Prominent leaker NateTheHate has claimed that based on what he’s heard, Nintendo is going to announce its next-gen console next month.

The Nintendo Switch 2 (or whatever Nintendo chooses to call its next-gen consoles) has been in the rumour mill for several months now, and with the Switch approaching its seventh anniversary in less than a month’s time, speculation about when its successor will be announced are continuing to heat up. Now, thanks to prominent insider NateTheHate, we might have some more information on that.

Speaking recently on the Game and Talk podcast, NateTheHate said that Nintendo will be announcing its next console next month, in March. The insider is unaware what form the announcement will take – it could be anything from a simple press release to a reveal trailer to a full-blown event, or anything in between – but he says that based on what he’s been hearing since Gamescom last August, March is when Nintendo will officially begin talking about the Switch’s successor.

Universo Nintendo’s editor-in-chief Felipe Lima has corroborated those claims, saying in a report that as per his sources, several Nintendo first party studios and partner developers are preparing to announce their projects in March as well, and that “several retail stores are moving to prepare the start of pre-orders for the system.”

Leaks have previously claimed that the next Nintendo console is scheduled for release sometime in the second half of 2024. If that is indeed the timeline the company is planning on following, an announcement in March doesn’t seem farfetched in the slightest. Of course, Nintendo is also rumoured to have a Direct presentation lined up for sometime next week, so the company is likely going to have some announcements in store for the original Switch before it’s ready to move on to its next-gen hardware.

Recently, Nintendo announced that the Switch has sold 139.36 million units worldwide as of December 31, 2023.