After years of speculation, Nintendo has finally unveiled some new hardware but it’s not exactly a new console…
The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old now and is in with an increasingly good chance of becoming the best-selling console of all-time. But it’s old and its replacement could be announced at any moment. In fact, Nintendo has revealed a new piece of hardware this very day and… it’s not what anyone was expecting.
The idea of a charger stand for Joy-Cons, so you can keep them topped up without having to plug them into the console, is perfectly sane and normal. What’s not is that Nintendo has waited until now to suddenly decide it’s necessary.
It’s not even as if it’ll be released right away. It won’t be released in Japan and the UK (and presumably other regions) until October 17, at which point the Switch 2 may already have been announced.
The Switch 2, or whatever it ends up being called, is not expected to be released until after April but even so, the timing of this is very unexpected.
Judging by Nintendo’s brief description of the device it’s primarily aimed at people that play a lot of party games, which often use more than just two Joy-Cons which makes keeping them all charged relatively difficult.
The stand also works with the retro NES controllers (and we’re guessing SNES, although that isn’t specified) which you’re unlikely to keep attached to the console and so are handy to charge up separately.
The stand only cost £16, so it’s not as if it’s a rip-off or anything, it’s just very odd that it’s only coming out now, seven years after it would have been most useful.
As is usually the case though there’s always some logic to Nintendo’s apparent madness and here the explanation seems to be that the stand is a tie-in for Super Mario Party Jamboree.
The giveaway is that the game is being released on the exact same day, so that’s obviously what Nintendo had in mind when they were planning it.
As for when the Switch 2 will be announced… there’s really no way of knowing. Nintendo won’t want to do it too early or it will put people off from buying the current Switch at Christmas.
In fact, given the older console is still selling relatively well they may wait until early next year before they show anything substantial, even if there’s likely to be some kind of hint or tease at some point this year.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership is the last Nintendo release of the year, on November 7, so sometime after that might be the best guess – perhaps at The Game Awards in early December – but this is Nintendo we’re talking about and they’re never easy to predict.
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