I think that a new Zelda is years away, but the Switch’s successor will come out next year or early 2025 at the latest.
I do expect Mario Kart 9 and a new 3D Mario at launch.
I think they’ll release a Tears of the Kingdom “Deluxe” a few months later (similar to what they did with Mario Kart 8 on the Switch). Enough people want a higher-res TotK that it’s worth making, but banking on an upscaled port as a launch title isn’t something they’d do.
There was also a leak about a year ago that claimed that this game was done, playtesting results were awful, and they were trying to figure out what to do with it.
When they silently dropped a trailer 2 weeks before release and a few days before a Nintendo Direct, I was convinced the leak was true, and that this would be a disaster.
“Okay” reviews are a huge surprise.
The weird thing is that it seems late for Nintendo to still be working on R&D for the Switch 2. This is probably less than a year from announcement. At this point, I would expect them to be hammering out agreements with suppliers, so the hardware should be more-or-less done.
Then again, I have no idea what the timeline is like for console development.
Assuming any of this is legit:
Is it possible that the “Switch 2” has a hybrid version like the Switch, a handheld version like the Switch Lite, and a home console version? (Or even just hybrid and home console versions, with a handheld to come later?)
These could all run the same software with very similar hardware, but the home console would either be cheaper or offer higher resolutions and/or framerates than the docked hybrid console.
Customers might get confused, but this is arguably more straightforward than the current lineup.
The downside is that developers would need to handle 3 different configurations (handheld, docked, and home).
Then he has never been the victim of a cyber-attack!