They'll Announce It When They Feel Like It

"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those that don't believe, no explanation will do. ~ Jeff Jarrett People really need to stop trying to analyze when and where Nintendo will give info on the successor to the Nintendo Switch.  They also need to stop acting like they weren't expecting Nintendo to reveal something by this point and then act as though it would be a "mistake" to announce it now when they know for certain that they aren't getting the info that they wanted, when they wanted it. The picture above describes where we are with the Switch successor. I'm not going to post the quote, but if you have seen the movie Spaceballs you know what I am talking about. On March 17th, 2015, Nintendo “announced” that it was working on a new device code-named “Project NX.”  They also said not to expect to hear anymore about the device for at least one year.  The Nintendo Switch was unveiled in October of 2016.  So they did exactly what they said, and food for though going forward.

Nintendo announced the successor to the Nintendo Switch in May of 2024 of this year and stated that we will hear about the console before the fiscal-year ends which is between March and April of 2025. So, we are well within the window of Nintendo announcing something, and any time is fair game. It seems like people that didn't get information when THEY wanted to get it are now trying to rationalize it by saying things like..... "Well, why would Nintendo reveal it before the Holiday? That just doesn't make sense." Of course, these same people had NO PROBLEM with this idea when they thought they were for sure getting some news about the Switch successor before those dates that THEY CHOSE for it to be revealed expired. The whole notion that Nintendo does not want to disturb Holiday sales by announcing a new product is a misnomer for a lot of reasons. Here is why.

In 2016, Nintendo announced bundles for both the Wii U and 3DS that were to go on sale AFTER the announcement of the Nintendo Switch. Yes, the Wii U was a failed platform, but with that being the case, what sense does it make to create a new bundle for it unless you expected it to be profitable? Companies don't just make bundles for the sake of making them. They do that because they expect to make money. So, clearly Nintendo did not feel that the announcement of the Switch would affect those sales or affect them enough to where it would severely curtail profits. The factor that you have to remember is that Nintendo is a publicly-traded company. Regardless on how much cash Nintendo has on hand (which is in the billions,) shareholders don't have access to any of that. Their profits are tied into the market cap. So, if Nintendo market cap is low (which is was at the time compared to now,) so is the stock for the shareholders. So, they want assurance that Nintendo would do something to bolster profits. To add to that, the 3DS WAS selling very well, and consistently. It continued to sell well even after the Switch was launched. The Switch was shown as a hybrid-device which means that it would take the place of a device that was actually selling very well. Sure, the Switch cannot do 3D, but no one was using 3D anymore on the 3DS at that time anyway. So, it would be logical to say that revealing a new device that is substantially more powerful than the 3DS before announcing new bundles for a console that was the only saving-grace for Nintendo in the 8th-gen was a huge risk for shareholders, but they did it anyway, and it worked just fine. So, that is why I call shenanigans on the whole idea of Nintendo not "revealing" the Switch successor before Black Friday because they do not want to disturb Holiday sales. I mean, Nintendo LITERALLY did the exact thing people are claiming they would "never" do, and they refuse to acknowledge or, or make excuses as to why they wouldn't know even when they are in a position of power where there is no risk at all, only gain, whereas when they actually did it, they were in a position of weakness and if it didn't work it could have caused major damage. To summarize... ~ 1. NO ONE was claiming this idea when they FOR SURE thought that the Switch successor would be unveiled around the same time the Switch was.

~ 2. When Nintendo was in a bad financial situation in 2016 where they needed strong sales from the products that they already had on the market to satisfy their shareholders, they still chose to unveil a product with superior qualities and capabilities that would make both of the incumbent products superfulous, and it didn't have a deleterious-effect at all. People also need to understand that what Nintendo did in 2016 was just a teaser-trailer. Just a quick-video to show you what it was, and primarily what it was about. That was basically it. We didn't get a full blow-out of the device for another three months A three minute and thirty-seven second trailer was definitely enough to get the industry buzzing, but not nearly enough information to make an informed-decision on a purpose. Yet STILL, they gave you the release date of the device on March 2017. Further proof of them either not caring, or feeling that this information would not be an issue for Holiday sales. Lastly, to put this to bed once and for all let me just be blunt.

Announcing the Switch successor will NOT prevent the Nintendo Switch from surpassing the Sony PlayStation 2 if that is something that you care about. I don't. No money is going into my bank account if they break that record, and I would be safe to venture a guess that the people that DO care, this applies to them as well. Nintendo has already stated that it will support the Switch well into the next-generation. This is not unique. In fact, it is par-for-the-course for consoles that sell over 100+million units. For instance, the Sony PlayStation 2 (which is the best-selling console of all-time FOR NOW,) released in the year 2000 and did not stop production until January of 2013. That was just 9 months before the PlayStation 4. That's lasting 2 full console generations. The original PlayStation sold well into the PS2 lifecycle. The Wii sold well into the Wii U lifecycle. The PlayStation 4 is STILL being manufactured today 4 years into the PlayStation 5 lifecycle. The Nintendo Switch has been on the market going on almost 8 years and has not even had a PRICE DROP, yet. So, this thing has long legs and will have no problem selling 10-15 million more units by the time it is no longer being manufactured. So, there is no logical reason AT ALL why Nintendo cannot, or should not announce the Switch successor before the Holiday season. When it absolutely could have hurt them in the past, it did not. I don't know when they will. If I had to venture a guess as to why it has taken so long to say anything, I would say that it has something to do with development or production. There is a snag somewhere that is hindering progress and they cannot take an incomplete product to their shareholders. Even if the "design" itself is finished, there are TONS of moving parts to mass-producing any consumer product, and you are dealing with dozens of companies all supplying different pieces to your end-product. If any one of those partnerships goes sour, or has technical difficulties in manufacturing those parts, that can slow the whole train down. Again, this is just a guess. I have no knowledge or proof that there are any delays in production. This is just something that happens a lot in the production of consumer electronics. For the people are basically saying..... "Well, since the Switch 2 wasn't announced when I thought it would have been, should have been, or when I wanted it to, it shouldn't be revealed before the Holidays at ALL," ......I feel like that is just a coping-mechanism. They won't admit that, but that is what it is in my opinion. I've already given a preponderance of evidence as to why in this blog. Nintendo does not need to sell another Nintendo Switch EVER AGAIN. In fact, Nintendo could not sell ANYTHING for 20 years, and still be just fine. They have 13 billion dollars in liquid-assets (cash-on-hand.) That's money they can take out of the bank and put in their pockets. Outside of the hardware just not being ready (which is just a possibility I threw out there,) there are no internal or external reasons why Nintendo cannot drop a three-minute trailer introducing a new product. NONE. It's not because they are afraid of it disrupting Holiday sales. It's not because they feel it will hinder a shot at surpassing the PS2. It's not because of the US Elections which is an idea I find COMPLETELY ridiculous. The only way that would be an issue is if they announced it ON Election day, where it would almost certainly get lost in the shuffle. I would agree to that part. Sure.

Many people have already voted. Many people are voting today, and they will be tomorrow. November 5th is the deadline TO vote. Nintendo could drop a trailer today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. I'm sorry, but it just makes no sense at all to even suggest this. Nintendo is a Japanese company. The whole idea and design of Switch was to cater to THAT market. Sure, it is popular in the US, but the Western market has always been set-top box central. The PlayStation 5 outsells the Switch 3-to-1 in North America and Europe respectively. The Switch outsells the PlayStation 5 by a 5-to-1 margin in Japan. Even the XBOX Series X sells as well if not MORE on weekly basis in North America than the Switch, and of course it sells virtually NOTHING in Japan. I don't know when we will get any concrete information about the Switch successor. I have absolutely no idea. I have sufficiently proven why there is no reason they cannot. The reason why they haven't announced the successor to the Nintendo Switch is simple.....

THEY AIN'T GOT TO RIGHT NOW Period, point blank.

Could Nintendo ever have a streaming service?

It seems like streaming is going to be the future of media overall. Pretty much every major TV network has a streaming-service. Every major cable channel has one. All of the premium cable channels have them. Movie studios have them as well. Even professional sports organizations have them. They are everywhere. Not only are they everywhere, but they seem to either be consolidating into larger conglomerations, or are shifting content back and forth between each other. I've had an account with a service called VUDU for many years. It is a service where you can buy digital versions of movies, or use a download-code from a DVD or Blu-Ray you've purchased somewhere to download a digital version of that movie. Not too long ago, Fandango bought out VUDU and now the app has become Fandango At Home. I've noticed now on Fandango At Home that not only do I have a larger selection of movies to choose from, but now I can buy whole series from many other streaming networks like Netflix, Paramount Plus, MAX, Showtime, etc. Also, motion-pictures are coming to Fandango At Home and other streaming-platforms a lot sooner rather than later. The point is that streaming is here to stay and clearly is the future. So, where does Nintendo fit into all of this?

Well, I'm not going to go too deep into this, but there have been patents released by Nintendo in recent weeks that suggest some-type of "episodic" media. Whether that is part of a game, or part of some type of visual content from Nintendo's past and present I don't know. It could be much ado about nothing. There are couple of things to think about though. Remember back in 2011 when the first scans came out of the dev-kits for Project Cafe' came out? Not too long after that, images started to leak about what would eventually become the Wii U GamePad, but people were at the time coining the system as the "Nintendo Stream." Remember that? To an extent, that is basically what the Wii U was. It was a game console that could stream gameplay to the GamePad up to 25 feet. Obviously, that was very limited and just one of MANY reasons why the Wii U did not perform well only selling 13 million units. Sony has taken that idea much farther with the PlayStation Portal where you can stream games from your PlayStation 5 device anyplace that has access to Wi-Fi with speeds of 5MBPS or more. So far, the device has gotten solid reviews and is doing okay. There have been several attempts at streaming-games via the cloud as well. The first one I remember was OnLive which launched in 2009 and lasted until 2015. OnLive was plagued by many technical issues, and dealt with an infrastructure that really was not ready to handle cloud-gaming at the time. Ten years later, Google decided to give it a try with Google Stadia. Things when a bit better for them and the service actually worked pretty good, but it just failed to gain traction with the consumer base. In 2013, nVidia launched it's GeForce Now streaming service and that has been successful for them. While the nVidia Shield (the principle device designed to be used with GeForce Now) did not fair as well, the streaming service is alive and well today. I say all that to say this. Nintendo is very good at taking technology that others failed at, or was just laying around collecting dust, and then turning it into something profitable. The tech inside the Wii-Mote was technology that had been around for well over a decade, but the creator could not find a buyer for his technology. Even Sony turned him down in 2001, but ironically would create superior motion-control technology less than a decade later with PS Move. Is it "possible" that Nintendo might choose to throw it's hat into the streaming-arena in the next generation? Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be part of the Switch successor. In fact, it may also work with the current Nintendo Switch as well. In Japan, Nintendo has successful used streaming on the Switch. Being that the Switch is basically a tweaked version of the nVidia Shield, it is fully capable of handling the streaming of games, or video content. Also, I would not expect them to announce or even mention it anywhere near the reveal of the Switch Successor to avoid confusion like what happened with the Wii U. It's not that far-fetched of an idea that Nintendo would do this at this particular point in time. It also could have a hand as to why Nintendo has not announced the successor to the Nintendo Switch as of the time of this blog. Maybe they are still working out the bugs of that aspect of the system, and want to make sure that is all good to go before unveiling the console? Even if it is just a streaming-platform for video content, I think that would be cool. Not only would Nintendo content from the past be available to watch on-demand, but perhaps content from other companies that they partner with as well. Sega definitely comes to mind, as does Bandai-Namco. If game-streaming were also a part of this, that might explain a few things about why what little information that we have heard from 3rd-parties regarding the Switch successor has been positive. It's just a thought. While possible, this seems a little too ambitious for Nintendo. They usually give us the least that they can get away with giving us.

Accountability Is Key

I have a question to ask. As of the time of this blog, there still has been no word on when the successor to the Nintendo Switch will even be REVEALED, much less given a release date. So many people have reported on when they thought the device would be revealed based on their "sources" and their best guess estimates based on prior Nintendo behavior. There is nothing inherently wrong with that in general, but, it is a potentially dangerous strategy to use when Nintendo is involved because they do not operate in our universe. The laws of logic and physics don't seem to apply with Nintendo. They do things that in no way, shape, or form make a LICK of good sense, and yet, somehow it works.... WELL. It really makes you look bad, or less credible as a journalist, blogger, or YouTube content creator when you try to predict what Nintendo is GOING to do. That is a practice best to be left alone. That's not what I want to talk about though. What I want to talk about is the "aftermath." Someday, the successor to the Nintendo Switch will be announced. People have made up in their minds what they think that is based off of leaks that have been "confirmed" as real, and based off of rumors and conjecture from people that have leaked information before on Nintendo-related rumors that panned out to be true. I think at this point, all of us have an image of what we think it is going to be. We have an image of what we want it to be, and we have an image of what we think it needs to be. My question is this. If the successor to the Nintendo Switch falls short in ALL of those categories, or for anything that you want or expect it to have, how are you going to respond? Are you going to be upset? Are you going to the apathetic and say, "Eh, whatever. It's better than what I have now at least." Or, are you going to say, "I don't care if it IS weak-sauce! NINTENDO ALL THE WAY BAY-BAAAAAAAH!!" Undoubtedly, there will be people that have any one, or combination of those responses. There is no right or wrong answer here. Let's just say for the sake of argument that this device is only as powerful as a PS4, when DOCKED. If Nintendo had revealed the successor the Nintendo Switch in 2022 and it released in 2023, I think a lot of people would be fine with that. Still lacking in power, but it would be more reasonable based on the time-frame. It's pretty much what people were expecting the fabled "Switch Pro" to be. We are only 2 months away from 2025. We have heard absolutely, NOTHING..... You already have powerful hybrid-devices on the market right now, with MORE powerful successors on the way for each of them. You also have new entries from other companies on the way to jump into the hybrid-device pool. The market is quickly becoming saturated with hybrid-devices. When the Switch released in 2017, it had no competition in it's arena. For five years, that platform stood undisturbed. It was like Nintendo was standing in a hot, burning, sweltering desert with a bunch of thirsty people crawling around in the sand looking for water and Nintendo had big, huge coolers full of fresh, ice-cold water. It worked, and Nintendo quenched the thirst of a lot of people ALONE for 5 years. Then, in 2022, Valve showed up and opened up a larger cooler with water and treats. Then, ASUS showed up with water and different kinds of treats. Then, Lenovo showed up. Then a bunch of other people showed up all offering comfort to those in this hot, burning desert. Maybe some like the taste of Nintendo's water better than Lenovo's water. Maybe some like the taste of ASUS' water better than Value's water. The point is, now, they have a choice. Everyone is doing good business, but no one company has all the marbles anymore. It wasn't because of Nintendo's 1st-party games that the Switch did so well. It is because it was something that the industry needed to bring the casuals back that left Nintendo after the bottom dropped out from the Wii and only ONE COMPANY was doing it, or doing it properly. Nintendo. I know it's hard for Nintendo fans to see it any other way, but casuals don't have that connection to Nintendo IP that they do. They see a device of practicality, and for THAT purpose made the purchase. Sure, they have a couple of 1st-party Nintendo games here and there, but that isn't why they bought it or what keeps them there. It is no longer a "Blue Ocean" strategy just to have a hybrid-device. It is "Red Ocean." It is "normal" to have a hybrid-device of some kind. Just as normal as having a set-top box used to be. Now, the set-top box is becoming the anomaly. Not every hybrid-device is the same in terms of features and design, but the overall concept of having a device that can be played at home or on the go remains constant. Just like all smart phones aren't the same, but the base concept of being a pocket computer/telephone is universal. While Microsoft and Sony do not have a hybrid-device as of right NOW, there are strong indicators that either one or both will have one within the next couple of years. Sony has already dipped their toe in the water with PS Portal. It's not a stretch to say that they are seriously considering a full-on hybrid-device and wanted to use PS Portal as a trial to see if their install-base would be interested portable gaming again. We saw in the FTC leak that Microsoft was indeed planning a portable device. I wouldn't hold my breath on that ever coming to fruition as they seemingly cancel every good idea these days and replace them with stupid ones, but it's still possible. It is fair to mention that as hybrid-devices became more popular and normalized, the sales of the Nintendo Switch declined in tandem with that. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but as I stated earlier, now people have several choices whereas before for five years they only had one. The Nintendo Switch was responsible for turning people on to the hybrid-gaming aspect, but many people that have no interest in Nintendo IP and only bought it for the hybrid-functionality aspect have graduated into more powerful hardware that can be used for more than just gaming. So, whenever Nintendo does reveal this thing, it can't just be a "better" version of the Nintendo Switch if they want people that are perfectly content with the Switch they already have that aren't interested in Nintendo 1st-party IP to fork over $400 dollars or more. That may satisfy some, but the vast majority of people will be over that pretty quickly once the "New Car" smell is all used up. As comedian/actor Eddie Murphy once famously said in his 1987 stand-up movie Eddie Murphy: Raw....

**paraphrasing** ~ If you are starving, and someone throws you a cracker, you are gonna think it is the most delicious cracker you ever had in your life! If you've had the same crackers everyday for a year, eventually you'll be like, "Hey! I just got some regular, old crackers." So, my point is that with all this secrecy, subterfuge, tantalizing and teasing, and them dragging this thing out longer than they ever have in their entire company's history with no tangible information regarding the device at all other than the fact that it exists, the "Nintendo Switch 2" has become an idol. I want to make this point abundantly clear. This is NOT about comparing the Switch successor to the XBOX Series X or the PlayStation 5 in terms of power, graphics, or performance. AT ALL. I'm also not saying that it has to exceed everyone's expectations whatever they may be. The RUMORED specs might not be what we want necessarily for a 10th-generation device, but, I haven't heard any complaints about them thus far. Even tech heads at Digital Foundry and Moore's Law Is Dead seem to be fine with the RUMORED specs, as am I. Something that is around XBOX Series S (which is what the RUMORS say and is why I am mentioning it here) power-level when docked? I can work with that. Realistically, you can't ask for much better than that for the price point that Nintendo will probably want to stick with. Of course we don't know what the price-point will be, but it is hard to imagine Nintendo selling a piece of hardware over $400 USD. Then again, they just told us that they want everyone to buy a digital alarm clock for $100 bucks.............so, there is that, too. What I'm asking is if this thing is under-powered based on those RUMORED specs and this thing is BARELY as powerful as the PS4 when docked, after all Nintendo has put their fan-base through, will you hold them accountable, or will you make excuses? REMEMBER, there is a very public record of many people saying that they wanted a more powerful Switch. When the RUMORS came out regarding the Switch successor using DLSS 3.1, Ray-Tracing, Universal Flash Storage, and having anywhere between 12-16 GB of LDDR5X RAM, NUMEROUS Nintendo fans said there were excited about that. Not only did they say that they wanted that, but that is ALL they wanted. No crazy gimmicks. No weird form-factors. Just a Switch with "more power." I'm right on board with that. What if it doesn't have that though? Sometimes people will voice their displeasure at FIRST, but then a week later they will go back to making excuses again as to why that was the "right" thing to do, and even go so far as to attack anyone for even having a different point-of-view about it. You can't on one hand champion Nintendo for "possibly" giving something that is decently-capable to give you games that at least feel close to what you see on everything else, but then turn around and say that "power doesn't matter" if you know you AREN'T getting any. Not only is that hypocritical, but that is going into the 'Fox and the Grapes' territory. He wanted the grapes really bad, but when it was clear he could not reach the grapes, he acted like he never wanted the grapes in the first place. I'm not saying that IF the successor to the Nintendo Switch is weak-sauce that people shouldn't buy it. Like I said earlier. A lot of people will be upset if that happens, but then will buy the console anyway. Not making an excuse for it. Just saying that it's better than what they have. If it's at a good price, and you have the money, why not? It's very rare that any console just hits a home-run with features, performance, game line-up, price, etc. I mean, what's the biggest gripe for the PS5 and XSX? Lack of 1st-party games. Some of it is due to hardware constraints. MORE of it is due to the greed of companies choosing to pad their own pockets rather than hire the manpower necessary to get games done quicker. That's the true motivation, in my opinion, behind PS5 Pro. These companies don't want to pay employees right, treat employees right, or hire enough employees to be able to use the PS5 the way it needs to be used. So, they "begged" Sony to make a more powerful machine so that the work can be done easier to give us games that the regular PS5 is more than capable of doing, but FASTER. Even Nintendo has stated that game development will take much longer and be more expensive for THEM AS WELL. So, it's not just a high-end console issue. I'm just trying to see how many people will keep that same energy if Nintendo lays an egg with the successor to the Nintendo Switch? When Sony does bogus stuff, we call them out. When Microsoft does bogus stuff, we call them out. When 3rd parties do bogus stuff, we call them out. People are welcome to whatever opinion that they wish, so here is mine. You have the Steam Deck, Ayaneo 2, ROG Ally, Lenovo GO, and many other hybrid-devices more powerful than the Switch as it is. They all have more powerful successors on the way. They do much more than just play video games. They are priced competitively for which each device does and offers respectively, and Nintendo comes in the room and says in 2025, here is our next-gen, 10th generation console, a portable XBOX One that is a PS4 when docked....... C'mon now. How to you justify that? I'm NOT saying that this IS going to happen. I'm just curious as to what the response will be IF that happens. Nintendo fans care a lot about 1st-party IPs. Casuals do not so much. Hardcore gamers did not make the Switch successful. Casuals do. In fact, casuals are the reason why every 100+ million console seller got to that point. The original Sony PlayStation had ZERO fan base and beat the every-loving breaks off of the Nintendo64 despite the N64 having far superior, genre-defining 1st-party content. How did that happen? The casuals. How did the PlayStation 2 completely destroy the Dreamcast, GameCube, and XBOX? The casuals, who used the PS2 as an all-in-one entertainment device. So, I end by saying that IF the RUMORS are true about the Switch successor in terms of the specs, this is all a moot-point anyway. Those specs are just fine. They will keep for at least 3-4 years, and Nintendo can always do a mid-gen refresh if necessary. HOWEVER...... After all this time of waiting when they could and should have released it two years ago, they give you something that is far weaker than even you expected even in the worst-case scenario, will people call out Nintendo on this or make excuses for it? It's a simple question. Will you say "yay" or "nay?" No explanation is needed as to why. It's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. If you say "yay," stand on that, and move on. "If you say "nay," stand on that and move on. It's not a big deal. I'm just saying. If Sony can get dragged, if Microsoft can get dragged, and if 3rd parties can get dragged, Nintendo is not beyond reproach. They can get that work, too.