Could Nintendo Go Another Year Without A Switch Successor?

January 1, 2024

Nintendo Switch OLED — *Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life*

Another year, and here we are again — wondering if the next 12 months might deliver perhaps the most exciting thing for any Nintendo fan: new hardware.

It feels like years now that we’ve been reporting on and discussing another potential Nintendo system, and that’s because it has been years. Whispers of a ‘Switch Pro’ were doing the rounds soon after the original console launched in March 2017, and while Switch Lite and Switch OLED reconfigured the base system in modest ways (and the original Switch got a ‘silent’ internal upgrade with better battery life), it’s been nearly seven full years now since we’ve got our hands on totally new Nintendo tech.

On one hand, it’s a result of merging handheld and home console lines into one product — there are naturally going to be 50% fewer hardware reveals than in previous generations. But for an industry and audience that thrives on shiny new things, it feels unusual to have Switch approaching its eighth year at retail without any public announcement or acknowledgement of a successor.

It’s true that Switch is a remarkable system, and we’ve seen developers perform miracles on it. However, it’s also true that its mobile chipset wasn’t cutting edge even when it launched, and the work involved to bring third-party titles to Nintendo gamers these days would be significantly easier in many cases if devs had a little more horsepower to play with. Obviously, no sane person is expecting PS5-level performance from ‘Switch 2’, but using some 2020 or 2021 vintage silicon, perhaps, would give a massive boost over the mid-2010s tech powering the current console.

Switch OLED Ridley — *Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life*

HOWEVER! Surveying the last year of Switch releases, with GOTY-level gems like Zelda and Mario Wonder bolstered by Pikmin 4, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, Persona 5 Tactica, Super Mario RPG, Sea of Stars, Blasphemous 2, a Red Dead port, Octopath II…, it doesn’t feel like a regular console’s seventh-year lineup (and that only scratches the surface). In fact, we looked back on previous Nintendo systems’ seventh years and it’s clear that Switch’s rude software health at this point in its lifecycle is a trait inherited from its handheld ancestors, which generally enjoy a longer shelf life than their home-based brethren.

With development times and costs going up across the board, Sony and Microsoft would likewise love to extend console lifecycles as long as possible, and with all the quality games coming out on Switch, it’s arguably only old habits and expectations making us antsy for that smell of new hardware. Who needs a Switch 2 if we get another year of bangers like the one we just had?

Switch’s hardware sales figures make the most compelling argument that we’re unlikely to get through 2024 without an announcement, though. We would assume bundles sold fairly well over the holidays (we’ll find out how well in Nintendo’s next financial report in February) but hardware sales are waning. Quarterly Switch sales went from 3.07m (reported May 2023) to a Zelda-bumped 3.91m (August 2023) to 2.93m (November 2023).

Yes, the Thanksgiving/Christmas period will almost certainly provide a bump on the last quarter’s results, and those numbers aren’t to be sniffed at, but year-on-year they’re steadily going down. Without an unprecedented price cut, it seems improbable that Nintendo will sell the 20 million+ Switches needed to catch up with Nintendo DS and PS2 (at 154m and 155m respectively), an imagined target that this writer doubts Nintendo would be too bothered about missing — certainly not at the cost of derailing plans for the next system. Switch has been a massive success regardless of where it ends up on the all-time best-sllers podium. The company will be looking to kickstart its next cycle before those figures nosedive much further and the quarterly shareholder Q&As become a barrage of “What’s next, Mr. President?”

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is looking great, but it’s not going to stoke the Switch fire — Image: Nintendo

The reality at this stage is that anybody who really wants a Switch has got at least one already, and, at this point, it seems overly optimistic to expect new Switch games of TOTK and Mario Wonder’s calibre. We’d love to be proved wrong, and there’s still plenty to look forward to regardless, but this feels like a good year for Switch to go out on a high.

And for Nintendo to put out some new driftless Joy-Con with its next system. That would be nice.

But what do you think? Is it possible Nintendo could coast through 2024 without revealing its next console? Let us know in the poll below.

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