Insiders say Nintendo’s next game console will launch next year (but this time they really mean it)
Insiders have been saying this for several years, so take it with a grain of salt
It’s been more than two years since we reported that Nintendo was just about to announce a new version of its wildly popular Switch console that would be able to produce 4K-level graphics when hooked up to a TV, and while Nintendo did eventually release its OLED Switch model (which has a nicer screen in handheld mode but notably does not do anything especially fancier when plugged in), we still have yet to see a true successor to the Nintendo Switch—a system that is now more than six years old. But perpetually unreliable video game industry insiders now say that the new Switch (or at least some new thing from Nintendo) is definitely real and definitely coming next year.
This comes from VGC, which spoke to “multiple people with knowledge of Nintendo’s next-gen console plans,” who said that the company is planning to launch a new thing in the “second half of 2024.” This new thing will supposedly be usable in portable mode and on a TV, like the Switch, and it might have a cheaper LCD screen in order to keep the cost down. The report has some other details about what Nintendo is supposedly planning and why it’s supposedly making those plans, but, at this point, it would make more sense not to get too invested in this thing.
It doesn’t take a video game industry insider to guess that Nintendo is working on its next thing, so even if it the “second half of 2024” part isn’t true, it will definitely put out some new thing at some point. But the rest of this might not be accurate at all. Predicting what Nintendo will do at any point has historically been impossible, since it followed up the N64 with a thing that plays tiny discs and has a handle, and then it made a thing you control by throwing a remote at your TV, and then it made a thing with a second TV attached to the controller, and then it made one of the greatest video game platforms of all time that combined all of the things that were good about its previous consoles.
The one thing we definitely know, and we’re absolutely confident that this is true, is that Nintendo is going to release a successor to the Switch really soon. So soon that it could be happening any day now. Hell, any minute now. Definitely.