After the Nintendo Direct and Splatoon 3 sales there are a lot of speculation about when we will see Nintendo’s NEXT actual next-gen hardware being announced.
One thing most people believe is that next summer’s Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, is a cross-gen title and will be released along side with the next hardware. That game finally received a specific release date for May 12th, 2023.
If that is true, this means the announcement of a next switch is eminent or not?
The truth is we don’t have any proof that this game will be a cross-gen. But when you look in detail of at that PIKMIN 4 trailer,… looks somewhat made to match PS5/XS capabilities than what we can expect from switch’s far out-dated hardware, with more polygon count, 4K-size texture/bump mapping resolution, lighting, animation-rig, anti-aliasing, etc than any current game of the platform.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYR3DVFUnyc&ab\_channel=Nintendo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYR3DVFUnyc&ab_channel=Nintendo)
On the other hand, switch is still selling very well. I mean, Splatoon 3 broke an all time record in Japan and lots of third party games are announced for release this year, and for first half of next year. So, why stop releasing a new hardware?
In my opinion, they need more than ever to launch their Next console. Acknowledging that there are plenty of good PS4/XBONE games that Switch can’t run natively. If Nintendo want these post-switch games on their console, then releasing an up-to-date hardware is a no-brainer.
Finally, Nintendo like to release a new hardware together with some key games. They released Switch Lite together with Animal Crossing and then Switch OLED together with Metroid Dread. I can see them bundling a NEW hardware together with either Zelda TOTK/Metroid Prime 4/PIKMIN 4 easily.