Nintendo has made a bit of a splash in the past day after it followed up the release of its latest financial earnings report with confirmation from its president, Shuntaro Furukawa, that the company will announce the successor to the Nintendo Switch in this current financial year (between now and March 2025).
“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo,” the post on X read. “We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year.”
Naturally, while it’s far from a proper reveal, this has been a source of excitement for fans with the mere mention of new hardware officially – something Nintendo hasn’t really acknowledged this directly before.
Now, Senior Analyst at MST Financial, David Gibson, has added further context by sharing a reported comment from Furukawa in the actual investor call, which seems to further corroborate ongoing rumours of the device’s form factor and general vibe by saying that the new hardware is best described as “Switch next model,” after being asked if this was a brand-new console or something else.
In the results call when asked if the next gen console was brand new or … Furukawa answered "Switch next model is the appropriate way to describe it" 🙂 #NintendoSwitch #NintendoSwitch2 https://t.co/ytF4oh0fN0
— David Gibson (@gibbogame) May 7, 2024
Gibson’s post reads, “In the results call when asked if the next gen console was brand new or… Furukawa answered “Switch next model is the appropriate way to describe it.”
This sentiment pretty well lines up with what we’ve heard from various outlets and sources in recent months (years, even), which suggest that the new device will be a pretty faithful follow-up to the Switch in form factor and hybrid functionality with a bigger 8″ LCD display, improved performance that may even include some form of DLSS technology powered by a custom NVIDIA chipset, as well as backwards compatibility with original Nintendo Switch games both digitally and via physical carts.
The way it’s been described in this reported comment from Furukawa makes it almost seem like something closer to a refresh than a completely new platform, which honestly seems like the right move for a follow-up to a console that’s sold over 140 million units.
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.
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.
