Despite all the rumours, Nintendo has insisted they have no plans to release a new console this year or even early next year.
Although most things in the games industry leak out long before they’re officially announced the one thing every fan learns is to not believe Nintendo rumours, no matter how good the source or how plausible the logic.
Given they don’t seem to have any major games planned for release after July it was perfectly reasonable to imagine that Nintendo was planning a new console for launch this Christmas, with several rumours suggesting exactly that.
However, Nintendo themselves have now insisted that’s not the case and that they won’t release any new hardware this financial year, which doesn’t end until after March 2024.
Although Nintendo can be economical with the truth sometimes, they said this during an earnings call for their latest financial report, which they’re not allowed to lie in.
Details of the report leaked out early, with today’s official release confirming that sales are down 22% on this time last year. Normally, that would be all the reason they need to launch a new console and yet apparently that isn’t what’s happening.
The final figures show that the Switch just missed (at 17.97 million) its full year target of 18 million sales, despite already lowering it from 21 million earlier in the year.
Its target for next year is 15 million sales, but Nintendo has already admittedly it probably won’t make that, with president Shuntaro Furukawa saying it was ‘a bit of stretch.’
It certainly seems that way, given not only the console’s age but the fact that Nintendo doesn’t have any games announced for this Christmas, just Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC.
All of that seems to add up to a new console but, according to Bloomberg, during a subsequent earnings call Furukawa said that next year’s forecast does not include any new or upgraded hardware.
That seems to leave a little bit of wriggle room for a surprise reveal, but far more likely is that Nintendo is simply telling the truth and that whenever the Switch 2 arrives it won’t be until at least this time next year.
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