Nintendo, notoriously secretive, has thus far mentioned nothing — or virtually nothing — on the file about its subsequent recreation console. As Nintendo Swap approaches its seventh birthday in March 2024, questions on how for much longer it should final are pure: Seven years is a typical lifespan for a console era, Swap gross sales are falling quick, and the expertise powering the console is displaying its age. However Nintendo has flatly refused to have interaction with these questions.
Behind the scenes, nevertheless, Nintendo is gearing up for the discharge of its new machine, briefing its companions, and releasing growth kits. Data has began to leak, and an image of what kind the console will take has begun to emerge, in addition to once we can anticipate to listen to about it and once we can anticipate to purchase one.
It’s no shock that Nintendo is treading fastidiously. The Swap has been an unlimited success — it’s the third-best-selling console of all time, behind solely PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s personal DS handheld — which presents each an enormous alternative and an enormous threat. Traditionally, Nintendo has struggled to comply with its hottest codecs: Wii and DS have been adopted by the flop of Wii U and the relative disappointment (in gross sales phrases) of 3DS. Nintendo’s traditional insistence on {hardware} innovation has confirmed as more likely to alienate its viewers as to discover a new one. Will Nintendo break with its personal custom and comply with the Swap with a extra highly effective tackle the identical system, or will it strive one thing completely different?
What’s the newest Swap 2 information?
Nintendo is focusing on a March 2025 launch for the successor to Swap, in keeping with a Nikkei report (as noticed and translated by VGC) on Feb. 26. Nikkei corroborates earlier reporting by the specialist press that the console’s launch had slipped out of its unique late 2024 window.
Nikkei has a couple of new particulars so as to add. First is that agency March window, versus “early 2025” — indicating that Nintendo, as anticipated, nonetheless hopes to launch Swap 2 in its subsequent monetary yr. Secondly, Nintendo’s cause for the delay isn’t just guaranteeing a powerful software program lineup, however attempting to construct up sufficient stock of the console itself to keep away from the shortages and widespread reselling by scalpers that blighted the PlayStation 5’s launch.
Thirdly and most ominously, Nikkei says that Swap 2’s launch may slip past March if the software program isn’t prepared and if Nintendo hasn’t manufactured sufficient models.
Elsewhere, Nikkei corroborates earlier stories that Swap 2 will likely be a hybrid moveable gadget like Swap, and that it’ll characteristic a bigger display than the present mannequin.
Will Nintendo’s next-gen console be referred to as Swap 2?
Relating to its identify, the reply is that we don’t know. It’s value noting that Nintendo has by no means earlier than named its consoles in numerical sequence, even after they have been direct follow-ups to a earlier era, such because the Tremendous Nintendo Leisure System, Recreation Boy Advance, and Nintendo 3DS. Tremendous Nintendo Swap (or Tremendous Swap!) has a sure ring to it, if you happen to ask us. However for now, “Swap 2” is a serviceable shorthand, and what we’ll use on this article.
Will Swap 2 be a hybrid handheld console, like Swap?
The reply right here seems to be sure. Latest reporting by VGC, citing a number of sources after dev kits arrived at accomplice studios, mentioned that the console “would be capable to be utilized in moveable mode, just like the Nintendo Swap.” This was later corroborated by Nikkei.
There’s no phrase but on whether or not the console will characteristic removable Pleasure-Con controllers just like the Swap, or whether or not it should have a handheld-only variant just like the Swap Lite. However early indicators are that Nintendo is eager to comply with carefully within the footsteps of the 130-million-plus-selling Swap.
It may be a bit larger, although. A 2024 report from a Japanese analyst suggests the console could have an 8-inch display, in comparison with the unique Swap’s 6.2 inches and the Swap OLED mannequin’s 7 inches.
What’s Swap 2’s launch date?
Nintendo hasn’t formally indicated when the Swap 2 will likely be launched, however we now have a couple of clues.
Initially, a number of sources reported that the console was deliberate to debut within the second half of 2024. Nonetheless, it now seems that Nintendo is focusing on a March 2025 launch date.
Brazilian games journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe initially broke the information of the slip to 2025, saying that a number of sources mentioned they have been engaged on video games which are set to launch alongside the Swap 2. Each Eurogamer and VGC heard related claims from their sources. Nikkei then reported Nintendo was focusing on March 2025 in an effort to keep away from {hardware} shortages and guarantee a powerful lineup of video games — however famous a slip past March was nonetheless attainable.
Whereas that is later than we beforehand anticipated, it matches in with an October 2023 interview with Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, who reiterated that the corporate would stay targeted on Swap till the top of Nintendo’s present fiscal yr in March 2024, and added that it will proceed to assist Swap with new titles within the following fiscal yr. The shift from “focus” to “assist” for the Swap implies {that a} new console will launch in Nintendo’s subsequent fiscal yr — so, between April 2024 and March 2025.
This additionally strains up with what we find out about declining Swap gross sales, the stage Nintendo is at within the growth of the console, and the discharge schedule for Swap video games. Nintendo beforehand dominated out releasing a brand new console earlier than the top of March 2024, and it now has Swap video games scheduled via summer time 2024; the newest launch on the present schedule is Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which has been given a summer time 2024 slot. (It’s additionally value noting that the not too long ago introduced remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-12 months Door doesn’t have a extra exact launch date than “2024.”)
This does imply the Swap 2 will miss the 2024 vacation season, but it surely’ll give the corporate extra time to stockpile some first-party titles, in keeping with VGC sources.
Will Swap 2 be backward-compatible?
That is the massive query, with many customers hoping — or outright anticipating — to hold ahead their recreation libraries to Nintendo’s subsequent console, as has turn into the norm with the newest generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The reply stays unknown, and it’s not straightforward to foretell, both.
VGC’s report mentioned that the backward compatibility of the machine “stays unclear.” Some third-party publishers have been mentioned to be anxious concerning the potential affect on gross sales of next-gen titles if the machine is backward-compatible. For its half, Nintendo has (in a uncommon on-the-record remark) mentioned it hopes to deliver Swap customers over to the brand new platform with their Nintendo accounts; if the Nintendo account system persists, that might in idea make it straightforward for customers to entry earlier purchases. However that’s not the identical factor because the console being technically able to it.
Nintendo has an honest, if not flawless, file for supporting backward compatibility. Wii performed GameCube video games, and Wii U performed Wii video games; Recreation Boy Advance was backward-compatible with Recreation Boy, and 3DS with DS. However the Swap, with its new recreation cartridge format, enforced a clear break with the previous, and Nintendo has made a mint from rereleasing Wii U video games on the machine, significantly the 55-million-selling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
On stability, so long as the machine makes use of the identical format for bodily releases (see under), Nintendo’s file suggests that it’ll make the Swap 2 backward-compatible. Nonetheless, there stay technical hurdles to implementing backward compatibility, and far will rely upon the chip structure Nintendo has chosen for the Swap 2, which isn’t at present identified.
Will Swap 2 be digital-only, or will video games be offered on cartridge (or disc)?
Of all of the console producers, Nintendo’s ties to the retail trade are maybe the strongest — stronger even than Sony’s — so Nintendo is extraordinarily unlikely to go digital-only for the Swap 2, even when this would appear to make sense for a transportable machine.
Certainly, VGC’s report included the element that the brand new console could have a cartridge slot for bodily releases. That is as near a lifeless cert as we are able to get with the Swap 2 — and it additionally occurs to assist the machine having the identical or related kind issue because the Swap, in addition to growing the probability of backward compatibility.
How highly effective will Swap 2 be? Will it be capable to play new AAA video games?
Due to Microsoft’s authorized battles over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and stories of demos given by Nintendo to companions at Gamescom, we’re starting to get a way of how succesful the Swap 2’s {hardware} will likely be.
Inner emails launched as a part of the FTC v. Microsoft case revealed that Activision executives met with Nintendo in December 2022 to debate the console, and got here away with the impression that efficiency can be near “Gen8 platforms” — in different phrases, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick later mentioned that he had not seen tech specs for the machine, nevertheless.)
If something, the “Gen8” comparability sounds as if it’d undersell the Swap 2’s capabilities. Based on Eurogamer’s and VGC’s reporting on the behind-closed-doors Gamescom demos, Nintendo confirmed {hardware} focusing on the specs of the console operating The Matrix Awakens’ Unreal Engine 5 tech demo with ray tracing enabled and “visuals akin to Sony’s and Microsoft’s current-gen consoles.”
This doesn’t imply that the Swap 2 will likely be as highly effective as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence X. As a substitute, Nintendo is probably going utilizing intelligent methods to scale back the demand on a much less highly effective graphics processor. VGC reported that the demo ran utilizing Nvidia’s superior DLSS upscaling expertise, which makes use of AI to upscale the decision of the picture, making it simpler for builders to optimize efficiency and visuals on weaker {hardware} by decreasing the inner decision settings.
Nonetheless, the point out of Unreal Engine 5 — which is establishing itself because the trade normal engine, focusing on present console {hardware} — together with DLSS and ray tracing means that Nintendo is eager to get nearer to PS5 and Xbox Sequence X when it comes to efficiency, and maybe make it extra possible for builders to port their dwelling console releases on the Swap 2. Reporting by Reuters and Digital Foundry suggests the console will use a customized Nvidia chip that will likely be able to each ray-tracing and DLSS.
Additionally at Gamescom, a particular, improved model of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was proven, operating at greater decision and body charge than it does on Swap.
The Swap 2 will characteristic one tech downgrade, nevertheless: Reportedly, the console will characteristic an LCD display, not like the OLED display seen within the present top-of-the-range Swap mannequin, as a cost-cutting measure.
What video games will likely be accessible for Swap 2?
Talking of the improved Breath of the Wild demo, sources have been eager to level out that there was no suggestion that an enhanced model of the total recreation would turn into a industrial product — though it wouldn’t be altogether stunning if it did.
The foremost candidate for a Swap 2 launch recreation might be Metroid Prime 4. Of the beforehand introduced in-house Nintendo video games, that is the one one with no suggestion of a launch date, and Nintendo has been very quiet about it of late. Provided that, a launch earlier than the second half of 2024 appears unlikely. Maybe Nintendo will make it a cross-gen launch for the Swap and its successor, because it did with Breath of the Wild for Wii U/Swap, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for GameCube/Wii.
Aside from Metroid Prime 4, there are two obtrusive gaps in Nintendo’s lineup: a brand new Mario Kart, and a 3D Tremendous Mario recreation. There hasn’t been an all-new Mario Kart in over 9 years, and apart from making add-ons for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Mario Kart growth group has been quiet for the reason that launch of Arms in 2017. Deluxe has offered so persistently over the Swap’s lifetime that Nintendo hasn’t had an incentive to launch a sequel, however a brand new platform would appear to current the proper alternative for Mario Kart 9.
Equally, there hasn’t been a brand new 3D Mario recreation since 2017’s Tremendous Mario Odyssey. It’s a provided that there will likely be one on Nintendo’s subsequent platform; the one query is when. Odyssey, like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, appeared through the first yr of the Swap’s life; maybe we are able to anticipate a repeat of that for the Swap 2.
Polygon will proceed to replace this story as new particulars develop.