The Switch 2 is still nowhere in sight, but Nintendo promises that it hasn’t changed its announcement timeline for the new console. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said on Tuesday in an online press conference that a reveal of the new hardware was still on track for this fiscal year ending March 2025.
A reveal seemed imminent weeks ago, after the company skipped its big annual September Nintendo Direct. October was when it announced the original Switch, before launching it the following spring. But with no further news on the next console, despite plenty of other Nintendo announcements, a look at the Switch 2 before the end of 2024 is looking less likely.
“Making an announcement this year has gotten quite difficult,” Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda told Reuters. “You would not want to divert attention to an upcoming console in the middle of the critical year-end shopping season.”
Indeed, Nintendo is already losing ground on this year’s ambitious sales plan for the nearly eight-year-old Switch. The company previously aimed to sell 13.5 million consoles in 2024. It cut that projection by 1 million in today’s earnings report, which is still an ambitious goal given the lack of any major first-party blockbusters this holiday. Nintendo’s only sold 4.72 million Switch consoles year-to-date.
Despite a steady stream of smaller, mid-sized games like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and ports like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the original Switch is clearly running out of gas. Outside of Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo seems to be holding the next round of upcoming heavy-hitters until the Switch 2 is out, and who knows when that will be.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company holds its big reveal showcase until the standard February Nintendo Direct. Diehard fans just need to hang on for a bit longer. A surprise release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A in January might help with that. After all, that’s when the first Pokémon Legends game hit.
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