Nintendo has announced that it won’t be attending Gamescom 2024 amidst rumours that the company is gearing up to launch the Switch 2 console in early 2025. While Gamescom organisers have yet to officially announce the exhibitor list for the annual show, a Nintendo spokesperson has revealed that Nintendo has no plans to be an exhibitor at this year’s event.
The spokerperson issued a statement to German publication Games Wirtschaft, revealing that Nintendo has dropped out of Gamescom 2024. The company attended Gamescom last year where it reportedly showed off tech demos for the Switch 2 in a behind closed doors event for media, though Nintendo would later deny that it happened.
Nintendo bowing out of Gamescom this year shouldn’t come as a surprise since it’s heavily rumoured that the company is shifting its focus towards launching the Switch 2 in early 2025. As a result, it’s unlikely that Nintendo has enough big releases to fill out the remainder of this year’s calendar, so fans suspect we’ll be in for a relatively quiet year beyond smaller releases like Princess Peach: Showtime.
As for the Switch 2, there have been plenty of rumours and reports about its key features. One report suggests that it will be backwards compatible with the original Switch, which makes sense as players can then port their libraries of games over to the next-gen hardware without having to repurchase them. That ties into a previous report from analysts that claimed the Switch 2 will simply be an iteration of the Switch and not a completely new console sporting a drastically different design.
Another report from back in August 2023 claimed that the Switch 2 will have 512 GB internal storage with an 8-inch LCD screen. By the sound of things, Nintendo is looking to keep the hybrid design model of the Switch for its successor, allowing users to continue taking the console on-the-go or playing at home in docked mode. We’ll simply have to wait for an official confirmation from Nintendo to see if any of these rumours stick.
Source: Games Wirtschaft
