A brand new Pokémon Legends sport is coming to the “Nintendo Switch family of systems” in 2025. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, introduced Tuesday with a short teaser trailer, is an “ambitious new entry” into the sequence that can launch concurrently worldwide. It’s additionally gasoline for the hearth {that a} new Nintendo Switch console is coming subsequent 12 months.
The first Pokémon Legends sport, Arceus, launched in 2022. Arceus was new floor for the franchise: the primary open-world sport within the sequence, one thing for which followers had lengthy clamored. The Pokémon Company supplied little in the way in which of particulars on Z-A, which is able to happen in Lumiose City of the Kalos area, the France-inspired setting launched in Pokémon X and Y. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, “an urban redevelopment plan is underway to shape the city into a place that belongs to both people and Pokémon.”
Wording across the sport’s launch, particularly that it’s going to come to Nintendo “systems,” has already caught the attention of some followers. While that would discuss with variations on the Switch—the Switch Lite, the OLED mannequin—stories earlier this month recommend that the Switch successor is anticipated in 2025. VGC stories that the delay might be a push to provide Nintendo time to line up “stronger first-party software.”
Anticipation for a brand new Nintendo console couldn’t be larger. It’s been almost seven years for the reason that firm launched the Switch and greater than two for the reason that OLED model dropped. All the extra motive for followers to invest about when the following system would possibly come. Following Tuesday’s Z-A announcement, “Switch 2”—the title generally given to the (presumably) forthcoming console—started trending on X with followers posting “I can care about Pokémon again” and “The Switch 2 has to be next year because I just know they don’t want us playing the new Pokémon game in 30 [frames per second].”
The new Switch’s existence is hardly a secret nowadays; throughout GDC’s 2024 state-of-the-industry survey, 8 % of polled builders mentioned they had been engaged on video games for its successor. It’s not a query of if the Switch 2 exists; it’s when Nintendo will lastly announce it.