In my January Roundup I developed an overview of Nintendo’s first party development teams in order to give realistic expectations for when we can expect major Switch 2 exclusive games from said teams. We’re revisiting that here with a lot of expansion, a lot of speculative prediction to complement my previous logistical analysis. Considering how much was covered in the Switch’s January 2017 presentation and how Switch 2’s first market year will extend into 2026, anything I mention for 2026 here is at least potentially on the table to be seen at the April Direct.
Switch 2 devkits reached developers in 2023 at the latest when the hardware was finalized and patented for all of its main new features like Mouse controls and the microphone, but considering that there were already third parties talking about it in 2023, it most likely reached first party even sooner, in 2022. We know that those developers are working* with hardware power well above PS4 and below PS5, around the range of PS4 Pro or Xbox Series S, but with the advantages of DLSS, 12GB RAM, and 12 Ray-Tracing cores.
*I don’t necessarily expect every Nintendo developer to take the fullest advantage of the hardware, or at least the most obvious advantage, for several reasons: Nintendo philosophically will continue to prioritize what this new tech can do for gameplay over graphics, and a lot of these series are already working at ‘good-enough’ graphics for their purposes. There are of course several boundary-pushing and/or tech-oriented studios at Nintendo where we can reasonably set high expectations, like Retro, Next Level, Monolith, and of course the 3D Zelda and 3D Mario teams.
And here are all the teams who we know for a certainty had those devkits in advance of launch, starting with ones that have confirmed or likely 2025 releases:
EPD9, the Mario Kart team led by Kosuke Yabuki, which has produced every main release including the mobile Mario Kart Tour and the Booster Course Pass DLC, and who informally announced the next Mario Kart in the console’s January reveal trailer. I believe that EPD9 started development on the new Mario Kart not longer after the initial launch of Tour, and transitioned it over to a Switch 2 exclusive in 2022 while also producing DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I’m sure that the decision to make the game a Switch 2 launch title came no later than the decision to extend support for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with more DLC, because they’re counting on it becoming the same kind of evergreen, so it shouldn’t miss a single day of sales. I similarly anticipate Nintendo prioritizing the other biggest system sellers to hit the console as soon as possible much like they were able to on Switch 1, and perhaps that’s a reason why the console didn’t come out sooner. Speaking of which…
EPD8, the 3D Mario team led by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kenta Motokura, is widely expected to be revealing and launching their next game this year, when it’s been four years since they launched a port and mini-project in the form of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury and almost eight years since Super Mario Odyssey.
Game Freak are of course the creators of Pokémon, and they recently announced that Pokémon Legends Z-A is hitting this holiday after the Switch 2 has already launched, so it will hopefully arrive with some nice cross-gen optimizations. After that will come the launch of Generation 10 in Holiday 2026 as either a full exclusive or Switch 2 first, as detailed in last year’s cyberattack leaks.
Retro Studios has spent almost the entire generation developing Metroid Prime 4 and with still no marketing for it since last year’s trailer, I am more confident than ever that its cross-gen release will be a big part of the April Direct and the Switch 2’s launch. It can show off the mouse controls for shooting and the gorgeous visuals at higher resolutions.
Xenoblade developers Monolith Soft are one of the most efficient and tech-forward teams operating at Nintendo: They shipped six main projects during the Switch’s eight years of life (two mainline RPGs, two expansions, and two remasters) while also providing support for Zelda, Splatoon, and Animal Crossing, with the longest single production cycle being four years for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2018 after Torna went gold to 2022). I believe that Monolith was a high priority early recipient for Switch 2 devkits and that we can see the results in 2027 or late 2026 if we’re lucky.
EPD5 led by Aya Kyogoku has both the Splatoon and Animal Crossing teams, although the teams are mostly independent of each other with limited overlap. I expect both series to be relatively early arrivals on Switch 2 with the next-gen Animal Crossing arriving first in 2026 and Splatoon 4 launching after in 2027. I think the biggest hurdle New Horizons faced was being the first HD entry in that series, requiring all of its hundreds of objects and characters to be rebuilt in HD assets, and hopefully now that foundation is established they can keep building atop it instead of starting completely over for 4K assets.
EPD4 is the team behind Nintendo’s most casual and experimental projects, who will most likely make some kind of Mouse Mode tech demo game to launch Switch 2. Maybe it’ll be Mario Paint! Historically, EPD4 has alternated between regular smaller games such as 1-2-Switch, Game Builder Garage, Big Brain Academy, and most recently Nintendo World Championships, and a larger game every few years like Ring Fit Adventure and Nintendo Switch Sports. I think we’ll see their next bigger project by 2026 and that it could easily be a Switch 2 exclusive sequel to either of those games, one without the compatibility limitations of the originals in BC. It could also be that bizarre Minecraft-like MMO we saw playtested last year. I’m also going to make a very specific prediction for one of their smaller releases: the first NintenDogs since the 3DS launch in 2011, taking advantage of the return of the microphone.
Nintendo Cube collaborated with EPD4 on Clubhouse Games, so they could be a part of shipping some of these games too. But Nintendo Cube’s main job is of course making Mario Party, and they just launched their biggest series entry yet, so that series will be waiting a while. Maybe they can at least stick to the three year cycle they had on Switch, so that would be 2027.
EPD 3, led by Eiji Aonuma, is the main Zelda team, producing the 3D entries and supervising all others. It has, astonishingly, been almost two years since Tears of the Kingdom launched, but that’s still only two years for games that already took six years apiece last gen, and obviously it’s been even less time since Grezzo’s Echoes of Wisdom. To posit that the next Zelda could’ve already started development before TOTK launched is completely divorced from the reality of game development and the hard work put in. Zelda on Switch 2 will be relegated back to rereleases and spinoffs for quite a while. However, I think it’s possible the next 3D Zelda is announced rather early so it can be used to boost broader Switch 2 enthusiasm.
EPD10 is the 2D Mario and Mario Maker team, who most recently launched Mario Wonder in 2023, so we should expect their next game to be further out as well. I think we will see Mario Maker 3 before the next 2D Mario, maybe by 2027, because of the new hardware that Mario Maker can take advantage of, especially Mouse Mode. EPD10 also collaborates with Eighting who is the new primary developer of the Pikmin series. Pikmin 4 obviously launched fairly recently as well and the series famously takes a long time in its development cycles, but I believe Pikmin 5 could be a bigger priority and gain momentum in development after the success of Pikmin 4.
HAL Laboratory make Kirby, and launched their last full new game in 2022 with Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the series’ first 3D platformer. Based on that game’s success and how 2D Kirby has been covered by a rerelease in the interim with 2023’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe, I expect they immediately started work on another 3D entry which could be ready by 2026 or 2027, and there’ll be more 2D rereleases coming like the rumored Planet Robobot HD.
Intelligent Systems has three separate teams dedicated to Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and WarioWare respectively, and all teams also receive support from other groups like Tose, Koei Tecmo, and Nintendo EPD, with which they’ve managed a very consistent mostly annual release schedule alternating between these three series. Fire Emblem Engage was infamously completed well ahead of launch and the Thousand Year Door Remake had all its ground level development done by Tose with only leadership/supervision by IntSys. Therefore, the bulk of their resources and personnel have been free for some time and devoted to something big like the next Fire Emblem. The only question is whether that will be cross-gen or next-gen.
EPD6 codevelops WarioWare with Intelligent Systems and is most likely also developing Rhythm Heaven Groove.
Next Level Games shipped Luigi’s Mansion 3 in 2019 and Mario Strikers: Battle League in 2022, and Strikers had less than half of their team credited on it, so they were already working on something else too. It is distinctly possible we could see Luigi’s Mansion 4 as a Switch 2 graphical showcase fairly soon, though I wouldn’t personally expect sooner than 2026.
Mario Sports developer Camelot is already in their longest dev cycle ever after launching Mario Golf: Super Rush in 2021, so it’s very likely we see their next game soon, and it’s probably Switch 2-first.
Mercury Steam, the developers of Samus Returns and Metroid Dread under producer Yoshio Sakamoto, have worked continuously on 2D Metroid since 2015 while a second team also ships other projects from a separate team like Spacelords, which launched the same year as Samus Returns. Therefore, the imminent launch of Blades of Fire has limited bearing on the status of Metroid 6, which is understood to be in development, and could be ready by 2026 at a solid five years after Metroid Dread.
Masahiro Sakurai has explicitly said that his next project started active production in April 2022 after pitching it in 2021 before Smash Ultimate’s post-launch development had even ended. Whether it’s the next Smash or not, it most likely needs more than three years to be ready considering that Ultimate barely got out the door in that timeframe. Until we know for sure what his next game is, I won’t try to prognosticate when Smash might arrive, we might have to wait quite a long time for it.
Lastly, there’s NERD, or Nintendo European Research & Development, the developers of almost every Nintendo Switch Online emulator and rereleases like Super Mario 3D All Stars and Pikmin 1+2. On March 14th, the FCC published another Nintendo document, one which describes a wireless Bluetooth controller with a layout identical to a Gamecube controller, with the exact same product line codenames as both the previous Switch 2 patents and previous Nintendo Switch Online controllers. SNES and N64 NSO controllers have leaked in this exact way right before their announcements in their respective Directs.
I know what we’re all thinking right now, I know it still seems too good to be true, but I am willing to commit to this: based on this evidence, I believe that Gamecube on NSO for Switch 2 will be announced in the April Direct. And I’ll hope that it’s a direct addition to the Expansion Pack tier without any outright new tier or price increase, because buying a Switch 2 to play it is already a big expense. In conjunction with this, I am willing to predict confidently that DS NSO and Wii NSO will also happen during the Switch 2 generation.
Thus concludes this assessment of the outlook for Switch 2 ahead of its near-imminent reveal.
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