Nintendo, notoriously secretive, has thus far stated nothing — or virtually nothing — on the document about its subsequent recreation console. As Nintendo Change approaches its seventh birthday in March 2024, questions on how for much longer it’s going to final are pure: Seven years is a typical lifespan for a console era, Change gross sales are falling fast, and the know-how powering the console is exhibiting its age. However Nintendo has flatly refused to interact with these questions.
Behind the scenes, nevertheless, Nintendo is gearing up for the discharge of its new machine, briefing its companions, and releasing improvement kits. Data has began to leak, and an image of what type the console will take has begun to emerge, in addition to once we can count on to listen to about it and once we can count on to purchase one.
It’s no shock that Nintendo is treading fastidiously. The Change has been an infinite success — it’s the third-best-selling console of all time, behind solely PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s personal DS handheld — which presents each an enormous alternative and an enormous threat. Traditionally, Nintendo has struggled to observe its hottest codecs: Wii and DS have been adopted by the flop of Wii U and the relative disappointment (in gross sales phrases) of 3DS. Nintendo’s traditional insistence on {hardware} innovation has confirmed as more likely to alienate its viewers as to discover a new one. Will Nintendo break with its personal custom and observe the Change with a extra highly effective tackle the identical formulation, or will it attempt one thing totally different?
What’s the newest Change 2 information?
In an indication that improvement of video games for Change 2 starting to ramp up exterior Nintendo, 8% of respondents to the Sport Builders Convention’s 2024 State of the Game Industry survey stated that they have been creating their present tasks for the “Nintendo Change successor.” It’s a comparatively small proportion — for comparability, 66% are creating video games for PC, 35% for PlayStation 5, and 18% for Change — but it surely’s not nothing: GDC surveyed greater than 3,000 builders, which means that not less than 240 of them are engaged on Change 2 video games. That definitely makes the platform appear to be a extra concrete proposition, and backs up studies that it is going to be prepared for market in 2024.
Will Nintendo’s next-gen console be known as Change 2?
Concerning its identify, the reply is that we don’t know. It’s value noting that Nintendo has by no means earlier than named its consoles in numerical sequence, even once they have been direct follow-ups to a earlier era, such because the Tremendous Nintendo Leisure System, Sport Boy Advance, and Nintendo 3DS. Tremendous Nintendo Change (or Tremendous Change!) has a sure ring to it, if you happen to ask us. However for now, “Change 2” is a serviceable shorthand, and what we’ll use on this article.
Will Change 2 be a hybrid handheld console, like Change?
The reply right here seems to be sure. Current reporting by VGC, citing a number of sources after dev kits arrived at associate studios, stated that the console “would be capable to be utilized in moveable mode, much like the Nintendo Change.”
There’s no phrase but on whether or not the console will characteristic removable Pleasure-Con controllers just like the Change, or whether or not it’s going to have a handheld-only variant just like the Change Lite. However early indicators are that Nintendo is eager to observe carefully within the footsteps of the 120-million-plus-selling Change.
What’s Change 2’s launch date?
Nintendo hasn’t indicated when the Change 2 can be launched, however we have now a number of clues.
VGC’s sources stated the console was deliberate to debut within the second half of 2024 — so, someday between the beginning of July and the top of December.
This matches with what we learn about declining Change gross sales, the stage Nintendo is at in improvement of the brand new console, and the discharge schedule for Change video games. Nintendo has beforehand dominated out releasing a brand new console earlier than the top of March 2024, and it now has Change video games scheduled via summer time 2024; the most recent launch on the present schedule is Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which has been given a summer time 2024 slot. (It’s additionally value noting that the just lately introduced remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Yr Door doesn’t have a extra exact launch date than “2024.”)
In an October 2023 interview, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa reiterated that the corporate would stay targeted on Change till the top of Nintendo’s present fiscal yr in March 2024, and added that it will proceed to assist Change with new titles within the following fiscal yr. The shift from “focus” to “assist” for the Change implies {that a} new console will launch in Nintendo’s subsequent fiscal yr — so, between April 2024 and March 2025.
All indicators level to a {hardware} launch in fall 2024, with Nintendo reportedly hoping to stockpile sufficient consoles to keep away from shortages through the vacation buying season.
Will Change 2 be backward-compatible?
That is the large query, with many customers hoping — or outright anticipating — to hold ahead their recreation libraries to Nintendo’s subsequent console, as has grow to be the norm with the most recent generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The reply stays unknown, and it’s not simple to foretell, both.
VGC’s report stated that the backward compatibility of the machine “stays unclear.” Some third-party publishers have been stated to be anxious in regards to the potential affect on gross sales of next-gen titles if the machine is backward-compatible. For its half, Nintendo has (in a uncommon on-the-record remark) stated it’s going to hope to deliver Change customers over to the brand new platform with their Nintendo accounts; if the Nintendo account system persists, that might in idea make it simple for customers to entry earlier purchases. However that’s not the identical factor because the console being technically able to it.
Nintendo has an honest, if not flawless, document for supporting backward compatibility. Wii performed GameCube video games, and Wii U performed Wii video games; Sport Boy Advance was backward-compatible with Sport Boy, and 3DS with DS. However the Change, with its new recreation cartridge format, enforced a clear break with the previous, and Nintendo has made a mint from rereleasing Wii U video games on the machine, notably the 55-million-selling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
On steadiness, so long as the machine makes use of the identical format for bodily releases (see beneath), Nintendo’s document suggests that it’s going to make the Change 2 backward-compatible. Nonetheless, there stay technical hurdles to implementing backward compatibility, and far will rely upon the chip structure Nintendo has chosen for the Change 2, which isn’t presently recognized.
Will Change 2 be digital-only, or will video games be bought on cartridge (or disc)?
Of all of the console producers, Nintendo’s ties to the retail trade are maybe the strongest — stronger even than Sony’s — so Nintendo is extraordinarily unlikely to go digital-only for the Change 2, even when this would appear to make sense for a transportable machine.
Certainly, VGC’s report included the element that the brand new console could have a cartridge slot for bodily releases. That is as near a useless cert as we will get with the Change 2 — and it additionally occurs to assist the machine having the identical or related type issue because the Change, in addition to growing the probability of backward compatibility.
How highly effective will Change 2 be? Will it be capable to play new AAA video games?
Due to Microsoft’s authorized wrangles over its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and studies of demos given by Nintendo to companions at Gamescom, we’re starting to get a way of how succesful the Change 2’s {hardware} can be.
Internal emails launched as a part of the FTC v. Microsoft case revealed that Activision executives met with Nintendo in December 2022 to debate the console, and got here away with the impression that efficiency could be near “Gen8 platforms” — in different phrases, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick later stated that he had not seen tech specs for the machine, nevertheless.)
If something, the “Gen8” comparability sounds as if it’d undersell the Change 2’s capabilities. In accordance with Eurogamer’s and VGC’s reporting on the behind-closed-doors Gamescom demos, Nintendo confirmed {hardware} focusing on the specs of the console working The Matrix Awakens’ Unreal Engine 5 tech demo with ray tracing enabled and “visuals corresponding to Sony’s and Microsoft’s current-gen consoles.”
This doesn’t imply that the Change 2 can be as highly effective as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X. As a substitute, Nintendo is probably going utilizing intelligent methods to cut back the demand on a much less highly effective graphics processor. VGC reported that the demo ran utilizing Nvidia’s superior DLSS upscaling know-how, which makes use of AI to upscale the decision of the picture, making it simpler for builders to optimize efficiency and visuals on weaker {hardware} by reducing the inner decision settings.
Nonetheless, the point out of Unreal Engine 5 — which is establishing itself because the trade commonplace engine, focusing on present console {hardware} — together with DLSS and ray tracing means that Nintendo is eager to get nearer to PS5 and Xbox Collection X when it comes to efficiency, and maybe make it extra possible for builders to port their house console releases on the Change 2.
Additionally at Gamescom, a particular, improved model of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was proven, working at greater decision and body charge than it does on Change.
The Change 2 will characteristic one tech downgrade, nevertheless: Reportedly, the console will feature an LCD screen, in contrast to the OLED display seen within the present top-of-the-range Change mannequin, as a cost-cutting measure.
What video games can be accessible for Change 2?
Talking of the improved Breath of the Wild demo, sources have been eager to level out that there was no suggestion that an enhanced model of the total recreation would grow to be a industrial product — though it wouldn’t be altogether stunning if it did.
The foremost candidate for a Change 2 launch recreation might be Metroid Prime 4. Of the beforehand introduced in-house Nintendo video games, that is the one one with no suggestion of a launch date, and Nintendo has been very quiet about it of late. On condition that, a launch earlier than the second half of 2024 appears unlikely. Maybe Nintendo will make it a cross-gen launch for the Change and its successor, because it did with Breath of the Wild for Wii U/Change, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for GameCube/Wii.
Apart from Metroid Prime 4, there are two evident gaps in Nintendo’s lineup: a brand new Mario Kart, and a 3D Tremendous Mario recreation. There hasn’t been an all-new Mario Kart in over 9 years, and other than making add-ons for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Mario Kart improvement staff has been quiet because the launch of Arms in 2017. Deluxe has bought so persistently over the Change’s lifetime that Nintendo hasn’t had an incentive to launch a sequel, however a brand new platform would appear to current the proper alternative for Mario Kart 9.
Equally, there hasn’t been a brand new 3D Mario recreation since 2017’s Tremendous Mario Odyssey. It’s a on condition that there can be one on Nintendo’s subsequent platform; the one query is when. Odyssey, like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, appeared through the first yr of the Change’s life; maybe we will count on a repeat of that for the Change 2.
Replace (Jan. 19): This text was up to date to replicate the proportion of respondents to the GDC survey presently creating for Change 2.