Despite increasing interest in a successor, Nintendo thinks the Switch still has room to grow and is planning to make more games for it.
The noticeable lack of first party titles for the rest of 2023 has increased speculation of Nintendo announcing and even releasing a new console in 2024, be it the Nintendo Switch 2 or something else entirely.
It’s been claimed that the company is skipping E3 2023 altogether, because it doesn’t have enough major new releases to justify attending, which further suggests that it’s busy preparing new games for the next console.
Yet despite the Nintendo Switch being nearly six years old, which would normally herald an upgrade or replacement, it sounds like the company still isn’t ready to move on. Instead, it’s insisted that more games are currently in development.
It was reported last month that Nintendo had ramped up production of the Switch to meet demand, suggesting it would still support it throughout the rest of 2023.
More recently, in a Q&A with investors, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa admitted that supporting a console for this long is unprecedented for the company (even the Wii only lasted six years until its successor, the Wii U, was announced), but Nintendo believes there’s enough room for growth to justify continued support.
‘Nintendo Switch is coming up on its seventh year of sales in March, and we see this as uncharted territory in the history of our dedicated video game platforms,’ explained Furukawa.
‘Under these circumstances it is hard to imagine that hardware sales will continue to grow at the same pace they have to date. However, there are titles under development for Nintendo Switch, and new titles will continue to be proposed going forward.
‘We are seeing both new demand and multiple system demand for the hardware, so we think there is still room for growth in sales. To that end, we want to maintain a high level of engagement with the hardware and create new demand not only by releasing new titles but also by working further to convey the appeal of existing titles.’
Currently the only major Nintendo game without a release date is Metroid Prime, which was rebooted in 2019 and which some have now assumed is being held back for the Switch 2.
Switch ports of The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are also rumoured to be happening, but Nintendo has never confirmed them and they’re pretty minor releases anyway.
There’s nothing to stop newly commissioned Switch games from being cross-gen, that is released on both the original Switch and its imagined successor, but as ever with Nintendo it’s unclear what they’re really planning or when they’ll explain themselves properly to the world.
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