There have been various rumors about a Nintendo Switch 2 or Nintendo Switch Pro circulating for years, but so far Nintendo hasn’t acknowledged any of them publicly. That has just changed, with Nintendo confirming that it will be revealing the Nintendo Switch 2 sometime before next April.
Speaking during the company’s end of year financial results, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said that a next-generation Switch will be announced “this fiscal year”. Nintendo’s business year runs from April to March, meaning the company has just set itself a March 31 2025 deadline to reveal its next generation console.
As Nintendo itself points out, a March announcement would mark the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the original Nintendo Switch. It also confirmed that while there will be a Nintendo Direct in June, this is to cover Switch software coming in the second half of 2024 — and will not mention the upcoming console.
Previous rumors claim that Nintendo originally intended to have a late 2024 launch for the console. However concerns about the supply chain may have led to a delay, so that Nintendo can meet the expected demand.
It’s probably about time Nintendo revealed a brand new console, rather than continuing on with the Switch. Not only has it been almost a decade since the console was released, Nintendo has seen a slump in sales over the past couple of years. While sales are still fairly strong, they did peak in 2021 — during the COVID-19 pandemic when Switch consoles were almost impossible to find.
Nintendo is also expecting to sell 13.5 million Switch consoles this fiscal year, compared to 15.7 million last year. Not that the company is giving up, announcing that it intends to have several Switch consoles in every home, ideally “one for every person”. But with interest starting to wane, now is the time for the company to start gearing up the hype train for the next console.
Recent rumors about the Switch 2 suggest that the console could come with an 8-inch display and will feature backwards compatibility. That’s with original Switch games and Joy-Cons. The new Joy-Cons may even attach magnetically, though that obviously means they won’t work with the older console — not that we would have expected them to.
Don’t expect any official news from Nintendo for many months, but in the meantime you can keep up to date with the latest news and rumors in our Nintendo Switch 2 hub.
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