I’ve given up on trying to predict what Nintendo will do — especially when it comes to the Switch 2

In 2018, Nintendo invited maine to a gathering successful New York City to spot a mysterious caller initiative. It was teased as an “interactive acquisition for Nintendo Switch,” which sent my caput to each sorts of places. This is the institution that made a weird dual-screen Game Boy and bongo controllers, aft all. It could beryllium anything. Even still, I did not conjecture that I would walk that gathering folding bits of cardboard — oregon that those cardboard accessories would crook retired to beryllium truthful awesome. That was the infinitesimal I wholly gave up connected trying to conjecture what Nintendo would bash next.

That gathering has been connected my caput rather a spot implicit the past fewer weeks. While overmuch of the crippled manufacture has been connected borderline successful anticipation of whatever the follow-up to the Switch volition be, Nintendo has focused connected beauteous overmuch thing and everything else.

This isn’t new, of course. Nintendo mostly goes its ain way. When Sony and Microsoft ushered successful the existent procreation of consoles, Nintendo launched a caller mentation of the Game & Watch, an LCD handheld from the ’80s. But the accelerated succession of announcements and reveals from the institution implicit the past fewer weeks has been astonishing and indicative of its idiosyncratic nature. And portion it mightiness look random, the weeks afloat of depository openings and alarm timepiece launches are apt portion of a precise calculated strategy.

It could mean a fewer things. Maybe Nintendo is clearing the runway to support the absorption connected the Switch 2 whenever it does determine to denote it. In the Switch era, Nintendo has go overmuch much adept astatine wide messaging, which hasn’t ever been the case. Just deliberation backmost to erstwhile the Wii U was archetypal announced, and immoderate (myself included) initially confused it for a Wii accessory. So it makes a batch of consciousness to get this different worldly retired of the mode earlier the adjacent console. Nintendo Direct presentations person go immense moments, and the 1 dedicated to the adjacent console volition perchance beryllium the biggest to date. You don’t privation to messiness that up.

It could besides beryllium an denotation of wherever Nintendo is close now. This is simply a institution that doesn’t privation to beryllium lone known for games. Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto said arsenic overmuch erstwhile I was successful Kyoto successful September. “A batch of radical whitethorn spot Nintendo arsenic a video crippled company,” he explained during a property conference. “But what I wanted to explicit with this depository is that we are archetypal and foremost an amusement company.” While it’s been gathering a caller console successful concealed and sending retired its existent 1 connected a precocious note, it has besides been branching retired successful caller directions.

Doing things otherwise isn’t ever a warrant of success, of course, and Nintendo has surely had its stock of failures. These glory days of the Switch, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Super Nintendo World famously happened successful the aftermath of the Wii U, Nintendo’s worst-selling location console to date. It took 30 years for the institution to travel up the infamous archetypal Mario movie flop with a billion-dollar film. The manufacture ebbs and flows, and it lone takes 1 console procreation to determination from the apical of the marketplace to the bottom. That lone makes it harder to foretell what Nintendo volition do; I surely would person ne'er guessed the Switch was its adjacent strategy backmost successful 2017 oregon that it would spell connected to outsell the Wii and Game Boy.

This is each a agelong mode of saying that, conscionable similar erstwhile I sat down successful beforehand of immoderate stacks of cardboard successful New York, I americium presently astatine a nonaccomplishment trying to fig retired what Nintendo’s execs are thinking. I person immoderate ideas, of course, helped on by a dependable watercourse of rumors, but nary existent consciousness of what the company’s adjacent console volition look similar oregon erstwhile it volition beryllium announced. All I cognize for definite is that it won’t beryllium boring. But if it is? That’d beryllium different large surprise.