Nintendo Switch 2 Could Bring Gaming Consoles’ Reckoning

Nintendo fans rejoiced last week at the long-awaited introduction of its Switch 2 home and handheld video game console, due later in 2025.

The successor to one of the bestselling pieces of gaming hardware in history, Switch 2 could not be arriving at a more doubtful time for the console side of the industry.

Nintendo Switch surpassed 146 million lifetime sales at the end of September 2023 and remains the No. 3 console by that metric, behind its 2004 Nintendo DS handheld predecessor and Sony’s PlayStation 2, the all-timer that kicked off the new millennium.

Launched in early 2017, the Switch has only two real competitors — PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series systems, both launched in 2020.

But the Switch didn’t so much compete with these systems as it did stand out from either and confirm hard truths about higher-end hardware giants and the futility of competing over cutting-edge graphics.

PlayStation’s victory over Xbox remains undeniable, of course. Estimates show PS5 beat Xbox Series as much as 5 to 1 in November 2024, the time of year when gaming hardware enters its busiest sales period that lasts through December. Notably, Xbox Series was also behind the Switch and didn’t even clear 1 million in sales, per the estimates.

Xbox’s sales defeat to PlayStation is far from a new trend, as Xbox One was dramatically outsold by PS4 over the last generation. But its inability to outsell an older system like the Switch, especially when rumors of the impending Switch 2 persisted all throughout 2024, is a big indictment of Microsoft Gaming, which shelled out a final $75 billion for “Call of Duty” publishing group Activision Blizzard in 2023. Right before Microsoft’s prior acquisition of “Fallout” owner ZeniMax for around $8 billion, CEO Satya Nadella reportedly mulled shutting down its Xbox business entirely.

Despite Activision’s biggest launch ever for “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” last October, which occurred even as the game was made available at launch for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, Game Pass has reportedly missed internal targets for the past two years, underscoring the questionability of what is normally touted as Xbox’s biggest benefit for gamers.

The service’s proliferation on a multitude of devices was the bedrock for the “This Is an Xbox” marketing campaign that sprung up last year. That spin on the Xbox brand now technically includes PlayStation, as a crop of Xbox exclusives arrived on its competitor for the first time last year and will be joined by “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” later in 2025.

Still, PlayStation doesn’t get off so easily. Its console exclusives, the bread and butter of its business, have grown astronomically expensive, while smaller games, such as its own “Astro Bot,” dominate the Game Awards. The attempt to make PlayStation Plus a more robust subscription service did not grow subscribers, causing Sony to stop reporting those numbers in its supplemental earnings reports.

Most important, its push into live services to generate recurring revenue through microtransactions seems to be coming to an unsatisfactory end after multiple cancellations of high-profile projects attached to top IP including “The Last of Us” and “God of War,” as well as the infamous “Concord,” which was shut down entirely less than two weeks after its August 2024 launch.

Last year’s “Helldivers 2” is still a success PlayStation can tout, but that’s just one year in its hopeful run. If Bungie’s “Destiny 2” proved anything, it’s that maintaining a high-quality live service with years of content updates without the popularity and revenue of mammoths like “Roblox” and “Fortnite” is a doomed endeavor, as Bungie was impacted by restructuring in 2024 that followed missed targets for its co-op shooter.

Even if PlayStation is still building on its hardware lead with the PS5 Pro, that updated system relies on AI technology to boost graphics that much further in order to exceed the current 4K standards for high fidelity, a practice that is not expected to generate much in extra sales and has drawn criticism for how few people can seemingly tell the difference.

Keep in mind Nintendo Switch’s built-in screen doesn’t even reach 1080p HD graphics, a sign of how much the hardware and its top exclusives, such as “The Legend of Zelda,” have accomplished. Nintendo has yet to detail surefire upgrades to Switch 2’s graphics, or even its release date, only showing the hardware’s appearance and confirming some backward compatibility with the current Switch.

It’s also not guaranteed to match current sales, as Nintendo has a sordid history of following successful consoles with new systems that fail to catch on, as was the case with Wii U before the Switch righted the ship.

Still, it will be difficult for PlayStation and Xbox to keep their heads above the Switch 2 hype, as new AAA games continue to trudge along at a crawl after well over 14,000 layoffs across the industry in 2024 and persistent delays.