It was expected that some details about the Nintendo Switch 2 would leak out before it was revealed.
Details about upcoming gaming consoles always leak before their official announcement. Unlike games in development, too many people outside the console’s parent company need to know about the device in advance to maintain secrecy: third-party publishers and developers, parts suppliers, accessory makers, retailers, and workers in the factories that make things. Someone somewhere in this enormous chain will break. Something will come up.
Still, the situation with Switch 2 is extreme right now. (Even the name was leaked.) There has been a flurry of leaks over the past few weeks, including apparent photos of the final hardware. The dam has broken so much that peripheral maker Genki, which claims to have acquired the real Switch 2 through back channels, threw caution to the wind and showed off a mockup of the console at CES. Genki even has a detailed, animated render of Nintendo’s fresh console on its website.
For most of last year, everything was business as usual in the land of Switch 2 leaks. Few details emerged from behind-closed-door meetings with Nintendo partners, and a fairly complete, if hazy, picture of the console’s form and function emerged: magnetic Joy-Cons, AI-powered scaling technology, backwards compatibility.
Then, in September, the leaks accelerated. The molds, diagrams, and hardware specifications came from manufacturers in China and were detailed enough for one YouTuber print a 3D mock-up of the fresh console. Since then, a ton of corroborating evidence has accumulated to the point that only a few mysteries remain (mainly what the fresh button, the additional USB-C port, and the optical sensor are for). We even have a good sense of color schemes.
That’s an unprecedented amount of data for a console that hasn’t even been announced yet. What happened?
Most likely it’s a basic matter of timing. Reports indicate this Nintendo originally planned to release the Switch 2 in 2024but postponed it to 2025 to allow time for fresh games to be completed and enough stockpiled to prevent stock shortages. However, this delay must have presented the company with a dilemma. If it announced a fresh console in 2024, it could have a domino effect of thwarting sales of the original Switch during the key holiday season.
This wasn’t a problem when Nintendo announced the original Switch in an October 2016 video – the Wii U was a sales dud and Nintendo wanted to move on. However, the Switch continues to sell in vast numbers to this day, and it seems that Nintendo probably decided that announcing its next move wasn’t worth the potential hit to revenue.
This strategy is in line with Nintendo’s decision to reveal one detail about Switch 2 before the holidays – that it will be backwards compatible, which will reassure players that Switch games are still worth buying.
Nintendo’s strategy has pulled preparations for Switch 2 in opposite directions. On the one hand, he clearly wanted a behind schedule announcement and a tiny promotional campaign to protect Switch sales. On the other hand, he apparently wanted a long lead-in period to start production in order to accumulate enough supplies. This led to an unusual situation: Nintendo was likely preparing for full production of the Switch 2 months before the console was announced. What appear to be the final retail units have even started to appear in the wild – all before the announcement.
So why not Nintendo, the notoriously secretive and contentious company that did just that loves data deletion request – looks like you’ve done everything you can to stop the leaks? This is basically unknowable and Nintendo will probably never say so. However, it seems likely that Nintendo’s management was fully aware that leaks were an inevitable consequence of this launch strategy, and chose to accept them, in this case, as a cost of doing business.
The good news is that with the holiday sale period now over, we can probably expect an announcement soon. What’s more: Switch 2 is a real reality. Exists; that’s what’s being done right now. However, this does not mean that its premiere is imminent. But that might not be too far away.
