Nintendo has reiterated it still intends to announce its next console hardware before the end of its current fiscal year, which concludes on March 31, 2025.
President Shuntaro Furukawa made the comments during an online press conference on Tuesday, following the publication of Nintendo’s latest earnings results, but the executive did not add any additional details.
Nintendo first confirmed plans to announce its Switch successor in May, when Furukawa said: “We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year.”
In its latest earnings report for the three months ended September 30, the Switch firm said it had lowered its Switch hardware sales forecast to 12.5m for the fiscal year, down from 13.5m, and lowered its operating profit outlook by 10% ¥360 billion ($2.4bn).
“For a platform that is in its 8th year in the market, both hardware and software enjoy stable demand and brisk sales,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said following publication of the results.
“But sales so far fell short of our original projections. Taking into consideration their sales in the first half, we revised our forecasts for both hardware and software, and that led to the earnings revision.”
Nintendo’s share price declined by nearly 4% following the publication of the results, and Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda told Reuters that Nintendo’s shares could remain under pressure, as it now looks unlikely to announce its new console before the end of the calendar year.
“Making an announcement this year has gotten quite difficult… You would not want to divert attention to an upcoming console in the middle of the critical year-end shopping season,” Yasuda said.
According to a report, developers have reportedly been briefed not to expect Nintendo’s next console to launch before April 2025.
“No developer I’ve spoken to expects it to be launching this financial year,” said GI.biz journalist Chris Dring. “In fact, they’ve been told not to expect it in the [current] financial year. A bunch of people I spoke to hope it’s out in April or May time, still early next year, not late.
“I don’t think any of us wants a late launch for Switch 2 because we all want a new Nintendo console, everyone gets very excited for it, and we don’t want that crunch of Grand Theft Auto 6 and Switch and all that kind of stuff on top of each other.”
Having launched in March 2017, Switch is in its eighth year on the market. In July, it surpassed the Famicom as the Nintendo console with the longest lifespan before being replaced.