Topic: Switch 2 Talk

Something to consider looking at the calendar. Easter is late April this year and it's usually a fairly popular time of the year for people to take holidays. Because public holidays are basically free days off and you can stack them with annual leave to min-max your leave balance. It's also true for kids, because the state tries to line up these days off with the school calendar. Here in Australia the 12th to the 27th are School holidays this year because they always try to line up with Easter. Less relevant for the more global release, we have Anzac day on the 25th so that's a 3 day work week. Outside of Australia in Japan Golden Week is the week of the 29th

So yeah, April is a big month for people taking holidays I think. And if you were a planning a release you would want to be before people take holidays because people on holidays have leisure time. Which means entertainment. Which means shopping and games. Mid April feels like it would be a fair candidate for a launch I think

Also, selfishly thinking of myself, I'm also booking holidays around that window. If Switch 2 comes out before my holidays? I'm probably getting it day 1 so I can take it with me. If it comes out while I'm on holidays obviously I'm not getting it then. If it comes out after? .... it's a slightly tougher sell, because if I buy it after my break I'll be buying it for 1hr here and there after work and weekends

edit: I have heard people on other forums talk about June/July in an effort to line up with Summer holidays. Probably also a valid perspective. Obviously doesn't line up at all with Australia but we are a tiny market all things considered. But regardless I do think that early/mid April is a fairly good window for launch. Certainly better than May

@skywake
Geez, man, you really are unpleasant towards me.

No. That is also not the reason why I’ve been saying next week. I’ve been saying it because I don’t feel the first week of the new year was viable, this week was CES or whatever, and next week week feels right to me if they want to have this thing about anytime between March-June. In my feel, if they wait to reveal towards the very end of January or into February, that pushes the release back to a June-September window, which I don’t think is in their interest.

I think they want about 4ish months between reveal and release.

@rallydefault
None of what you said excludes the week of the 20th or 27th. And I don't see how one week here or there on an announcement pushes the release months back

And you always have the contrarian takes, it's your jam

Xbox Developer Direct pretty much deconfirms the week of January 20th considering Xbox as a 3rd party publisher would know when the Switch 2 is being revealed and hence would time their event accordingly. Meanwhile the final week of January risks clashing with stuff like a State of Play (last year there was one on January 31st) or GTA6 news (Take Two's investor meeting is on February 6th so Rockstar may share news the week before).

So Nintendo seems to have made 1 of 2 choices:
1. Reveal Switch 2 next week even though DKC Returns HD is releasing on Thursday
2. Reveal Switch 2 after their investor meeting

I think they'll go for option 2.

@Grumblevolcano But then there’s also Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. If number 2 is preferred over number 1 in that, then it just leaves if the Switch 2 is revealed after the investor meeting in February or after Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition comes out.

@Grumblevolcano
I've been saying for a while that you can invent a reason why it won't be any week. The only reason I'm not keen on the idea of next week is that Nintendo had control of when DKCR HD released. They could've gone for February, or earlier in January, or some other time. They picked next week. That doesn't mean it can't be next week but it's a good reason for it to be some other time

Certainly overshadowing your own title on a date you picked seems like a better reason than possibly overlapping with some other event that may or may not happen

@skywake Any chance it happens the same day as Microsoft’s own event?

I'm still thinking we get a Direct / Event / Trailer early February. There seems to be a weird narrative that the CES leak is on Nintendo...but it's not. It's entirely on Genki (hence the ninjas.) Switch 2 is possibly the most looked forward to console I can recollect. The idea of getting in first with accessories was obviously too much of a temptation for them. But I do believe the gossip (and reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised if the final console is nothing like lol!). I believe the placeholder software listings. We've seen similar before. I just don't believe it's that simple for Nintendo to simply bring all their plans forward. And I would be very surprised to see a January reveal (which to be fair, Nintendo do like to surprise us...so come on Nintendo lol!)

@GrailUK
The problem with the “they’re moving it forward” theory is that it’s untestable short of Nintendo confirming the thinking behind the timing. If it happens next week for all we know it was always planned for next week. But the same goes the other way. I doubt they would move it out of next week and delay because things are leaking

January always made sense as a possible announcement time. That hasn’t changed

@skywake Exactly. If we get anything next week, it has been planned. Agreed. You can communicate a delay much easier than bringing something forward. Imagine how much work that creates for so many partners and outlets.

All I see from comments is more and more arguments suggesting there is NO good week to announce the Switch 2 because apparently every single week has something that could interfere or be overshadowed.

@skywake
I just said, to me, the weeks of the 20th and 27th feel too late if they are releasing the console in the March-June timeframe. A week is a week. I think it matters.

I take things the way I see them. Sometimes they link up with what everyone else is saying, sometimes they don't.

The Returns port is clearly not immediately important to them given the lack of marketing and the lack of features for the game itself. My hunch is that they view it as an evergreen title that will eventually get them between 1-2 million sales, as they should: It's not something that people are going to rush out and buy, especially casual fans who still buy their games by making a trip to their Gamestop every few months to look at what is new.

The argument that official Switch 2 info next week would take away from the DKC hype to me is laughable because 1: there is no hype and 2: this is a title that Nintendo knows won't be heavy on initial sales, but will instead sell steadily over time, especially to families who hang onto their original Switch for a bit longer even after the new ones comes out.

@skywake The DKC Returns HD release date was announced in June of which it's possible that Nintendo still planned on revealing Switch 2 in 2024 at that point like if there was any truth to the September/October rumours. Though I don't think they'd purposely time a rearranged reveal to clash with DKC Returns HD either.

@rallydefault
I don't see how an announcement one or weeks later is going to mean they can't hit a 3 months window. It's not like this week April is possible but if it's next week suddenly it has to be July. That's a bit of a silly idea. If early April is possible with an announcement this week April is still possible next week

In terms of DKCR being important or not, you're not really winning anyone over here. I agree it's not a significant release. But the announcement of the Switch 2 is significant. And this isn't some public holiday or third party event. It's a date they picked. So why release this game on-top of a Switch 2 announcement if they could've just released in February or something? Or a week earlier?

Unless the @Grumblevolcano theory is right and it's a change of plans with the DKCR date being set before the Switch 2 reveal date. Although that I also have doubts about because mass production started around September/October. They already had a schedule by mid last year I'd think. I would expect everything we've seen since August or so has been pretty well planned out in one block

And if it wasn't then why did they bother giving DKCRHD a date at all? They could've just said 2025. They didn't. They were confident where it would fit

Anyways, I've been pretty happy with my last week of Jan guess since it didn't land in my first guess of October. Watch as they announce it this week I guess. Because the truth is none of us have the slightest of clue about what they're doing

I’m just hoping Nintendo don’t try the two part reveal thing they did with the Switch. The idea of a trailer that reveals the hardware followed by a separate live event or Direct focused on software doesn’t make sense for the Switch 2 as everyone knows what the hardware is. So just show the games at the same time along with release date and price.

@FragRed
Yeah, I don't think a short hardware trailer alone would work. Both because the hardware concept itself doesn't really need explaining but also because there isn't that much time. There really needs to be a full press event style thing where they drag third parties out to show their releases and also outline first party titles

Not sure if the first event would be the place for going deep into NSO/BC etc. Possibly that's something more for a Direct in March/April or something just before launch. The initial messaging needs to be very direct. Going into the mechanics of the hardware transition? Doesn't seem like the right time for that

Genki was not wrong about Switch 2 consoles being sold in the black market.

Nintendo is pretty mad.

Coming back to this, I can tell you that Big Man won FrostyFest 2025 even if it was not the same theme you brought up. Although they could have secretly done this for themselves to know when to reveal the Switch 2, and if we’re going by that, since Team Presents won (otherwise Team March), Nintendo will now hold off revealing the Switch 2 until March.

One of the main reasons I was fairly confident about an October announcement last year. They surely knew this was a risk, presumably the marketing strategy of doing a condensed launch lead-in was more important

@skywake Yeah Nintendo knew and I was sure of a reveal last year too. But then as we hit mid September I started doubting things and then obviously we never got anything. But no company waits this long to reveal an in production product without knowing the consequences.

And I do hope you are right that they have decided not to do a separate console trailer and then a software focused Direct. I’m just concerned by Nintendo merely stating they’ll reveal the console, which suggests it’s only hardware we will see.