Nintendo to support the Switch with new games until 2025

Domagoj Belancic

4.10.2023

Translation: machine translated

In an interview, Nintendo reveals that the Switch will continue to be supplied with new games for a long time to come. However, support for online services from the previous console generation will end soon.

The Switch will be seven years old in March. A respectable age for Nintendo's hybrid console. However, according to Shuntaro Furukawa, President of Nintendo, this advanced age does not mean the end of the console. On the contrary.

Furukawa confirmed in an interview with the Nikkei financial newspaper that the Switch will continue to be supported with new games for a long time to come. Nintendo is therefore still working on games that are planned for the next financial year. This means that Switch owners can look forward to new Switch fodder until at least March 2025.

Furukawa has not indicated which games these are. What is clear, however, is that Nintendo has only announced two more games for the Switch after the end of the current financial year in March 2024. Namely the HD remake of "Luigi's Mansion 2" and the remake of the Gamecube classic "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door". The former is scheduled for release in summer 2024 and "Paper Mario" sometime next year. The lost "Metroid Prime 4" is still officially rumoured to be a Switch game, but without a release date.

Nintendo is still keeping quiet about a possible Switch successor. The Switch is still too big a success for that. To date, Nintendo's hybrid console has sold almost 130 million units. This makes it the second most successful Nintendo console of all time - the Nintendo DS is in first place with 154 million. No wonder, then, that Nintendo is still focussing on software support for the current platform.

At an investor presentation in May this year, Furukawa confirmed that a successor to the Nintendo Switch will not be released until after the end of the current financial year at the earliest. So in April 2024 at the earliest.

Rumours about a Switch 2 come to a head

While Nintendo is keeping quiet about a possible successor and prefers to talk about upcoming Switch games, rumours about a "Switch 2" are intensifying. According to anonymous sources, Nintendo unveiled its next-gen hardware behind closed doors with several tech demos at Gamescom in Cologne. The hardware is reportedly so powerful that it can run theMatrix Tech demo for Unreal Engine 5. The console is also said to have an LCD screen instead of an OLED screen. Some high-ranking developer studios are apparently already in possession of development kits.

It is unclear whether the new console will be compatible with games from the current Switch generation. The announcement that the Switch will continue to be fed with software for a long time at least gives hope that Nintendo's new hardware generation will also be able to swallow these Switch games.

A statement made by Furukawa in June of this year also gives hope. According to this statement, Nintendo is endeavouring to ensure the "smoothest possible transition" to the next console generation:

Online services for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS to be discontinued

In another area, Nintendo is announcing the end of support. As the company announces, all online functions of Wii U and 3DS software will be discontinued from April 2024. This includes online multiplayer, leaderboards and "data sharing". The only exception is "Pokémon Bank" - a software for storing Pokémon on the 3DS. You can find all the details about the end of online services in the official FAQ. The online shops for both consoles were closed for good back in March of this year. With the closure, over 1000 digital-only games were removed from sale. The re-downloading of purchased software and offline play should still be possible for the time being.

The Wii U was released in 2012 and is considered a major flop by Nintendo standards. Just 13.5 million units were sold. The console was no longer supplied with Nintendo games after the release of the Switch. The last game Nintendo released for the Wii U was "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild".

The Nintendo 3DS was released in 2011. With almost 76 million units sold, the last Nintendo handheld is considered a great success for the company. Nintendo continued to support the portable console with software for a long time. The last Nintendo game, "Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn", was released around two years after the launch of the Switch.

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.