One of the holy s**t announcements many people expected to surface at The Game Awards was the Nintendo Switch 2. That’s hardly a surprise considering we’ve been waiting months for the company to reveal its new console as hardware specs and accessory designs leaked, but for it to be unveiled on the biggest stage of them all and not a bespoke event would have turned a lot of heads. But this didn’t happen. In fact, Nintendo didn’t reveal a single thing at the show.
Aside from a handful of advertisements for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and its hardware bundles ahead of the holidays, Nintendo wasn’t present at all. It even lost Best Family Game — a category which has belonged to the company since its inception — to Astro Bot. This is a coincidence, but the fact it decided against throwing any of its future announcements at The Game Awards means a lot of gears are turning behind the scenes.
When Could The Nintendo Switch 2 Be Revealed?
I was going to say The Game Awards, but with the event now in the rearview mirror, it looks like Nintendo is waiting until 2025 to finally break cover on the Switch 2. There are no major events left in the calendar year, and unless Nintendo wants to dominate the news cycle over Christmas, January is the earliest we are likely to see any sign of the new console.
As for the original Switch, it was first revealed in October 2016 with its official name, but at this point it was already confirmed that games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be coming to the console, albeit under the ‘NX’ codename. This trailer revealed that the Switch would be a hybrid device alongside revealing a couple of new games, but aside from that, most of its features were kept under wraps.
Fast-forward to December of that year and Reggie Fils-Aime appeared on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon to play Zelda. It was a concerted effort to market the console to a mainstream audience after the Wii U’s failure. But as of right now, we haven’t heard an official peep on the Switch 2, indicating that maybe the release timeline is going to be a little different.
A more comprehensive Switch reveal event followed in January 2017, two months before release. Here, we finally learned about the console’s headlining features like HD Rumble alongside looks at new games like
Splatoon 2, Arms, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Super Mario Odyssey, and 1-2 Switch. It was a bumper event, and the last of its kind Nintendo has held since. It’s now trading almost exclusively in Direct presentations, so the second an event similar to it gets confirmed, it’s going to be all about the Switch 2. Expect word on that early next year and perhaps at very short notice. Hell, Nintendo might just upload a big video on a random Tuesday like it did with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. Speaking of…
When Could The Nintendo Switch 2 Be Released?
Right now, we know the Nintendo Switch 2 is launching at some point in 2025. If it had been teased at The Game Awards, I would have expected that bombshell would come with its release window. Instead, we’re left to speculate. With Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition arriving at the end of March with no other major exclusives currently slated for launch, that’d provide Nintendo with a clear runway to make the year all about Nintendo Switch 2.
Despite its successor apparently being backward compatible, it would need to shine a light on a handful of exclusive launch titles and make the pitch that it is a faithful successor to its original console that is both more powerful and more ambitious. Will it natively improve performance/graphics on games we already own? Will the user interface be similar? Will friend codes carry over? I have a lot of questions, and aside from being a massive marketing spin for the machine in its own right, a huge reveal event will need to provide a number of answers.
That’s why the decision to skip The Game Awards altogether is such a strange one. Given that it still ran commercials for its existing products at the show, it’s clear Nintendo decided to do its own thing, and undoubtedly has plans in motion. This could’ve been an opportunity to steal the show and make the next few weeks all about Nintendo, but I’m choosing to trust the company knows what it’s doing and will blow me away all the same.
Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo Switch is both a home console and a handheld gaming system in one package, with various versions offering better specs for dedicated enthusiasts.