Yes, yes – we know Nintendo Switch is old now. There comes a time in each console’s life when the games start to dry up and we look to the future — and the Switch is very much in the autumn of its years. Back in May, two months into its eighth year, Nintendo said a new hardware announcement is coming at some point before April next year, and with that acknowledgement comes a sense that the really good stuff will be saved to launch the next console with a bang.
However, looking back at past Nintendo systems, it doesn’t necessarily mean Switch will be running on fumes for the rest of the year. You would have been forgiven for thinking Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was the Switch’s last hurrah, and then Super Mario Bros. Wonder turned up. You may have thought the release of Switch in 2017 meant that the might 3DS’ days of quality exclusive software were numbered, but as we’ll highlight below, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Nintendo has good form when it comes to putting out brilliant games at the very end of a console’s lifecycle and having sold over 140 million Switches, there’s a high chance that there’s still gold in them first-party hills, as well as all the third-party stuff we already know about.