Nintendo Switch is in its full era | Digital trends

The Switch Oled is located in the right background. — Nintendo

After years of speculation and wild rumors, it’s official: Nintendo’s new console is on the horizon.

IN tweet this week, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that the company plans to announce its Switch sequel in the next fiscal year (though it won’t be during its upcoming Direct in June). It’s exciting news, but one that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone paying attention to the Switch’s lineup of first-party games this year: The Nintendo Switch is now in its full era.

I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. While it’s been a strange year for Nintendo so far, filled with B — and sometimes C — releases, it’s given the Switch a slew of niche titles that I imagine gamers will look back on fondly years from now. It might feel like we’re in a drought on Switch right now, but enjoy this moment defined by left-field curiosities while you can. Once the Switch 2 drops, it’s back to the races.

The era of fillers

I first started to suspect that Nintendo was reducing support for the Switch last November. Then the company released a surprising remake of Super Mario RPG. It was an exciting announcement, but something didn’t seem a little strange. It was not advertised as a major release. This made sense when I played the final product, a 1:1 remake that seemed conservative in its ambitions.

The biggest tip-off, however, was the mystery surrounding the project’s developer. Nintendo kept this information under wraps prior to launch, even forbidding reviewers from revealing it. After the game was released, the credits revealed that the project did not come from Square Enix or Nintendo; it was assigned to the smaller ArtePiazza. With Switch 2 rumors heating up, I’m starting to wonder if Nintendo is filling its first party schedule with smaller projects like this from satellite studios to keep big players like Monolith Soft focused on bigger Switch 2 games.

Since then, every new first-party Switch game has had the same feel. Other code: Recall and Mario vs. Donkey Kong both felt like left-field remakes created to fill the early months of 2024. The same feeling extends to the upcoming Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. As for the new games, both Princess Peach Showtime! and this month Endless Ocean: Shining they feel surprisingly elegant in scale. Each pad supplements its slim runtime by remixing content or using repetitive gameplay loops. The back half of 2024 doesn’t look much different. Nintendo World Cup: NES Edition is another collection of retro games in the spirit of NES Remix this seems like a quick way to get something on the shelves this summer.

If this moment sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been common over the last full year of a Nintendo platform’s life. Check out the lineup of Nintendo 3DS games in 2017 as the handheld passes the torch to the Nintendo Switch. This 12 months brought us ports of games like Yoshi’s Woolly World and surprise remakes like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions. Captivating games like Mario Sports Superstars and Mario Party: Top 100 helped keep the platform afloat while Nintendo’s major players delivered Super Mario Odyssey on Switch. The switch is now in that exact position.

As I mentioned, when I say this is the “filler era,” I don’t mean it pejoratively. Yes, that means we’re unlikely to interfere much with major releases, except for the Hail Mary Metroid Prime 4 holiday release. But just because the Switch’s 2024 game lineup isn’t full of critical darlings doesn’t mean it won’t be memorable. I still look back on the last years of the 3DS fondly. Games like Ever Oasis and Hey! Pikmin are the kind of hidden gems that may not impress now but evoke warm nostalgia years later. The biggest moment for the 3DS came with 2017 Metroid: Samus Returns. At the time, it was positioned as a low-stakes side experiment for a dormant franchise. Its success revived the Metroid series and paved the way for the excellent ones Metroid Dread. I hope you like the titles Princess Peach Showtime! have the same long-term effect.

So enjoy this experimental year while it’s here. Once the Switch 2 comes out, Nintendo will undoubtedly relaunch their top-tier franchises, pushing us into a more predictable cycle of safe bets. Niche games like Endless Ocean: Shining they will be far and few between. This is your moment to enjoy Nintendo’s quirks.