 Look, to say that we've been talking a lot about Nintendo's next system would be an understatement. Clearly, Nintendo has something in the works. They've told us since 2021 that there is a new device coming in 20XX that Nintendo accounts will be forward compatible with. They reminded us that Nintendo accounts are being forward compatible. People sometimes took that to infer that also means Nintendo Switch Online, which is technically a separate service that's just tangentially related to Nintendo accounts. But look, there's basically nothing officially we know about this platform other than that it exists. And they plan to transition to it at some point. But there are key things we can look at, including a brand new piece of news that we need to talk about. And another piece of news we gotta talk about from an insider. And my mind is racing at the moment. And I'm very confused, but also I'm really excited. So before we jump into that, hey guys, we're on our road to 150,000 subscribers. If you enjoyed this video, I'd appreciate if you drop a like and just, hey, help us on our journey to 150,000 by subscribing to the channel. All right guys, let's talk about the first bit of news we have. And that is this right here, which is important for a number of reasons. So this comes from Game Biz out of Japan. Nintendo's research and development expenses for the fiscal year ending March of 23 hit a record high of 110 billion yen, providing innovative game experiences by allocating a large amount of budget every year. Now what's interesting in the R&D stuff isn't just that it involves game development and all that, it also involves, you know, their hardware development. And the last time that they hit a record high was back in 2020. And we all know, well, after that we got the Nintendo Switch OLED, although we know about all the rumors of the Switch Pro, which according to the Digital Foundry was a real thing. There were actual dev kits that got recalled late last year. Now this all being, you know, rising up and having even higher research and development costs, you know, this past year is also really interesting because there's all these rumors rolling around Switch too. And typically Nintendo's research and development spending really spikes a year or so before a new system comes out. It spiked back in 2016 before Nintendo Switch came out. It spiked back in 2011 before the Wii came out. And here it is yet again, spiking, spiking, spiking. And I find this all to be quite fascinating because it's something else that we're going to talk about. And of course, you guys know we're gonna be bringing up Switch too here because somebody who is very accurate with their inside information has said something. Now you're gonna see something that we already covered but there's a continuation and I wanna make sure that we're giving some context to this continuation. So we're talking about NW player one, two, three, AKA Nicky, a well-known data miner and insider who has been correct on information in the past specifically before the Nintendo Switch and Switch OLED came out. Now they talked about the NX2 NDP thing and everyone thinks that's all fake. That was that 4chan image. Nobody really thinks that was real because it's super easy to fake but because they were getting pinged on it they figured that they would talk about stuff and they mentioned how they were assuming that the system would be unveiled in September but it sounds like it might happen before then because they were hearing whispers on it. And if it was on the MBD, a small number of deaths you'd still have been hearing about it. So this is just more on the, hey, if that NDP thing was real which the Nintendo Development Portal NX2 thing was real we would be hearing about it all the time but dev kits go out often without that stuff being on the portal. So that's okay. There are separate development tools often included with those dev kits but then they talked about selling Switch like Hotcakes and the plan Nintendo has was to continue Switch but also launch Next Gen for people who want more power. Now she's acting like this was actually Nintendo's plan. So this is the full context here and then we have on July 5th since the NG Switch is still and this means Next Gen Switch is still running hostile it'll be very funny when they continue to ignore themes and other things that people have been asking for which again, I never really thought Nintendo was gonna add themes or any of that stuff. I don't think that's a selling point to the system. I just think it's one of those nice to haves but this is the new stuff now with that full context that gets really exciting. So 11 hours ago, since my Google alerts have been on fire. For the record, I never tweeted the NX2 image or deleted any tweets on the matter. It came from 4chan and I mentioned this before. Originally which spread to family boards which spread to Reddit and I made this thread when I got pinged about it. My best guess from what I have heard is that the announcement is sometime this year probably in the next couple months and it's launching in Q2 of 2024. Now, this is an educated guess based on things they have heard but still a guess but here's what's interesting. Switch selling well because we just talked about the Switch sales in a prior video how it's doing really well in the month of June. Switch selling well does not change their plans. They have a timeline and they're sticking with it. What that timeline is remains to be seen. So here's what we can infer from this one. She has an educated guess that it will be unveiled this year and launched in Q2 of next year. Okay, so that means somewhere between like April to June, you know, January, February, March, April. Yeah, April to June, April May, June that would be Q2 but what's interesting about this and this is just a guess obviously it could be Q1. Well, what's really interesting about this guess is that the exact plans apparently are locked in. According to Nikki, Nintendo has a plan. We shouldn't be surprised that Nintendo has a plan locked in, right? That's, but what's interesting is that it doesn't matter what the Switch does. That's the curious part. Whatever Nintendo's plan is to launch the next system is basically not contingent on how well Switch sells. Whether Switch sells well, whether Switch doesn't sell well, it sounds like it doesn't make any difference. Nintendo knows what they're doing. They're launching the system. When they're launching the system, the plan is already in order. Now, here's another interesting part to add to it. They're making millions of these things. So she's inferring it's being mass manufactured right now and they only have so much warehouse space before they gotta start selling them. So basically Nintendo seems to be prepping the launch right now, meaning the launch has to be sooner rather than later. It can't, even a holiday 2024, you're just gonna sit on those products in a warehouse for a year. Seems pretty unlikely, right? Not to mention it shouldn't be as big of a hassle migrating from next gen Switch slash MVN2. Since it shares a lot of the same concepts just with new features, ray tracing and DLSS. So this is where she gets into, hey, backwards compatibility, all this. So the transition shouldn't be a harsh transition, right? It'll still probably be a Switch of some type and it'll just be here's your more powerful, your next-gen or here's your PlayStation 2, right? Your PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2. Here's that next device. Your old device wasn't forgotten. We're still selling it. We're still making games for it but things are moving and smoothing to the next one. So there's a lot of information that be gleaned from this. Mostly that one, Nintendo's making millions of these things right now. Whatever this system is, it's being mass manufactured as I speak, which is quite interesting and that she just thinks is being unveiled this year. Whisper she's heard is it's this year, you know, coming out quarter to next year. But again, based on what she's hearing, not based on like direct knowledge of Nintendo's launch plans. But yeah, Nintendo has a plan. There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt that Nintendo knows what they're doing. And I talked about this before that no matter how well the Switch continues to sell, that shouldn't really delay Nintendo's plans to release because honestly, if you look at how PlayStation maintains 100 million users every single generation, they're launching their platforms while the old platform is still doing well. PlayStation 4 was selling 15 plus million units in 2020. That's what it was on pace to sell with major releases coming out. They had massive games launching there. Last of us, part two, right? You know, the Ghost of Shishima, like they had a huge games coming out, also still selling a lot. That didn't lead to them delaying PlayStation 5. They still launched PlayStation 5 and continued to sell PlayStation 4s until they seemingly stopped manufacturing them, which I don't know if they ever announced that, but I haven't seen a PlayStation 4 on a shelf in a long time. So they clearly just stopped making them to sort of get new consumers to buy PlayStation 5 instead. But that is pretty much what I expect to happen with Nintendo and Switch. They're gonna continue to sell Switches for another year or two as a budget device. And then eventually they'll slowly phase them out as more people transition over to the new hardware. And I talked about this for a long time that you wanna bring your new product out while you still have momentum, not at the peak of your momentum, right? You don't drop this thing in 2020. That wouldn't have made any sense at the peak, but you definitely drop it before momentum's gone. And Nintendo Switch continues to have fairly strong sales. It obviously has incredible software sales and you want to keep that momentum. Basically what Sony has been able to do is maintain consistent momentum, which has led to them maintaining consistently high revenue and profits. And Nintendo, while they are usually more profitable because they don't go as in debt as Sony does, what's interesting about it is Nintendo's been wildly fluctuating generation to generation. Like transitioning to a new generation often leads to major dips at Nintendo in terms of their finances. And one way to mitigate that is while you still have momentum, launch the next thing. So Nintendo's massively increasing their spending on research and development, which by the way goes into the theme parks now, goes into their movies, goes into a lot of things. It's not just their hardware anymore or their software, but still the point is the pattern is present. You have NW players saying, hey, they're already manufacturing millions of these things right now, which okay, so they're preparing for a pretty big launch, a pretty big demand at launch, I would say if they're already trying to make millions of these right now. So I'm just gonna leave this to you guys. I don't know what to think about it. Would they actually announce it this year to launch next year, knowing it could hurt their holiday sales? Or do they think it won't hurt their holiday sales? Maybe that is possible that they don't think it will hurt holiday sales and why wouldn't it hurt holiday sales? Because maybe they're gonna discount the switch. And if you're going to end up discounting the switch this holiday, that's gonna lead to a boost in sales, not a drop in sales. And you still have these major games coming out that if you don't own a switch, people will buy a cheap switch for. Honestly, it could be lining up quite well for such a thing. There are some people that think it's being unveiled this month, next month. Nikki originally thought it'd be unveiled in September. I find it weird to unveil it before the holidays for next year. I never really seriously considered that to be a possibility, but you know what? The more I think about it, the less crazy it feels depending on what other decisions Nintendo makes. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.