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Dulfite on 05 February 2022
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RolStoppable said:
PAOerfulone said:

(...)

Nintendo has already stated numerous times they want to break the past pattern (longer cycle) of their previous consoles with the Switch. So that would put it past the 7 year mark, which would be March 2024. So it's looking more and more like Holiday 2024 is the earliest it will launch, they may even stretch it to March 2025 depending on how the software lineup and development looks like.

Nintendo should replicate the Game Boy route. Substantial mid-gen upgrade to prolong the lifecycle with no mandated support of all SKUs for any given give.

We've already had the topic of more processing power doesn't bring new gameplay anymore. It's also clear that Nintendo doesn't need to have more powerful hardware to get AAA third party games, because most of the AAA publishers in question don't want to release their games on a Nintendo console anyway. In that sense, this is really the right time to question the fundamental premise of console lifecycles. The huge drawback of any new cycle is always that the installed base has to be built from 0 again, but iterative upgrades could be a feasible option to let the same platform press on and on and on.

The reason why it worked for the Game Boy is that there was no serious competitor in sight in the late 1990s. Bandai's Wonderswan and the Neo Geo Pocket were never going to have global presences. And nowadays there's even less competition than those, so it could work again and maybe for even more than one such upgrade. Nintendo may be seriously considering this idea and that's why their roadmap had Switch's successor with a release year of 20XX. This would also be the optimistic scenario for Switch lifetime sales as opposed to the example I've posted earlier in this thread.

If they go this route I'd be happy. They can say it's part of the Switch generation all they want, won't mean it's true. The Gameboy Color was a more powerful device with hundreds of high budget exclusive games on it that the original Gameboy could not play. Not shovelware like DSI had compared to DS Lite/DS, or an incredibly small amount of higher budget exclusive games like New 3ds had over 3ds, but a TON of exclusives. So if Nintendo makes something powerful enough to have hundreds of exclusives on it that Switch 1 literally can't run, then I don't care if they call it Switch Pro, or New Switch, and I don't care if they want to call it part of the Switch 1 generation, it will be next gen in my eyes based on the exclusive AA to AAA budget games and I will be happy that we have a new generation just like GBC was a new generation in the eyes of most consumers compared to GB.