There is incredibly hard evidence that it would be a mistake to replace the Switch before late 2023. We just have to look at the product lifecycle of the console! If someone doesn’t know about the product life-cycle theory, here is a Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life-cycle_theory .
There are five phases in the lifecycle of a product: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Saturation and Decline. Introduction is self-explanatory. The Growth phase means that revenues with the product keep increasing and keep increasing at the same or faster rate. This is exactly the phase the Switch is in right now, as its sales have been growing rapidly in 2020. In the Maturity phase, the sales increases become slower and then (Saturation) stagnate and start do decline.
With the Switch, Nintendo realised the growth phase (in 2018) wasn’t as strong as they had hoped for and that the Switch was mainly selling to male customers aged 20-30. To alleviate this, they introduced the Switch Lite and software like Brain Training, Animal Crossing, Ring Fit. The Switch Lite was meant to attract a larger audience and to spur the growth phase of the product. Same thing happened with the DS Lite and 3DS XL / 2DS. This (mainly the software) was successful: Enter 2020 and the Switch is still in the growth-phase of the product lifecycle. Just to make clear why this is profoundly important, let’s compare the product life cycle of the Switch to that of the Wii:
| Introduction | Late 2006, 2007 |
| Growth | 2008 |
| Maturity | 2009 |
| Saturation | 2010 |
| Decline | 2011, 2012 |
Every stage of the product lifecycle lasted roughly one year for the Wii. Now, let’s look at the Switch.
| Introduction | 2017 |
| Growth | 2018, 2019, 2020 |
| Maturity | 2021, 2022? |
| Saturation | 2023? |
| Decline | 2024? |
As we can see, the growth phase of the Switch is probably going to last three full years! Thrice as long as the growth phase of the Wii! We can thus expect the Switch to last at least two years longer compared to the Wii, probably three years, unless we prescribe to the infamous „sales falling off a cliff“ theory and believe after three years of growth there will just be one year of Saturation before the Switch declines heavily (this could be possible, but only if Nintendo prematurely abandons the platform).
So, what is the point of a redesign (the technical term is "re-launch" by the way) in the Maturity stage of the product lifecycle? Is it to increase sales? No! The point is to prolong the Maturity phase. This is well understood and documented. This is what companies do all the time and it’s the reason why Nintendo released the DSi and the New 3DS. A „New Switch“ in late 2020 or in 2021 thus makes perfect sense and it’s a tactic Nintendo has often implemented in the past. Basically every single manufacturer in this business releases redesigns of their consoles during the Maturity phase of the product lifecycle. Why would everyone, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, do this if these redesigns didn’t have the desired effect? And just to drive the point home: In many graphs depicting the product lifecycle, re-launches (here: redesigns) are actually baked into the graph. It is widely expected that companies will try to prolong the Maturity phase, as this is where the big profits are! If Nintendo cuts short the Maturity phase, they are going to lose a hell of a lot of profits.
As for when the Switch 2 should launch: The best point to release the successor of a product is at the end of the Saturation phase, or once the product is in actual decline. For the Switch that could be 2023. It could be 2024, but I’m always sceptical about Nintendo as they turn somewhat crazy whenever they got some success. So if you want to argue that the Switch 2 should release in 2022, you have to argue against a very popular business theory.
