I Keep Forgetting How Close We Are To The Launch Of The Nintendo Switch 2

Mario Bautista May 24, 2025

Did you know that the Nintendo Switch 2 launches in less than two weeks? Yeah, me neither.

Okay, obviously, there are plenty of people who are extremely aware of the Switch 2’s June 5 launch date. If you’ve been unsuccessfully trying to secure a preorder, each day that passes lowers the chances that you’ll be able to get the console shipped by launch.

In The Switch 2 Era, Publisher Get To Claim A W Just For Putting Games On Cartridges

If you put your game on the actual cartridge, you’re suddenly a hero.

And if you did manage to get your hands on a Switch 2, you’re likely waiting with baited breath for the handheld hybrid to arrive on your doorstep. Each day brings you one day closer to Mario Kart World and, more importantly, one day closer to paying ten bucks for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.

Yes, I’m still salty about the most pack-in game to ever pack-in game not being a pack-in game. That isn’t a “welcome tour” in my book. “Welcome tours” are included with the thing you’re being welcomed to.

June Is A Weird Month To Launch A Console

As much as I’d like to play those games, the launch has snuck up on me because June is not a time when I’m really in a console-buying state of mind. As a kid, I would have loved this release date. My school usually let out for summer break in the first week of June, so I would have been able to go to my last day of school (always a half-day), then come home, eat lunch, and play several hours of Mario Kart World. Sounds pretty cool. The only downside would have been getting kinda tired of Mario Kart after playing it all day every day, then needing to wait a month for Donkey Kong Bananza with only cable sitcom reruns to keep me entertained.

With Nintendo’s two most recent console launches — the Switch 2 and the Switch before it — it has broken with the schedule that home console launches have followed for my entire life. There have been occasional (though notable) exceptions. The PS2 was a March launch, and the Sega Saturn was released in May. But the vast majority of North American console launches have hit in the back-half of the year — August, at the earliest, and December, at the latest.

The Saturn was an infamous shadow drop, with Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske announcing on-stage at E3 that the console would be available that day — months ahead of the planned September release date.

That’s always made a lot of sense. Starting in the fall, parents begin looking for Christmas gifts for their kids, and having a box launch near the holidays was a solid strategy for making it the “must-have” item as holiday shopping got underway. It’s not like Nintendo has any competition this time around either. The PS6 and Xbox Series Z/Now I Know My ABCs won’t launch for another two years, maybe even three. So, what’s the purpose of getting the console out so far ahead of the holidays?

Why Is The Switch 2 A Summer Launch?

I have a few theories. Nintendo might have been hoping to start selling consoles before President Trump began implementing tariffs — and if that was the strategy, it didn’t end up working out. But it also could have been a response to the slate of games it had ready.

If you have big new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games prepared, and have zero current-gen games other than ports, it makes sense to launch the console in June. If Nintendo had waited for November, that would have been an eight-month gap between releases, assuming it didn’t add any major Switch games to the schedule after Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. That isn’t ideal, even if it would have redeemed the fiscal year with a raft of next-gen games in the last few months. Players start to get itchy.

Or, maybe Nintendo is taking an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach. The original Switch was a March launch, and went on to become Nintendo’s best-selling home console of all time. Did that have anything to do with launching in the first half of the year? Probably not, though there’s an argument to be made that the early release allowed it to have two ‘launches’, the true launch when it actually came out, and the holiday season when Nintendo made it a killer Christmas gift with Super Mario Odyssey. That strong year wasn’t enough, on its own, to make the Switch the runaway success it became. But it certainly didn’t hurt, and maybe Nintendo views the early launch as a lucky rabbit’s foot.

Or maybe not. The only thing I know is that it doesn’t feel real that the Switch 2 will be out in two weeks. And, given that I haven’t been able to lock down a preorder, maybe that’s a blessing.