| Kai_Mao said: It’s not really simple since Nintendo’s planned lineup makes placing the reveal and launch of the Switch successor at an..interesting debate. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will still be getting DLC until the end of 2023. Splatoon 3 has planned content throughout 2023. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is planned for May. We don’t know when Pikmin 4 will come out in 2023, if it’ll release at all in 2023. Xenoblade 3’s season pass will be completed at least near the end of 2023. Pokemon S/V will likely get a season pass as well. |
Yeah there is all that, plus they won't want to cut off sales at all for Holiday 2023 by announcing anything before the end of the year. Also presumably we'll get a couple big titles on the Switch next holiday - Prime 4 and a 2D Mario would be the most obvious and those would probably be the last really major first party titles to come to the Switch.
It seems to make the most sense for them to announce the successor roughly 4-5 months ahead of the launch to give people enough time to get excited and save up to buy it and to market it but not so much time that they're gonna lose a lot of Switch sales.
So I think the earliest we get an announcement would be Jan 2024 for a May/June launch (doing another March launch just wouldn't make sense with the timing unless its March 2025), or otherwise late-Spring/early-Summer 2024 announcement for a November 2024 launch.
March 2025 doesn't seem too likely because Switch HW sales are indeed dropping now so unless they plan on doing a couple price drops sales will definitely be a good bit below 15m in 2024. Sure they're gonna be enormous amounts of software but I doubt they have another round of major game releases planned for the Switch as those should be going to the successor and I expect after TotK that Prime 4 and a 2D Mario would be the last big games on the system with a few more medium sized releases, so old SW might be selling a ton in 2024 but I wouldn't expect them to have any major new games in 2024 on the Switch, and if that is the case waiting to 2025 to release a successor wouldn't make sense.
So basically Q1 or Q2 2024 announcement and a Q2 or Q4 2024 launch seems like the most obvious choices.
