Nintendo Switch owners have been waiting for upgraded hardware for years. They might finally get a glimpse of that later this month, as rumors continue pouring in about an imminent reveal of a Switch 2 console in September, including that it will boast backwards compatibility so that fans’ vast game collections can come along for the ride.
There’s been speculation about Nintendo teasing at least a glimpse of the upcoming console this month for a while. That’s because the company followed a similar timeline with the rollout of the original Switch, and recently jumbled around its normal Nintendo Direct schedule to seemingly make room for showing something off in September. Now fans increasingly feel like “The Switchening” might finally be underway.
Yesterday, GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring teased “industry whispers” that something Switch 2-related” would be happening this month, describing the vibe in a follow-up tweet as “just chatter from folks.” Editor-in-chief of VGC, Andy Robinson, poured both hot and cold water on the report. “Seems a bunch of press have heard this,” he posted. “But I still wouldn’t bet my house on it.”
That same day, senior analyst at MST Financial, Dave Gibson, highlighted a spike in production equipment spending by Nintendo assembler Hosiden. “Hosiden is spending ¥2bn on production equipment and ¥1bn on automation in FY3/25 for its major customer in amusement (Nintendo),” he tweeted. “I still expect Sept news and March 2025 release for next device.”
Then, in a repost of Gibson’s comment on the GamingLeaksAndRumors subreddit, industry insider and podcaster NateTheHate claimed that the Switch 2 would be backwards compatible. “It has backwards compatibility support,” he wrote. When asked if it would have colored buttons, he wrote back, “‘I’m colorblind, so I wouldn’t be able to tell one way or the other.” This only fueled speculation further.
Prior leaks have also suggested the Switch 2 would be backwards compatible, including support for both physical cartridges and digital games. And Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser seemingly teased such a feature when he said in an interview last year that the company was aiming for a smoother transition with Nintendo accounts this time around when going from one console generation to another.
“Creating the Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players if and when we make a transition to a new platform, to help ease that process or transition,” he said at the time. “Our goal is to minimize the dip you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another. I can’t speak to the possible features of a new platform, but the Nintendo Account is a strong basis for having that communication as we make the transition.”
Anticipation for a Switch 2 reveal has been heating up ever since Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa wrote back in May that a Switch successor wouldn’t be mentioned during the company’s June Nintendo Direct. Naturally, fans took this to mean that a mention would be coming sometime later in the year. Time is starting to run out, but knowing the Mario maker, the first news of a Switch 2 could be shadow-dropped any day now in something as simple as a single press release or a trailer suddenly shared to social media.
And as manufacturing of the devices gets underway, the pressure will be on for Nintendo to reveal the console itself before grainy cellphone footage from a Chinese warehouse that looks like it’s from 2007 reveals it instead.