Nintendo just did something we didn’t necessarily see coming. The Japanese gaming giant gave the world the good news players needed. After years of rumors that Nintendo routinely shot down, the company is finally ready to confirm the Nintendo Switch successor.
It gets even better than that: We have a Nintendo Switch 2 release date announcement deadline from the company. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said the next-gen console will be announced “within this fiscal year.” Nintendo’s 2024 fiscal year will end on March 31st, 2025. Therefore, the Nintendo Switch 2 should be official by next April.
Furukawa made the comment during the company’s earnings call for the March quarter that ended the previous fiscal year. Nintendo posted the full comment on X, which provides a little more context about the Nintendo Switch 2 release date announcement.
The exec said fans should not expect an announcement at the Nintendo Direct event in June. The company will only address software news for the remainder of the year during the event:
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.
That somewhat narrows everything down. A Nintendo Switch 2 announcement might come anytime between this summer and April 2025. I’d expect Nintendo to unveil the next-gen console this fall, rather than wait it out any longer.
There’s precedent for this, of course. But if Nintendo follows the launch recipe of the first-gen Switch, the successor won’t hit stores this Christmas. The first Switch was unveiled on October 20th, 2016. The console hit stores on March 3rd, 2017, becoming a massive success.
Some rumors say Nintendo will start selling the Switch 2 in the first quarter of 2025. That’s in line with the April 2025 deadline Furukawa offered.
However, Nintendo Switch sales have slowed down compared to the first four years, despite the company’s release of the Nintendo Switch OLED option in 2022. Nintendo expects to sell 13.5 million Switch units in 2024, or more than two million fewer consoles than last year.
A next-gen device is needed to boost hardware sales in the coming years. Let’s also remember that Sony and Microsoft are working on upgrades for the PS5 and Xbox. These console refreshes should be even more powerful than the current models. They’ll probably be available to buyers in time for Christmas, putting extra pressure on Nintendo.
It’ll be interesting to see what sort of specs upgrades the Nintendo Switch 2 will get, especially compared to the upcoming PS5 and Xbox rivals. Some of them have started to leak out, and you should not expect the Nintendo Switch 2 to match the kind of power Sony and Microsoft might be working on.
After all, the Switch’s main feature is that you can play it anywhere. Comparatively, the PS5 and Xbox are gaming-focused desktop-like computers that do not leave the room you place them in.