Love it or despise it, you can’t deny that Nintendo continues to be its own quirky self in the otherwise hyper-corporate world of the video game industry.
The company started back in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai, and specialized in making playing cards, after all. That 19th-century origin is a far cry from the more tech-based origins of Nintendo’s peers in the video game space, Sony and Microsoft.
Speaking of those companies, when Nintendo’s contemporaries at Sony or Microsoft announce their next video game system, the announcement will typically be accompanied by boisterous fanfare and a highly glamorized presentation.
When Nintendo announces a system, one would assume there would be similar theatrics, and historically, that’s typically been true.
Even a Nintendo system generally considered a failure, like the Wii U, received a ritzy presentation during its reveal.
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Given all that, it would’ve been a smart guess that any official announcement about a successor to Nintendo’s wildly popular and successful Switch console would get a little pomp and circumstance.
Instead, Nintendo confirmed a Switch sequel in a casual, throwaway X post from the company’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa.
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. 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…
— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) May 7, 2024
Have you ever owned a Nintendo video game system?
“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo,” the post begins. “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.”
Despite the sparsely worded nature of it, fans flocked to the X post in droves.
The English-translated post boasts over 125,000 likes and 48,000 re-posts. And those figures pale in comparison to the original post (which was in Japanese) that garnered over 325,000 likes and a whopping 208,000 re-posts.
While this official announcement confirming the existence of a new Nintendo system doesn’t offer much, it does offer one hard deadline.
For any announcement about a Switch successor to be made “within this fiscal year,” Furukawa basically gave his company until March 2025 to make the “Switch 2,” or whatever it ends up being called, announcement, according to The Associated Press.
Nintendo itself has been in an odd spot as of late.
While the company has been courting some culture war controversy of late, the Big N has otherwise been enjoying unmitigated success in an era where Nintendo’s peers are making more layoff announcements than they are games.
Accounting for dampened expectations due to the Switch’s age, the financial report offered by Nintendo otherwise paints a rosy picture of a company in growth, featuring in-demand products across multiple mediums, including film.
“Based on our belief that the true value of entertainment lies in its uniqueness, Nintendo will strive to achieve sustainable growth and increase its corporate value by offering unique entertainment that plays to the company’s strengths, continuing to adapt to the times and cherishing the spirit of creativity,” Furukawa wrote in a message to investors.
