Hardware revisions are commonplace in the gaming industry, but according to a new report an updated model of Nintendo’s Switch console won’t be released this year. Instead, players hoping for an upgrade will have to wait until 2019 at the earliest.
Sources close to Nintendo told The Wall Street Journal that Nintendo hopes to drive sales this year not through new hardware, but through enhancing the console’s online infrastructure before it goes premium, and another strong year of game releases.
Mario Tennis Aces, Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Fire Emblem, a new Yoshi and more are among the new releases expected in 2018.
It comes off the back of a stellar first year for the console, which started with launch title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and ended with Super Mario Odyssey. Both featured in our top three overall games of the year.
Another major release for Switch this year is Nintendo Labo, the game-maker’s offbeat, peripheral-led game that tasks players with building creations such as remote control cars and pianos from cardboard.
These creations, called Toy-Cons, can then be used in games and can be further tinkered with to create new contraptions only limited by the player’s imaginations (and cardboard supplies). Suffice to say we were impressed when we went hands-on in February.
Switch has been an enormous and sorely-needed success for Nintendo following the bitterly disappointing sales of Wii U. The new device, which is both a home console and a handheld, has already outsold its predecessor, hitting nearly 15 million units sold in just ten months.
It’s expected to hit 17 million before the financial year concludes at the end of March.
A hardware revision is likely to happen at some point. Nintendo has offered multiple iterations of past consoles, particularly its handhelds, and there are areas where the hardware could be improved.
For example, the Switch’s internal storage, which is a paltry 32GB – smaller than some games – making additional SD cards a necessary purchase. There’s also the possibility of a Switch capable of 4G connectivity, which would expand the reach of it as a portable.