Nintendo is primed to reveal what their next console is going to be at some point before the end of the fiscal year in March 2025. I thought it might be fun to cover the facts and the rumors surrounding it just to generate hype and get some predictions going.
Facts:
Nintendo is "always working on new hardware." Way back in 2009, Satoru Iwata graced investors with this tidbit of information. Speaking in an investor's call, he said
Here's a Nintendo Everything article with this quote and much more from Iwata regarding the matter. This was less of a "way Iwata does things" and more of a look into Nintendo's internal dealings regarding hardware development. It was refreshing to see how easily he talked about it for the time.
Nintendo tweeted about the reveal of the Nintendo Switch on October 19th, 2016 at 8:30pm ET via an official tweet (still calling it by its codename, the "NX"). 13.5 hours later, we were graced by the reveal of the console and its name via a trailer with an official YouTube upload at 10am ET. The video was set to private by July 6, 2022, and has not been available to view since. Plenty of other places had the trailer re-uploaded and have not had to take them down (such as GameSpot's re-upload here).
On May 7, 2024, Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that we would get a formal announcement of the "Successor to Nintendo Switch" in an official tweet:
The same day, during an Investor's meeting, they held a Q&A where someone asked for a bit more information about the wording of this announcement:
By May 9th, people on Famiboards had compiled information of public customs shipment information from Nintendo, Nvidia, and others over the last year or so in which they glean should be the hardware for this successor console. The information itself isn't necessarily fact regarding the successor console, but the fact that they went this far and got this much information to share is worth noting here, whether it's successor console related or not.
Someone on reddit compiled all the information pretty nicely.
The majority of information found was from a company named Hosiden. This is a Vietnamese company known for manufacturing Nintendo console parts. They found indentifiers that mostly matched up with Switch console part identifiers.
On June 27, 2024, Nintendo held their 84th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and held a Q&A. It was there that Nintendo basically affirmed that they have enough parts produced now, that another shortage of components shouldn't "significantly affect production."
On September 4, 2024, David Gibson (person who attends Nintendo JP's meetings and gives us rough translations earlier than the official translation release) points out Hosiden's upcoming plans for production.
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Every announcement of an official Nintendo presentation since the announcement of the console's announcement has been followed up with a message of there being no mention of the successor. You can see it in the description of each presentation's video:
It's important to note that Nintendo isn't going to bring up anything like new hardware until they are confident that they are truly ready to talk about it. Getting confirmation about an announcement of new hardware says to me that they are beyond development and are in the final stages where it's basically a heavy time for the Marketing department. I believe that logos, stock photos, videos, presentations, commercials, etc. are what the focus is right now as they wrap up first-run hardware production and prepare for packaging and mass production.
I also think it's worth noting that keen eyes over at Famiboards seem to believe they found a year's worth of public customs data for massive shipments of what seem to be Nintendo-related parts for things currently existing hardware do not use, and that a month later the president is saying there's no reason to worry about any shortages.
Facts:
Nintendo is "always working on new hardware." Way back in 2009, Satoru Iwata graced investors with this tidbit of information. Speaking in an investor's call, he said
"We do not think that Nintendo DS and Wii will last forever. Our internal hardware teams are always researching and working on new hardware so that we can launch them whenever we find a very interesting idea."
Nintendo tweeted about the reveal of the Nintendo Switch on October 19th, 2016 at 8:30pm ET via an official tweet (still calling it by its codename, the "NX"). 13.5 hours later, we were graced by the reveal of the console and its name via a trailer with an official YouTube upload at 10am ET. The video was set to private by July 6, 2022, and has not been available to view since. Plenty of other places had the trailer re-uploaded and have not had to take them down (such as GameSpot's re-upload here).
On May 7, 2024, Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that we would get a formal announcement of the "Successor to Nintendo Switch" in an official tweet:
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 this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.
By May 9th, people on Famiboards had compiled information of public customs shipment information from Nintendo, Nvidia, and others over the last year or so in which they glean should be the hardware for this successor console. The information itself isn't necessarily fact regarding the successor console, but the fact that they went this far and got this much information to share is worth noting here, whether it's successor console related or not.
Someone on reddit compiled all the information pretty nicely.
The majority of information found was from a company named Hosiden. This is a Vietnamese company known for manufacturing Nintendo console parts. They found indentifiers that mostly matched up with Switch console part identifiers.
On June 27, 2024, Nintendo held their 84th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and held a Q&A. It was there that Nintendo basically affirmed that they have enough parts produced now, that another shortage of components shouldn't "significantly affect production."
On September 4, 2024, David Gibson (person who attends Nintendo JP's meetings and gives us rough translations earlier than the official translation release) points out Hosiden's upcoming plans for production.
No-one seems to have noticed the Nintendo assembler- Hosiden is spending ¥2bn on production equipment and ¥1bn on automation in FY3/25 for its major customer in amusement (Nintendo). I still expect Sept news and March 2025 release for next device.
Every announcement of an official Nintendo presentation since the announcement of the console's announcement has been followed up with a message of there being no mention of the successor. You can see it in the description of each presentation's video:
It's important to note that Nintendo isn't going to bring up anything like new hardware until they are confident that they are truly ready to talk about it. Getting confirmation about an announcement of new hardware says to me that they are beyond development and are in the final stages where it's basically a heavy time for the Marketing department. I believe that logos, stock photos, videos, presentations, commercials, etc. are what the focus is right now as they wrap up first-run hardware production and prepare for packaging and mass production.
I also think it's worth noting that keen eyes over at Famiboards seem to believe they found a year's worth of public customs data for massive shipments of what seem to be Nintendo-related parts for things currently existing hardware do not use, and that a month later the president is saying there's no reason to worry about any shortages.
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