As a Nintendo fan and Switch owner I’ve been following the company’s output for a few decades now and want to get out ahead of news of the Switch’s successor. Below I will lay out my feelings on the Switch, briefly, as well as what I feel Nintendo will do to follow it up, why it will take that form and when it will release. There’s a point of pride in here for me, there is no point in saying “I knew it” but there is one in saying “I told you so” so I am going to tell you so right now.
But first, lets run down where the Switch is and how it got there. The Switch launched in March of 2017 with its headliner being Zelda BoTW- a Wii U dual release. 1/2 Switch, Arms and Overcooked filled out its release slate, with a small selection of third party titles too. Despite coming off of two disappointments (the 3DS and Wii U) the Switch was off like a rocket and has managed to be a strong seller for all of its 6+ years of life. Though there have been occasional questionable patches the Switch’s biggest surprise was probably Covid, which resulted in world-wide stock-outs in a period of time when the system should have been struggling to add users. Indeed, the system continues to sell well today, despite its massive existing user-base and total lack of price drops. With total lifetime sales of 125 million and nearly 5000 games released the Switch is a massive -and massively profitable- ecosystem.
And yet all good things have come to an end and it is clear to nearly everyone that the Switch has to be phased out and replaced. But why? Internally at Nintendo, I think its clear that the gravy train is over. In advising Ubisoft on Mario+Rabbids 2, they warned the French that ”it's better to do one iteration on each machine” and the headstrong Ubisofties have admitted that they probably should have waited (“we were a bit too early”). How many of Nintendo’s Switch games are holding up their series’ slot? Nintendo has released one of nearly every series active. They also are, due to an industry switch to “current gen” systems, running into issues getting downports of current games. It was always tough being one gen behind-techwise, but being two gens behind makes such porting nearly impossible. Furthermore, the limitations of the dated hardware have pained Nintendo’s own teams, and as industry-wide engine (and middleware) support moves on, Nintendo must as well. If for nothing else, than for the pride and ambition of its own teams.
So then, what are they to do? For the past twenty years Nintendo has adopted its famous “blue ocean” strategy where it swims away from the “red ocean” of direct, bloody competition and plays in its own area. Less keen-eyed readers will summarize this as “gimmicks.” Ala the second, touch-based, screen of the DS and the motion controls of the Wii. And they certainly were blue ocean. And they certainly were gimmicks. But being blue ocean doesn’t mean you have to change the gimmick each time. Because no competitor has released a mass-market hybrid system, Nintendo is free to keep it the same and instead release the “Switch 2” as a better version of the original hybrid vision.
That choice gives Nintendo several benefits. The most important is that they know that the gimmick works. There is a major fear in the company that they will lose their massive existing userbase and playing it “safe” with the same gimmick could be a play at keeping them. Maintaining current Switch features across the divide will also make it easier to incorporate backwards compatibility, which Nintendo seems to think is a big selling point historically but was impossible to maintain for Switch due to changing control schemes. It also makes dual platform releases easier, an aspect of game development which Nintendo largely declined to take part in, even in 2017 to 2019 when Switch was sharing its stage with the 3DS.
And thus we get to the real meat. What do I think “Switch 2” will be? Well, I’m too much of a dummy to analyze chips and engines, but being “of generation” with last gen seems a very safe bet. Especially since Bobby Kotick basically confirmed that that is the plan. The Switching gimmick is surely set to remain, as will the general button layout. A new “feature” I think will be included is virtual backwards compatibility across New Nintendo Accounts. A year ago Nintendo and DeNA launched a partnership to build a new accounts system and hopefully replace the utter trash that is the current system. This was made, seemingly, with the specific task of getting the userbase to go from Switch to Switch 2 (and mobile, etc.) and I can’t see that working without BC.
Bigger changes might be occurring with some of the accessories, though. Having spent seven years inoculating people to the idea of plugging their Switch into a television, the large, protective dock is no longer needed, strictly speaking. It was smoke and mirrors all along anyway, the world’s most needlessly large plug and A/V out setup. I would not be surprised if the “new dock” is just a streamlined stand with cables. The “Doghead” might face a worse fate, being phased out entirely. I gave it up for a Pro controller years ago myself but know that it still gets a lot of use from normies. For cost reasons though either the Doghead or the disconnected joy-con ends have to go and the second one of those allows for unique gameplay modes so rip Doghead. Oh and speaking of joy-cons, I suspect that they will be thicker this time around. Specifically, they will be thicker to give more space to joy-stick internals and thus lessen the prevalence of drift. Nintendo has been silent on this issue for nearly seven years now (thanks, court cases!) but its pretty obvious that they want the issue gone and from what I’ve heard, an easy way to lessen it is to give more space to the plastic detector thing at the base of the stick. This doesn’t necessarily preclude interoperability between Switch joy-cons and the Switch 2 from a technical standpoint (think Wiimotes on Wii U) but in the names of capitalism and keeping it simple, stupid, it pretty much does.
That’s all positive (sorry Doghead, you hurt my thumbs) but there’s going to be some “challenges” with the layout as well. The first one is price. Switch never dropped in price and is still worth the same 300 dollars as when it came out (and the OLED is worth more!) This is, uhh, a problem since they aren’t going to just replace the Switch with an identically priced better system. Inflation is also, well, its unavoidable, and in that sense staying at 300 was a price cut, versus certain competing consoles anyway… But yeah, if Switch is 300 dollars, then Switch 2 is 400 dollars. And they’re stretching that 400 dollars too between the console, the screen, the joy-cons, the grips and Nintendo’s demand of selling at a profit. The big casualty here will be some of the bells and whistles. Modern day multi-touch screen? Lol, no. Pack in pro-controller? Fuck no. Good storage? Haha. A separate slot for Switch 1 games? Not on this handheld. Oh, and the battery life will stick suck, battery tech has not kept pace with computing advancements, that was shown with the original Switch and will only show harder now.
So that was the system, now lets talk about the circus. My proposed timeline is as such. Announced in March-May, released in August-October. Of 2024. For those still holding out to within a year of today, sorry, we’re too far gone from that. We have yet to get any dev-kit leak photos (not even of games, just of kits) and from what Bobby has been saying, most western third parties aren’t even sure what it will specifically be yet. Although JP devs and first party devs are pretty good at keeping this stuff under-wraps western third parties very much are not. If these things were common, at all, we’d have seen at least one slip into a photo. Given that lead time, spring and summer (my previously favored time) are both already out of the running and extremely late in the year is actually not a great time to launch either (it needlessly combines early adaptors with the Christmas rush, leading to stock outs and customers putting money elsewhere.) Thus early to mid-fall ends up as the goldilocks period, not too hot or cold. Given the history of gaming announcements in the last decade (PS4/XBO, PS5/XBS and even Switch, itself) it seems likely that Nintendo will want as little time as possible between announcement and launch, in order to sneak out “late life” Switch sales to people who would otherwise just wait for the new one. This also, obviously, precludes any announcement this year, which would not only kill Switch sales for nearly a year, but tank 2023 holiday sales as well.
Onto software. As stated earlier, Nintendo generally sticks with a single series entry per console (exceptions exist, of course) and thus the door is wide open, sort of (2D Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem and Xenoblade just got entries this year, they’re all out of the running.) That said, a few names/teams stick out. Not counting Bowser’s Fury, EPD 8 will have gone 7 years without releasing a 3D, mainline, Mario game, beating the gap between 64 and Sunshine. Mario’s 3D adventures remain a huge force in gaming and it’s presence at launch would certainly perk the ears of hardcore Nintendo fans. EPD 9 actually has had an even longer drought between Mario Kart 8’s original Wii U release and the present, though the series has only grown in popularity between that game’s Switch port and the ghastly mobile title. This is the best selling game on Switch, one of the best selling games of all time and good normie-bait. And of course, Metroid Prime 4 (which is very much not in development hell, despite popular conversation) should be wrapping up development in the next one to two years as well. I think Nintendo will want two of the above three available at launch, but it needs one of them, and it doesn’t really matter which. The one big name that won’t be there from the start though is Pokemon, which always targets the bigger, younger last gen userbase. Down the line, perhaps, “mega hits” like Tears of the Kingdom or Splatoon 3 (JP specifically- its going to basically double up on BotW over there) get upgraded ports. Even if not, with BC they will certainly run better, a trait shared with many of the chuggier games in Switch’s current catalog.
And will it all work? What will the fan reaction be? Its hard to judge, especially for me, the man who is always wrong. Crossing the divide to 400 dollars in price will anger people. Despite being less money than the PS3 18 years prior, 400 dollars is still a big jump for the budget-minded Nintendo gamer. Nintendo fans are not actually cucks and love to bitch about everything. If the big 3 above miss launch or are not featured, or even if the one that does get featured just isn’t to a fan’s preference, then a fit will be pitched. And even if the game chosen is good, its not going to be Breath of the Wild revolutionary, and it takes a lot to get people to spend 400 dollars on a games console. Mario Kart in particular. It appeals to normal people but they don’t normally buy at launch. It has to have a bigger “grab” to the core audience. And Metroid doesn’t go wide enough, even the “successful” ones top off at around 3 million copies sold, those other two cross 10 million and keep going. It really should be 3D Mario, which hits both sections. And of course, if Nintendo could just fuck it all up and spend their whole presentation and marketing campaign on motion control bullshit or party games.
And as a final aside, the Switch won’t be dying any time soon. The most successful systems of their eras, the 3DS, the DS, the PS2, the SNES and NES, they’ve all had long tails with years of releases after their heyday. 3DS, most notably, lasted 2 additional years with Pokemon, remakes and lower budget Nintendo “partner” games. And Nintendo has openly stated that the Switch still has a long life ahead of it. In a sense, this month’s Nintendo direct is probably a fore-showing of what we can expect from Switch going forward. Digital only remasters/rereleases, “small” releases like Princess Peach and the SMRPG and Luigi’s Mansion 2 remakes, Pokemon, Grezzo Zelda, mop-up titles like Kid Icarus and such. Some of those might also get dual releases, a benefit of similar form factors, or perhaps with Switch 2 games getting gimped downports to the larger Switch market. And we all know what Switch 2 buyers will be thinking of that: “die Switch die, I hate you now.” The same reaction we had to the 3DS in its end, the same reaction we had to PS4 ports in the cross-gen era.
So go ahead, everyone, tell me why I’m wrong. And grave-dig this in three years when Nintendo finally announces their virtual reality masterpiece, the Nintendo On. It was real all along…
But first, lets run down where the Switch is and how it got there. The Switch launched in March of 2017 with its headliner being Zelda BoTW- a Wii U dual release. 1/2 Switch, Arms and Overcooked filled out its release slate, with a small selection of third party titles too. Despite coming off of two disappointments (the 3DS and Wii U) the Switch was off like a rocket and has managed to be a strong seller for all of its 6+ years of life. Though there have been occasional questionable patches the Switch’s biggest surprise was probably Covid, which resulted in world-wide stock-outs in a period of time when the system should have been struggling to add users. Indeed, the system continues to sell well today, despite its massive existing user-base and total lack of price drops. With total lifetime sales of 125 million and nearly 5000 games released the Switch is a massive -and massively profitable- ecosystem.
And yet all good things have come to an end and it is clear to nearly everyone that the Switch has to be phased out and replaced. But why? Internally at Nintendo, I think its clear that the gravy train is over. In advising Ubisoft on Mario+Rabbids 2, they warned the French that ”it's better to do one iteration on each machine” and the headstrong Ubisofties have admitted that they probably should have waited (“we were a bit too early”). How many of Nintendo’s Switch games are holding up their series’ slot? Nintendo has released one of nearly every series active. They also are, due to an industry switch to “current gen” systems, running into issues getting downports of current games. It was always tough being one gen behind-techwise, but being two gens behind makes such porting nearly impossible. Furthermore, the limitations of the dated hardware have pained Nintendo’s own teams, and as industry-wide engine (and middleware) support moves on, Nintendo must as well. If for nothing else, than for the pride and ambition of its own teams.
So then, what are they to do? For the past twenty years Nintendo has adopted its famous “blue ocean” strategy where it swims away from the “red ocean” of direct, bloody competition and plays in its own area. Less keen-eyed readers will summarize this as “gimmicks.” Ala the second, touch-based, screen of the DS and the motion controls of the Wii. And they certainly were blue ocean. And they certainly were gimmicks. But being blue ocean doesn’t mean you have to change the gimmick each time. Because no competitor has released a mass-market hybrid system, Nintendo is free to keep it the same and instead release the “Switch 2” as a better version of the original hybrid vision.
That choice gives Nintendo several benefits. The most important is that they know that the gimmick works. There is a major fear in the company that they will lose their massive existing userbase and playing it “safe” with the same gimmick could be a play at keeping them. Maintaining current Switch features across the divide will also make it easier to incorporate backwards compatibility, which Nintendo seems to think is a big selling point historically but was impossible to maintain for Switch due to changing control schemes. It also makes dual platform releases easier, an aspect of game development which Nintendo largely declined to take part in, even in 2017 to 2019 when Switch was sharing its stage with the 3DS.
And thus we get to the real meat. What do I think “Switch 2” will be? Well, I’m too much of a dummy to analyze chips and engines, but being “of generation” with last gen seems a very safe bet. Especially since Bobby Kotick basically confirmed that that is the plan. The Switching gimmick is surely set to remain, as will the general button layout. A new “feature” I think will be included is virtual backwards compatibility across New Nintendo Accounts. A year ago Nintendo and DeNA launched a partnership to build a new accounts system and hopefully replace the utter trash that is the current system. This was made, seemingly, with the specific task of getting the userbase to go from Switch to Switch 2 (and mobile, etc.) and I can’t see that working without BC.
Bigger changes might be occurring with some of the accessories, though. Having spent seven years inoculating people to the idea of plugging their Switch into a television, the large, protective dock is no longer needed, strictly speaking. It was smoke and mirrors all along anyway, the world’s most needlessly large plug and A/V out setup. I would not be surprised if the “new dock” is just a streamlined stand with cables. The “Doghead” might face a worse fate, being phased out entirely. I gave it up for a Pro controller years ago myself but know that it still gets a lot of use from normies. For cost reasons though either the Doghead or the disconnected joy-con ends have to go and the second one of those allows for unique gameplay modes so rip Doghead. Oh and speaking of joy-cons, I suspect that they will be thicker this time around. Specifically, they will be thicker to give more space to joy-stick internals and thus lessen the prevalence of drift. Nintendo has been silent on this issue for nearly seven years now (thanks, court cases!) but its pretty obvious that they want the issue gone and from what I’ve heard, an easy way to lessen it is to give more space to the plastic detector thing at the base of the stick. This doesn’t necessarily preclude interoperability between Switch joy-cons and the Switch 2 from a technical standpoint (think Wiimotes on Wii U) but in the names of capitalism and keeping it simple, stupid, it pretty much does.
That’s all positive (sorry Doghead, you hurt my thumbs) but there’s going to be some “challenges” with the layout as well. The first one is price. Switch never dropped in price and is still worth the same 300 dollars as when it came out (and the OLED is worth more!) This is, uhh, a problem since they aren’t going to just replace the Switch with an identically priced better system. Inflation is also, well, its unavoidable, and in that sense staying at 300 was a price cut, versus certain competing consoles anyway… But yeah, if Switch is 300 dollars, then Switch 2 is 400 dollars. And they’re stretching that 400 dollars too between the console, the screen, the joy-cons, the grips and Nintendo’s demand of selling at a profit. The big casualty here will be some of the bells and whistles. Modern day multi-touch screen? Lol, no. Pack in pro-controller? Fuck no. Good storage? Haha. A separate slot for Switch 1 games? Not on this handheld. Oh, and the battery life will stick suck, battery tech has not kept pace with computing advancements, that was shown with the original Switch and will only show harder now.
So that was the system, now lets talk about the circus. My proposed timeline is as such. Announced in March-May, released in August-October. Of 2024. For those still holding out to within a year of today, sorry, we’re too far gone from that. We have yet to get any dev-kit leak photos (not even of games, just of kits) and from what Bobby has been saying, most western third parties aren’t even sure what it will specifically be yet. Although JP devs and first party devs are pretty good at keeping this stuff under-wraps western third parties very much are not. If these things were common, at all, we’d have seen at least one slip into a photo. Given that lead time, spring and summer (my previously favored time) are both already out of the running and extremely late in the year is actually not a great time to launch either (it needlessly combines early adaptors with the Christmas rush, leading to stock outs and customers putting money elsewhere.) Thus early to mid-fall ends up as the goldilocks period, not too hot or cold. Given the history of gaming announcements in the last decade (PS4/XBO, PS5/XBS and even Switch, itself) it seems likely that Nintendo will want as little time as possible between announcement and launch, in order to sneak out “late life” Switch sales to people who would otherwise just wait for the new one. This also, obviously, precludes any announcement this year, which would not only kill Switch sales for nearly a year, but tank 2023 holiday sales as well.
Onto software. As stated earlier, Nintendo generally sticks with a single series entry per console (exceptions exist, of course) and thus the door is wide open, sort of (2D Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem and Xenoblade just got entries this year, they’re all out of the running.) That said, a few names/teams stick out. Not counting Bowser’s Fury, EPD 8 will have gone 7 years without releasing a 3D, mainline, Mario game, beating the gap between 64 and Sunshine. Mario’s 3D adventures remain a huge force in gaming and it’s presence at launch would certainly perk the ears of hardcore Nintendo fans. EPD 9 actually has had an even longer drought between Mario Kart 8’s original Wii U release and the present, though the series has only grown in popularity between that game’s Switch port and the ghastly mobile title. This is the best selling game on Switch, one of the best selling games of all time and good normie-bait. And of course, Metroid Prime 4 (which is very much not in development hell, despite popular conversation) should be wrapping up development in the next one to two years as well. I think Nintendo will want two of the above three available at launch, but it needs one of them, and it doesn’t really matter which. The one big name that won’t be there from the start though is Pokemon, which always targets the bigger, younger last gen userbase. Down the line, perhaps, “mega hits” like Tears of the Kingdom or Splatoon 3 (JP specifically- its going to basically double up on BotW over there) get upgraded ports. Even if not, with BC they will certainly run better, a trait shared with many of the chuggier games in Switch’s current catalog.
And will it all work? What will the fan reaction be? Its hard to judge, especially for me, the man who is always wrong. Crossing the divide to 400 dollars in price will anger people. Despite being less money than the PS3 18 years prior, 400 dollars is still a big jump for the budget-minded Nintendo gamer. Nintendo fans are not actually cucks and love to bitch about everything. If the big 3 above miss launch or are not featured, or even if the one that does get featured just isn’t to a fan’s preference, then a fit will be pitched. And even if the game chosen is good, its not going to be Breath of the Wild revolutionary, and it takes a lot to get people to spend 400 dollars on a games console. Mario Kart in particular. It appeals to normal people but they don’t normally buy at launch. It has to have a bigger “grab” to the core audience. And Metroid doesn’t go wide enough, even the “successful” ones top off at around 3 million copies sold, those other two cross 10 million and keep going. It really should be 3D Mario, which hits both sections. And of course, if Nintendo could just fuck it all up and spend their whole presentation and marketing campaign on motion control bullshit or party games.
And as a final aside, the Switch won’t be dying any time soon. The most successful systems of their eras, the 3DS, the DS, the PS2, the SNES and NES, they’ve all had long tails with years of releases after their heyday. 3DS, most notably, lasted 2 additional years with Pokemon, remakes and lower budget Nintendo “partner” games. And Nintendo has openly stated that the Switch still has a long life ahead of it. In a sense, this month’s Nintendo direct is probably a fore-showing of what we can expect from Switch going forward. Digital only remasters/rereleases, “small” releases like Princess Peach and the SMRPG and Luigi’s Mansion 2 remakes, Pokemon, Grezzo Zelda, mop-up titles like Kid Icarus and such. Some of those might also get dual releases, a benefit of similar form factors, or perhaps with Switch 2 games getting gimped downports to the larger Switch market. And we all know what Switch 2 buyers will be thinking of that: “die Switch die, I hate you now.” The same reaction we had to the 3DS in its end, the same reaction we had to PS4 ports in the cross-gen era.
So go ahead, everyone, tell me why I’m wrong. And grave-dig this in three years when Nintendo finally announces their virtual reality masterpiece, the Nintendo On. It was real all along…
