Demand continues to be extremely high for the seven-year-old Switch.
Pocket-lint
Although rumours and speculation on its next games console abound, Nintendo is increasing production of its existing machine. It is said to be matching continued demand and relative improvement in components availability with a larger production order.
The popularity of the seven-year-old Nintendo Switch defies the usual console lifespan. Console generations tend to last a similar timeframe but are then replaced. The Xbox Series X and S machines were released seven years after the Xbox One, for example. The same is true of the PS5 and its predecessor, the PlayStation 4.
Nintendo is not unknown to break with convention though and, while it has previously confirmed that a successor is in development, it clearly sees a lot more life in the existing Switch still – even if third-party developers are starting to struggle with its hardware limitations.
The news on Nintendo’s production plans come care of Bloomberg (via VGC) and suggest that, as the Japanese gaming giant is placing this latest order to cover the next fiscal year, we’re unlikely to see a Switch Pro until 2024 at the least.
This matches a few other recent rumours, which also claim that we’ll have to wait until next year for an announcement.
In fact, one reveals that we won’t get a Switch Pro at all and that Nintendo’s next console might be something new altogether: “Talking to different developers, there was some sort of mid-generation Switch update planned at one point, but that seems to no longer be happening,” said Digital Foundry’s John Linneman on a recent episode of the DF Direct Weekly video stream.
He also suggests that 2024 is a more realistic target for new Nintendo hardware: “I don’t think it’s going to be 2023 and I think Nintendo itself is likely to be very nervous about this transition because, let’s face it, their last few transitions have not gone well,” he added.
On the other hand, we’d love to see a Switch Pro ourselves, a machine capable of running the latest games in 4K and with stable frame rates, but without ditching all the cool features of the Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED we’ve come to love. Hopefully, Nintendo agrees.
