PlayStation 2’s record as the top-selling videogame system of all-time.
As Furukawa said, it’s approaching nine years since the Switch was announced as being in development in March 2015. So, considering the original Nintendo Switch reveal trailer dropped in October 2016 before a bigger blowout in January 2017 revealed some of the games coming to the system after its upcoming March 2017 launch, we could see a similar timeframe for the console’s successor.
Whenever we do see the new Nintendo console for the first time, we should also get a confirmation on the system’s technical specifications, such as how powerful it is, what the screen will look like, if it will continue being a hybrid system, and if it will be backward compatible with the original Switch.
Published: May 7, 2024 02:04 am