Japanese giant Nintendo announced on Tuesday that details of the long-awaited successor to its more than seven-year-old Switch console would be announced by the end of March 2025, while unveiling extremely cautious new financial forecasts.
“We will make an announcement about the successor to the Nintendo Switch during this fiscal year,” which ends March 31, 2025, its president Shuntaro Furukawa wrote on X. He tempered expectations, however, adding that there would be “no mention” of the new console in announcements about upcoming Nintendo games in June. The tangle of rumors, never confirmed by Nintendo, that have been building pressure around a Switch successor for years, gave way to investor disappointment in mid-February when several media outlets said the hoped-for launch this year could be pushed back to 2025.
Conservative financial forecasts
Nintendo shares, which have soared since early January amid expectations of a Switch 2 release this year, have fallen 13% since the news went to press. And annual targets announced Tuesday by the group based in Kyoto, western Japan, detail that the future console will have only a minor impact on its results in 2024/25: Nintendo is therefore forecasting net profits of just 300 billion yen ( 1 .81 billion euros), which would be a drop of almost 40% for the year.
The company also expects its turnover to decline by 20% over the period. Defying all predictions of a hard end, the current Switch console, released in March 2017, has now sold more than 141 million units, Nintendo said Tuesday. It is the third most popular console in video game history after Sony PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.
And according to Kantan Games analyst Serkan Toto, the Switch “could overtake” its two competitors and take the first step of the podium, “especially if Nintendo continues to sell it for a certain time after the release” of the new product. He estimates Nintendo sold 15.7 million Switch copies last financial year, on track to meet its target, and plans to sell a further 13.5 million in 2024/25.
Secret…
Sales of the console peaked in 2020 as a large number of countries imposed lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting many consumers to arm themselves with video games to get them through the period. But since then, revenues have been on a downward trend, even with the release of several major and highly anticipated games such as “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” and the fallout from the box office success of the “Mario” movie. in 2023/24 helped mitigate the inevitable decline in sales.
Thanks to the drag of an aging machine and a weakening yen that has boosted its overseas sales, Nintendo on Tuesday posted a record net profit for the fiscal year ended at the end of March (490.6 billion yen, or 2.9). billion euros, which is 13.4% more than last year), and sales increased by 4.4%. Much less predictable than its rivals Sony and Microsoft with their new consoles, Nintendo usually introduces innovations beyond pure power with each new release, and this time the secret is once again well kept.
However, many analysts believe that abandoning the Switch hybrid model, which allows the console to be used portablely or connected to a TV, would be a significant risk for the Japanese group. Accustomed to rollercoaster rides, Nintendo has in the past followed the triumph of the Wii console in 2006 (101.63 million copies sold) with the thunderous Wii U six years later (only 13.56 million copies sold).
Sami Nemli with agency / ECO Inspirations
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