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Produced by Huxiu Technology Group

Author | Wandushan

Editor | Miao Zhengqing

Header image | Visual China

Almost since 2020, "the release of Switch 2" has become a regular feature in the gaming community, with news leaked and rumors debunked every year.

However, some recent news from the industry chain seems to confirm the launch time of Switch 2.

On August 16, Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Japan's Toyo Securities, said in an investment briefing that he had learned from the supply chain that Nintendo will officially release the Switch 2 handheld game console in April-June next year, with an estimated price of US$499.

Coincidentally, on August 18, Taiwan media MoneyDJ reported that when looking forward to the future market prospects, Lin Chongtao, CEO of chip manufacturer Weltrend Electronics, said, "Game console application orders have rebounded since the third quarter, including the introduction and shipment of PS5, Xbox and "Switch new models"."

Public information shows that Weltrend Electronics is the main supplier of Switch power management chips. According to the 8-10 month stocking cycle commonly used in the consumer electronics industry, the introduction and shipment time mentioned by the company's CEO also happens to correspond to the Switch 2 launch time disclosed by Toyo Securities.

It has been 7 years since the launch of Nintendo Switch. During this period, the game console industry has undergone turbulent changes. The new category of Windows handhelds has become a track for various companies to focus on. Steam, which has 500 million global users, is also actively promoting the SteamOS system in the console industry.

Faced with fierce industry competition, can Switch 2 recreate the glory of its previous generation?

Switch 2, no time to lose

"The current Switch is so successful that how to transition to the next generation of hardware is the company's biggest concern."

In 2022, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa made this summary that made the industry feel Versailles when attending the company's financial report meeting.

At that time, the cumulative global sales of Switch after its release reached 118 million units, surpassing PS4 to become the fourth best-selling game console in history. With a stable and huge user base, Nintendo can choose to "live off its past glory" without hesitation.

But one day the capital will be exhausted.

On August 2, Nintendo released its first quarter report for fiscal year 2025 (i.e. the second quarter of 2024). The report showed that during the period, Nintendo achieved revenue of 246.6 billion yen (about 11.9 billion yuan), a decrease of 46.5% compared with the same period last year; net profit was 54.5 billion yen (about 2.6 billion yuan).This is a 70% decrease compared to the same period last year and less than 60% of analysts' consensus estimate of 93.7 billion yen.

Against the backdrop of a slight recovery in the global gaming industry, Nintendo's financial report is a bit embarrassing.

Another statistic in the financial report is also very eye-catching. In the second quarter of this year, the total sales volume of Nintendo Switch series products was 2.1 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 46.3%.

It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of this year, Nintendo gave investors a performance guidance of "selling 13.5 million devices throughout the year", but at present, this goal is impossible to achieve.

Sales of console platforms have been halved, and I believe Nintendo is well aware of the reason: its own console platforms are too old, to the point where even the most loyal fans can’t stand it.

It should be said here that among the "Big Three" game manufacturers, Nintendo's approach is quite special. Basically since the Wii (released in 2006), Nintendo has stopped participating in the competition with Microsoft and Sony over hardware performance, but instead focused on the game content itself.

This is reflected in the Switch, which uses almost the "most basic" configuration to build a hardware platform, and then relies on exclusive "first-party masterpieces" to attract users.

Under this strategy, Nintendo's "Planning and Production Headquarters" was able to show its strength, and a number of "popular and well-received" games such as "Animal Crossing" and "The Legend of Zelda" have gained a group of loyal users. At the same time, although the Switch's hardware performance is not good, through targeted in-depth optimization, users can also get a good gaming experience.

However, since last year, this strategy has gradually become ineffective.

The most typical example is the embarrassing situation when The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom of Tears was released last year. Many players reported that the game had serious frame drops on Switch, and the frame rate was even less than 20 in some scenes. Some players tried to run the cracked version of Kingdom of Tears on PC using an emulator and found that it could easily run at 4K 60 frames.

Image credit: Nintendo

This has resulted in an extremely rare phenomenon in the history of the two game consoles: the game consoles are unable to run the games developed by themselves; and the way to get the best gaming experience is to play pirated games on emulators.

Therefore, whether from the perspective of performance or retaining users, the launch of Switch 2 has become Nintendo’s most core task at the moment.

Surrounded by powerful enemies?

Currently, the leaked information surrounding Switch 2 is complicated, and many upgrade information seem "fake at first glance", but one thing is certain: Switch 2 will continue the design of the previous generation model and will not return to the traditional console form.

The reason is that Shuntaro Furukawa has said more than once that the next generation of consoles will be "backward compatible." This is not difficult to understand. The success of Switch is largely due to sports and party games such as "Ring Fit" and "NS Sports", which have covered light game users. When it comes to the next generation of consoles, there is naturally no reason to abandon the characteristics of "heterogeneous consoles."

However, these types of games generally have lower requirements for hardware performance, and it is a challenge for Nintendo to convince casual players to migrate to new game console platforms.

Another issue that must be considered is that the current game console industry has changed a lot since the Switch was released.

For example, the rise of the handheld game console track. Since the release of Steam Deck in 2022, the handheld game console industry has been quickly ignited, and a number of manufacturers including ROG, MSI, Lenovo, GPD, etc. have come up with corresponding products.

Image source: steampowered

Admittedly, the user profiles of Switch and open source handhelds or Windows handhelds have little overlap, and Switch may not have too much direct competition with the latter two. But it is undeniable that some users who buy Switch value its handheld form factor rather than exclusive games.

One thing that needs to be pointed out is that after Sony announced the discontinuation of PSV in 2019, for a long time, Switch was almost the only handheld game console available on the market. Nowadays, when handheld game console users are faced with products with stronger hardware performance and better compatibility, it is difficult to say how much advantage Switch's exclusive games still have.

In addition, this year Valve has also been actively shaping its own handheld gaming ecosystem in the industry. In last week's SteamOS 3.6.9 Beta update, it was explicitly mentioned that support for buttons on ROG's Ally series of handhelds would be added. This signal is enough to show that SteamOS will be available on more third-party manufacturers' hardware platforms in the future, which may prompt more developers to move to this platform.

Surrounded by powerful rivals, the challenges Nintendo will face in the future are undoubtedly severe.