Nintendo may release new version of Switch later this year jaar
Nintendo will not release a new version of the Switch any time soon. That says director Shuntaro Furukawa when discussing the quarterly figures. His ruling leaves the possibility for a new version later this year. There have been rumors about this for a long time.
At the beginning of last year, Furukawa explicitly said that there would be no new model of the Nintendo Switch in 2020. When asked if a new model is expected this year, he now answers that Nintendo does not plan to make an announcement anytime soon. This leaves open the possibility for the arrival of a new version later this year.
The director notes that Mario and Monster Hunter versions of the Switch will be released in February and March. They are identical to the current Switch in terms of hardware. Furukawa made the statements at the presentation of the quarterly figures, reports Bloomberg journalist Takashi Mochizuki on Twitter. When those figures were released, it appeared that Nintendo has shipped nearly 80 million units of the Switch to date.
Nintendo released the Switch in 2017 and came out with the Switch Lite variant in 2019. A revision of the Switch also appeared in the same year, with a more economical variant of the Nvidia Tegra X1 soc and other nand memory. There have been rumors about the arrival of a new Switch for a long time. In August last year, there was talk of a release in early 2021, but that seems to be later. The new model would get more computing power and possibly support 4k display. Nintendo is said to have already asked developers to make their games and applications compatible with 4k playback.
Dataminer Mike Heskin claimed earlier this month that the Switch firmware details contains about a new model codenamed Aula. That model would have a better screen and include a Realtek multimedia chip, but the Tegra X1 soc would be unchanged. Heskin speculates that the Realtek chip could be used to upscale HDMI output to 4k resolution.
Update, 16:35: Added details about the possible new Switch version.
Nintendo Switch from 2017