 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. I am Nathaniel Rumpeljantz and oh man, we get to talk about a topic today that really exists because of two reasons. One, Nate Drake opened his mouth about new Switch hardware so we get to briefly touch on that stuff. But more importantly, the whole reason we're even having this conversation is because of Nintendo themselves. They are doing something that's extremely suspicious and in the past has always been an indicator of new hardware coming. In fact, it's been an indicator every single time. So if you want to follow patterns at Nintendo, this is a pattern worth paying attention to. So what are we talking about? Well, we all know that having Nintendo at mini, we have the Sparks of Hope stuff. But while all this was going on, Nintendo had their annual shareholders meeting. Now the shareholders meeting isn't talking about game sales and all of that. It goes over some of the larger spending that Nintendo has going on, their net profits and losses. So sort of like a financial briefing. However, they also end up voting on everyone who's in power. CEO voting, Miyamoto's position, Takahashi's position, all that stuff. They do all that voting. And for the most part, it almost always goes the exact way Nintendo nominates and wants things to go because a lot of the largest shareholders at Nintendo just agree with whatever Nintendo decides to do. And you can't blame them because Nintendo's existed for over 100 years and they know what the hell they're doing. That being said, what's interesting is looking at one particular thing they mentioned. And this one particular thing shows a growing pattern in Nintendo history. And that is how much they are spending on raw materials. They have increased the spending on raw materials since 2019, since 2020, since 2021 by 95% in 2022. Now, why? Why are they increasing that spending? Well, we have seen them do that already three times in the last six years. They had increased spending at 2016, which clearly led to the release of the Nintendo Switch in early 2017. They had increased spending back in 2019, which obviously led to the release of the Switch Lite. They had increased spending last year, which led to the release of the Switch OLED. But what's very, very interesting this time around, the increase in spending is so large, this signifies a significant movement in the hardware space because a lot of raw material spending is about hardware. That's not about Switch cartridges. It's not about the cases for Switch games. It's about Switch hardware. And even if we want to say COVID has increased prices of raw materials, COVID has not doubled or tripled the cost of these materials. So even considering that unlikely scenario, this increase is something that signifies something big is happening behind the scenes as Nintendo is securing the only parts, but the materials to make the parts for something that is huge. See, if there wasn't something being mass produced at some point this year, at some point this year, then Nintendo wouldn't need to spend what they're spending on materials because they have actually brought the forecast for Nintendo Switch sales down year over year, down from 2020. So if we're talking about, oh, they need to increase their spending to get more switches out there, but they're forecasting selling less switches than last year. So why are they spending 95% more money this year than last year, which was an increase over 2020 because they were obviously getting the Switch OLED ready to go in 2019, increased it over 2018 because they were getting the Switch Lite out 2016, increasing over 2015 because they were obviously mass producing Nintendo switches. This is the pattern. And if you actually dig through Nintendo's annual shareholders meeting for the last 20 years, you will see every time there is a new system launching within a 12 month period of that financial briefing, there's going to increase in spending when they go into mass production on raw materials. So that is why everyone today is really talking about the next Nintendo platform, whether it's a pro, whether it's next gen, whatever it is, something is going into mass production this year. Now, now, the question obviously is, what is it? Well, Knaetrek, who absolutely nailed the Mario plus rabbit stuff this week, went out there to one retweet a podcast from October of last year that he said for no particular reason, just had a feeling. The reason is obviously the financial briefing. But also, it's funny because Wood from beat em ups put out a tweet, tagging the Genshin impact people will be like, Hey man, where the hell is the Switch version? And he responded to him directly saying, well, they've moved the development of Genshin Impact to the DLSS model of Nintendo Switch entirely, meaning it would be a DLSS exclusive release of Genshin Impact, which is interesting since we don't have a DLSS model Switch. It doesn't exist, at least publicly. And this is where things obviously get interesting. So I revisited his podcast from October of last year, and it just goes over a lot of the reports from Takahashi and stuff that, you know, he's heard from behind the scenes. But the big thing is, you know, we're talking about whenever this platform is coming in, he literally said he's calling it a Switch 4K moving forward because he doesn't know if it's a mid gen refresh. He doesn't know if it's a Switch 2, but he doesn't know it has DLSS 4K. So you know what? Switch 4K, that's what he's calling it. He said, well, all of his developer sources, people with dev units, are making their games with the anticipation of a late 2022 or quarter one slash early 2023 release. This is interesting because a lot of people have speculated that, hey, Nintendo would release it alongside Breath of the Wild 2, which is, as we know, a spring 2023 game. You can argue that technically falls just outside of Q1, but Q1 for Nintendo is not the same as Q1 for the year. So it's kind of, you can kind of finagle it. And basically for some time in the next 12 months, direct feed games, Nate the hate, Nate Drake, whatever you want to call them, is expecting this thing to come out. Now, if you want to play Devil's Advocate, and that is totally fine, they could be going in mass production to release it next holiday season. They could be wanting to bank up 10, 15 million of these bad boys, although that's obviously a risky proposition when the Wii U sold 13 million to just presume you're going to move 15 million of these things. Most companies aren't going to presume 15 million in sales before they've even announced a platform and seen the reaction. So the question obviously is, are we getting to switch 4K soon? And I mentioned, not too long ago, a few weeks ago, that I thought there was a high chance we get this next platform sooner than later. I noted switches closer to the end than it is to the beginning. We are already past the five-year anniversary. Coming next March is the sixth. Then we enter that seventh year. I know everyone hits me with this every time. Furukawa said, hey, this is going to be longer than usual generation. And it still can be that they don't consider the switch 4K a new generation. After all, this is the same Nintendo that claims Game Boy Color is the same generation as the OG Game Boy that came out in the 80s. Like, that's the Nintendo we're dealing with. They have a pretty broad definition of what a generation is. So it's entirely possible that this, they just consider this an upgrade. It could be a significant upgrade or a mid-gen upgrade, full backwards compatibility. First of all, two will be on the OG Switch. It's on the original. If it's on this switch, it'll be in 4K, maybe higher frame rates, etc, etc, etc. And obviously, third-party companies would be a lot more excited for the new hardware than the old. So, I don't know what's happening. Do you know what's happening? Do you have any sources? Because, hey, I actually know three developers. None of them have switched dev units, not even the Switch. So, they don't know anything. All I know is, there's been a lot of smoke. Takahashi Matsuzuki got a lot of flat glass here, but, but Takahashi Matsuzuki has a sterling reputation. He didn't just say 11 developers have dev units without actually having real sources. So, we can dismiss Nate Drake, if you want. Nate the hate, say he's a fake insider. What we can't dismiss are two points. One, Nintendo has massively increased spending on raw materials in a way that infers mass production of a new system. That's one. Number two, we can't just say, oh, Takahashi Matsuzuki's full of shit, and didn't have any real development sources when he called out 11 companies, including Zynga. So, I leave the rest to you guys to debate. Let me know. Personally, a breath of the wild do a release with a new platform, starting to look a little bit more likely today than it did yesterday. Who knows? Maybe Nintendo shocks the world, and we're actually getting it this holiday. After all, the spending on raw materials started at the beginning of the year and is continuing right now. It's in mass production, whatever the hell this thing is. Only the Nintendo knows when they're actually going to reveal it and release it. Of note, they revealed the Switch OLED two months before release. Switch Lite, two months before release. If it's just considered a revision, we don't need a large timetable from announcement to release. So, I guess time will tell. I am Nathaniel Rubblejance from Nintendo Prime. If you enjoyed this video, I appreciate you dropping a like, subscribe to the channel, and I'll catch you in the next video.