Nintendo has just released its financial earnings report for the fiscal year ended March 2024, but alongside this a message from its president, Shuntaro Furukawa, has also finally acknowledged that the company has new hardware to announce soon – promising it’ll have an announcement within this financial year (between now and March 2025).
Furukawa also confirmed that a Nintendo Direct showcase is happening in June which will show off the company’s games line-up for the rest of 2024, but the new console will not be shown during this event.
“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo,” the post on X making the announcement reads. “We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.”
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct…
— ?????????????IR? (@NintendoCoLtd) May 7, 2024
Based on the wording around the June Direct and the allowance of the first three months of next year to make the hardware announcement, it’s probably fairly safe to assume we’ll see the new console launch very late in 2024 at the absolute earliest, or far more likely at some point in 2025 as per the most recent round of claims made by various outlets.
While we still know very little about Nintendo’s next console in an official capacity, the most widely-believed rumours have it pegged as a pretty faithful follow-up to the Switch in form factor with a bigger 8″ LCD display, improved performance that may even include some form of DLSS technology powered by a custom NVIDIA chipset, and backwards compatibility with original Nintendo Switch games both digitally and via physical carts.
For now, this small acknowledgment is the most news we’ve had from Nintendo themselves on the next-gen front.
