When do you think the Switch Successor will release?

[Shadow1980]

Okay. Time to try to get this thread back on topic.

I already said I'm going with Q2 2024, but regarding my reason why I think that, I'm going to repeat what I've said in another thread: If the Switch 2 is ready to go next year, it's going to release next year. The only way it's going to be a 2025 release is if it's not ready for prime time in 2024. They are not going to delay it just to squeeze more out of the Switch. There is no good business reason for waiting any longer than necessary. The Switch is in decline. The longer Nintendo waits, the worse things will get.

On the hardware side of things, current projections have Switch hardware at 15M for the current fiscal year, a 16.5% decline from last fiscal year and a 48% decline from the Switch's peak year of 2020. If Nintendo holds back on the Switch 2 until well into 2025 and the Switch drops to, say, 12M next fiscal year, that would make it the fifth-worst year for hardware shipments in the past 30 years.

On the software side, things won't be as bad, but sales are still in decline. Software shipments for the current fiscal year are projected to be 180M units, a 16% drop from last fiscal year and a 23.4% decline from the FY2021-22 peak. If software sales in the 2024-25 fiscal year drop to, say, 140M units, that wouldn't quite be close to the previous low of 75.34M units in the 2016-17 FY, but it would still be numerically closer to that low than to the Switch's peak, and would represent a drop of over 40%, or nearly 100M units, from the 2021-22 FY.

The console market is cyclical, and the Switch is in the "decline" part of the "grow-peak-decline" cycle. Nintendo and their shareholders will not sustain continued, inevitable losses to revenues if they don't have to. I'm not saying the Switch 2 won't release in 2025, but Nintendo will not release it that year unless they simply cannot release it next year. A 2024 release simply makes better business sense as it will reset the cycle and result in higher revenues next year, assuming it has a similar trajectory as the Switch.

Last edited by Shadow1980 - on 27 July 2023