Shigeru Miyamoto – he doesn’t care much about graphics tech
A reader thinks Nintendo may have given away more than people realise when it comes to the next console after the Nintendo Switch.
Considering the Nintendo Switch is coming up to its sixth anniversary it’s obvious that a successor must be well underway, no matter how much Nintendo tries to play down that eventuality. They’ve said the Switch is meant to last 10 years but that doesn’t mean they’re going to wait until March 2027 and only release their new console then. It’s perfectly normal for consoles to continue to be sold for a year or two after their replacement is released and often more than that for Nintendo ones.
It’s pointless trying to predict a release date – that’s not what I’m trying to write about – but I would be relatively surprised if Nintendo didn’t at least start to hint about it officially next year. Best case scenario, I think the theory about Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom being the last big budget Switch-only game is fairly likely and we may hear about the console shortly after its release.
Nintendo were in a tricky situation with the Switch 2, or whatever it ends up being called, because they’re out of synch with Xbox and PlayStation, given the failure of Wii U, and if the pandemic hadn’t happened they would’ve ended up releasing it halfway through the current generation, and probably only a year or two before there started to be talk about the PlayStation 6. That’s not going to happen for a long, long time now though – at least five years – which gives Nintendo a chance to catch up.
Logically, there’s no way Nintendo isn’t already working on new hardware, but they pretty much confirmed as much recently when Miyamoto was talking about backwards compatibility and digital accounts (plus a Pokémon developer saying they’re working on next gen hardware). It was all very vague, as you’d expect, but he did come out with this one very interesting sentence:
‘Nintendo’s strength is in creating new games. With new hardware, we would like to propose unique games that cannot be realised on existing hardware.’
Some may have dismissed this as just white nose, that doesn’t really say anything, but it’s not. It actually says a lot more than many people seem to have realised. What he’s doing, is he’s acknowledging that there is ‘new hardware’ but he’s also suggesting that it’s so significantly different that it’s going to enable Nintendo to create games that are currently impossible on the Switch.
If this was Xbox or PlayStation you’d just assume this to mean better graphics, but with Nintendo it’s almost guaranteed to be more than that. Many people think the Switch 2 is going to be just that: the Switch but with better graphics and maybe better controllers. I don’t think so. Not only do Nintendo generally try to be more experimental than that but I think they will be keenly aware of the failure of the Wii U, which tried to be just the Wii but with better graphics and a different controller.
I also think the fact that Miyamoto is the one behind the quote says a lot. He’s never interested in graphics and if he’s excited about something it’ll be for basically every reason except that. Who can say what new gadgets or features the new console will have but I am willing to bet that the next Nintendo console will have abilities that are very different from the Switch. This won’t just be a Switch Pro, it’ll be a brand new console with new gimmicks.
Of course, only time will tell if I’m right but whatever else you say about Nintendo they’re never scared to experiment, even when the safe option is just to sit back and do more of the same. Sometimes it works out for them and sometimes it doesn’t but I don’t see that attitude ever changing, especially not when thinking outside the box has done so well for them with the Switch.
By reader Ranbo
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A reader thinks Nintendo may have given away more than people realise when it comes to the next console after the Nintendo Switch.
