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Nintendo predicts sales slump ahead of introducing the Switch successor, currently rumored for Q1 2025.

By Jess Weatherbed, a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Nintendo’s logo in a green circle with black and purple shapes around it
Nintendo throws a bone to Switch fans.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nintendo has thrown Switch players a long-awaited bone alongside announcing its end-of-year financials results, confirming the console’s successor will be unveiled before April, 2025. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said that a next-generation Nintendo Switch console will be announced “within this fiscal year” — giving the Japanese gaming giant a deadline of March 31st, 2025. That aligns nicely with its current Q1 2025 rumored launch.

Regarding the Switch 2 console announcement, Furukawa said:

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. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.

Meanwhile, Nintendo’s forecast signals an anticipated slowdown in Switch console sales, projecting to sell 13.5 million Switch consoles this year compared to the 15.7 million units sold the previous fiscal year. Net profit during the upcoming year is also expected to fall by 39 percent, alongside a projected 19 percent fall in revenue.

A screenshot taken from Nintendo’s 2024 earnings report

While Switch hardware sales are falling, the number of players active on the platform has steadily increased.

Image: Nintendo

Switch console sales have slipped substantially since their peak in 2021, while the OLED model — the most recent version of the now near-decade-old console — enjoyed a small 1.1 percent bump in sales year over year. The number of users for the platform remains healthy though, with Nintendo claiming the 123 million annual players recorded between April 2023 and March 2024 were the “highest seen since Nintendo Switch was launched.”

Nintendo hasn’t given up on the current generation of Switch consoles, however. In its forecast the company said it will “try to not only put one system in every home, but several in every home, or even one for every person.”