With CES 2025 lastly within the rearview, it’s time to maneuver on to the following spherical of massive {hardware} bulletins. Rumors have emerged over the previous few weeks, pointing to an imminent announcement for the next-generation of Nintendo’s wildly profitable hybrid Switch console.
In specific, phrase from trade stalwart Eurogamer (amongst others) pegs a January 16 announcement — that’s to say, Thursday. If certainly the large reveal is coming this week, it factors to a extra incremental announcement. The firm will probably dole info out one Nintendo Direct at a time fairly than one, massive keynote with specs, availability, and launch titles.
We do know for sure that the corporate had its sights set on a Q1 announcement for the Switch 2 — particularly, earlier than the top of March 2025. One different key bit confirmed by Nintendo is the machine’s backward compatibility with its predecessor. That’s excellent news for the 150 million or so who bought the primary Switch.
The greatest query in the mean time is how massive of an improve we’re in the end speaking about right here. Nintendo’s console names have largely pointed to massive departures for each subsequent era. With few exceptions — just like the ill-fated Wii U — issues have been far much less easy than, say, Sony’s PlayStation.
It’s cheap to count on that the Switch 2 will likely be an evolution of the present product, fairly than a significant departure. After all, Nintendo spent a while within the wilderness previous to the Switch’s March 2017 launch. The convertible type issue and a few really wonderful titles had been exactly what the corporate wanted to reestablish itself in a dramatically completely different gaming panorama after the Wii U’s stumbles.
There’s little question the brand new console will greatest the unique specs, but it surely’s additionally vital to mood expectations, given Nintendo’s historical past. The days of going toe-to-toe with rivals on components like GPU are a long time within the firm’s previous.
Other rumors are simply that: magnetic Joy-Cons and a soar in display dimension to eight inches up from 6 on the traditional Switch and seven on the Switch OLED, which arrived towards the top of 2021. Between that console improve and the portable-only, budget-minded mannequin that Nintendo launched with the Switch Lite in 2019, there have been upgrades alongside the way in which.
[Nintendo Switch 2 not pictured]
