With the announcement of the Nintendo Swap OLED, avid gamers’ hopes for a long-rumored ‘professional’ model of the favored console had been dashed, however it did not cease the goals and rumors flowing.
An article from Bloomberg claimed that 11 totally different recreation studios had entry to an official improvement package that featured 4K help – probably the most standard rumored options for a Swap Professional – however Nintendo has as soon as once more quashed these hopes.
Nintendo’s official Twitter account has posted a direct response to the Bloomberg article, desirous to “make clear that this report isn’t true” and that its claims of “supplying instruments to drive recreation improvement for Nintendo Swap with 4K help” are false.
Much more damning, in a reply to this tweet, Nintendo outright acknowledged that it has “no plans for any new mannequin aside from Nintendo Swap – OLED Mannequin, which can launch on October 8, 2021.”
Whereas it is potential that some language within the first tweet could possibly be bent to counsel that Nintendo is now not offering 4K dev instruments however at one level did so, the second tweet (if correct) places to mattress any rumors of a Nintendo Swap Professional being at the moment in improvement, and even on the distant horizon.
Evaluation: Swap professional quo
There’s a little bit bit extra to unpack within the phrasing “no plans for any new mannequin” – if we’re to take ‘no plans’ actually, it will imply that the corporate hasn’t even thought-about the prospect of one other Swap mannequin aside from its upcoming Swap OLED, however we discover that onerous to imagine.
Extra doubtless, concepts and viability assessments have been made for all types of Swap console counterparts, however we take this ‘no plans’ messaging to imply that none of those ideas have made it into any concrete type, reminiscent of a improvement roadmap.
Trying on the second half of this assertion, ‘any new mannequin’ may be a sneaky manner of suggesting that there will be one other, extra highly effective console on the horizon, however it could not particularly be a Swap console – might we quickly see Nintendo’s reply to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence X.
The ultimate and (frankly) probably possibility is that this assertion is a little bit white lie from Nintendo. What ramifications, if any, would the gaming big face for releasing one other Swap console in a yr’s time, as an illustration, after having claimed that they weren’t engaged on one?
Moreover, stating that there is no impending replace to the Swap lineup only a week forward of the launch of the brand new OLED mannequin might effectively assist its gross sales, as potential consumers might be much less prone to wait out for the ‘subsequent’ improve.
There’s additionally the matter of Bloomberg’s preliminary report – whereas its sources are nameless, they declare to be from 11 totally different corporations, so we discover it onerous to imagine that every worker is making the identical false declare independently.
Both manner, we’ll little doubt right here additional clarification on this level within the days to come back, and we’ll replace our story as we study extra.