It would take warfare escalating or another huge pandemic (obviously both horrific) to do that.

I posed the question in another thread if Switch took as long as Game Boy to get replaced. But as I and others have acknowledged Game Boy was a unique case because

-Nintendo had home consoles and handhelds, not just a hybrid like right now. They even had a weird platform like Virtual Boy that flopped hard but probably would've been a third pillar if it somehow succeeded. 

-Switch sales are better to date than Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined. A soft saturation point (which I think Switch is approaching) means hardware sales are clearly past their peak and can't be coasted on forever. 

-Pokemon was a world-shattering IP launched on Game Boy in 1996 in Japan and the rest of the world in 1998. What in 2024 or beyond could possibly come out of the woodwork on Switch to compete with that? 

While a new platform is always risky (especially with Switch being the most profitable platform to date), it's also risky to leave money on the table that could come with a new platform. 

A spring launch just makes sense to me after seeing the success of the Switch. I'm surprised other Sony and Microsoft didn't follow suit with their consoles. It seems like, unless it's a Wii U level flop, the console will sell out at launch regardless of when it's released.

Anyway, I voted for early 2025.

Yeah, I can definitely see it being Spring 25 instead of next year like everyone thinks. Switch is just doing so well still and the dual Mario games this holiday are likely going to be huge. I think Nintendo prob wants one more holiday season after this for Switch sales, and try to go for that all time console record which it can probably get with holiday 24 no successor.

Banned for spamming the same post on the forums - TrunksWD

Updated the poll to see your guys' new thoughts on this after all the Switch 2 rumors been coming out.

I'm still on the fence with this thinking either 2024 or 2025, while all the rumors seem to be pointing towards a 2024 release. We've seen that even the most reliable rumors could be dead wrong at times. For example the Switch Pro didn't even end up with any sort of spec upgrades like they predicted, I've also seen reliable rumors mess up on game announcements. And a decent amount of these rumors suggested it was releasing in early 2024 which is already factually wrong since Nintendo confirmed no new hardware before the end of the fiscal year which ends in April.

The reason why I've been leaning towards 2025 is that Nintendo just seems way too quiet for a successor that's supposedly supposed to release in less than a year. Every prior Nintendo console launch had at least 1 year or more where Nintendo at least acknowledged that it was coming, but here we are in Dec 2023 and Nintendo's still denying anything Switch 2 related.

-For the SNES, Nintendo let people know a successor was coming in 1988, 2 years before its Japan launch and 3 years before its NA launch
-For N64, the gap between announcement and release was 3 years (1993-1996)
-For GC, the gap was 2 years
-For Wii, the gap was 2 years
-1.5 Year gap for Wii U
-For Switch, it was a 2 year gap

Same goes for handhelds:
-2 year gap for OG GB
-2 year gap for GBA
-1 Year gap for DS & 3DS

All of Nintendo's past 10 console launched had an announcement that was a year in advanced before launch. It would be very uncharacteristic of Nintendo to launch the Switch 2 in 2024 with less than a year to announce and market it.

It still could technically happen, Nintendo is under new leadership compared to those prior 10 times and they're sitting on the most profitable console of all time so maybe this time Nintendo wants to squeeze every last drop from the Switch before they announce the Switch 2, which may be a possibility, but even with other super successful Nintendo systems like the Wii & DS, they announce the successor more than a year in advance of launch, plus if it happened over 10 times in the past, we have to acknowledge that pattern even under new leadership, we've seen that Nintendo is still composed of many of the same longtime employees from the NES days and still employs that same Nintendo mindset. I'd feel like if this system were less than 1 year away we should see Nintendo at least hint at it a bit more, but they keep reinforcing that nothing is coming.

Also, I've been feeling like Nintendo is still too hot right now with the current Switch to rush it out in 2024. They had one if their best 1st half fiscal year ever in profit and net sales and i think they'll definitely still thrive in 2024 without a successor. People bring up the Wii & DS being successful but still had their life end early but the Switch is way more profitable than those 2 consoles were at the tail end.

Some people may argue that they won't have any big games in 2024, but I could easily see a new Pokemon game being placed as a holiday 2024 title and they'll still be super successful with that along with other games.

The reason why I'm saying 2024, November 2024, is because Nintendo has said that they want the transition between Switch users and next console users to be seemless. And they plan to do so using the Nintendo Accounts. So it sounds like there will be B/C. And many developers have access to the Nintendo's next generation dev kits. Dev Kits are a good sign that the next console will launch rather soon, most of the time it's 18 months soon. And that's about the most concrete truth we know. Everything else is rumors, and we can talk all day about the rumors, speculations, and leaks.
Personally I would love to have the Nintendo Switch for another 2 years easy. I'm not worried about the 3rd party developers. Nintendo is doing their own thing.