Nintendo Swears Switch 2 Is Still on Track for Fiscal 2024 Release
Nintendo isn’t budging on its current schedule to share news about the Switch 2—though we still only have a rough idea of when those details will be coming out.
In Nintendo’s Nov. 5 earnings call, President Shuntaro Furukawa did not provide a new update on the Switch’s successor. Instead, he simply restated that the company will discuss its new hardware at some point before the end of the 2024 fiscal year. That means, if nothing else changes internally, we are still set to get an announcement before March 31, 2025.
With Furukawa pointing that out, it appears any type of Switch 2 reveal coming in 2024 is unlikely. Considering the holiday sales season is here, we got an announcement for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition for Switch shadow, which was dropped on a random Tuesday instead of during a Nintendo Direct. That Xenoblade release date is March 20, 2025, too, which could mean it is the final first-party title dropping for the Switch in the current fiscal year.
According to Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda, via Reuters, making a Switch 2 announcement this year “has gotten quite difficult” because Nintendo won’t want to divert interest away from the original Switch when people are Holiday shopping—even as Switch demand continues to fall.
In the earnings call, Furukawa noted that the eight-year-old console was still enjoying “stable demand and brisk sales” for its hardware and software but that sales “fell short” of projections so far as the company sold 4.7 million Switch consoles through two quarters—down from 6.8 million for the same timeframe last year.
Nintendo's new earnings reveal:
— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) November 5, 2024
*Weaker than expected Switch sales
*Still revealing Switch 2 before end of March 2025
*MK8 outsold all new games except Zelda: Echoes
*Zelda: TOTK has overtaken Mario Party pic.twitter.com/29L103WeHT
This comes even as the Switch has reached 146.04m lifetime units sold and is just nine million away from becoming the best-selling console of all time by surpassing the PlayStation 2’s 155 million units. It could also become Nintendo’s best-selling hardware of all time by overtaking the Nintendo DS’s 154.02 million units, too.
Related Article: Tech Experts: "Nintendo Switch 2 Leaks Are Almost Certainly Real"
As for a Switch 2 release, we are now more likely to see the console revealed in early 2024 and released outside of the current fiscal year. Back in August, head of GamesIndustry.biz Chris Dring noted, via VGC, that developers are expecting it to launch outside of that timeframe, potentially in April or May.
“No developer I’ve spoken to expects it to be launching this financial year,” Dring said. “In fact, they’ve been told not to expect it in the [current] financial year. A bunch of people I spoke to hope it’s out in April or May time, still early next year, not late. I don’t think any of us wants a late launch for Switch 2 because we all want a new Nintendo console, everyone gets very excited for it, and we don’t want that crunch of Grand Theft Auto 6 and Switch and all that kind of stuff on top of each other.”
Nintendo Makes No Comment on Pokémon Legends: Z-A Leaks
Nintendo also provided no comment on October's massive Pokémon leaks, which isn't surprisining.
Nintendo tends to avoid talking about leaks or legal proceedings unless the company absolutely needs to make a public statement, such as with its recent legal pursuit of Palworld. As a result, there was no update on the leak situation, nor more news for the upcoming release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which we still only have a single trailer for from back in February.
Related Article: Pokemon Leaker Says Sharing More Info Could Delay Legends Z-A, More Games
Game Freak already released a public statement about the Pokémon leaks, focusing on the security aspect for its current and former employees rather than the reported 1TB of stolen game documents and information.
