I’m on the fence.
On one hand, things have been dying down for the Switch already. Even in this past year of Directs, the biggest announcement was Mario Wonder, a game that then released later that year. All that we know about in terms of first party Switch releases going into 2024 are a couple of remakes and a Princess Peach game that really doesn’t seem like that major of a title. Even back in the summer direct it felt like they were really stretching to fill time.
On the other hand, the reason for this could just be because of how heavy last year was. The amount of franchises Nintendo has whose development teams have had enough time since their last release to pump out a new product seems to be pretty low. It’s possible that the reason we haven’t seen anything about 2024 is simply because they haven’t been able to keep up.
If that’s the case then they likely don’t have anything to release for a new console. Nintendo has hopefully learned their lesson about not supporting their console with a proper lineup of launch titles (See 3DS), I doubt they’d release a new one without something big. Prime 4 could potentially be a dual release, but unlike TP and BotW there wouldn’t be much of a reason to buy a new console for it since most people interested in it to begin with would already own a Switch. Even disregarding that, Metroid doesn’t sell nearly well enough to have it as your big launch title, same could be said for Xenoblade. Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem, and Pikmin just had major releases last year (with the first 2 also happening to have been released after the longest gaps between entries in their respective series with Pikmin not far off). Mario Kart just finished a massive DLC pack last year. Splatoon 3 hasn’t even finished its DLC yet. Luigi’s Mansion is already getting a new remaster this year. Smash doesn’t seem likely at all considering how busy Sakurai has been keeping himself lately. Pokemon is just on its own clock entirely. The only other series that I can think of that hasn’t had a new entry in a reasonable time frame and could actually be a system seller is Animal Crossing.
