Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa recently answered questions during a press conference and addressed a slew of rumors doing the rounds. A lot of those rumors centered around the next iteration of Nintendo’s popular console, purportedly called Switch 2, which Furukawa was quick to deny.
The first Nintendo Switch was released back in March 2017 and has been selling quite well since. An OLED version of the console was released two years ago. Apart from quashing several rumors, Furukawa also discussed Switch sales forecasts during the holiday season later this year, while steering clear of any revelations regarding a Switch successor.
Switch 2 Prototype Rumors Are Inaccurate; No Official Details Have Been Shared Yet
A Reddit post has briefly detailed what Nintendo President Furukawa answered during a press conference. Among the biggest rumors surrounding the Switch successor was that Nintendo had shared a prototype of Switch 2 during the Gamescom event earlier this year, which Furukawa quickly dismissed as being inaccurate.
The FTC vs. Microsoft court case from earlier this year had unsealed a slew of legal documents and emails that confirmed Activision was in contact with Nintendo about the latter’s next-gen console, with the console being compared to the PlayStation 4 in performance.
Furukawa denying the rumors could only mean Nintendo has no intention of acknowledging a new console being under development this close to the holiday season. Nintendo forecasts a successful holiday season in terms of Switch sales, which might be considered a confirmation that could disrupt their sales forecast.
Furukawa also revealed that just last month, Nintendo applied for a patent for a gaming device that comes equipped with two screens. Furukawa said that while the patent was publicly applied, by no means was it meant to be installed in an upcoming Nintendo product.
Without any official reports from Nintendo, there’s no way to know if Switch 2 will support current-gen Switch games or not. Backward compatibility is highly favored by fans of modern consoles to play older titles and is offered by both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
PlayStation 5 uses cloud streaming to play PlayStation 3 games, while Xbox Series consoles can download and play older titles directly. Nintendo has no clear history of offering backward compatibility. This might be a big reason why the existence of the Switch 2 is denied: to get gamers to still pick up their existing consoles this holiday season.
Nintendo Forecasts Another Successful Holiday Season and Aims to Sell 15 Million Units
Nintendo released an OLED Switch edition back in October 2021 and a limited The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom edition earlier this year. Furukawa’s press conference also touched upon the current profit of Nintendo, which was said to be around $1.8 billion, which was 17.7% year-over-year growth.
Sales were also said to have increased by 21.2% year-over-year, hitting $5.2 billion, with 6.84 million units sold, an increase of 2.4% from the same period last year. Back in May this year, Nintendo had set a target of selling another 15 million Switch units by the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2024.
Furukawa further stated that the important target was to convert “replacements and new demand into purchases during the Holiday shopping season.”
As of September 30 this year, it was reported that around 132 million Nintendo Switch consoles had been shipped. That’s just 26 million units less than what the PlayStation 2 managed to achieve, with the final tally of the legendary Sony console standing at 158 million units.
Nintendo might be looking at surpassing the PlayStation 2 figures before it announces its next-gen Switch console. Whenever the Switch 2 does get announced, the first concern from fans will be about backward compatibility, which, if the next-gen console achieves seamlessly, will win over the fanbase immediately.
As for now, Switch fans await the release of Hogwarts Legacy, which is releasing on the 14th of this month, and the highly-awaited Super Mario RPG, which is coming out three days later, on the 17th of this month.
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