Anyone with a slightest interest in gaming will have heard of the Nintendo Switch, a hybrid console by Japanese company Nintendo which has become one of the biggest successes in the history of gaming. Actually, since its launch in March 2017, almost 80 million Switch’s have been sold.
This surely must have made Nintendo forget about the high-profile failure that the Wii U was.
Thankfully, the Nintendo Switch has been a massive success, a success that former president Reggie Fils-Aimé said made it easy for him to retire from his post.
However, current Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has expressed anxiety about the Nintendo Switch’s future, considering the big drop off in sales Nintendo consoles tend to experience once they’ve been in the market for a couple of years.
“I myself as well as those within the company do not at all think the current state of affairs will keep going and going”, Furukawa told Nikkei Business as reported on Kotaku (via GameSpot).
“Not matter the hits, in the entertainment business, people someday do lose interest. Up until now, we have repeatedly had the experience of our business taking a nosedive”, Nintendo’s president said, acknowledging that the Switch had entered the “middle phase or so” in its lifespan.
This is why despite the fact that Furukawa says the Nintendo Switch’s sales are “exceedingly favorable” he still has “zero peace of mind”.
And the truth is that Japanese company Nintendo does not seem to be resting on its laurels despite the Nintendo Switch’s success: it put out a lighter, more compact, handheld-only version of the console in September 2019 (the Nintendo Switch Lite), and according to reports is now gearing up to launch a beefier, Nintendo Switch Pro model.
This will support 4K resolution in docked mode – certainly a plus taking into account the penetration of 4K TVs into households worldwide.
However, this doesn’t mean the Nintendo Switch Pro will be rendering images at this resolution, it will just upscale a 1080p image to 4K, which should still make for a nicer image than what the standard Switch is capable of.
The Pro will use an upgraded version of the Nvidia Tegra chip the standard Switch boasts, meaning players could experience smoother gameplay, but perhaps the most exciting thing about the rumored Switch Pro is that it will have a bigger screen.
That’s it, the Nintendo Switch Pro could feature a screen as big as 7 inches – quite a bit bigger than the standard Switch, which boasts a 6.2 inch screen, and much larger than that of the Switch Lite, which is only 5.5 inches in diagonal.
However, this could negate one of the biggest advantages the Nintendo Switch has when in handheld mode, as the bigger screen size could make it a bit harder to carry around as one Forbes contributor has pointed out.
The new console (if it’s actually real that is) is still bound to sell well – the momentum behind the Nintendo Switch is too strong right now, with the console beating all others in terms of sales last year, even edging out the PlayStation 5 last December according to an NPD report.
Games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons are routinely topping the charts, and with the release of new blockbusters like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 on the horizon, it’s almost a certainty that another Nintendo Switch model will sell like hot cakes whenever it comes out.
Read more: Former Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aimé talks about the Nintendo Switch’s success in interview
Nintendo Switch (Nintendo of America)