Nintendo is rumored to have the same unofficial name for the Switch 2 as fans, as more evidence emerges of a new Mario Party.
For years, fans have been referring to Nintendo’s next console as the Switch 2. Not necessarily because that’s what they think it will be called, but without anything else to go on it’s the most obvious way to refer to it.
It seems that Nintendo itself feels the same way, as according to a Japanese source, they use the terms ‘Switch 2’ and ‘New Switch’ to refer to the console when speaking to Sega and Atlus.
That’s not necessarily what it will end up being called, but if it makes sense – in the sense that the console is at least physically similar to the Switch – then it could very well stick.
Insider Midori has long been a reliable source of information about the industry in Japan, although many of her leaks are rather uninteresting or vague, regarding code names and general plans for the future.
Her recent tease about a Zelda: Breath Of The Wild remake was different, however, as it not only hinted at a possible launch title, but also provided insight into how Nintendo creates and uses codenames.
More recently, she tried to explain how U-King-O makes sense as a codename for the remake, and how it follows the same pattern for previous Nintendo games and consoles, when she revealed the information about the Switch 2 and New Switch.
While Switch 2 is self-explanatory, ‘New Switch’ also follows the format of the New Nintendo 3DS, with the idea of adding a prefix to the front of a game or console name going all the way back to the Super NES.
There’s still no guarantee that the final console will be called either name, but it does imply something about how similar the new console might be to the old one.
In another example of how seemingly nonsensical codenames can be useful, Midori also states that there is a game in development at Nintendo codenamed Banquet, by developers NDcube and SmileBoom.
SmileBoom is quite obscure, with its most popular product being game creation tool RPG developer Bakin, but NDcube has been working with Nintendo since the early 2000s.
They have created all of the recent Mario Party games, with several employees previously working at original Mario Party developer Hudson Soft.
Add that to the fact that the secret project is codenamed Banquet, while the codename of the previous Mario Party game was Buffet, and it’s not hard to imagine that a new installment is on the way.
The only question is whether the new Mario Party is for the current Switch or for the Switch 2. Since Mario Party games are often released in time for Christmas and Nintendo has some very empty schedules to fill, this year seems like the most obvious bet.
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