Enough, immediately, to leave investors and fans hungry. The prospect of the announcement of the new Switch had heightened expectations and caused Nintendo’s stock price to rise by 12% over the last six months according to “leaks” on the internet.
“Because of all the information already available, people may have said to themselves: ‘this is what I expected’” without anything new, commented Krysta Yang, host of the specialized podcast Kit & Krysta.
“The fundamental problem for Nintendo was that everything it showed in its video had already leaked days, even weeks before,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games in Tokyo, told AFP.
“The manufacturers (of the console) in China had shown the design, the colors, the layout of the buttons and even some new features like the method of attaching the controllers,” he observes.
Nintendo announces the Switch 2, successor to its flagship console, for 2025
New “Mario Kart”?
However, the stakes are massive for Nintendo. The new machine must take over from the Switch: released in March 2017, this hybrid console, playable both on the go and connected to a television, has become a huge success.
It had sold 146 million copies at the end of September 2024, making it the third most popular console in the history of video games behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS. Nintendo estimates that it has sold 1.3 billion games running on the Switch.
But sales have run out of steam over the years: while waiting for a successor to its aging machine, the Japanese giant saw its net profit plummet by 60% year-on-year in the first half of its staggered financial year which began in April 2024. , and lowered its annual forecasts.
Certainly, the Kyoto-based group is working to increase its brand recognition by opening theme parks and financing films featuring its characters like “Super Mario.”
“However, Nintendo still generates around 91% of its revenues from its Switch,” insists Darang Candra, analyst at Niko Partners, to AFP.
Above all, the range of games available will be decisive: the trailer seems to show a new version of the Mario Kart series on the integrated screen of the new console.
The previous installment for the Switch, “Mario Kart 8”, sold more than 64 million copies.
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“Not blown away”
A new Mario Kart title is a “positive,” but due to a release later in the calendar year, “the Switch 2 may not surpass the 15 million unit sales recorded by the Switch on its first year” commented Nathan Naidu, of Baidu Intelligence.
For Serkan Toto, “gamers are certainly not blown away as they were by the revelation represented by the first Switch, but I think the demand will be very high — at least in the first year.”
He says making the Switch 2 “simply a bigger and better version of the original console” might be all Nintendo needs: there’s no real pressure from gamers to reinvent the wheel”.
Another source of questions: Nintendo said in November that games running on the Switch would be compatible with its new console.
But a part “may not be supported or fully compatible with the Switch 2”, the group corrected Thursday, promising to provide more details later.
