The Future of Nintendo

Nintendo, known for its secrecy, has so far said little about its next game console. As the Nintendo Switch celebrated its seventh birthday in March 2024, questions about its future arise naturally: Seven years is a typical lifespan for a console generation, Switch sales are declining, and the technology powering the console is showing its age.

However, behind the scenes, Nintendo is gearing up for the release of its new machine, briefing its partners, and releasing development kits. Information has started to leak, revealing a picture of what form the console will take and when we can expect to hear about it and buy one.

The Challenge and Opportunity for Nintendo

Nintendo is proceeding with caution. The Switch has been an enormous success — it’s the third-best-selling console of all time, behind only the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s own DS handheld — presenting both a big opportunity and a big risk. Historically, Nintendo has struggled to follow its most popular formats: the Wii and the DS were followed by the flop of the Wii U and the relative disappointment (in sales terms) of the 3DS. Nintendo’s usual insistence on hardware innovation has proven as likely to alienate its audience as to find a new one. Will Nintendo break with its tradition and follow the Switch with a more powerful take on the same formula, or will it try something different?

The Latest Switch 2 News

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told investors at the company’s annual general meeting on June 27 that he does not expect stock shortages for the successor console to Nintendo Switch. Answering a question about the steps Nintendo would take to prevent scalpers from creating a resale market around the Switch 2, Furukawa noted that the chip shortages that have constrained Switch production (and, notably, PlayStation 5 stock) in recent years were no longer an issue.

“As a measure against resale, we believe that the most important thing is to produce a sufficient number of units to meet customer demand, and this approach has not changed since last year,” Furukawa said (via Google Translate). “Last year and the year before, we were unable to produce a sufficient amount of Nintendo Switch hardware due to a shortage of semiconductor parts, but this situation has now been resolved. We do not believe that the shortage of parts will have a significant impact on production of the successor model at this time.”

It has been reported that part of the reason for the Switch 2’s delay into 2025 has been that Nintendo is keen to have enough hardware units on hand to supply the market, as well as enough games ready for launch.

Will Nintendo’s Next-Gen Console Be Called Switch 2?

Regarding its name, the answer is that we don’t know. It’s worth noting that Nintendo has never named its consoles in numerical sequence, even when they were direct follow-ups to a previous generation, such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo 3DS. Super Nintendo Switch (or Super Switch!) has a certain ring to it, if you ask us. But for now, “Switch 2” is a serviceable shorthand and what we’ll use in this article.

Will Switch 2 Be a Hybrid Handheld Console, Like Switch?

The answer here appears to be yes. Reporting by VGC, citing multiple sources after dev kits arrived at partner studios, said that the console “would be able to be used in portable mode, similar to the Nintendo Switch.” This was later corroborated by Nikkei.

Reports suggest the console will feature detachable Joy-Con controllers like the Switch, this time with a magnetic attachment system as well as additional buttons, plus a dock similar to the original Switch’s. There’s no word on whether it will have a handheld-only variant like the Switch Lite. But early signs are that Nintendo is keen to follow closely in the footsteps of the 130-million-plus-selling Switch.

It might be a bit bigger, though. A 2024 report from a Japanese analyst suggests the console will have an 8-inch screen, compared to the original Switch’s 6.2 inches and the Switch OLED model’s 7 inches.

What Is Switch 2’s Release Date?

Nintendo hasn’t officially indicated when the Switch 2 will be released, but we have a few clues.

Originally, multiple sources reported that the console was planned to debut in the second half of 2024. However, it now appears that Nintendo is targeting a March 2025 release date.

Brazilian games journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe originally broke the news of the slip to 2025, saying that multiple sources said they were working on games that are set to launch alongside the Switch 2. Both Eurogamer and VGC heard similar claims from their sources. Nikkei then reported Nintendo was targeting March 2025 in an effort to avoid hardware shortages and ensure a strong lineup of games — but noted a slip beyond March was still possible.

While this is later than we previously expected, it fits in with an October 2023 interview with Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, who reiterated that the company would remain focused on Switch until the end of Nintendo’s current fiscal year in March 2024 and added that it would continue to support Switch with new titles in the following fiscal year. The shift from “focus” to “support” for the Switch implies that a new console will launch in Nintendo’s next fiscal year — so, between April 2024 and March 2025.

This also lines up with what we know about declining Switch sales, the stage Nintendo is at in the development of the console, and the release schedule for Switch games. Nintendo previously ruled out releasing a new console before the end of March 2024, and it now has Switch games scheduled through summer 2024; the latest release on the current schedule is Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which has been given a summer 2024 slot. (It’s also worth noting that the recently announced remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door doesn’t have a more precise release date than “2024.”)

This does mean the Switch 2 will miss the 2024 holiday season, but it’ll give the company more time to stockpile some first-party titles, according to VGC sources.

Will Switch 2 Be Backward-Compatible?

This is the big question, with many users hoping — or outright expecting — to carry forward their game libraries to Nintendo’s next console, as has become the norm with the latest generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The answer remains unknown, and it’s not easy to predict, either.

VGC’s report said that the backward compatibility of the machine “remains unclear.” Some third-party publishers were said to be worried about the potential impact on sales of next-gen titles if the machine is backward-compatible. For its part, Nintendo has (in a rare on-the-record comment) said it hopes to bring Switch users over to the new platform with their Nintendo accounts; if the Nintendo account system persists, that would in theory make it easy for users to access previous purchases. But that’s not the same thing as the console being technically capable of it.

However, later reports, sourced from peripheral manufacturers, suggest that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible with Switch games — including physical cartridges — and accessories, including the Pro Controller and Joy-Cons.

Will Switch 2 Be Digital-Only, or Will Games Be Sold on Cartridge (or Disc)?

Of all the console manufacturers, Nintendo’s ties to the retail industry are perhaps the strongest — stronger even than Sony’s — so Nintendo is extremely unlikely to go digital-only for the Switch 2, even if this would seem to make sense for a portable machine.

Indeed, VGC’s report included the detail that the new console will have a cartridge slot for physical releases. This is as close to a dead cert as we can get with the Switch 2 — and it also happens to support the machine having the same or similar form factor as the Switch, as well as increasing the likelihood of backward compatibility.

How Powerful Will Switch 2 Be? Will It Be Able to Play New AAA Games?

Thanks to Microsoft’s legal battles over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and reports of demos given by Nintendo to partners at Gamescom, we are beginning to get a sense of how capable the Switch 2’s hardware will be.

Internal emails released as part of the FTC v. Microsoft case revealed that Activision executives met with Nintendo in December 2022 to discuss the console and came away with the impression that performance would be close to “Gen8 platforms