It appears that Nintendo's next generation incarnation of the Nintendo Switch will most likely be ready to debut in 2025. This information comes courtesy of GamesIndustry.biz that the developer/publisher giant has been advising third party development teams that their follow-up piece of mainline hardware will see a March 2025 release at the earliest, based on anonymous media sources that includes Bloomberg (paywall).

A launch planned around March 2025 would be 8 years since the original hybrid console took the video game world by surprise in 2017. The news of a new device, or even its projected window or release, has yet to be officially confirmed by Nintendo themselves. The deck has been held very close to their chests, and speculation and rumors continue to spike until something is verified.

2023 felt like quite the bang to go out on, with strong releases like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Wonder, Octopath Traveler 2, and the Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Remake. 2024 has just started, but Nintendo's release of exclusive software still seems promising with Mario vs Donkey Kong (just released February 16th), Princess Peach: Showtime, and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD. Still keeping a sighting on Metroid Prime 4.

As far as information that's known about the "Switch 2", there is some confirmation that it will embrace backwards compatibility and Nintendo Switch profiles will carry over, meaning accessing your current Switch library will be streamlined. The power of this new [likely] hybrid console is a question for debate, but insiders believe it will be capable of producing "PS5-level games". Its horsepower is rumored to be using Nvidia's T239, a modified version of their T234, indicating that this next-gen hybrid could be capable of ray tracing, DLSS upscaling.     

With Switch sales slowing down considerably, it looks like it may not dethrone the PlayStation 2 as the top selling video game console on the planet, though it sits at an impressive 139.3 million units worldwide, as of December 2023. It's quite a run.

SOURCE: GamesIndustry.biz