Switch 2: Nintendo reportedly targeting early 2025 release date

Update: VGC has updated its report, linked below, saying that multiple sources have now confirmed that Nintendo's next console has been delayed from late 2024 to early 2025. One of those sources claimed that the delay was at least partly to help Nintendo prepare a stronger first-party software lineup for launch.

Original story: New reports claim the yet unannounced Nintendo Switch 2 is releasing early next year.

As we now near the Switch's seventh birthday, a report from Brazilian games journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, loosely corroborated by Eurogamer and VGC, says five different development sources indicate the console's successor is due to launch in Q1 2025. This reportedly comes from developers working directly on games for the Switch 2.

I should addend the part about Eurogamer and VGC's corroboration to include the outlets' respective language, as it suggests much less of a hard confirmation of Lippe's report. Eurogamer says only that it's "heard similar whispers," while VGC's sources were able to corroborate that they're indeed "working on Switch 2 games planned for release early next year but could not confirm if that meant a later-than-expected launch for the console itself."

We've been hearing reports and rumors of varying credibility, almost ad nauseum, about Nintendo's mystery Switch successor for a few years now - most recently, that it was launching in 2024. However, it was only recently that the big N actually acknowledged the existence of any such hardware. Reports from 2019 claimed a Switch Pro was in the works with upgraded internals and an OLED screen, but those ultimately culminated somewhat anti-climactically in the release of the Switch OLED, which has exactly the same guts as the original Switch but with a bigger, sharper screen.

With the age of the Switch in mind, along with increasingly convincing reports surfacing, a Switch 2 announcement this year seems inevitable. After all, if an early 2025 release date is accurate, it would be the longest gap between Nintendo consoles ever, so even if you don't trust the reporting, you can fairly safely rely on precedent and assume there is almost certainly a new Nintendo console on the near-ish horizon. Could an announcement be coming at the next Nintendo Direct?

A recent report claims the Switch 2 will have digital and physical backward compatibility and support "enhanced" older games.