Nintendo confirms Switch 2 console will be announced before next April-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The original Switch isn’t quite done yet (Nintendo)

The news fans have been waiting years for has finally been confirmed: Nintendo has a new console out but it won’t be revealed this summer.

After literally years of speculation, Nintendo has confirmed what has become obvious to all: they have a new console underway and it will likely be released sometime next year.

The announcement came at the same time as Nintendo’s latest financial results, and ahead of its investor meeting next week (which is now unlikely to reveal any additional information), and states that the new hardware be revealed sometime before April next year – but that the new console will not be mentioned during the traditional Nintendo Direct in June.

Predicting Nintendo is usually a mug’s game but it’s now tempting to assume they’ll follow the same pattern as the original Nintendo Switch, with an initial reveal in October and a launch sometime around March 2025.

Surprisingly, the news was announced in a simple tweet: ‘This is Furukawa, the president of Nintendo. We will be announcing the successor to the Switch during this fiscal year for the first time in nine years since we announced the existence of the Nintendo Switch in March 2015.’

‘We will also be holding a Nintendo Direct in June to announce the Switch software line-up for the second half of 2024, but this will not include the successor model. Please do not misunderstand,’ added Nintendo’s boss.

As you can see, Nintendo does not give any indication of when the console will be released, but if it’s not going to be at the Nintendo Direct in June that all but rules out this year. It’s almost certainly next year though, with a spring launch seeming the most likely.

In terms of its financial results, Nintendo managed to beat its sales predictions for the original Switch, which is now in its seventh year, for a new lifetime total of 141.32 million.

That confirms it as the third most successful console ever, just 10 million behind the Nintendo DS and still with an outside chance of beating the PlayStation 2 for first place.

Sales are definitely falling though and it’s clearly time for a new format, although the newly updated list of the top 10 titles on the system show some impressive successes, with many franchises seeing their best ever performance on the Switch.

Other recent releases have also performed well, with last Christmas’ Super Mario Bros. Wonder now at 13.44 million, remaster Super Mario RPG on 3.14 million, and this year’s Mario Vs. Donkey Kong remaster on 1.12 million and the brand new Princess Peach: Showtime! debuting with 1.22 million.

For the whole financial year, Nintendo saw operating profits rise by 4.9% to the equivalent of £2.74 billion, while net sales increased by 4.4% to the equivalent of £8.29 billion. That alone is an extraordinary result, given the age of the Switch and its thinning release schedule.

At this point, what Nintendo is going to do with the original Switch, until its successor is released, is just as much a mystery as what the new console is.

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Nintendo’s financial targets for the year are surprisingly high, which suggests they have something significant still to announce for launch this year. And yet the only rumours have been for very minor releases, such as a new NES Remix collection.

Even the long-delayed Metroid Prime 4 is unlikely to enjoy that much mainstream success, compared to a Mario or Zelda, so it may be simply that Nintendo is planning a major price reduction for Switch hardware in its final year.

As ever with Nintendo though, it’s always impossible to predict them accurately. But it does seem as if there’s going to be a busy few months ahead, of both rumours and, at last, official announcements.

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