Everyone else is busy revealing the Switch 2 – What gives, Nintendo?
If you’ve been browsing social media in the past few days (hell, let’s not joke, the past few years), you’ll see a lot of anticipation about the arrival of the Switch’s successor.
The latest whispers suggest that Wednesday, January 8 is the first reasonable day after the holidays for Nintendo to finally lift the curtain on ‘Switch 2’. As everyone across territories returned to the office, it made sense to put all the rumors to rest with an official reveal in early January.
But here we are, with lots of console news, but none of it coming from Nintendo.
No, it’s the peripheral manufacturers who ship, or at least the only parts that are being shipped. Accessory maker Genki announced last week that it plans to show and discuss the Switch 2 and its line of peripherals at CES 2025, and it make good on their promises. In fact, Genki’s trailer gives us perhaps the most polished look at yet-to-be-announced hardware we have.
The image shows the company’s system naturally wrapped in its upcoming “NS2” case — let’s not forget the whole reason many accessory makers are eager to launch ahead of the official announcement — but the general layout matches the leaked details we’ve been seeing since the first supposed hardware photos appeared online back in September.
And it’s not just Genki. Peripheral companies everywhere are jumping into action. Dbrand Of course, this was first out of the gate and today Funlab jumped in:
Elsewhere, Felipe Lima of Universo Nintendo claims to have an accurate reproduction of the final Switch 2 logo, provided by a source. It essentially looks similar to the logo we’ve been seeing for weeks (a big ‘2’ highlighted next to the Joy-Con icons) and there’s a good chance it’s legit too.
With this deluge of details and crazy speculation, the big question is WHY DON’T YOU ANNOUNCE THE NINTENDO THING!?!?!? Are you going to sit idly by while every case manufacturer in the region pulls the same stunt? Surely as a platform holder you want to get out there and process the message before every chip is demolished, every transistor is counted, every secret is revealed? It’s okay to have all your ducks in a row, but surely the reveal was planned months in advance? You already have the trailer on your hard drive ready to go, Right?
It’s confusing, angry, tiring… but maybe ‘crazy’ is the key word there. The internet is getting flaky (well, a little more than usual, if that’s possible), but you can’t buy this kind of marketing. #NintendoSwitch2 is trending very well, thank-you-very-much, and Nintendo’s team has done exactly nothing to get there.
It’s also worth remembering that, from a certain perspective (and assuming the leaks look real), this is probably the least exciting Nintendo system reveal in the company’s history. Don’t get us wrong – we’re beyond excited to see the final product and are enamored with the ultra-high-res official renders, and we can’t wait to get our hands on this thing and play new games on new Nintendo hardware. It doesn’t get much better than that!
However, from a legacy hardware perspective, it looks like exactly what we speculated was around five years ago when we dreamed up the ‘Switch Pro’. Bigger screen, more power, 4K upscaling in the dock – you name it, it’s been rumored for a long time.
That’s what you get with an iterative update with a sensible name and a sensible business plan to create as many units as possible before launch. Nintendo’s new hardware is never boring, but this one doesn’t even have the self-standing 3D display’s namesake gimmick. This is the quantity most known for ages.
Yet here we are, all anxiously waiting official recording and notification. Nintendo must have planned this – you don’t produce millions of consoles and try to keep them completely secret – which means this was all part of their plan. Nintendo won’t be in a hurry.
And really, what To be the rush when what you’re revealing is essentially ‘one of those’? The Switch 2 has the potential to top that with gaming’s two best: Sound 2. PS2. Galaxy 2. We Love a good ‘2’ (Um), but the amount known is the nature of the monster with direct sequels.
Nintendo’s biggest problem is avoiding the reveal being completely offensive, so it’s only natural that everyone – including us – wants them to get on with it. But been in this state for too long and seems to be with the console Exactly what we thought would happen half a decade ago, perhaps an adverse reveal was inevitable and this was the best approach they had. Like any good DJ, Nintendo is waiting to strike when the crowd can’t take it anymore.
Just be careful out there. Switch is going wild.
