There’s just over one more week to go until Nintendo lifts the lid on the Nintendo Switch 2 with its upcoming Direct presentation on 2nd April, but we’ve got room for another rumour or two right?
The latest comes from Insider Gaming, who claims via multiple conversations during GDC in San Francisco that Nintendo is planning to launch the Switch 2 in June, roughly two months following its Direct. This would line up quite nicely with how it approached the launch of the original Switch, though to our knowledge, the last major console to release in the month of June was the N64 in Japan. Will Nintendo really follow suit with the Switch 2?
Not only that, but Nintendo will supposedly implement a three-phase plan for its Switch 2 software, with first-party titles getting top priority during the initial launch. Following this, phase two will commence in October / November and allow for titles from third-party publishers to shine. As part of this, it’s said that developers will receive dev kits in June.
Finally, the third phase essentially covers the Christmas period, which presumably would allow both Nintendo and third-party publishers to unleash some major titles.
Overall, aspects of this sound plausible, but we’re not completely convinced. First of all, while we can certainly imagine dev kits being sent to indie developers in June, we have to imagine that some of the major publishers (i.e. Activision, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft etc) will have had their hands on dev kits for some time now. Frankly, the notion of the Switch 2 launching with no third-party games is a bit ridiculous.
On the flip side, it strikes us that development for the Switch 2 would be comparatively straightforward compared to previous generations, so Nintendo holding back dev kits until the last minute wouldn’t be completely out of the question. Our recent interview with Llamasoft revealed that not even Jeff Minter has managed to bag one yet.
Whatever happens, we remain confident that the Switch 2 will play host to a wide variety of games from major developers and indies alike. Whether these come at launch or are staggered throughout the year, we reckon we’ll be eating well once the console finally drops.
