All aboard the hype train

There goes my prediction  :(

It'll probably depend on Switch hardware sales.  If hardware sales are keep at expectation or surpass them, then they'll probably hold off until early 2025, so they can get on last big holiday season out of the Switch without the general public knowing anything about a successor.

If Switch hardware sales start to sell below exceptions, then I could see them announcing the new system later this year to please shareholders that even though the Switch is selling worse then expected, here's the new system that will turn all that around.

Interesting that they would just casually mention this in a shareholder's meeting.  This pretty much means a 2025 Switch 2.  I'm both excited and nervous.  With the Switch Nintendo finally had good third party support again for the first time in 20 years.  But do they know why?  Is the Switch a happy accident or perfect execution of a good plan?  With Nintendo you never know.  Most of us are hoping for a Switch 2 but Nintendo might double down on Labo instead or something like that.  They're very unpredictable.

Though you would think that this announcement of an announcement could hurt Switch system sales.  Obviously you have to announce these things with some time before the launch but you don't want to do it too early.  And this isn't the old days where an announcement like this is largely unknown to the general public beyond hardcore enthusiasts.  This is on social media.  You can assume that the average consumer will be aware of this when they're Christmas shopping this year.

Well yeah, they actually designed the system with third party support in mind.  It's been well documented the Switch hardware was designed to be scalable with all the major game engines at the time of release.  Nintendo was also really aggressive to build up relationships with indie developers going into the launch of the Switch.

Some even speculate one of the reasons Nintendo waited so long to start releasing NES/SNES games was to help indie devs who specialize in retro style games build up a good audience early on, and didn't want there own retro games taking attention from the Indies.

So yeah the Switch good third party support is a direct result of Nintendo designing a system that was at the time easier to design for and went out of their way to build relationships with many smaller devs.

Not really.  Outside of the Wii and Wii U, the rest of Nintendo systems have been natural evolutions of its predecessors.  Even the Switch itself is basically a perfection of the idea they had with the Wii U of people playing on TV then playing on the tablet if others want to watch TV.