Nintendo will continue supporting the Switch until 2025
by Danny Craig
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Nintendo
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has confirmed that the Switch will be prioritized for the remainder of the fiscal year 2023–24, with support continuing into the following year.
The details:
- Furukawa was asked about the future of the Switch in an interview with Nikkei, now that the hybrid console is more than six years old. According to the executive, Nintendo's focus will remain on the system for the remainder of the current fiscal year, which concludes in March 2024, with new software continuing to be released the following year. “We are still working on software for the Switch for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025,” Furukawa said. “In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, we hope to sustain the momentum of Zelda and the [Super Mario Bros] movie, with focus on the holiday sales season. As for hardware, we will maximize not only new demand for the hardware but also for those buying second consoles and replacements.”
- Furukawa did not elaborate on future release plans, but we do know that the first party release Princess Peach Showtime is set to launch in March next year, followed by the HD remaster of Luigi's Mansion 2 and the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Beyond those titles, it's unclear whether Nintendo will continue to develop Switch exclusives or shift to cross-generation titles with the rumored Switch successor.
- Earlier this year, it was reported that Nintendo's development partners had begun receiving dev kits for the company's upcoming system, which is set to launch in the second half of 2024. Since then, it has also been reported that it showed off impressive tech demos for the system behind closed doors at Gamescom, with ray-tracing and 4K made possible by DLSS upscaling.
More gaming news:
- Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, believes game streaming will "take off" within the next decade, comparing the current disdain for cloud gaming to how Netflix's transition to becoming a movie streaming service was frowned upon in the 2000s.
- Sega has canceled Creative Assembly's extraction shooter Hyenas, and layoffs are likely at the studio. According to the publisher, the decision was made after an internal review prompted by the "lower profitability of the European region.”
