With CES 2025 finally in the rearview, it’s time to move on to the next round of big hardware announcements. Rumors have emerged over the last few weeks, pointing to an imminent announcement for the next-generation of Nintendo’s wildly successful hybrid Switch console.
In particular, word from industry stalwart Eurogamer (among others) pegs a January 16 announcement — that is to say, Thursday. If indeed the big reveal is coming this week, it points to a more incremental announcement. The company will likely dole information out one Nintendo Direct at a time rather than one, big keynote with specs, availability, and launch titles.
We do know for certain that the company had its sights set on a Q1 announcement for the Switch 2 — specifically, before the end of March 2025. One other key bit confirmed by Nintendo is the device’s backward compatibility with its predecessor. That’s good news for the 150 million or so who purchased the first Switch.
The biggest question at the moment is how large of an upgrade we’re ultimately talking about here. Nintendo’s console names have largely pointed to big departures for every subsequent generation. With few exceptions — like the ill-fated Wii U — things have been far less straightforward than, say, Sony’s PlayStation.
It’s reasonable to expect that the Switch 2 will be an evolution of the existing product, rather than a meaningful departure. After all, Nintendo spent some time in the wilderness prior to the Switch’s March 2017 launch. The convertible form factor and some truly excellent titles were precisely what the company needed to reestablish itself in a dramatically different gaming landscape after the Wii U’s stumbles.
There’s no doubt the new console will best the original specs, but it’s also important to temper expectations, given Nintendo’s history. The days of going toe-to-toe with competitors on elements like GPU are decades in the company’s past.
Other rumors are just that: magnetic Joy-Cons and a jump in screen size to 8 inches up from 6 on the classic Switch and 7 on the Switch OLED, which arrived toward the end of 2021. Between that console upgrade and the portable-only, budget-minded model that Nintendo introduced with the Switch Lite in 2019, there have been upgrades along the way.
[Nintendo Switch 2 not pictured]
