| IcaroRibeiro said: Preferable but not a must |
Thinking on the timeline, they typically have around 6 years for a console. During years 4-6, studios begin shifting development to the next console, especially if they released a game in year 3.
The Switch was acting like a normal console (nothing on steroids) until 2020 when lockdowns + Animal Crossing made it explode in popularity. That's year 3. Nintendo would have already started some studios on Switch 2 games by that point, plus they had no way to know the recent success would be sustained and sales wouldn't calm back down after a bit. They wouldn't want to leave their next console hanging with no games, so I'm sure a good chunk of their studios started in 2020 to work on games for the next console, with another chunk in 2021.
You can't just plan for a console to be as successful and have sales lasting as long as the Switch did, and you've *got* to stick to a game development schedule so your next console isn't dead on arrival with no software to support it.
But they didn't stick with a 6 year cycle. They pushed Switch 2 back from a typical March 2023 release window (or less) to probably later than March 2024 (7 + years later).
I say all this to state my belief that Nintendo is sitting or close to sitting on quite a few finished/soon to be finished Switch 2 games waiting for that consoles launch.
