No new Switch model this year claim insiders – but new peripherals instead

March 6, 2018

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No new Switch model this year claim insiders – but new peripherals instead — What peripherals could Nintendo be planning?

Industry rumours suggest there will be no new version of the Switch in the near future, but there will be new accessories.

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The problem with buying consoles, especially since the release of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, is that you never know how long it’s going to remain the top model.

Nintendo doesn’t usually update their home consoles, except for a low budget alternative right at the end of its life, but there’s always multiple versions of their portables – often with only a year or two between each one.

But since the Switch is a hybrid of both home and portable console it’s been hard to guess whether there’ll be a new version or not. But according to The Wall Street Journal there won’t be one this year at least (and by year, they mean the financial year ending March 2019).

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They refer to the hypothetical new model as the Switch 2.0, but say that changes to the Switch, including a smaller version of the machine, are ‘unlikely’ this year and that instead they’ll just focus on improving manufacturing of the current model.

Nintendo has already indicated that they want the Switch to last longer than the standard five or six years of a console, and according to The Wall Street Journal’s sources they plan to achieve that by waiting longer than usual for a hardware update.

What they will apparently be doing this year though is expanding the Switch’s features via peripherals.

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The report specifically mentions ‘additional network-related features and peripherals to be attached to its USB Type-C port’, but what that actually means isn’t clear.

Considering some of the stranger peripherals Nintendo has released over the years (not to mention Nintendo Labo) it could be anything.

Even so, it’s hard to imagine what ‘network-related features’ would require a peripheral, although if it’s some kind of headset to make up for the Switch’s lack of in-built voice chat that could be useful.