While Nintendo themselves have not given us any tangible information regrading the plans for their next-generation console, speculation continues run rampant about what it is, how much it will cost, the form-factor, what possible games are in development for it, and when it will release? The latest report suggests that their next console (for the sake of this conversation let's just call it the "Switch 2" although I suspect there could be more than meets the eye to this elusive-device,) will not release until 2025, but still within the window of Nintendo's fiscal-year. This means based on the report, anytime between January and March of 2025 we could see the Switch 2.
The reason why I say "report" rather than "rumor" is because this has been corroborated by several credible sources. On February 16th, 2024, Brazilian game journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe is the one that broke the story. Afterwards, VGC News along with Eurogamer (the ones that correctly reported the form factor of the Nintendo Switch back in 2016) backed up that story with their own sources. Finally, Bloomberg chimed in on this story to back it up further.Now granted, Nintendo has not said anything at all to confirm or deny these reports and as of the time of this writing don't seem to be in any type of a hurry to do so, but when you have an organization such a Bloomberg reporting on information regarding your plans and congruently the Nintendo stock price has dropped over 8% largely in reaction to this report, it is grossly irresponsible and negligent as a company to allow misinformation to carry this long without a response. This is why I feel this information has some truth behind it. How much truth we won't know until Nintendo stops all the subterfuge and just reveals the Switch 2. There are times when silence is golden. This is not one of those times. Even if these reports are 100% true, Nintendo owes it to their fan-base as well as their shareholders to explain why even in a cursory-sense. We don't need to know the final specs of it yet. We don't need to know the official name yet. We don't need to know the main launch title and any other intricate details. Even just a code-name would be nice. Just an official acknowledgement of the device from Nintendo. I'm closing in on 50 and I've see all of Nintendo's consoles. I can never remember being this late in the game and not even having so much as a code-name for Nintendo's successor yet. The first time I remember hearing code-names for Nintendo console was with 'Project Reality' back in 1993 which was an experiment of Nintendo toying around with Silicon Graphics computers. That eventually was developed into a console form-factor with the Ultra64, and then that finally became the Nintendo64. With the Nintendo GameCube, it had the code-name of 'Dolphin' in 1999. Two years before the release the console. In 2004, then Nintendo President the late Saturo Iwata announced Nintendo's plan for the 'Nintendo Revolution' which was the code-name for the Nintendo Wii which was revealed at E3 2006.In April of 2011, there was a leak that Nintendo was working on a new console with the code-name of 'Project Cafe.' It was only two months later that it was revealed at E3 2011 to be the Nintendo Wii U.Finally, in 2013, the late Saturo Iwata stated in an interview that Nintendo's plan for their next-gen console was to release a family of devices that shared a common OS. In 2015, Nintendo official gave the code-name for their console which was 'Project NX.' That was revealed to be the Nintendo Switch in 2016, and released in 2017.
So, with the last three consoles Nintendo has kind of been all over the place in terms of it's timing on releasing information officially about their next-gen console. While there was only one case of this (with the Wii U,) the precedent has been set for Nintendo to go from 0-to-10 at the drop of a dime, meaning going from having no information at all to a full reveal. However, even with the Wii U we still had to wait a year after the full reveal of the console. The Switch 2 is "allegedly" going to release in early 2025 and we haven't even seen the blasted-thing yet! Hopefully, Nintendo doesn't keep us waiting much longer.
