What you need to know
- The Steam Deck and the ROG Ally (and all PC-based handhelds) will soon know what the competition is up to.
- Nintendo has confirmed that it will reveal information on its successor to the Switch before the end of this fiscal year.
- Before the next Switch is announced, we'd expect to see upgraded versions of at least the ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go.
In the most casual way possible, the kings of handheld gaming, Nintendo, has today revealed that information on the successor to the Nintendo Switch will be revealed before the end of this fiscal year. So that's not necessarily before the end of the 2024 calendar year, since Nintendo's fiscal year runs to March 2025.
Why is this important to us? After all, we don't cover Nintendo in these parts. It's important because the Switch is the most popular handheld gaming console on the planet, and in PC gaming land we're just getting started. It's always prudent to keep one eye on the competition, and we recognize the Switch as one of the best gaming handhelds you can buy today.
The one thing we do know is that the Nintendo Direct planned in June won't be talking about hardware. Presumably that'll be another chance for Hollow Knight: Silksong fans to be disappointed, instead.
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct…May 7, 2024
The Switch, and certainly its successor, is also going to be an important battleground for Microsoft's Xbox and its new focus on cross-platform availability for its first-party games. Grounded recently hit the Switch, Minecraft (and its spin-offs) has been successful on the Switch, so it's absolutely going to be relevant. And of course, it's a handheld, which means that handheld buyers may still end up deciding between it, and one of the Windows (or Linux) powered PC consoles.
The Switch was first revealed back in 2015, nine years ago, which feels like a lifetime. It's true that one of the benefits of going in on PC gaming handhelds is that there will be a more frequent upgrade cycle, so the hardware limitations on newer games can be negated as things progress. Let's face it, the Switch doesn't come close to the Steam Deck or the ROG Ally on hardware.
Upgrades expected to the ROG Ally, at least, before the Switch successor appears
With PC makers like ASUS and Lenovo in on the handheld action, you can guarantee that things won't sit still for long. We already know that ASUS has a sequel to the ROG Ally in the works, and likewise Lenovo is also getting to it with a successor for the Legion Go.
This is something that Nintendo will never do, and frankly, never has done. The company generally succeeds behind its first-party games, not on boasting about performance. Next to Xbox, PlayStation and PC gaming, the Switch is greatly underpowered.
But Nintendo always draws eyeballs, and until hell freezes over and Mario comes to PC, it's going to be the biggest threat to PC-based handheld consoles. Some will have both, but realistically, that's not how average people buy their tech.
So, we'll be keeping a close eye on this one. It's an exciting time in the handheld gaming space, and it doesn't look like it's slowing down.
