The Nintendo Switch 2 is real. Realer than real. It is so real that only the most precious select insiders, accessory-makers, and publishers have been able to see it or, in some cases, merely touch it. But Nintendo Japan’s big boss has finally offered us the measliest of official morsels. The Nintendo Switch sequel will arrive soon, but we may still have to wait until 2025 to catch the barest glimpse of the ultra-hyped handheld console.
In an overnight tweet, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa spilled the beans on the next switch. He told all those who remain hyped about the console that the company will announce its “successor Switch” sometime this fiscal year. Before you get too excited, Nintendo ends its fiscal year in March. This means that previous rumors that the Switch 2 announcement won’t happen until 2025 could still remain true.
We started hearing rumblings of a Switch 2 long ago before the company released its Nintendo Switch OLED. Previous hints seemed to indicate the legacy game maker would finally elaborate on its sequel console this year, but at some point, that announcement got pushed back. Nintendo first announced its Switch console in 2015, but the company wouldn’t fully release it until early 2017. We’ve now had seven full years to come to terms with the Mario maker’s landmark console that truly brought us our current handheld console paradigm. It’s also been enough time to recognize the faults in the console’s design, mainly because it’s a relatively low-power device where games like Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom occasionally suffer big framerate dips.
The YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, one of the most verbose and reliable leakers on the Switch 2, has proclaimed, according to anonymous sources at Nvidia (the company making the chip for the Switch 2), that the hardware has been completed for “a very long time.” He added that “the ball has long been entirely in [Nintendo’s] court for years,” which seems to indicate Nintendo has had some reason why it wanted to delay the sequel, probably to eek a few more years out of what’s become its most successful console since the Wii.
Moore’s Law also recently shared that the Switch 2 could save on battery life because of the chip’s underclock speed. Until Nintendo finally offers us the full details, we’ll still have to rely on speculation and leaks for the time being.