3 Reasons Why the Nintendo Switch 2 Is Taking So Long to Be Announced

The Nintendo Switch 2 has been rumored and speculated over for several years now. While it seems as though we’re seemingly always just a Nintendo Direct away from an official reveal, it still hasn’t happened yet in the seven long years since the hardware originally debuted.

What exactly is holding Nintendo back, and when could we realistically expect to see something concrete?

While Nintendo Switch 2 leaks and rumors have existed ranging from plausible to comical, the details are hazy in a way that’s gone on far longer than anyone could have anticipated. It’s been nearly six months since Shuntaro Furukawa took to X to state that the Nintendo Switch 2 will be announced within “this fiscal year.”

This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct…

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報?IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) May 7, 2024

However, with the closure of the financial year now drawing closer, time is running out.

We’re looking at three potential reasons why the Nintendo Switch 2 is taking so long to announce and what it means for gamers in the coming year.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. 3 Reasons Why the Nintendo Switch 2 Is Taking So Long
3. The Bottom Line
4. FAQs
5. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. 3 Reasons Why the Nintendo Switch 2 Is Taking So Long
3. The Bottom Line
Show Full Guide
4. FAQs
5. References

3 Reasons Why the Nintendo Switch 2 Is Taking So Long

1. The Nintendo Switch Continues to Dominate in Sales

For context, the first Nintendo Switch announcement happened all the way back in March 2015 when the popular home console-handheld hybrid was known as “Project NX.” It wouldn’t be until over a year later that the system would be given its final name, the Nintendo Switch, which happened in October 2016 with the reveal trailer offering up the March 2017 release date, and the rest is history.

Nintendo Switch sales have now exceeded 140 million units sold since then, becoming one of the best-selling video game consoles of all time, showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. With this information in mind, it begs the question of exactly why Nintendo would rush out successor hardware and ruin a good thing when the machines are still selling, and the best Nintendo Switch games are arguably even more popular in 2025 than ever.

Based on Furukawa’s statement that we’ll get a Nintendo Switch 2 announcement by the end of the fiscal year, it could stand to reason that Nintendo will pull a similar trick to what it did the first time round, with a five-to-six-month gap from reveal to release.

This could position the company favorably to have one more big batch of sales in the holiday season before slowly unsetting the system with a replacement unit in 2025.

2. Nintendo Is Preparing a Major Launch Lineup

If you browse any of the upcoming Nintendo Switch games from either first or third parties, you’ll notice that each month is now stacked with releases. Just this year alone, we’ve had some heavy hitters arrive on the platform, such as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (remake) and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, with the likes of Mario & Luigi: Brothership set to debut next week.

There’s no shortage of games, but it wasn’t always this way.

Outside of the landmark release that was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which also came to Wii U), the original Nintendo Switch launch lineup was incredibly lacking. 1-2 Switch (a disappointingly shallow party game), Just Dance 2017, and Skylanders: Imaginators were never going to set the world on fire. Sure, Super Bomberman R and Snipperclips were cute, but they were hardly the system sellers.

Now, Nintendo has to break out the big guns and impress with big system sellers to tempt those Nintendo Switch users to upgrade. There’s been some speculation around which titles could be making their way to the Nintendo Switch 2. A case can be made for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond with its 2025 release window and impressive first person shooter gameplay.

Yes, as the trailer and title show, it will be on the existing hardware, but could it be cross-platform with the Switch 2? It seems like a possibility at this time.

A recent Nintendo Switch 2 leak alleges that we could see a new 3D Mario game in the vein of Odyssey, alongside what could be Mario Kart 9 and a new Animal Crossing game (via ComicBook). That’s just to speak of the first-party games; with the improved hardware inside, we could see more capable third-party games instead of the cutdown ports and cloud versions we’re seeing now.

3. Nintendo Is Waiting for the Hardware to Become Cheaper

If there’s one thing that’s been true of Nintendo’s hardware for decades now is that the company has never been on the bleeding edge.

This was true with the Nintendo 64 back in 1996. Despite being 64-bit over the 32-bit PlayStation, the console was confined to cartridges, which meant the games were inferior, and developers struggled on the platform. Fast forward to the Nintendo Wii a decade later with its 480p visuals and lacking horsepower at the dawn of HD gaming, etc.

Well, the same is true of the Nintendo Switch with its dated Tegra X1 chip and 720p output in handheld mode which can output in 1080p when docked. Even in 2017, the visuals of the first Switch’s hardware weren’t quite up to the level of the then five-year-old PS4 and Xbox One, looking a fraction better than Xbox 360 and PS3 games (and sometimes running worse).

Simply put, the SoC inside the Switch was fit for purpose as a tablet you could game on for its time, but it’s become apparent in seven long years that today’s games are too much for the aging console.

Current Nintendo Switch 2 rumors allege that the system could use the Nvidia T239 SoC, which is built on Ampere architecture (via Eurogamer). The ARM-based CPU and Ampere (RTX-30 series) GPU are a definitive step up from the primitive gear in the guts of the original Nintendo Switch, however, the capabilities of the chip aren’t going to blow you away with raw power.

You see, with a quoted 1,536 CUDA cores, 102GB/sec bandwidth, and a 128-bit memory bus width, the machine will still lag behind the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 quite considerably, coming closer to what’s possible with the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go with the AMD Z1 series hardware.

It culminates in hardware, which itself will be a couple of years out of date by the time the Nintendo Switch 2 release date rolls around. Ampere (the codename for the RTX 30 series) debuted in 2020 and was replaced in 2022 with the Ada series (RTX 40 series), and we’re now approaching the time for successor hardware, the Blackwell (RTX 50 series), which is rumored to be announced in January 2025.

Nintendo will essentially be running older (and likely now much cheaper) hardware in its console when it goes to mass production, which should keep the machine cost-effective.

The Bottom Line

There you have it. We’ve outlined three reasons why the Nintendo Switch 2 has taken so long to be announced, and we’re still no closer to finding out anything about the Switch 2 release date.

Whether it’s the hardware, the games, or the continuing excellent sales, the Japanese hardware giant is playing the long game with its upcoming hybrid console, one that we’re hopeful will come to an end in the very near future.

FAQs