Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa dashed everyone’s hopes of an imminent Switch 2 reveal in a Twitter/X post this morning. While Furukawa did finally offer official confirmation of a new console, the company won’t be talking about it right now.
“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.”
Remember, the fiscal year is between now and March 2025.
What we’ll see next month is the last push of Nintendo Switch software before the next hardware launch.
But what about the Switch 2 (or whatever Nintendo calls it)? What kind of timeline are we looking at between reveal and release? Let’s look at the Nintendo Switch to get an idea of what we could see.
The Nintendo Switch was unveiled on October 20, 2016, and hit retail less than six months later on March 3, 2017. The most recent rumors are pointing to a March 2025 release date. If these rumors pan out, we’ll probably see a very similar reveal to release for the next piece of Nintendo hardware.
I’m curious to see what today’s official acknowledgment of the next Nintendo hardware means for game announcements later this year. We’ll see a flurry of game announcements next month as publishers host events to talk about their lineups for the rest of this year and beyond. When 2025 games are announced, will the platform list include the next Nintendo Switch? It’ll be something to keep an eye on.
Microsoft made a big deal about promising to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms as it finalized its Activision Blizzard buyout. Maybe we’ll get confirmation that the next Call of Duty will hit Nintendo during their Xbox Showcase on June 9.
I’m curious to see what Nintendo decides to do. The company has never been one to follow the traditional path. And the handheld market has a lot more competition these days with the Steam Deck. But Nintendo’s software will carry whatever they decide to do. Just give us a good performance bump, and I’ll be happy.