Nintendo Switch 2 will be announced by the end of March 2025, company confirms

Japan’s Nintendo said Tuesday it plans to announce a successor to its long-running Switch console during its fiscal year ending March 2025.

Nintendo has extended the lifecycle of Switch devices with hit titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with the market focused on the prospects of a smooth transition to the next-generation hardware.

The Kyoto-based gaming company said it expects to sell 13.5 million Switch units in the current fiscal year as it tries to shed further sales from the older device.

Nintendo did not provide many details on the new hardware, saying that no reveal would be made at the Nintendo Direct presentation in June.

“Many users will put off buying the current Switch now that they know the new model will come out sometime in 2025,” said Serkan Toto, founder of Kanton Games Consultancy.

Nintendo sold 15.7 million units last year of the hybrid home-portable device, which launched in March 2017. Nintendo raised its full-year forecast in February to 15.5 million units.

The company has made incremental changes to its Switch devices, with sales of OLED models increasing year-over-year, while broader hardware sales continue to decline annually.

Nintendo expects operating profit to decline by nearly a quarter this year to JPY 400 billion ($2.6 billion or about Rs 21,713 crore).

The company is seen to have a thin pipeline as it holds back heavy-hitting titles for the successor device, including Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door later this month and Luigi’s Mansion 2 in June.

Nintendo expects to sell 165 million software units this year, which would be a 17 percent decline from last year.

When Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked how the market has changed since the Switch launched, he said, “Game development has become more sophisticated, long-term, and complex.”

Operating profit rose 4.9 percent to JPY 528.9 billion in the year ended March.

Nintendo shares closed up 2.4 percent ahead of earnings and are up 5.4 percent this year after the recent selloff.

“Fiscal 2026 is a very late launch window for new hardware,” Toto said.

© Thomson Reuters 2024