Nintendo Switch 2 News Unlikely Until 2025
With every day that passes, it becomes less likely we will see news about Nintendo’s next console before the end of the year. Which means a 2025 reveal for the console and some of Nintendo’s upcoming games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A are more likely.
With how much hype is building around whatever the Switch successor console will actually be, Nintendo has been incredibly tight-lipped about the details. The company is on a timer for when the Switch 2 needs to be fully revealed, however, and we still don’t even have a release window to go along with that deadline.
When Will We Get Nintendo Switch 2 News?
Heading into the holiday shopping season, many original predictions for when the Nintendo Switch’s successor will be officially revealed and given a release date have been thrown out the window. Now, it is likely we will be waiting until early 2025 for information about the new console.
Previously, Nintendo confirmed that the Switch’s successor will be revealed at some point before March 31, 2025—the end of the company’s current fiscal year.
Nintendo reiterated that announcement window during its Nov. 5 earnings call, giving no additional information about the console’s potential release timeline. However, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa did confirm the next console will be backwards compatible with the original Switch—further showing that some early leaks about Switch 2 specs are accurate.
The original Switch reveal dropped on Oct. 20, 2016, with a full announcement with new game reveals coming less than three months later on Jan. 13, 2017. The Switch released two months later on March 3, 2017, and this is a similar timeline to what fans thought Nintendo would do for the Switch 2 considering the original has been a monstrous success—selling 146.04 million as of September.
Now that we are unlikely to get a March release for the Switch 2 unless Nintendo drops news ASAP and hits the ground running, it looks like we will instead get an initial console reveal in January or February as part of the first 2025 Nintendo Direct with a release date tied to it.
It is also telling that we have yet to get a big Nintendo Direct in the second half of 2024. The last big Direct was on June 18, and the last game-focused program in general was the Indie World and Partner Showcase on Aug. 27. Outside of that, we have only seen broadcasts for the Nintendo Museum and Super Nintendo World’s Donkey Kong Country park expansion.
The biggest new game reveal we have seen from Nintendo in the last few months was Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, which was announced on a random Tuesday via social media and a YouTube trailer. With that game getting a March 20, 2025 release date, it seems like getting that early 2025 reveal for a mid- to late-year console release is in the cards.
Is Pokémon Legends: Z-A News Coming Soon?
Speaking of game reveals, we have yet to get any actual info on Pokémon Legends: Z-A since the game’s initial reveal on Feb. 27 during the Pokémon Day presentation.
Pokémon is a weird case since Nintendo doesn’t always include news about the franchise in Nintendo Direct broadcasts—largely because it is a big enough brand to stand on its own and is only partially owned by the company. But, even with the developers seemingly listening to player feedback and spending more time on the next game after Scarlet and Violet’s messy launch, not getting any news on an upcoming title for the majority of a year is still strange.
While Pokémon TCG Pocket is dominating mobile devices, the only Legends: Z-A things we have seen in months came from huge Game Freak leaks. And, while none of that information can be verified until Nintendo or The Pokémon Company share more details, there is a chance those leaks also led to delays in getting new info.
Related Article: Leaks Show Pokémon Tried Out More Action-Style Combat in Legends Arceus
According to known Pokémon leaker Khu, something about Legends: Z-A was supposed to be promoted in November but “shit happened unexpectedly.” The image they shared doesn’t detail what we might have seen, just reiterating the 2025 release window we already knew about, but many fans are taking this to mean that a trailer or small news dump of some kind was pushed back due to how devastating the Game Freak leaks were in October.
We should hear about Legends: Z-A again in early 2025, with Pokémon Day on Feb. 27 being the most likely date, potentially putting the news cycle at exactly one year since the initial reveal. At that point, we are likely to get a deep dive into the game with full gameplay, new content reveals, and a release date of mid to late 2025—and a high likelihood that it will be released on Switch and Switch 2.
