Folks, it finally happened…sort of. Nintendo formally (and remarkably casually) acknowledged its successor to the Nintendo Switch, stating that it will be announced “within this fiscal year” as part of an investor meeting this week, meaning we’ll hear about it before April 2025. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa took to the company’s Twitter account to make the announcement himself, and his message all but confirms that the next-generation console, which was reportedly slated for 2024, has been delayed into 2025.
Advertisement
Furukawa’s message makes mention of Nintendo’s next-gen console, saying how it will have been “over nine years” since the Switch was announced, but also confirmed that there will be a customary Nintendo Direct in June. While this would’ve typically been part of E3 (RIP), it’s still slotted around the same time as many other companies’ presentations and announcements, though Furukawa didn’t confirm a specific date for the Direct. Crucially, he stressed that folks shouldn’t anticipate any mention of the Switch successor at this Direct, which will instead focus on the remainder of the Switch’s 2024 lineup. So don’t all get too excited for news of this thing next month. My money’s on a formal Switch 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) announcement early in the fall.
Speculation about Nintendo’s next-generation console has picked up considerably in the last year, especially as landmark titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder released and the Switch’s 2024 lineup appeared to thin significantly. Even now, most of the big first-party titles arriving on the Switch for the remainder of the year are ports or remasters of existing games, such as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. In lieu of major titles, focus has shifted dramatically to rumors about the Switch’s successor, and they are numerous.
Advertisement
It’s been reported that countless titles are being held for the Switch 2 lineup next year, and it is now entirely within the realm of possibility to posit that games like Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which was announced for “Nintendo Switch systems” a few months ago, will be part of the console’s launch window. The Switch 2 was also reportedly delayed in order to, among other things, be able to better meet the demand for a new system and combat resellers, which tracks given how difficult it was to get your hands on a Switch when it launched back in 2017. It sounds like it’ll be worth it, though, because according to some other rumors floating around, the Switch 2 seems likely to have magnetic Joy-Cons, an 8-inch LCD screen, and will apparently be “clocked crazy low” when undocked in order to significantly boost its battery life on the go.
While I expect reporting on Switch 2 rumors to pick up even more now, it officially sounds like we won’t have to wait much longer to figure out what this thing really is. Begin the countdown, y’all, we’re in the home stretch.
