Rumor: Japan Leak For Next Nintendo Console, Release Close To PS5 Pro

gameranx.com:

There is now a newer rumor about the next upcoming Nintendo console, this time from a Japanese Twitter user.

Twitter user Tamakichi, who has the handle segamega99, made the following tweets in the span of a few days.

Switch PROPS5 PRO わーすごいすごいメーカー、問屋●●になるね。

任天堂の次世代機のロンチにはゼルダ、マリオ、スプラがあるとして今ゼルダ新作が出るとなると次世代機発売はいつ頃になるのか　と問屋、メーカーさんと話したり。

Now, we won’t wager to attempt our own translation of these tweets as this writer does not read and write Japanese. Reddit drew attention to these tweets and summarized them for us.

Basically, Tamakichi made two claims. One is that Mario, Zelda, and Splatoon could be available for the next Nintendo console upon launch.

Now, given that Splatoon 3 had just released last September 8, 2022, and it took five years to develop, it seems highly unlikely that Nintendo would have a Splatoon 4 ready for the next hardware’s launch date.

Subsequently, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom is set to release this coming May 12, 2023. In other words, it’s only a few weeks away.

So if the rumor is true, Tamakichi is likely not talking about new games for these franchises, as much as they are alluding to backwards compatibility with the Switch library. That would be in line with the backwards compatibility that the other current generation consoles, the Xbox Series X|S and the PlayStation 5, offer.

But to humor Tamakichi, it is possible that a new Mario game is in development, and that it is exclusive to that next Nintendo console. Thanks to Mario’s versatility, there have been new Mario games for each year of the Nintendo Switch’s lifetime. But this potential Mario launch title would more likely be either a Mario platformer or Mario Kart.

Mario Kart 8, of course, dates all the way back to 2014, and an