Nintendo President Predicts Switch Still Has Strong Years Ahead

Doug Bowser, the president of Nintendo of America, recently sat for a lengthy interview with the Associated Press, and when asked about the timeline of the potential Switch successor, he stated that the company is still feeling “very bullish” about the current Nintendo Switch, suggesting that it won’t be abandoned any time soon.

Bowser stated that there is still a “very, very strong lineup coming” for the console and that Nintendo feels “very confident” that the Switch can maintain a strong performance “over the next few years.” He elaborated that this is in part due to its unique hybrid design that allows players to play in a variety of ways. When discussing what new capabilities a future Nintendo console would have, he stated simply “one of the things we look at always is how can we surprise and delight, how can we introduce new unique ways of playing.”

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This answer is particularly noteworthy due to the recent pile-up of Switch successor rumors that have been making the rounds over the past couple of weeks. First, a 4chan post claimed that a new Switch with potentially stronger hardware would be releasing alongside the second wave of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet’s DLC (which is set to launch in Winter 2023).

Though random online claims are a dime a dozen, this user accurately predicted nearly everything that was announced in that Pokemon Presents livestream regarding Scarlet & Violet. A few days later, a more reliable industry insider, Jeff Grubb, stated that he’d “heard rumors” of a Switch 2 announcement in 2023, and that things were “lining up again to have something happen sooner rather than later, by the end of this year.”

The recent statements by Bowser rather throw a wrench in these Switch 2 rumors, as a new console coming out so soon would likely hinder the current Switch from having a few more years of “strong performance.” That being said, it could be that the plan is for the Switch to coexist with this potential successor, with Nintendo games being cross-generational for a few years, much like what’s happened with the PlayStation and Xbox platforms.

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