Industry insider John Linneman let slip that the oft rumoured Switch Pro is no longer in development, but a follow up could be out as early as 2024.
The Nintendo Switch Pro has been churning up the rumour mill practically since the console's launch almost seven years ago. These rumours hit fever pitch in 2020 when internal documents showed that Nintendo had been buying a lot of OLED screens, then in 2021…the Switch OLED was released, which – although the best version of the current hardware – wasn’t quite the beefed up Switch Pro most fans were hoping for.
Now it seems that the rumours can be finally put to bed, as Digital Foundry’s John Linneman let slip during a recent episode of the Digital Foundry podcast that there was a mid-gen Switch update planned at one point, but it was subsequently scrapped
“So I think, at one point, internally – from what I can understand from talking to different developers – there was some sort of mid generation Switch update planned at one point, and that seems to no longer be happening. Thus it's pretty clear that, whatever they do next, is going to be actual next-generation hardware – a Nintendo Switch 2 perhaps?
“I don't think it's going to be 2023, and I think Nintendo itself is probably, likely, very nervous about this transition because – let's face it – their last few transitions have not gone well.”
As someone who is in almost constant contact with both developers and hardware makers, Linneman and the team at Digital Foundry are as credible as they come. As a group of both hardware experts and games industry veterans, let’s just say DF knows what it’s talking about.
A Switch successor in 2024
If Linneman is correct, and plans for a Switch Pro have been shelved, could we see a new console from the house of Mario as soon as 2024? During the same podcast, Linneman and co. speculated on when we would likely see a Switch successor. The consensus was 2024 at the earliest, and this humble hack would agree.
It’s safe to say that the Switch has seen better days, despite the best efforts of a slew of talented studios, and some truly miraculous ports like The Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal. The amount of cutbacks needed to bring current-gen games to the system has greatly increased, and pervasive performance issues are prevalent even in first party games (cough Pokemon Scarlet/ Violet, hack, splutter). From a hardware perspective at least, Switch development has hit a wall. One that is only going to get harder to climb over as cross-gen games begin to dry up next year, and most larger studios move on to making games solely for the Xbox Series X|S and PS5.
Traditionally Nintendo has stuck to a life cycle of about five to six years for its hardware since the launch of the Gamecube in 2001, although its handhelds tend to last a little longer. The Switch will probably go the way of ‘old yella’ sooner rather than later. Although Nintendo President, Shuntaro Furukawa, claimed during an investor call in February (via Bloomberg) that the Switch was "just in the middle of its lifecycle". This doesn’t necessarily mean that we won’t see new hardware sooner rather than later, as both the SNES and NES continued to be supported after their replacements were released.
Unless we get a shock announcement that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be another cross-gen game and the Switch 2: Electric Boogaloo will launch on the game's launch date of May 12, 2023, I think we’ll see the next Nintendo machine in 2024 at the earliest.
The biggest problem Nintendo has though is that it has a horrible habit of following top selling consoles with hardware that bombs. This has been true back as far as the SNES. So I’m sure the Big N will be carefully considering its next move.
As Linneman opined during the same DF podcast: “how do you make that transition while keeping that audience happy and make it exciting again? There's a risk that if they just do more Switch like an enhanced Switch, It won't necessarily get that same buzz, but if they go too far from the concept they could alienate their fans.
“I think they need to ensure that Switch games work on whatever comes next. It has to have backwards compatibility. That's not even a given at this point, but I would hope so.”
