Last year, we heard a lot about the Nintendo Switch Pro, with leaks, rumours and trusted sources all pointing to Nintendo doing a more powerful variant of their hugely successful Switch.
Now of course, Nintendo haven’t commented officially on this yet, but they did state “Please note that we have no plans to launch a new Nintendo Switch model during 2020.” This is naturally exactly what happened, or rather, didn’t happen. But today has brought us two very interesting items of business regarding the as yet unannounced Switch Pro.
The first, is some comments from industry analysts in Gamesindustry.biz’s annual predictions for the year. All of the analysts have a lot to say, so I would recommend giving the full article a read, but we’re just going to focus on the Switch Pro for this article.
While Matt Piscatella of NPD remained unconvinced that we would see an updated Switch console, the other two analysts offered a differing opinion. Dr Serkan Toto of Kantan Games said, “I predict a beefed-up 4K device is coming during Nintendo’s next financial year. And let it be said: “Switch” is just a word.”
I’m sure you’ll agree that the last comment he made there is quite telling – he is implying that the 4K console from Nintendo may not carry the Switch branding. That would be an interesting choice from Nintendo, given that the Switch has been printing money since it’s release, but these are just his predicitions and we shouldn’t take this as confirmation.
Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis, meanwhile, was less willing to make such bold statements but did say that it would make “commercial sense” for a Switch Pro to release. He said, “Last year I was unconvinced there would be a new flagship model Switch in 2020, but it makes more commercial sense to release an updated version in 2021. I currently have an updated version of the Switch in my forecasts for 2021.”
That leads us to our second piece of Switch Pro news which surfaced today. Now let me just say, I think that this is almost certainly fake, but since it’s doing the rounds let’s take a look. A supposed internal use only document from Nintendo, which details their plans for 2021 was shared online by Gothalion on Twitter.
Please be real. pic.twitter.com/MELdryhGn6
— Gothalion (@Gothalion) January 5, 2021
There’s a lot of things on here that get the old excitement going, but right at the bottom there is a huge paragraph titled “Upcoming Nintendo Switch Pro / Switch Games”. The list of games includes things like Crash 4, Fall Guys, Hollow Knight: Silksong and way way more. But it’s in the list of games (and how this leak is just a photograph of a printout, because well, frankly anyone can write this out and print it) that alarm bells ring loud and clear.
One of the biggest red flags for me is the mention of Kingdom Hearts: Destiny’s Embrace. Tetsuya Nomura said to fans back in November of last year that we shouldn’t expect a new KH game until 2022. But, that’s not all. The games list doesn’t have a single new game (other than KH), they are all games we know exist, like Bayonetta 3, or sequels like Mario Odyssey 2 which may or may not be happening.
Make of this one what you will as ever guys, but I would feel pretty confident in betting on this being fake. Of course, if I’m wrong, then the future for Nintendo would be far from boring.
