Nintendo to launch Switch successor

Start saving your spare change. You have about a year until Nintendo announces the successor to its popular Switch video game console.

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The company announced that it will unveil the new video game system between now and March 2025, The Associated Press reported.

Nintendo didn’t give any details about the new machine, only saying that it plans to announce something.

“We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said on social media.

The Switch has been popular since it was released almost a decade ago, selling more than 141 million systems, including more than 15 million in the most current fiscal year. Reuters predicted that another 13.5 million Switch devices will be sold this year.

The most recent upgrade was the OLED screen model, released in 2021, the BBC reported.

The company also sells the Switch Lite which is purely handheld.

The OLED and traditional Switch consoles can be played on a television via a docking station, on a tabletop with the controllers removed and in a handheld mode with the controllers attached to the screen.

Industry experts expect the new system will not detour much from the Switch.

“Judging by the success of the Switch, we expect the new device to be a similar form factor and to continue the legacy of the original product,” Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere Analytics’ head of games, told the BBC.

Nintendo Direct will be held next month. Instead of promoting the new system, it will announce the Switch’s upcoming game releases for the latter half of 2024.

The BBC called “Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” and “Super Mario Wonder” the last blockbuster releases for the system. Both were released last year. This year, gamers have seen “Mario Vs. Donkey Kong” and “Princess Peach: Showtime!” Later this year, sequels “Luigi’s Mansion 2″ and “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door” are slated to be released.

The company plans to sell 165 million games this year, a 17% decline from last year, Reuters reported.

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