While Nintendo hasn't yet confirmed a Nintendo Switch successor, the rumor mill is chugging along steadily. A potential release date timeframe surfaced online this week from a fairly credible financial site with a track record for Nintendo leaks, suggesting we could see the Nintendo Switch 2 launch in the first quarter of 2024.
Chinese investment site MoneyDJ recently published a report outlining the production outlook at Hongzhun, a metal cases manufacturer and subsidiary of Hon Hai Technology Group, better known in international markets as Foxconn. Foxconn is best known for being Apple's go-to manufacturer for the best iPhones, but it has branches that work assembling gaming consoles as well.
MoneyDJ expects sales at Hongzhun to peak in the latter half of 2023, citing Nintendo's plans to launch the Switch successor in the first quarter of 2024. It isn't specified if that means the first quarter of the calendar or fiscal year. The company's official statements imply the latter, as Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed back in May that Nintendo has no plans to release any hardware during its next fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2024.
Nintendo Switch 2 announcement soon?
Still, if accurate, that means we likely won't have much longer to wait to learn more about what Nintendo has planned. The purported release date suggests we could see an official Switch 2 announcement sometime later this year.
With the original Switch, Nintendo officially announced the console in October 2016 ahead of its launch in March 2017. So it's not a long shot to imagine Nintendo could follow a similar timeline with the Nintendo Switch 2. And with an early 2024 release date, Nintendo would avoid the potential of negatively impacting sales of the original Switch over the holiday season. And the buzz generated over a new model on the horizon could help shift any remaining stock.
While we won't know whether this release window is accurate until Nintendo announces anything, it's worth pointing out that MondeyDJ has a good track record with Nintendo rumors. The site was one of the first to reveal details about the original Switch's production, then-codenamed the NX, in 2016, which later turned out to be correct.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that Nintendo announces the Switch successor sometime this year. Furukawa noted in June that the company is already thinking about the transition from the current Switch to its next-generation system. "We want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers while utilizing the Nintendo Account," he said during the Q&A portion of a recent investors call, which could hint at the Nintendo Switch 2 being backwards compatible.
Hopefully, we won't have much longer to wait for more details. In the meantime, be sure to check out the best Nintendo Switch deals going on this Prime Day.
