Nikkei: Nintendo Switch's successor will launch in March 2025
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Interesting conspirational speculation from Zhuge, given what the Nikkei Asia article mentioned:
Nintendo to launch Switch console successor in March 2025 at earliest
Delay allows streamlining of sales, gives developers time to create titles for new unitasia.nikkei.com
Is Zhuge saying that he expects a Nintendo movie/TV show in early 2025 that he thinks the Switch 2 will launch with, because that seems impossible? The only Nintendo movie that has been announced thus far is the Zelda movie and that probably won't come out until ~2027 at the earliest.
The other explanation is that he thinks the Switch 2 will launch with a Nintendo IP that already has an existing movie/TV adaptation, which would refer to Mario.
It will be a sitcom about the NCL board delaying endlessly a console to piss off internet nerds.
OP
OP
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- #54
The Zelda movie isn't the next Nintendo IP adaptation.
Is there supposed to be a Nintendo movie/TV adaptation announced for a Mar 2025 release? Seems very unlikely IMO
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PS4 specs means ps4 dev times.
5 year+ will be the norm going forward unless they do a heavy asset reuse sequal.
3d Mario and Mario kart are likely the only 2 ready or close to it from your list.
One thing to remember is that Nintendo actually don't have that big of a development team at the company. The whole Nintendo EPD, their internal development division is estimated to be around 800 developers. So for Nintendo to have more trouble getting games out fast when they make a jump into better hardware doesn't seem that far-fetched. There are many western studios that have far more developers than Nintendo have for example.
That's PS5 times. PS4 trends were closer to 4 years aside from the pandemic. And it's an overall scope issue. An Animal Crossing that iterates on New Horizons can be done in 3 years so we can see one by 2025. The issue is more whether the teams overlap or not. Like Splatoon 3 uses several Animal Crossing: New Horizons staff and that's why we wouldn't get one in 2024. However, with the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I'd expect a lot of staff was freed up to do new games for 2025-2026.
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They have been constructing an entire second building and are hiring more in the runup to its anticipated completion in 2027-28, presumably to deal with trying to maintain a consistent cadance of games, especially now that they don't have the Wii U catalog to fall back on.
Another advantage Nintendo has is that it has maintained franchises of different sizes. Not every currently active IP they have is on the level of requiring the resources a 3D Mario or Zelda has, so presumbaly they can get new entries out quicker.
Both Animal Crossing and Splatoon are currently being developed by the same production group at Nintendo EPD, that being Group No. 5. Presumably they alternate between a new Animal Crossing game and a new Splatoon game, but I do hope that group splits into seperate teams sooner or later because both franchises are frankly too big and important for one group to handle.
Remember that one Nintendo Tokyo ad featuring the two series, Mario and Zelda? Well, while Splatoon and AC share a production group, Zelda has one entirely on it's own, and Mario has a production group for 2D Mario (and Pikmin), a group for 3D Mario, and a group for Mario Kart.
A lot (most?) of Nintendo games aren't developed by EPD, and the ones that are are always aided by ton of outsourcing, be it from internal partners or to 3rd party developers.
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I hope they do a thing where yearly NSO members get exclusive access to a special early preorder window. 1 per account.
Means its 20$ and some extra setup per scalp and helps fight the bots that plague normal preorders.
Or something of the nature.
I know. I made the thread on Famiboards. Zelda's group is a bit of a misunderstanding. Major Zelda games take from all over EPD. Like Aya Kyogoku had her first work at Nintendo be on Four Swords Adventures. Or Shiro Mouri (Super Mario Bros. Wonder Director) being heavily involved with the handheld Zeldas. Or Animal Crossing: New Horizon's subdirector, Kotaro Hiramatsu, worked as a planner on Tears of the Kingdom. Most of the Zelda leads primarily work on Zelda but, the lower ranking staff do work on other series inbetween. Animal Crossing and Splatoon share a production group but it's only about a third of the staff overlap. Several leads aren't shared so preproduction can start during the development of the other.
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That is only true for specific games.
Dev times go only up for graphically very intensive games. More power could even reduce dev times for most games because it could reduce the need to micro optimizing.
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So they’ll be making mroe games.
Actually look at the credits. Splatoon and animal crossing barely have any crossover over despite being from the same production group.
Throwing money at it only speeds up game dev to a certain point, and that process of speeding it up becomes exponentially more expensive.
PS4 specs means ps4 dev times and nitnendo was preparing themselves for that. Animal crossing is especially going to be incredibly hard to make now.
Anyway for your second point yeah I agree they listed none of those. Maybe star fox but they still have to make them look good.
Smaller franchises will grow or die, it’s the exact same thing alsmot every major publisher did when faced with how hard it is to make modern games. Look at the jrpg genre and how hard it was hit by hd dev. And nitnendo is no stranger to killing franchises, they have the largest kill list in the industry. Of course they are bringing back a lot for a second go currently to see if they can make any a gif.
Switch 2’s small games are switch 1’s medium games, a medium switch 2 game will be a large switch one game and so on.
Increased dev times and budgets are unavoidable, otherwise the rest of the industry wouldn’t have them.
I acknowledge all of what you say is right to a point, but those hires aren’t going to speed it up, they are going to keep parity with switch 1 dev cycle on important projects.
This is a wii to wii u type jump, not a wii u to switch higher specs are exponentially more difficulty to develop for at the upper levels, of course nitnendo staying a decade behind allows them many developmental advantages Sony or Microsoft don’t have, due to the nature of tech being outdated and well known by now.
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I also don't see any piece of media being big enough to warrant dealying a console, I think if they had something this big it would've been announced already. Outside of the Mario Movie and Zelda movie, the next thing would probably be an Animal Crossing movie/anime, but I think the newest Animal Crossing is coming in March/April 2026 at the earliest.
I think it's okay to look at how long big franchises have been missing but this list might skew people's expectations a bit: DK and StarFox don't have dedicated teams and Luigi's Mansion is made by Next Lelvel who released Mario Strikers less than 2 years ago. I don't think any of those three are coming any time soon. I'd love to see Playtonic and Retro collaborating on a new DK, especially after Chris' report of Nintendo looking for partners to work on their IP, but until it's confirmed I wouldn't take it for granted.
Speaking of franchises and development times, one big factor I haven't seen discussed yet (my bad if anyone brought it up) is that the Zelda team will effectively be 2 full years into development of the next title if the Switch 2 launches March 2025, effectively moving up the release within the lifecycle, most of us were expecting the next Zelda to release in year 5 of Switch 2.
Who is "most" here, because I surely am not part of it lol.
Speaking of which, by 2025, it will have been 3 years since Xenoblade 3, which is enough time for Monolith Soft to make a whole game. That's ignoring the high probability of them having been at work of another game parallel to XB3 for even longer. I don't want to set up myself for disappointment, but I'm reasonably hopeful/optimistic that we'll see a new Monolith Soft-game in 2025, too. "At worst", it might be an X-remaster ;>
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I count 4.5 years between XC2 and XC3.
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I meant the next 3D one of course, we now had 2 games on a 6 year development cycle. assuming Switch 2 released in 2024, one year after TotK, that leavs 5 more years of waiting for Zelda. Now on the other hand if it launches in March 2025 it's more likely to release in year 4 or late year 3 at the earliest.
I count less than 2 years between XBX and XB2. And it's highly likely that not only was the game finished earlier than its actual release (even despite the prelay), but also slowed down by excessive help on TotK. And again: I really doubt Monolith Soft has not been working on a second game of their own all that time.
Be that as it may be, there's a good chance for game from them, since there haven't been 2 years in a row without one since 2017.
I'd wager the Zelda team spent a decent portion of the years between BOTW and TOTK mapping things out for their next game as well, while I don't buy into the whole "70 dollar DLC" meme you see bandied about TOTK was certainly not six years worth of focused development beyond BOTW.
Interesting conspirational speculation from Zhuge, given what the Nikkei Asia article mentioned:
Nintendo to launch Switch console successor in March 2025 at earliest
Delay allows streamlining of sales, gives developers time to create titles for new unit
Other media initiatives don't impact the launch of a platform.
System selling software does as happened many times in Nintendo's history.
I believe Nintendo's management has set the goal to launch the new system in FY ending March 2025 and when they decided they needed a delay they postponed to the last month of the chosen FY.
And they likely had enough software on Switch to avoid a steep drop in hardware sales in 2024.
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You need to consider the Japan release for XBX, which was in April 2015 and also that team helped Nintendo with BotW (and in fact it is now the Zelda Team) and there wasn't much of a overlap between XBX and XB2.
The curious thing is that a lot of new hired staff between 2021-2023 didn't work on either XB3 (including FR) nor Zelda TotK, so there must be something under the radar. Anyway I'm expecting something Monolith related at the Switch 2 presentation/showcase.
Tialo
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I dont think that new Monolith game will be finished before holiday 2026 at the earliest (!). Till summer 2022, they have been busy with development of Xeno 3 and co-developing TotK. So I would say that pre-production of their next game started in summer 2022 at the earliest and main production started maybe around april/may 2023 (after Xeno 3 DLC and TotK were done). If we assume that their next game will also be a 'big-scale-Openworld-project', then I think we should calculate with 3.5 years of main development at least. So I dont think that we will see something about their new project before September Direct 2025 or somewhen like that
Regarding Zelda: I think they could have a new 3D Zelda game ready for spring/summer 2025. Something like a mixture of 'bigger spinoff' and new entry. Maybe a 3D Zelda that heavenly recapitalises on the mechanics and graphics of BotW and TotK BUT combines it with more old-school-gameplay (dungeon and item focused, no big open world). I would compare it to a game like Spiderman Miles Morales or something like this. Next 'real' 3D Open World Zelda will come in late 2028/early 2029 then
Regarding Zelda: I think they could have a new 3D Zelda game ready for spring/summer 2025. Something like a mixture of 'bigger spinoff' and new entry. Maybe a 3D Zelda that heavenly recapitalises on the mechanics and graphics of BotW and TotK BUT combines it with more old-school-gameplay (dungeon and item focused, no big open world). I would compare it to a game like Spiderman Miles Morales or something like this. Next 'real' 3D Open World Zelda will come in late 2028/early 2029 then
They also produced Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition in between.
Honestly what sort of productivity black magic has Monolith found to make all of these games and co develop like half of Nintendo's other projects? Their production seems like utter lunacy compared to the industry standard.
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I mean, one year was just spent on polishing the game, COVID was also a factor we can't forget and the new phsyics ad all of that. I do think you felt the time they spent on it while playing the game.
Tialo
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July 2010: Xenoblade Chronicles
April 2015: Xenoblade X
December 2017: Xenoblade 2
September 2018: Xenoblade 2 Torna
May 2020: Xenoblade DE
July 2022: Xenoblade 3
April 2023: Xenolade 3 FR
Yes this is a very good track record - furthermore if we assume some Covid-delays and -problems inbetween
And then you need to add their help on Mario Kart, Splatoon, Animal Crossing and, of course, Zelda. It's insane.
There is staff that worked on Xenoblade DE that didn't work on either Xenoblade 3 or Tears of the Kingdom, and Koh Kojima didn't work on the Xenoblade 3 DLC, so they have undoubtedly had something else cooking in the meantime.
More than hardware sales (considering NSW is already > 140M), I'd say it's the software side which is especially taken under consideration (higher profit margins).
The NSW launch itself was delayed and at that time Nintendo's business was in a much worse state (WiiU discontiued in October 2016, 3DS performing so so).
This is due to a very active install base as show in Nintendo financial report slides.
No, not really to be honest. Let's look at something simple, like rendering a scene, that alone should be a WAY faster compared to 2012-2013. Between how much stronger tech/PCs is, and the potential use of AI to help in development, we can safely say that developing PS4 level games in 2024 to be significantly faster than 2012. Will it take more time? yes, of course, but it would still take a lot less.
At least from a tech point of view in terms of rendering speed, knowledge of engines, and engines being way more friendly too.
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Tialo
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Derail over multiple posts, misinformation, bad faith arguing, long prior history
Yes maybe pre-production or prototype-phasis started earlier than I thought in my initial post. But nevertheless: I think full-development did only start in spring 2023, because Xeno 3 + DLC + should have blocked the vast majority of their staff.
They probably have everything mapped out in preproduction and make little changes after that. Their gameplay and environment design are pretty segregated so you don't necessarily need to rip out entire levels because it breaks your gameplay flow. And their assets aren't the highest fidelity. And liberal reuse of assets rather than make too many bespoke assets *insert the "one halo rock" tweet*
Reminder that XB
E was done by 28 staff (+outsourcing). Monolith Soft is crazy efficient and, again, I highly doubt they had only one project of their own in full-development, but the "near"-ish future will prove or disprove that.Tialo
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Okay, with NO new Pokemon Game coming in 2024 for Switch, I think schedule looks indeed very week for this year. I am curious if Nintendo will have any christmas game for Switch at all (beside of some remaster stuff)
Donkey Kong
Soo no Pokemon game this holiday so we can remove that one from the list.
Tialo
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Derail over multiple posts, misinformation, bad faith arguing, long prior history
To be honest: I dont think that there will be any 'big' holiday game at all. MP4 will release in 2025 when Switch 2 is ready, Pokemon is also removed from the 2024-list now and I highly doubt that a new Donkey Kong Game would be 'wasted' now so late in Switch lifecycle. I think that we will indeed get maybe a last Mario Sports or Mario Game and some other remakes/ports for holiday season (FE4 Remake, F-Zero GX HD, Metroid 2/3 HD, Wind Waker/TP HD - not ALL of them, but some of them)
We heard about EPD Tokyo doing a 2D DK platformer years ago from Emily Rogers. The Switch base is huge, the window's wide open, Drake will be BC, I don't see this as a waste tbh. We might've got it last year if not for Wonder.
I also think there's s good possibility Prime 4 isn't cross-gen and is the "core" Switch 1 sendoff this year. In the other direction we still have Tomodachi Life as a big casual/family title potentially.
There's other smaller stuff too yet to make it's Switch debut we could see (Rhythm Heaven, Star Fox, etc). Generally though yeah, I expect a lot of catalog reissues (remakes, full remasters, digital emu-remasters) and next FY we already have s couple (Luigi's Mansion 2, Paper Mario TTYD).
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It's funny that it never crossed anyone's mind the game requiring more development time might be Pokémon and not something developed by internal Nintendo when it was obviously the one first party franchise facing technical issues. Yes Pokémon comes late to new systems yada yada. TPCI was also proven wrong with the Switch, patterns are a thing until they aren't and the game being announced for Switch means there are no install base limitations, it just needs that next gen patch, which is something Game Freak never did.
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Hmm... yeah, it's actually really easy to imagine that scenario assuming the leaks are true. Especially since Game Freak's moved to inside the Nintendo building.
"Nintendo envisioned a Holiday 2024 launch with Pokemon Legends Z-A being a major selling point because it's fucking Pokemon. But Game Freak might've needed more time (and assistance, maybe?) to really polish the game and nobody wants to experince the Scarlet and Violet launch situation again so they delayed the console internally to accomodate. The best thing Pokemon could do is make their next game a standout release (in a good way) for the next console. Silence the doubters, so to speak."
Does that mean it's the case? No, we don't know and we might never know. But it is really easy to think about in retrospect.
I sincerely hope the console release date is siloed away from their media initiatives. That's a slippery slope that can go horribly out of Nintendo's favor if I were to look at Gamefreak and The Pokemon Company's relationship in the constant pushing out of poorly developed titles each year.
Tialo
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I dont think that the delay depends on Pokemon Legends AZ. Nintendo should have definetly their own majorsellers ready for launch or launchwindow - and we talk about exclusive Switch 2 games here while Legends AZ will 'only' be crossgen. The following pattern would have been good enough for Switch 2 release;
November 2024, Switch 2 launch. Exclusive games:
- New 3D Mario
- New EPD4 Casual game
- some smaller AA-3rd-Party-Game
December 2024:
nothing
January 2025:
Metroid Prime 4
February 2025:
Nothing
March 2025:
Pokemon Legends AZ as Crossgen
So I highly doubt that they would delay their entire plattform due to a crossgen title (assuming that they have other big titles ready - hopefully they have)
November 2024, Switch 2 launch. Exclusive games:
- New 3D Mario
- New EPD4 Casual game
- some smaller AA-3rd-Party-Game
December 2024:
nothing
January 2025:
Metroid Prime 4
February 2025:
Nothing
March 2025:
Pokemon Legends AZ as Crossgen
So I highly doubt that they would delay their entire plattform due to a crossgen title (assuming that they have other big titles ready - hopefully they have)
I'm sure "medium Switch 2 game = big Switch 1 game, small Switch 2 game = big Switch 1 game" will be true for some games, I feel like this wont apply to many other titles as well.
For every Mario Kart or Smash that offers a ton of content and post-launch support, I'd expect a Mario Party or Switch Sports that will basically play like prettier iterations of prior entries and recieve no DLC. A smaller Nintendo IP like Kirby will probably become more ambitious and Mario-like, but another smaller Nintendo IP like Fire Emblem will still be Fire Emblem but now in 4K. 3D Zelda will continue to push the bounds of dynamic systems-based gameplay while 3D Mario may fully embrace an open-world, but 2D Zelda will probably only consists of remakes while 2D Mario will still be very linear, with a reliance on sheer creativity rather than pure technical scope.
In other words, not every Nintendo IP is automatically going to scale up dramatically simply because of the increase in available hardware specs. Nintendo publishes a diverse catalog of software, and not every game will have the same development pipelines as each other
It crossed everyone's mind, it's just that they still released multiple games despite the fact they needed more time. Everyone's happy they did the reasonable thing for once
Looking at reports Nintendo doesn't have set March 2025 in stone (for now).
They can survive to a relative weak FY if it's to ensure Switch 2 succes.
As @Celine said Switch is still at way higher software Baseline than 3DS/WiiU at this point.