If you happen to’ve been listening to video games lengthy sufficient, not even within the month-to-month huge releases however the day-to-day information mill, you’ve seen tales in regards to the theorized Nintendo Swap 2. This casual moniker has turn into one of many greatest query marks dangling over 2024.

Days into the brand new 12 months, and even earlier than the calendar flipped over, headlines with rumors, hypothesis, and dialogue popped up in every single place. The place is the Nintendo Swap 2? What is it? When may it arrive?

It’s actually exhausting to not really feel like we’ve been right here earlier than. I, myself, have executed my fair proportion of reporting on and speculating a few new Swap. Earlier than it was Swap 2, it was a Swap Professional. We’re closing in on seven years of the Nintendo Swap, and followers are questioning the place its successor is.

Frankly, and I do know I’m simply laying out a rake to step on right here, that is the most seemingly 12 months but that we’ll see a Swap successor. As you’ll learn on down under, all indicators are pointing that means, although predicting Nintendo’s subsequent transfer has at all times been a difficult goal. Greater than something, it feels just like the collective hypothesis and curiosity in regards to the subsequent Nintendo console has boiled over, to the purpose that the ghost of ’90s cheat cartridges has risen from the grave so as to add gasoline to the hearth.

In some way, GameShark returned

Sure, that GameShark. The cheat machine you purchased so you would mess along with your Pokémon recordsdata is now again as “AI Shark,” an AI-powered assist engine. Apparently, relatively than cheat instruments that manipulate {hardware}, AI Shark “focuses on aiding people in bettering their gameplay over time.”

Look, does that sound like a pc that may inform you to only parry? A bit bit, yeah. However the revived corpse of GameShark is one way or the other not the massive information. Relatively, it’s a word in regards to the AI Shark’s launch window, as noticed by Digital Tendencies: “The official launch is deliberate to coincide with the Nintendo Swap 2 in September 2024.”

Both Altec Lansing and the AI Shark crew know one thing and let it slip, or they don’t know for certain and simply stated that. Each choices are equally amusing to me. Typing the sentence “GameShark is again as an AI instrument, and it leaked the Swap 2 launch window” offers me a brand new appreciation for the unusual occasions we dwell in.

In a follow-up remark to Digital Tendencies, AI Shark pulled again on the stick. It “backtracked” on the September month, but in addition confirmed the tentative launch for platform is “Fall 2024,” which it then backtracked on once more in a second follow-up, noting “Nintendo has not formally clarified a launch.” Now we have reached out to Nintendo for additional info and clarification.

No matter spurred the corporate to place that information within the press launch, its personal hypothesis and expectations are on the market. It’s truthful to ask why they’d accomplish that within the first place. However GameShark is hardly the primary. There’s a Rainbow Street of Swap 2 rumors, stretching again for a number of weeks and months at this level.

Everyone 1-2 Swap

Analysts, talking to websites like CNBC and GamesIndustry.biz, appear assured in a Swap successor arriving this 12 months. Former Nintendo workers Equipment and Krysta additionally shared their very own expectations for a Swap follow-up.

“The time is lastly right here for a Swap successor, despite the fact that I can say a ‘Professional’ mannequin really did exist and sure builders had been already working with the dev package,” analyst Dr. Serkan Toto advised GIbiz, and he went on to take a position that it’s going to value out at $400 and probably see its video games climb to the new-gen $70 value level.

Flip the clock again to July 2023, and VGC was reporting {that a} Nintendo Swap successor is ready to reach within the second half of 2024. Skip forward a number of months, and also you’ll examine rumors that Nintendo demoed a theoretical Swap 2 for builders at Gamescom 2023, from Eurogamer and VGC.

GameShark could have tipped the Jenga tower of Swap 2 fervor, however loads of blocks had been already pulled. Heck, even the broader Nintendo rumor mill is getting wrapped up across the potential of a brand new console. Identified leaker Zippo makes point out of the subsequent Nintendo console in write-ups a few rumored new 3D Mario and a full Xenoblade Chronicles X remake. (God, please, let that one pan out.)

Level being, it seems like everyone seems to be speaking a few Swap 2 however Nintendo.

A Swap’s legacy

Actually, it’s not like Nintendo has actually wanted to speak a few new console, both. The 1-2 punch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the COVID-19 pandemic injected Wii Sports activities ranges of life into the Swap again in 2020, and it’s not just like the Swap hasn’t delivered bangers yearly since. Tears of the Kingdom took house our huge GOTY trophy final 12 months—in spirit solely, I don’t even know the place you fee trophies today—and the Pikmin fanbase appeared to like the newest entry.

Nintendo’s been driving excessive on the success of the Nintendo Swap. So even almost seven years faraway from the launch of the console, the hybrid gadget nonetheless seems like a dominant pressure available in the market. I personally ascribe the hand-held PC revolution to the success of the Swap, alongside Valve’s willingness to dive headfirst into the unknown. I nonetheless see builders get the “when’s the Swap port” query beneath trailers and promotional supplies.

So, is that this lastly the 12 months the place Nintendo ditches the Swap? The place it determines the trail ahead as one thing new, whether or not that’s a beefier hybrid or one thing new solely? Might the clamshell design rise from the dust, like GameShark earlier than it?

As Big Bomb’s Jeff Grubb just lately identified, Nintendo’s obtained a behavior of internet hosting Directs in February. And outdoors of some video games like Princess Peach: Showtime arriving within the first quarter of the 12 months, there aren’t actually any huge, huge titles (kicks Metroid Prime 4 underneath the fridge like a stray ice dice) on the horizon.

This can be a 12 months the place, greater than ever, it seems like a brand new Swap is on the horizon. However I additionally acknowledge that we, collectively, have been on this boat earlier than. Although I’ve to say, I actually hope it’s actual, as a result of “GameShark leaked the Swap 2 launch window” is simply too good.