What Will The Switch Successor Be Called?

Even though Nintendo seems to be trying to set a world record for how long they can drag a well selling system before finally introducing its successor (and to their credit, the Switch continues to sell at a flabbergastingly mind boggling pace more than six years into its life), at some point in the future, a successor to it will exist. It might be this year, it might be next year, or maybe it’s five years down the line – but unless Nintendo plans to exit video games entirely, at some point they’ll have new hardware. 

This new hardware has been relentlessly leaked, rumored, and speculated on for quite literally years now. The first rumor of a more powerful Switch dates back to late 2018, which was just a year and a half into its life span (and almost five years ago now…). Since then, the rumors have only gone more and more assertive and insistent, even as reality has steadfastly refused to accede to them – almost as if they’re trying to will the damn thing into existence simply by wishing for it hard enough. 

The current crop of rumors, which feels fairly reasonable, claims that the Switch successor is happening some time next year (some rumors get a bit more specific and put it at a late 2024 release); which, fine, we can accept that. This current crop of rumors also goes a fair bit into what the Switch successor is supposed to be, and speculation on what everyone wants from Nintendo’s next hardware is also a topic that has by now been thoroughly run into the ground – I myself have written enough on the potential Switch successor over the years that it would take the fingers on both hands to count it all. 

So this time, I’m not going to talk about the specs, or nature, or features, or launch lineup, or pricing, or release window, or anything else, for the Switch successor. Those discussions have already been had, go find the few billion ones that already exist on the internet if that’s what you were going for. Instead, for this discussion, I will hone in and hyper fixate on one very specific aspect of the (hopefully not hypothetical) system that might feel a bit trite, but is actually a fairly significant point of discussion – especially when it comes to Nintendo. The name. 

Nintendo console names are among the most fascinating in the industry for a multitude of reasons. For starters, typically Nintendo does not stick to the same brand across their various systems, which means, to begin with, you flat out cannot guess with anything approaching certainty what the next Nintendo might be called. You can go from the Nintendo 64 to the GameCube to the Wii in a span of ten years – there is no through line there, no connective tissue. The there is a general sense of whimsy and fun and unpredictable excitement with their system names. You never know what to expect, and a lot of their names and branding end up being home runs (and at least one of them ends up being Wii U, but you’re bound to have some missteps). Each system is named specifically in context of what it is supposed to be and with regards to what Nintendo feels best epitomizes that. 

There are exceptions – the Nintendo Entertainment System was followed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Gameboy by the Gameboy Advance, and more infamously, the Wii by Wii U, and DS by 3DS. However, generally, Nintendo likes to give each system its own name that represents the identity and purpose it has been built towards. 

Which also makes sense given the nature of Nintendo hardware, and how it differs from the approach of Sony and Microsoft towards hardware, is that Nintendo systems are very rarely iterative and linear progressions over their predecessors – the successor to the PlayStation is simply a better, more powerful version of that console. Therefore, it’s called PlayStation 2. The successor to that? PlayStation 3, for the exact same reasons. And so on. 

Nintendo, on the other hand, swerves wildly. The Nintendo 64 is nothing like the Wii, which is nothing like the Switch. Those systems did not build upon each other – even though they’re each a generation apart from the other, even if you take the GameCube and Wii U into account, the line from one to the next is not as straightforward as you find with PlayStation and Xbox. Which means, unless you quite know the nature of what Nintendo is going to go for with their next hardware, even trying to guess the name is a fool’s errand in a lot of ways. 

Current common wisdom holds that the Switch’s successor will just be a better Switch – more powerful, more capable, a linear progression over the current system. Whatever gimmicks it will have will be more minor additions by the side, rather than central to the system’s identity. In other words, it will be the PlayStation version of a next generation Switch – a simple linear upgrade over what we have. 

This first and foremost assures one thing – the Switch branding will probably stay for this successor. Traditionally Nintendo introduces new branding for new systems, but as we noted above, there are exceptions to that, and those tend to happen when we get a more straightforward successor that is supposed to build on what came before – which is what the Switch successor seems to be. 

So let’s assume it’s the Switch… something. What, though? Switch 2? Nintendo is presumably not worried about the number inferiority complex that plagues Microsoft with Xbox naming and makes them go from Xbox to Xbox 360 to Xbox One (?) to Xbox Series X (????) in an attempt to avoid slapping a simple number at the end of their console to communicate its status as a successor, since that number will always be one less than PlayStation owing to the unfortunate circumstance of timing that was Xbox’s entry into the market – they joined one generation after PS, and so their number would always be one less. And customers will think Xbox 4 is worse than PlayStation 5. Gasp! That can’t be allowed to happen. Xbox Series is surely better and not at all confusing. 

Whatever nonsense leads Microsoft to their naming scheme, however, Nintendo doesn’t seem to care as much about. They’re not directly competing with Sony and Microsoft. They’re not pitching their systems as a direct substitute for PlayStation or Xbox – they CAN be, for many people, and they ARE for a lot of them, but Nintendo is selling the Switch in a mostly uncontested market. It doesn’t matter if the 2 in its name is lower than the 5 in PlayStation’s name, any more than it matters that the 2 in the Meta Quest’s name is lower than the 5 in PlayStation’s name – while they’re all selling within the same general market, they’re also in very explicitly defined separate lanes. 

So, Switch 2 would be simple, straightforward, instantly communicate the point (this is a Switch, but new, more powerful, better) without having to make the customer guess what the heck the name is supposed to be communicating. It would in one simple character allow them to avoid the entire crap show that was the Wii U’s branding and naming and that, more than anything else, doomed that console to failure before it even had a chance (it was never going to have a chance to do well, but that’s a whole other discussion). Nintendo is also extremely traumatized by the Wii U’s failure – and while the general meme around the company is that they refuse to learn from their mistakes and failures, they have in fact gone out of their way to demonstrate multiple times that they do understand what went wrong with the Wii U, and that they are reluctant to repeat it. 

So that seems to suggest Switch 2. Problem solved, moving on… right?

Well, no. It’s still Nintendo we’re talking about here after all. While they probably don’t want to get too clever or cute with their naming this time, it’s extremely possible they don’t want to go with a straightforward “2” for the name either.  Over the past few years Nintendo has become more and more open to using simple numbers to iterate successors and follow ups, at least for their games – all three Splatoon games do just this, for example. It’s obviously not an across the board trend, but it does indicate SOME willingness to do it where it is called for. 

However, Nintendo as a company also abhors the linear progression of tech being used as a selling point for hardware – that’s the whole reason they went with their alternate hardware strategy to begin with. They don’t like the simple “same console but more powerful” marketing angle they’d be stuck with otherwise. They WANT to be able to experiment and try other things, introduce new innovations, experiment with more bizarre nonsense. Calling their successor a Switch “2” is the ultimate capitulation to the very philosophy they have now spent over two decades very steadfastly avoiding  – it’s a Switch, but better, communicated in the literal most boring (if effective) Yay. 

So they might try to convey that same point in a way that lets them retain at least some of the whimsy they seem to believe is central to their vision as a company. In the past, Nintendo used prefixes like “Super” and suffixes like “Advance” to communicate a more powerful version of what came before. The NES was followed by the Super NES, and the Gameboy was followed by the Gameboy Advance. Maybe they would just do that? Super Switch and Switch Advance both sound good, don’t confuse the player, communicate that it’s a new system, sidestep using boring numbers to denote sequence, AND evoke nostalgia (a commodity Nintendo is almost a master at weaponizing). Why not those, right? 

Unless, of course, they’re just so spooked by the Wii U failure, and so unwilling to rock the boat of the insane and unprecedented success of the Switch, that they just throw reticence to the wind, and go with Switch 2 because why risk ANY confused buyers with “Advance” or “Super” or anything else? Numbers are boring but they are effective and they are proven to work. Why NOT just do that?

Ultimately, this becomes a circular discussion at this point, because we don’t know what Nintendo is thinking about how they approach the branding for this next system. We don’t even know if they’ll retain the Switch brand! We can guess, because it seems sensible that they do, but when was the last time Nintendo did something sensible? We don’t know what the new system is, meaning we can’t use its nature to guess at its name, and we can’t rely on precedence to guide us here, because most of that precedence predates their worst failure in the industry (which probably changed the paradigm for them a bit), and because the Switch is literally an unprecedented success, meaning arguments that may have applied to systems with less success do not necessarily apply to it. 

So what’s the takeaway? The takeaway is, we don’t know what it will be called. We can probably safely (though not certainly) expect it will retain the Switch branding. We can assume with some degree of reassurance that it will probably be a simple name to convey that it’s a successor. We can probably think that numbers are the way they’ll go, because that’s the path of least resistance. But each assumption in that sequence is built on shakier ground than the last. Ultimately, this is all guesswork. 

We don’t know what Nintendo will call the Switch successor, we can only guess. And then be utterly dumbfounded when it ends up being called something bizarre like the Nintendo Pi Hi Play.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.