Enlarge / I took this photo nearly seven years ago, and I'm still waiting for a new game console from Nintendo.

Throughout 2023, we saw multiple credible reports that Nintendo was planning to release its long-awaited Switch follow-up sometime in 2024. Now, a new flurry of new reports say third-party developers have recently been advised that Nintendo's next console is aiming for an early 2025 release.

Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe was among the first to report on the new planned release window on Friday, and Video Games Chronicle expanded on that report the same day. The outlet cited its own sources in reporting that "third-party game companies were recently briefed on an internal delay in Nintendo’s next-gen launch timing, from late 2024 to early the following year."

By late Friday, those reports had been corroborated by Eurogamer , which said the launch would slip past the 2024 calendar year "but still [be] within the coming financial year" (ending in March of 2025). And over the weekend, Bloomberg cited unnamed "people with knowledge of the matter" in reporting that some publishers have been told "not to expect the console until March 2025 at the earliest."

Enlarge / It's-a me, the long arm of the law. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Nintendo / Getty Images)

When 54-year-old Gary Bowser pleaded guilty to his role in helping Team Xecuter with their piracy-enabling line of console accessories , he realized he would likely never pay back the $14.5 million he owed Nintendo in civil and criminal penalties . In a new interview with The Guardian , though, Bowser says he began making $25 monthly payments toward those massive fines even while serving a related prison sentence.

Last year, Bowser was released after serving 14 months of that 40-month sentence (in addition to 16 months of pre-trial detention), which was spread across several different prisons. During part of that stay, Bowser tells The Guardian, he was paid $1 an hour for four-hour shifts counseling other prisoners on suicide watch.

From that money, Bowser says he “was paying Nintendo $25 a month” while behind bars. That lines up roughly with a discussion Bowser had with the Nick Moses podcast last year, where he said he had already paid $175 to Nintendo during his detention.

Enlarge / The 7" screen of the Switch OLED (top) seen next to the 6.2" screen of the original Switch. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Nintendo's follow-up to the aging Switch—which is widely rumored to be aiming for release later this year —will sport an 8-inch LCD screen. That's according to Omdia analyst Hiroshi Hayase, who is cited in a Bloomberg News report focused on the upcoming handheld's potential effects on the market for "amusement displays" over the next few years.

An 8-inch screen (measured diagonally) would put the Switch 2 near the extreme upper end of portable gaming screens historically. Among mass-market devices, only the recently launched PlayStation Portal (8-inch screen) and Lenovo Legion Go (8.8-inch screen) have broken past the 7-inch barrier for dedicated gaming handhelds.

That said, the 6.2-inch screen on the original Nintendo Switch also set portable gaming records when it launched in 2017 , easily surpassing the once-luxurious 5-inch screen of 2011's PlayStation Vita . The 2021 launch of the Switch OLED increased the diagonal screen measurement to 7 inches, a screen size that has since become somewhat standard on subsequent portable gaming devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally .

Baby Luigi represents the reaction of sandbagging racers in this artistic rendering. (credit: Nintendo)

Since Mario Kart 8 's launch on the Wii U, one of the game's most successful and controversial strategies has involved intentionally hanging out at the back of the pack to amass and abuse the game's best items. Now, over nine years since the game's initial release , Nintendo has taken steps to eliminate the controversial "bagging" strategy in the latest update to the Switch's Mario Kart 8 Deluxe .

Mario Kart 8 players who made use of "bagging" (short for "sandbagging" and sometimes also called "item smuggling") in online races would briefly retreat to last place to sit on a regenerating item box, waiting to acquire some of the game's most powerful items (which are much more likely to appear when you are far away from first place ). The bagging player could then use one of those items (say, a Golden Mushroom and/or Starman) to quickly catch up with the pack before using the other amassed item (say, a Bullet Bill) to build up a dominant lead. The strategy can be especially effective on tracks like "Cheese Land," where using a Bullet Bill in very specific locations can extend how long the powerful item lasts .

Not “cheating,” but not exactly “racing”?

Despite bagging's controversial reputation among many players, the strategy isn't really comparable to outright cheating—baggers play an unmodified version of the game as it was designed, after all. And for years , many Mario Kart 8 players have argued that it's a perfectly fair strategy that requires actual skill to use effectively. "Sandbagging is a risk vs reward kind of thing," GameFAQs user RydeonHD wrote in 2016 . "There have been many times where it can just plain out backfire (in those cases, it would've just been better to strive for first)."

Enlarge / A look at the Nvidia T234 that could be the basis for a scaled-down custom chip in the next Nintendo console. (credit: Nvidia / Imgur )

In recent months, the long-running speculation surrounding Nintendo's inevitable follow-up to the Switch has become more frequent and more specific , pointing to a release sometime in late 2024. Now, the pixel-counting boffins over at Digital Foundry have gone deep with some informed speculation on the system , dissecting leaked details on what they're convinced is the Nvidia chip Nintendo will be putting in their Switch follow-up.

That chip is the Nvidia T239, a scaled-down, custom variant of the Nvidia Orin T234 that is popular in the automotive and robotics markets. While Digital Foundry can't say definitively that this is the next Switch chip with "absolute 100 percent certainty," the website points to circumstantial links and references to the chip in a number of leaks , a recent Nvidia hack , LinkedIn posts from Nvidia employees, and Nvidia's own Linux distribution.

"From my perspective, the bottom line is that by a process of elimination, T239 is the best candidate for the processor at the heart of the new Nintendo machine," Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter writes. "With a mooted 2024 release date, there have been no convincing leaks whatsoever for any other processor that could find its way into the new Switch."

Enlarge / My original US-8-150W shortly before being replaced. Don't judge my zip-tie mounting job—it held for eight years! (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

This morning, I'd like to pour one out for a truly awesome piece of gear that did everything I asked of it without complaint and died before its time: my Unifi 8-port POE switch, model US-8-150W. Farewell, dear switch. You were a real one, and a lightning strike took you from us too soon.

I picked up this switch back in January of 2016 , when I was ramping up my quest to replace my shaky home Wi-Fi with something a little more enterprise-y. The results were, on the whole, positive (you can read about how that quest turned out in this piece right here , which contains much reflection on the consequences—good and bad—of going overboard on home networking), and this little 8-port switch proved to be a major enabler of the design I settled on.

Happier times—the old US-8-150W right out of the box, when it was brand new. Note those two SFP slots at right.

Why? Well, it's a nice enough device—having 802.3af/at and also Ubiquiti's 24-volt passive PoE option made it universally compatible with just about anything I wanted to hook up to it. But the key feature was the two SFP slots, which technically make this a 10-port switch. I have a detached garage, and I wanted to hook up some PoE-powered security cameras out there, along with an additional wireless access point. The simplest solution would have been to run Ethernet between the house and the garage, but that's not actually a simple solution at all—running Ethernet underground between two buildings can be electrically problematic unless it's done by professionals with professional tools, and I am definitely not a professional. A couple of estimates from local companies told me that trenching conduit between my house and the garage was going to cost several hundred dollars, which was more than I wanted to spend.

Enlarge / Whatever is in those Wonder Flower, I want some. (credit: Nintendo)

Back in 1995, Nintendo released Yoshi’s Island , which included the game’s seventh level, “Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy. ” After a relatively sedate and predictable first half, the last part of “Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy” introduces the floating white puffballs that give the level its name (and its cult status among Mario fans). While touching most enemies in Yoshi’s Island causes damage or instant death, touching a fuzzy simply makes the entire level start to bob up and down like a series of ocean waves, as a wide-eyed Yoshi staggers back and forth like he's 10 shots deep into an epic bender.

Playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder , it feels like somebody at Nintendo asked, “What if we made a game where every level was like ‘Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy’?” Thankfully for us, someone at Nintendo apparently heard this question and said, “Sure, why not?”

Wonder-full flowers

The Wonder Flowers hidden in each level of Super Mario Bros. Wonder could have easily been a gimmick—the kind of repetitive, minor alterations to the status quo that help check a box on the game packaging. Instead, the Wonder Flower effects provide a much-needed shot in the arm that keeps the game from falling into anything approaching a predictable rut.

Enlarge / The Nintendo Switch OLED. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Development hardware for Nintendo's next console is already in some third-party developers' hands in preparation for a launch in the second half of 2024, according to sources who spoke with gaming news site Video Games Chronicle .

Sources that spoke to Eurogamer corroborated the late 2024 release window, and a Nikkei Asia report previously claimed earlier this year that Nintendo planned to launch its next console sometime after spring of 2024 .

Citing "multiple people with knowledge of Nintendo's next-gen console plans," Video Games Chronicle also claims to clarify a few details about the Nintendo Switch's successor. Like the Switch, it will also be usable in portable mode. However, two of Video Games Chronicle's sources suggested that Nintendo will go with an LCD screen to keep costs down, which would make it a downgrade from the latest Switch model in one key area.