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This is the longest a Nintendo console has gone without a successor

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A Nintendo Switch OLED model in its dock next to a regular Switch dock.
Digital Trends

If you feel like you’ve been waiting a long time for a Nintendo Switch 2, you’re not wrong. The Switch’s lifecycle is officially the longest Nintendo has gone without releasing (or announcing) a console successor.

We caught wind of this fact from this LinkedIn post by PR manager Jess Thomas, who noted that the second-longest wait time was between the NES and the SNES. So we did the math. As of publication time, it’s been 2,688 days since the Switch was released. The length of time between the NES and the SNES was 2,686 days.

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That’s not taking into account the time between announcements. The SNES was revealed to press in 1988 — two years before its release. We do know that a Switch successor is in development, since Nintendo has confirmed that it exists. Company president Shuntaro Furukawa wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that it’ll “make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015.” That means we’ll know more before March 2025.

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This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct…

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) May 7, 2024

However, we have no official details of what the Switch successor will be beyond rumors and leaks. For example, it’s been reported that it’ll have an LCD screen rather than an OLED, will use Nvidia’s T238 chipset, and (thankfully) that it will likely be backward compatible. So that day count will only continue to grow.

Some more fun facts: The shortest time between console releases was between Wii U and the Switch at 1,566 days. The Wii U always felt like the test for the Switch’s hybrid nature, and it didn’t sell well, so that isn’t too surprising. Oddly enough, the time between the Wii and the Wii U was 2,191 days. For two consoles that are similar, that feels like a long time.

Still, the Switch family (the regular Switch, the Switch Lite, and the OLED model), has sold more than 140 million units over its lifetime, so maybe Nintendo isn’t in a rush to release its successor.

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Carli Velocci
Carli Velocci
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
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