Nintendo Switch gets its swansong – what about its successor? | Opinion
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This is an unusual moment in Nintendo's storied history. It's launching Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the hugely anticipated sequel to one of its most critically acclaimed games of all time, while simultaneously watching the Super Mario Bros movie sail past a billion dollars in the box office, becoming not only the most successful video game adaptation ever, but also the fifth highest grossing animated movie ever.
Meanwhile the company's dream of expanding into Disney-style theme parks is off to a strong start, with Super Nintendo World areas at Universal Studios parks in Osaka and Los Angeles set to be joined by areas in Florida and Singapore by 2025.
Throw in the fact that Pokémon Go is still one of the top-grossing mobile games in the world, and that the Switch installed base has sailed past 125 million units worldwide, and it seems evident that this is a golden age for the company.
Yet, in the same week that Tears of the Kingdom arrives – accompanied by a Zelda-themed OLED Switch that seems to be giving the ageing hardware a nice sales bump – we've also seen results from Nintendo that received a response that seemed a little pessimistic for a company in a golden age.
The reason is simple; Switch is coming to the end of its lifespan, though Nintendo disagrees somewhat with market analysts about how fast that's happening. The company reckons it can sell another 15 million Switch units in the year to March 2024; several analysts have publicly raised their eyebrows at this projection, given among other factors that it'll be facing a market where PS5 supply is plentiful for the first time. Even if it hits those numbers, this would be a
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