The Nintendo Switch is about to have its biggest week in some time. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives on Friday as the most anticipated game of the year and will push the aged console to its limits. While the game itself is almost certainly going to be a critical darling and sales success, many gamers are rightly nervous about how it’ll perform on what’s now very dated hardware.
But if your plan is to wait until Nintendo puts out a beefier machine to run it on, you may be waiting some time. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa spoke to the company’s investors this morning and confirmed that there will neither be an upgraded ‘Switch Pro’ nor a follow-up console this financial year, meaning nothing before April 2024.
Sony and Microsoft released the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X as a mid-generational upgrade back in the 2010s, so many had suspected Nintendo would pull the same routine and at least give us a Switch with 4K capability and/or hardware that’d let games run at higher frame rates. We did get the OLED Switch, but as lovely as that screen is, it still runs games exactly as the base Switch model does.
Eurogamer spoke to games industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls, who believes we may see some kind of ‘Switch 2’ in late 2024, but indicated that from Nintendo’s perspective, the Switch is still a big moneymaker.
“There is still some life in the Switch platform yet. I expect the new Zelda to drive hardware sales to those upgrading from older versions to the latest OLED model and probably from some entirely new Switch buyers. That will help Nintendo reach its 15m shipment target for the year ending March ’24. Software sales remain pretty robust, especially for first-party titles.”
Nintendo has a well-deserved expectation for confounding industry expectations, with the mega-successful Wii and Switch both as unique pieces of hardware compared to other consoles. But we like the Switch so much, we’re hoping they deliver a console in a similar, but more optimized, form. Hopefully, with a massive hardware upgrade that’ll put it in line with the capabilities of something like the Steam Deck.
For now, let’s just hope Tears of the Kingdom runs at a decent frame rate when it lands this Friday.