Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@Kidfried That would be so much fun! A game completely focused on the Pikmin would be so cool.

It's worth noting the value of the Yen if we're speculating Switch 2 timing. To be clear, the day to day movements won't really matter because consoles are things that exist on the scale of years not days. Even so, the value of the Yen has been climbing fairly steadily for the last year and a half. From 1USD buying 127Y up to last month when it was buying 160Y. In the last month it has dropped to ~140Y.....

What does that mean? Well, in a round about way. If Nintendo was to sell a console for $400US when 1USD buys 160Y that means Nintendo gets 64,000Y. But if the Yen falls to 140Y they're only making 56,000Y. Of course there are costs, losses, retailer margins, overseas assets and so forth that offset some of that. But fundamentally that's the equation

Again, not something that's really going to impact much from our perspective. All of the timing of stuff would already be in motion. But the rapidly shifting exchange rate is, I would think, one of Nintendo's biggest concerns ATM. More than pretty much anything else people might put on these pages

@skywake ... and here's Nintendo Forecast again with another timely, and well researched, analysis piece ...

TL;DR for everyone else, Nintendo has possibly dodged a bullet by holding off Switch 2 until 2025

@PikminMarioKirby @FishyS Nintendo games have been inspired by many things over the years, how about a Pikmin game based on an ant colony? This wouldn't stray too far from the current game, but would bring in interesting options. Multi player vs (rival colonies) or co-op, you can have existing enemies and new ones, maybe a building mechanic where you need to dig out the colony and expand, defend against attacks, gather resources etc.

@YourDaddy Oh! Oh! Do you know if it has graphics?

Thinking about what the Switch 2 might be and some of the stuff that has leaked about it. I think I might review one of my firmest of opinions here somewhat

I've repeatedly crapped on the idea that the Switch 2 might be a "reverse Wii U". That it would be a handheld that would stream video to your TV. There are a lot of technical reasons why that's a bad idea but it mostly comes down to three things:
1. A TV demands a higher level of fidelity than you can get away with on a portable
2. When docked you have more power available to you
3. Wireless connections are lower bandwidth

..... however, we know from shipping information that the dock contains a fan. Which suggests it's doing something more than just converting display port to HDMI. It could well have a (very light) SoC on it. Which could well include hardware accelerated AV1 encode/decode. And that could enable this additional mode and possibly even some other standalone functionality in the dock. If done in a smart way you could eliminate some of the issues that are just inevitable with this approach

How I'd imagine this would work is that the dock outputs a signal to the TV and it can do this even when undocked and within range. The default state would be to just.... show a splash screen or something telling you to dock to continue playing on the TV. But optionally developers could choose to push their own static elements, render some simple elements on the dock itself (don't get too hyped, think 3DS tier) and possibly combine that with a video stream sent from the Switch 2 hardware itself wirelessly

The video feed stuff? That'd suffer from all the issues that I think are just inherent in this idea, although a high quality hardware accelerated video decode would mitigate some of that. But the locally rendered stuff? It could be serviceable for the right game. And there are plenty of game ideas that could work with just a straight up static image on the TV

Would this mean we're streaming the next big Zelda from the portable to the TV? Almost surely not. For a title like that you'd be wanting to use every bit of the device possible and on TV the best way to do that would be fully docked. But I think you could easily use it for stuff like DS on NSO or less demanding titles like Mario Party or Mario Maker

.... do I think this will happen? Probably not. But I think it's certainly possible and an interesting angle to take

Talk of a 60w power supply and a dual cooling system, one in the dock and one in the console.

The discussion over on Famiboards is...interesting.

Famiboards can be exhausting. Their equivalent to this thread both from 2021 has over 158,000 posts...

I did notice Skywake over there recently.

@FishyS
Yeah, I got bored of this thread being a bit of a dead end so started posting over there. Certainly a bit less..... relaxed than it is over here....

Like trying to converse with a congregation of skywakes. One of me is surely enough

@skywake I liked your comment about supporting newer 4K standards. There's not too many regular contributors on Fami that write about TVs in detail, and I've always thought decent output on newer TVs was one of the key drivers for any upgrade

For everyone else, Spawn Wave had a good summary of recent discussions on Fami yesterday ...

https://wccftech.com/nintendo-switch-2-miss-early-2025-launch/

It's looking like Switch 2 might not follow the Switch's release schedule after all. During a podcast on GamesIndustry, Chris Ding says that multiple developers he's talked to have been told not to expect the Switch 2 to release in this fiscal year. So a March 2025 release date may be off the table now and we may be looking more towards a Summer or (probably more likely) a Holiday 2025 release date.

April 1st release 😝

Yeah, Nintendo does not care about April Fool's that much (is that even celebrated in Japan?). It would be epic if their social media team did a Switch 2 related April Fool's prank, but we're supposedly getting the reveal before then.

More seriously, it's sounding more like Switch 2 is going to be a March 2025 REVEAL and Holiday release. That would be the next best timeline if a March release is off the table. That's probably why Chris Ding is saying this now. He's basically saying not to expect an imminent Switch 2 reveal.

March hasn't been very likely for the next console's release, in my opinion, once it was revealed that it'd only be announced by next March, I think pretty much any time after that in 2025 is fair game (besides December, I can't really see that happening)

It's not announced yet, and we haven't had any manufacturing leaks so it hasn't hit mass production yet. We're not yet half way through their FY and they've said they'll announce it this FY

If it was releasing this FY it would've only just barely made March. So "not before April" isn't really news. As far as I'm concerned it just rules out the earliest possible month

@skywake Yeah at this point March was seeming less possible anyway, but I wonder if Nintendo would want to do an April/May release, have they ever released a console around that time before?

@PikminMarioKirby
Depends on the region. For major new consoles and outside of Japan the 3DS was very late in March, 31st in Australia. Might as well have been April. And if you go into revisions the DSi in most regions was early April, and the DS Lite was in June excluding Japan

Also we can't ignore the fact that Tears of the Kingdom dropped in May. Not hardware obviously but certainly one of their most significant releases in the last several years

So definitely some precedent there for major releases in that period. They tend to like March more for sure but it does feel like, outside of the holiday window, they like to drop major stuff either side of their EOFY

Y'know, a March reveal with a Q4 release would make the YoY easier the following year hahaha. Seriously though, Switch next year with Metroid Prime 4 and Mario Odyssey 2 would be fine upto October.

I'm guessing January reveal, April/May launch. The initial stock will sell out regardless of launch timing, so this will allow them to build up more supply for the holiday season, as well as building a stronger lineup of games. Still mimics Switch's year 1 to some degree.

Edit: Also, I think they'll want to avoid launching in Fall/Holiday 2025 so they don't have to compete with GTA VI, especially given that game almost certainly won't be coming to Switch 2. Nintendo likes to have the spotlight all to themselves.

@IceClimbers Is GTA coming to XBox S? And is there really that much crossover between GTA and a Nintendo console?