Nintendo 'Switch 2' coming this year with 8-inch LCD screen, claims Omdia tech analyst

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Japanese supply chain sources cited.

Nintendo Switch
(Image credit: Ekaterina Minaeva/Shutterstock)

Nintendo will launch its long-awaited next-generation Switch handheld gaming console later this year, according to tech analysts at Omdia. Bloomberg reports that Omdia’s small and medium display specialist, Hiroshi Hayase, expects the new console to feature an 8-inch LCD screen. Supply chain sources seem to be behind Hayase’s predictions, and it is thought the new Switch console will result in a doubling of shipments for this class of displays.

As the source notes, a Sharp-made LCD panel was already in the frame as a critical component of the next-generation Switch. However, Nintendo’s intention to launch the next version of the incredibly popular hybrid console built around a larger 8-inch display is a fresh insight. On the one hand, some will argue that going back to LCD panels is a retrograde step, but the larger (and likely higher resolution) screen should boost the immersion available to handheld gamers.

Sharp LCD production

(Image credit: Sharp)

Nintendo might equip the first iteration of the Switch 2 with an LCD panel for several valid reasons. Console makers put a lot of effort into minimizing the bill-of-materials of a console across its lifecycle. Nintendo might have obtained a great deal from Sharp, and the panel might be of excellent quality. Meanwhile, companies that supply OLED display panels may have few resources dedicated to 8-inch panel output, meaning supplies are limited, and there would be little benefit from economies of scale. If Nintendo is determined to increase the display size of the next-gen Switch, an LCD panel might have proved a necessity.

We have previously had some false starts concerning the arrival of a next-gen Switch, so it is best not to get too excited yet. For example, rumors ahead of the release of the Switch Lite and Switch OLED were sometimes mistaken for true, next-generation updates. However, in recent months, we have seen some compelling supporting evidence of Switch 2 development.

Last September, we reported on indications that the Nintendo Switch 2 could use a customized version of Nvidia's Jetson Orin. Its SoC could thus include up to 12 Arm Cortex A78 CPU cores and an Ampere GPU with over 2,000 CUDA cores. There was also talk of select game developers enjoying some Switch 2 action behind closed doors at Gamescom 2023.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Giroro
    Nintendo always adheres to some pretty strict patterns when it comes to console releases. If a switch 2 was coming out this year, it would have been announced by last July. Maybe the final death of E3 caused them to change their formula, but I doubt it.

    The Switch 2 will be announced this July, and will come out the second Tuesday in November 2025. If it's not announced in July, then it will come out 2026 or later. If Nintendo decides the Switch 2 is a gameboy instead of a console (they won't), it will release in March. Yes they should have released a Switch 2 by now, but it got pushed back 2 years when everybody started panic buying an unlimited number of Switches for covid. If a new switch comes out this year, it would have to be a mid-cycle refresh - which could be a lot more powerful than a switch, but not much software will make good use of it (New 3DS, DSi, Gameboy Color, etc) - But Nintendo treats the switch as a console, not as a gameboy. But they don't refresh consoles with significantly more powerful versions, which put the Switch in an awkward position. Yes they've done refreshes, but the first refresh was to patch a critical security flaw, and, to me, the OLED has always been a stealth price-hike on their ancient hardware. Nintendo's best choice chip if they had wanted to make an upgraded Switch is the Tegra X2, which is 7 years old now, I'm not sure if its even in production anymore. That refresh could have come out in 2020, but was apparently canned do to the massive sales spike in the original switch.
    My baseless speculation for the hardware in a Switch 2, is that it could be semi-custom Nvidia hardware built on Samsung 8nm, which closely resembles the Jetson Orin Nano (8GB) - which at around 4x the performance of the Switch will make it severely underpowered (even by the standards of a lower-cost handheld). They'll try to make up for it (unsuccessfully) with fancy upscaling and a lot of promises of features that will be quickly forgotten after launch.

    Anybody can come up with a similar assessment with 5 minutes of research into how Nintendo releases consoles. I don't know what Omdia is, but they must employ some low quality "tech analysts", who seem suspiciously concerned with trying to raise Sharp's stock value, for some reason.
    So there's my analysis of the Switch 2: TLDR - No Switch 2 this year and Omdia is probably liars who like money.

    The only real question anybody should asking about a Switch 2, is "how are they going to fundamentally misunderstand their product's success and completely screw it up this time, Wii U style."
    Reply
  • brandonjclark
    Yeah, there's just no way this is happening this year.
    Reply
  • HopefulToad
    A Switch 2 would be incredibly boring. When was the last time Nintendo did a (not mid-gen upgrade) successor system that was exactly the same as the previous just with better specs? The GameCube. I would prefer if they did something wildly different and there were no Switch 2 at all. I'd also prefer they go back to having dedicated handhelds and home consoles, because doing halfsies with one console instead makes both sides worse. Home gaming suffers from the heavily constrained specs needed to make handheld play possible, and handheld gaming suffers because games are designed with the home gaming experience and large screens in mind, and the games and system are more expensive. I used to have a Switch Lite, but I eventually traded it in because I had a hard time enjoying playing games on it.

    I would love if Nintendo made a handheld that was handheld-only, and was lower-resolution and less powerful than the Switch, and had a price tag of $150 or less with $40 games. The games made for it would be designed for the portable experience again. I'd also like if they made a not-portable console that could compete at least with the Series S. I know these things will never happen though, seeing as how the Switch was (IMO undeservedly) wildly successful.
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    HopefulToad said:
    A Switch 2 would be incredibly boring. When was the last time Nintendo did a (not mid-gen upgrade) successor system that was exactly the same as the previous just with better specs? The GameCube. I would prefer if they did something wildly different and there were no Switch 2 at all. I'd also prefer they go back to having dedicated handhelds and home consoles, because doing halfsies with one console instead makes both sides worse. Home gaming suffers from the heavily constrained specs needed to make handheld play possible, and handheld gaming suffers because games are designed with the home gaming experience and large screens in mind, and the games and system are more expensive. I used to have a Switch Lite, but I eventually traded it in because I had a hard time enjoying playing games on it.

    I would love if Nintendo made a handheld that was handheld-only, and was lower-resolution and less powerful than the Switch, and had a price tag of $150 or less with $40 games. The games made for it would be designed for the portable experience again. I'd also like if they made a not-portable console that could compete at least with the Series S. I know these things will never happen though, seeing as how the Switch was (IMO undeservedly) wildly successful.
    The developers would rather have one platform instead of 2x.

    So logistics comes first.

    So I don't see Nintendo going away from the Mobile Home console format.

    The bigger issue is will Nintendo Cheap out on RAM capacity.

    4 GiB of LPDDR4 was puny back when the Nintendo Switch Launched.

    Hopefully Nintendo has some common sense and increases it to 16 GiB at the minimum.

    But the Bean Counters might opt for 8 GiB which is what I'm afraid that they may do.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    HopefulToad said:
    When was the last time Nintendo did a (not mid-gen upgrade) successor system that was exactly the same as the previous just with better specs?
    Nintendo's track record shows with home consoles, they don't tend to go with the previous design. It's usually something out of left field which makes Nintendo, Nintendo and that's what I love about them. They are like the Apple slogan, "Think Different".

    However on the portable side, their track record tends to be a lot different. They carried over the original design of the first Nintendo DS and improved its design with evolutionary changes all the way up to the Nintendo 3DS.

    The question becomes, does Nintendo view the Switch primarily as a portable or a home console? It's tricky to predict because the Switch serves two purposes.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    HopefulToad said:
    When was the last time Nintendo did a (not mid-gen upgrade) successor system that was exactly the same as the previous just with better specs?
    The wii was a more powerful gamecube with 100% hardware compatibility and the wiiu was a more powerful wii with 100% hardware compatibility, well not 100% because they dropped the controller and memcard ports but the wii u when modded can basically play 3 generations of games because they share the same DNA.
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    I wouldn't mind a new Switch with an 8" screen. My brother and I mocked our Dad for having to use reading glasses, ( We called them his "Catch Me, (Fword) Me glasses). It was funny... until both of us got old and can't live with out reading glasses. I think the choice of screen sizes would be a good idea.

    I don't believe for a heartbeat that Nintendo is coming out with a new Switch 2 this year. Maybe Q4 of next year.
    Reply
  • gg83
    Excellent point about 8 inch availability and I think sharp makes a kickbutt lcd screens. This new screen might use some new lcd tech, idk wishful thinking. I was just about to buy a switch this week, then I read this article.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Giroro said:
    Nintendo always adheres to some pretty strict patterns when it comes to console releases. If a switch 2 was coming out this year, it would have been announced by last July. Maybe the final death of E3 caused them to change their formula, but I doubt it.

    The Switch 2 will be announced this July, and will come out the second Tuesday in November 2025. If it's not announced in July, then it will come out 2026 or later.
    That seems a bit questionable. While Nintendo has often mentioned their upcoming devices to investors more than a year prior to launch, that isn't always the case. For the Switch, Nintendo first started mentioning the existence of a new device to investors less than a year before its release, and officially unveiled the Switch just over 4 months before it launched. So, a release before the end of this year could still happen, though the first quarter of next year is probably more likely. The Switch came out worldwide at the beginning of March, so there's no reason to expect its successor to require a fall launch.

    Usually Nintendo's console hardware generations only last for around 5-6 years, and we are already nearly at 7 for the Switch, so it's already overdue for a successor. While NES>SNES was about 7 years and 4 months, SNES>N64 was 5 years and 7 months, N64>GCN was 5 years and 3 months, GCN>Wii was 5 years and 2 months, Wii>Wii U was 6 years, and Wii U>Switch was just 4 years and 3 months, likely due to a combination of the Wii U underperforming and the Switch taking over for both the Console and handheld side. As for handheld devices, aside from the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color that lasted over a decade combined, GBA>DS was just 3 years and 8 months, DS>3DS was 6 years and 3 months, and 3DS to Switch was 6 years. So aside from the original NES and the original Game Boy, no prior Nintendo gaming device generation has lasted much more than 6 years. Being already at nearly 7 years for the Switch, I can't see Nintendo going much longer.
    Reply
  • HopefulToad
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    The developers would rather have one platform instead of 2x.

    So logistics comes first.

    So I don't see Nintendo going away from the Mobile Home console format.

    The bigger issue is will Nintendo Cheap out on RAM capacity.

    4 GiB of LPDDR4 was puny back when the Nintendo Switch Launched.

    Hopefully Nintendo has some common sense and increases it to 16 GiB at the minimum.

    But the Bean Counters might opt for 8 GiB which is what I'm afraid that they may do.
    Ha, I think there's about a 0.001% chance of Nintendo's next system having 16 GBs of RAM. Not even the Series S has that much, and we'll be lucky if the successor can compete with the Series S.

    Heat_Fan89 said:
    Nintendo's track record shows with home consoles, they don't tend to go with the previous design. It's usually something out of left field which makes Nintendo, Nintendo and that's what I love about them. They are like the Apple slogan, "Think Different".
    Totally agreed on how you feel about Nintendo changing things up, but I'm worried this time they won't.

    Heat_Fan89 said:
    However on the portable side, their track record tends to be a lot different. They carried over the original design of the first Nintendo DS and improved its design with evolutionary changes all the way up to the Nintendo 3DS.
    You're right that they tend to change things up somewhat less with the portables. GBC was a souped up GB (with color!). GBA was a considerably souped-up GBC (with even more colors, and shoulder buttons!). But the DS added a second screen, touch controls (and more face buttons), and a mic, so it was a pretty drastic departure from the Game Boy line. DSi (XL) isn't really different enough to be considered its own generation (GBC might also fall into that group). The 3DS added the 3D effect, gyro controls, the Circle Pad (big boon for 3D movement), and higher resolution screens, so YMMV on whether it's not different enough from the DS to be considered iterative or not.

    Heat_Fan89 said:
    The question becomes, does Nintendo view the Switch primarily as a portable or a home console? It's tricky to predict because the Switch serves two purposes.
    Indeed. Here's hoping they consider it a home console. I'm not that interested in a Switch 2 unless they do something cool with it beyond upping its specs, like add glasses-free 3D to the screen. Even then, I'd still rather they don't do a Switch 2 at all, and go back to the drawing board instead. But sadly the Switch prints money.

    TerryLaze said:
    The wii was a more powerful gamecube with 100% hardware compatibility and the wiiu was a more powerful wii with 100% hardware compatibility, well not 100% because they dropped the controller and memcard ports but the wii u when modded can basically play 3 generations of games because they share the same DNA.
    But the Wii also added motion controls, a total game-changer compared to the GameCube. Yes, power wise it was just "two GameCubes duct-taped together," but with the motion controls and WiiWare and the Virtual Console, it's pretty different from the GameCube experience. The Wii U added the GamePad, introducing off-TV play and new ways to play with games that took advantage of it. Also, full retail games were now purchaseable from the eShop, meaning the console could be all-digital in a way the Wii couldn't. It's also their first HD console. I'm a big Wii U fan, by the way. I miss the Nintendo that was responsible for that system.
    Reply