Despite being touted for a 2024 release, it appears that the Nintendo Switch 2, or whatever it will be called, will not be coming this year after all

The news was first reported by Brazilian games journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe and later corroborated by independent sources at VGC and Eurogamer Independent sources at VGC and Eurogamer have confirmed that the later launch date Independent sources at VGC and Eurogamer suggest that the later launch date is to facilitate a stronger first-party launch game lineup

The good news is that it apparently won't face a long delay If it launches at the very end of this window, as the original Switch did on March 3, 2017 in most regions, there is a certain symmetry

Still, it would mean that the Switch would celebrate its eighth birthday without a successor, certainly pushing the limits of hardware that was not the most capable at launch This is a long period of time historically speaking, with Nintendo typically allowing five years between hardware generations (six years between the Wii and Wii U)

Of course, the Switch's OLED arrived, but this was not the "Pro"-like performance boost that was initially rumored Many developers reportedly received 4K development kits, but Nintendo's vaguely worded denials suggest that this plan was eventually shelved or was Switch 2 hardware all along

The good thing about such a large gap is that it genuinely feels like a generational leap in performance Sure, it may not offer Xbox Series X or PS5 level grunt, but you can still expect significant graphical improvements

With multi-platform titles increasingly struggling on Nintendo hardware, this can only be a good thing In fact, titles that have struggled to grow on the current Nintendo Switch hardware may get a bit of a boost from rumors of enhanced backwards compatibility

Of course, most people buy Nintendo consoles for the Nintendo games they can't play anywhere else And talk of delays is based on the need for more first-party launch games, and we could see a variety arriving on consoles early next year

There are also rumors surrounding a new Mario Kart game (later remastered for the Switch), the first since 2013, and a new Mario platformer There is also Metroid Prime 4, which was originally announced for 2017 but not heard from for five years; Polygon speculates that this could be a candidate to make the most of the new hardware