Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has reiterated that the Nintendo Switch is still in the middle of its lifecycle meaning that there’s many more years to come of games on the Switch and potentially new versions of the Nintendo Switch hardware. So far we have had to Nintendo Switch (2017) the Switch Lite (2019) and Nintendo Switch (OLED Model) (2021). He said that momentum is still going strong for the console which is will soon be in its sixth year on the market. Furukawa is confident that sales will continue to be strong for the console going forward over the next few years on both the software and hardware front despite the newer more powerful systems from both Sony and Microsoft.
“Switch is just in the middle of its lifecycle and the momentum going into this year is good. The Switch is ready to break a pattern of our past consoles that saw momentum weakening in their sixth year on the market and grow further.”
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa
Not sure how I feel about this. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Switch, but I really don’t think it can go on too much longer without needing upgraded hardware. They’re definitely going to need a Pro version at some point if this is true.
I was personally hoping for a new system in maybe 2024/2025, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening.
It sounds like it could be similar to what happened with the Wii, but we will see :)
I really like this from president Furukawa. The Dona Presidents Miyamoto ( interim ), and Kimishima chose their new president well. Here is an outlier I am proposing, crazy to the core but envision this :
Nintendo purchasing Capcom, Square Enix shares, Sega, stock in EA, then releasing a Switch pro with 4K capabilities. If possible 8K rendering. Then the switch 2 in 2026-2027 having 8K native DSSLR 3-4 ( whatever at that point is trending ), 16 to 32 gigs of ram( it will be cheap America is making chips again ), plus AMD-Invidia are now one so CPU will be a heavenly being (pun intended). We can all dream 💭.
F=ma.
I’m not going to say that the Switch definitely ISN’T going to last that much longer, but no one should take this at face value. Nintendo always publicly declares that the current console is far from done until the day they announce its discontinuation. I’m sure many on the board here remember claims that the Switch was not going to replace the 3DS.
But aside from that, the market is the thing that decides when its life is over, not the company. If people keep buying Switches, they’ll keep making Switch games. If people stop buying Switches, the console’s life will be over regardless of whatever Mr. Furukawa wants to declare. He could deliberately kill a console by ending all support if he wanted to lose money for some strange reason, but there’s absolutely nothing he can do to extend the life of the system if the public is done with it.
Slight correction: March 2017 launch makes it 5 years old next month, where it will enter its 6th year on the market.
I love my Switch and have a ton of games for it, but I’m still hoping to see a Switch 2 in 2023/2024. More power isn’t everything, but it would certainly be nice to have (especially for whenever MP4 comes out).
Thanks :)
So the lifetime of a console doesn’t end once the successor is released. I think that’s worth mentioning. All this means is he envisions the switch being supported with new software for 5 more years. Not that we have to wait for a new console for 5 more years.
Switch will be needing an upgrade next year or the year after imo. I’ll be playing my steamdeck instead and using switch for exclusives so I’m not really bothered much.
I’m not a fan of long console cycles. 5 years to me should be the max.
I will continue to play my original model of my Switch even so It won’t be getting another higher upgraded again soon.. I know we haven’t get much major updates for the system since last year but it would be nice if Nintendo added Pokémon icons already.
I think the console could at least get some features in the OS. Like folders, more themes, etc. I love my Switch for the games but hope we don’t have to live with the barebones features for 4~5 more years.
Steam Deck thanks