Nintendo remains fully committed to announcing the successor to its current-gen Switch console by the end of the current fiscal year.
During an online press conference (via) after the publication of the company’s latest earnings results, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that it intends to announce the Switch successor before the end of its current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2025.
As for the Nintendo Switch, Furukawa said that for a platform that is in its 8th year in the market, both hardware and software enjoy stable demand and brisk sales. However, he added that sales so far fell short of the company’s original projections. Taking into consideration their sales in the first half, he said that Nintendo revised its forecasts for both hardware and software, and that led to the earnings revision.
Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda is of the thought that making an announcement this year has got quite difficult for Nintendo. According to him, the company would not want to divert attention to an upcoming console in the middle of the critical year-end shopping season.
Previously, alleged Nintendo Switch 2 prototype images had appeared on a file hosting site alongside a slide that details the upcoming console’s hardware specs. Based on the specs, in terms of internal components, the prototype for Nintendo’s next-gen console features an SoC (CPU + GPU, GMLX30-R-A1), on-board memory (6GB*2 LPDDR5X, 7500 MT/s), flash memory (256 GB, 2100 MB/s), an on-board audio chip, an NFC reader, a built-in microphone, dual cooling fans paired with a copper heat sink, video signal conversion (DisplayPort to HDMI 2.1), an on-board network chip, an on-board microcontroller chip, and on-board speakers.
Furthermore, the Nintendo Switch 2 prototype is said to include a pair of joy-cons that appear similar to the original Nintendo Switch joy-cons. The console also features a magnetic slide rail and an 8-inch display. The latter was previously leaked via Omdia analyst Hiroshi Hayase, who had reported that a new device from Nintendo would be responsible for a doubling in shipments of “amusement” displays in 2024.
