Here’s Why The Nintendo Switch 2 Might Not Launch Until March 2025

Nintendo reportedly wants to bulk up on stock to avoid resellers

If it feels like you’ve been hearing a lot about the Nintendo Switch 2 recently, it’s because you have. Over the past month or so, a proverbial dam of info about the highly anticipated follow up to the Nintendo Switch has seemingly leaked, including that the console’s launch was delayed to 2025 and news of titles it’ll likely receive. The latest report now provides a potential reason for that move.

According to the Japanese publication Nikkei, the delay to 2025 is an effort from Nintendo to fight scalping and the reseller problem that the Nintendo Switch faced when it launched in 2017. The Nintendo Switch, to be concise, sold like hotcakes when it first released, making it all but impossible for fans to secure consoles through official channels, and leading to huge markups on the secondhand market. Anecdotally, I remember hearing about folks who paid at least double the $300 retail price just to get their hands on it in those early months. I was only able to get mine due to proximity to the Nintendo Store in New York, which sat on a stock it was able to ration out in very limited daily quantities at the height of this dearth.

Nikkei’s reporting lines up with previous rumors that suggested Nintendo would be producing 10 million Switch 2 units by March 2025, which is now believed to be the launch window of the system. By delaying the console into next year, the company seems to be buying itself enough time to bulk up on stock to meet the likely high demand for the Switch’s successor.

Elsewhere, the report reinforces a lot of details we’ve previously heard, including the March 2025 timing and the form factor of the system, which will reportedly be in line with the Switch’s hybrid design. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, after all. Now if only Nintendo could just announce the thing already, so we can all stop talking about it in hypotheticals every other day.

Thanks to Kotaku