ALBAWABA – Nintendo’s 7-year-old Switch, which has sold over 139 million units so far, making it the third best-selling console of all time, has been speculated to have a successor version sometime this year, however, new reports from EuroGamer, VCG and Bloomberg are indicating that the Kyoto based company has pushed the release for an early 2025 launch to put the new console alongside as many new games as possible.
Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe has revealed in an episode of OX do Controle that he was able to collect information from 5 different sources across 3 continents that Nintendo is aiming to release the next-gen Switch console in the first quarter of 2025, with VCG earlier reporting that the upcoming console is expected to come in the second half of 2024, keeping an LCD display instead of an OLED upgrade, due to cost concerns, and the signature physical game cartridges, backwards compatibility support, however, is still not clear.
EuroGamer confirmed this news as well, with their own sources saying that Nintendo has informed several third-party game develops that it is pushing the release of the console to the next year, however during the current fiscal year to reap the benefits before it wraps up the financial year, thus also indicating a Q1 launch.
Nintendo Switch with various game cartridges isolated (Shutterstock)
Leak: Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarok and more Playstation exclusives coming to PC soon!The delay in the release of the next-gen Switch means that Nintendo will be missing on holiday sales at the end of this year, as Bloomberg notes, adding that it confirmed this release delay from publishing executives who were not named due to the device not being announced yet.
Despite investors' focus shifting beyond the months to come towards the next generation, Nintendo's shares hit a record high last week as the portable gaming device has maintained a much-extended interest compared to other consoles, with hit games like Legend of Zelda titles and Mario Kart 8, which sold over 60 million copies this far.
