Nintendo has just announced that there will be a Nintendo Direct livestream tomorrow, June 18 at 7 AM PT, 10 AM ET. It will last 40 minutes and it will not mention the Nintendo Switch successor. Yeah they want to be make that extremely clear, though it’s honestly getting kind of funny at this point.
The actual point of the Direct is to talk about current Switch games that will be released in the second half of 2024, which we will enter in two weeks. This has gotten people hoping there will finally be an update about Metroid Prime 4, though it seems exceedingly unlikely they would fully reveal and release that within six months. But we can dare to dream. Another hopeful thought is maybe the meme-worthy Hollow Knight: Silksong may finally come out in that window.
Nintendo has already had a few major titles out this year, so it’s unclear what big ones could make it out for the holiday season. Though also yes, it sure does feel like it’s time to start talking about the Nintendo Switch 2, or whatever it will be called.
The original Nintendo Switch is now more than seven years old, and while it has sold incredibly well for years, those numbers are starting to plunge at this point. Additionally, when it was released it was well behind the power capabilities of even the PS4 and Xbox One generation of consoles, and now we’re years into PS5 and Xbox Series X. While power was never that important to the Switch, and certainly not its main draw, it is now very much showing its age and has become more and more of a meme over time in terms of how downgraded its ports have to be:
There are plenty of rumors about the capabilities of the next-gen Switch, namely that dev kits have been out a while, and it may end up with the power of something akin to the PS4 this time around, which would track with how things worked last time. We do not at all seem to be heading toward a Wii > Wii U moment with a dramatic shift in concept, a mistake Nintendo seems to want to avoid replicating even if their console gens have all been pretty different from one another over the years. Of course many open questions remain.
Like…when is this coming out? At this point it does not seem to be before the end of the year, certainly, and some rumors have placed it in May 2025. Nintendo does not really care about holiday releases of hardware lately, as the first Switch was out in March. The Wii and Wii U were out in November, however.
It should be an interesting Direct to see what’s actually there, if not hardware. I’d expect the Switch 2 reveal closer to fall at this point.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
