The Competition and Markets Authority of the United Kingdom, CMA in its initials in English, has made a mention of a possible new device or a new Nintendo platform in his most recent documents related to the investigation he is carrying out regarding the purchase of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft.
The documents that refer to the possible new device or new Nintendo platform are part of a supplementary material to the already mentioned investigation. The appendices include data for calculating market shares used in the regulator’s provisional findings and cloud gaming service supply shares. But focusing on what really concerns us in this post, the CMA (does not) mention a possible Nintendo Switch Pro that has not yet been announced:
“Nintendo Switch Online has been excluded from our actions because Nintendo’s cloud gaming service is very limited. Nintendo’s cloud gaming service is only available on the Nintendo Switch device and [recortado]. Nintendo Switch Online gives players access to online gaming and cloud saves, among other features. Therefore, we see Nintendo Switch Online predominantly as an online multiplayer service rather than a cloud gaming service.”
Excerpt from the British CMA document in which the possible existence of a new Nintendo console or platform is mentioned.
What is that device or that platform whose mention has been removed? Although there is the possibility that the CMA has omitted or eliminated an old platform, it is more logical to think that the Big N of video games is preparing a new device that would also make use of the Nintendo Switch Online service, which would more or less be in line. with certain predictions that point to the announcement of a new console for the year 2024.
Nintendo is a company that tends to keep what it does very secretive, so it is unknown what it will really do in the future. A few months ago Digital Foundry said that the Switch Pro had been canceled and analyst Piers Harding-Rolls predicted the existence of the Nintendo Switch 2 by 2024.
For now nothing is known about the characteristics of the next Nintendo console, but it is plausible to think that the partnership with NVIDIA will continue to have access to DLSSa technology that could open up enormous possibilities at the level of graphics deployment and with support for 4K, but it is still too early to say anything.
Nintendo Switch meant the abandonment of the desktop console market by the Big N to bet everything on the sector where it was always dominant, the portable ones, although with a hybrid approach that has allowed it to generate a market niche that until recently it occupied exclusively (at least in terms of market share). However, the appearance of the Steam Deck has implanted the perception among the public that the Nintendo console is no longer alone in the segment of hybrid consoles and also has the advantages of being a standard PC, so a bad move by the Japanese company could mean the takeoff of Valve’s mini-PC.
