Nintendo Switch Pro 2021

The will they/won’t they ambiguity from Nintendo about releasing a Switch Pro doesn’t feel too different from Ross and Rachel from Friends or Jim and Pam from The Office. It feels like we been hearing about this potential model for years. There have been leaks, reports, speculations, inside sources and even quotes from some of the higher ups at Nintendo.

On February 1st, at the last Nintendo Earnings Report for Q3 FY2021, which we covered, when asked about the possibility of a new more powerful Switch model, Shuntaro Furukawa responded by saying that “with Nintendo Switch having just marked it’s highest sales in it’s fourth year on the market, we do not have plans to announce a new model” These words are coming from the President of Nintendo but they are very vague.

We have seen Nintendo in the past do this dance before and as a publicly traded company with the upcoming release of the special edition Monster Hunter Rise Switch and the just released blue and red version, they obviously want to sell those units and save the news of a new Switch for a different fiscal period, as FY2021 has been almost as good as it could have been for Nintendo considering the situation.

Nintendo has been a company that likes to stick with what works when something works and that includes the constant re-mastering, re-bundling, re-packing and other form of selling their old games to you as well as offering multiple options for consoles. Iterations have been plentiful dating all the way back to the Nitnedo 64 with the rainbow assortment of colours all the way up to the many varieties that existed for the DS and the 3DS. It’s obvious that newer models of the Switch are on the way but obviously the unknown factor is when.

Switch Pro Shortages

This brings us to the latest report from Takashi Mochizuki from Bloomberg that says that Switch Pro or whatever moniker it is given will be released later in 2021. According to the article the Switch Pro will launch in time for the holidays, will have a larger OLED screen made by Samsung, and will output in docked at 4K. These new features will produce results that some hardcore Nintendo fans have been asking for including higher resolution, better performance and longer battery life.

The OLED display which will be manufactured by Samsung is reportedly going into production around June with a target of a million units per month so that the panels can be shipped to the assembly factories for July. One million units does sound a little on the low end for a holiday season which likely means that it will be similar to almost every other Nintendo product at launch and be extremely scarce. Even more so this holiday season when multiplied against the effect of COVID and people still likely preferring to order online. I can’t see any reason why this will go any different then how the launch of the Xbox Series and PS5 went with messy launches and bots galore.

Switch lite released September 19, 2019 and between that date and the end of 2019, it sold 5.19 million units worldwide. This is about 2.5 million per month for a Switch that doesn’t Switch, can’t disconnect the joy cons, and was not released during a pandemic. 

If Samsung is able to manufacture around one million screens per month starting in July that would mean that by a similar release date to the Lite in mid September there would only be about three million units available for purchase.  In a seemingly best case scenario, by December there would be somewhere around five million Switch Pro’s that have been produced and ready for purchase. 

In my opinion the Switch Lite only appealed to a certain demographic that only used their system in handheld similar to a DS or 3DS, whereas the Switch Pro basically targets everyone. All the existing Switch owners who have owned their system for almost five years when Holiday 2021 comes around, the owners who are tired of the battery life, the people that have upgraded to a 4K TV since 2017, and any person who has not bought a Switch yet and is thinking about getting into the ecosystem.  The simple math on this equation is that there easily won’t be enough systems available for purchase by a wide margin. 

Rigid Strategy

In true Nintendo frugal strategy, the OLED panels that will be used for the Switch Pro will be rigid OLED as opposed to flexible OLED which is used in higher end smartphones and premium electronics. This makes perfect sense as Nintendo is able to secure a lower price on the components and the Switch doesn’t have a need for a flexible display. Nintendo has never been about using the latest and greatest tech but instead using what they have to its fullest potential.

The good news is that the new display will be OLED and will be larger from 6.2 inches to 7, however a bit of a downside is that the screen will only be 720p, which is likely fine for now and the games the Switch has been producing but doesn’t feel like a future proof move. The current Switch is already producing a 720p LED screen, so its somewhat unfortunate that it didn’t get the boost to 1080.

4K would have been overkill on a screen that size as even one of the most premium electronics available today, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is only 2.8k, which retails for almost two thousand dollars fully upgraded. Understandably, Nintendo wants to keep the cost down on the Switch Pro based on their use of the rigid OLED, 720p resolution and the size increase not being too big that it can’t still use the same Joy-Cons.

The other puzzle piece that has yet to be put into place will be what will be launching alongside with the Switch Pro. It’s possible that Nintendo doesn’t care and knows the product will sell out regardless but to really drive sales of all the Switch models during and through the Holidays, it would make sense to launch alongside a premium Nintendo tentpole game.

The most obvious answer would be that Breath of the Wild 2 will be the big game for the Holiday 2021 season as it is the 35th anniversary of the series, and it will have been almost five years since the release of Breath of the Wild. At the last Nintendo Direct, they did say that we would get more information on the sequel later in the year. At this point it could be almost anything from games that we already know Nintendo is working on like Metroid Prime 4 or Breath of the Wild 2 to other games that we could assume are coming including Mario Kart 9 or the next wholly original Mario title.