We have a pretty huge rumor about the Switch 2, that provides actual credible evidence that Nintendo is preparing the console for launch.
Necro Felipe reported on this rumor for Universo Nintendo, but his source is actually a Famiboards user with the handle LiC. With LiC’s permission, Necro Felipe reported that a Vietnam Switch 2 factory received 800,000 units of the T239 SOC as of this September.
It looks like this is the same factory that LiC and fellow Famiboards user darthdiablo has been talking about, owned by Japanese manufacturer Hosiden. Three weeks ago, they revealed that a significant number of components were shipped to the Hosiden factory.
Necro Felipe details these components, again with permission from LiC. The factory received 803,500 RAM modules. The RAM modules come from different manufacturers, between Micron, Samsung and Hynix. It also received 290,000 UFS (Universal Flash Storage) chips, made by Kioxia and Hynix.
All this shipping data is not for this week, but all the way back in September. Subsequently, LiC revealed that the next data they will be sharing this month will be dated for October. So, even this public disclosure won’t be enough to really tell us how soon Nintendo will reveal or launch the Switch 2. We will always be a few weeks behind on what Nintendo and their manufacturing partners have been doing.
But with that, what we do know is more than just nothing. If the Switch 2 factories were receiving components en masse last September, they were clearly preparing for mass production. And now that we believe that the SOC, AKA the brains of the console, were themselves made in large numbers and have been sent to the factory, there must be that much closer to mass manufacturing.
While we don’t have the data to prove this, it’s reasonable to assume that mass manufacture has started now, as you are reading this. Nintendo made public their intention to make sufficient numbers of the Switch 2 to ensure everyone who wants one will get one at launch.
The most recent rumor we reported on was that Nintendo planned to make 6.5 million units of the Switch 2 to be ready for launch. That isn’t a number that Nintendo themselves revealed, but all the rumors are lining up to tell the same story.
We still don’t know when Nintendo will announce or reveal the console, and we still don’t know if it really is just a Switch with more powerful hardware, or if Nintendo is introducing another bold gimmick with it (maybe something like VR?) But we know that the countdown to Nintendo’s self-assigned deadline to reveal the Switch 2 keeps ticking down. Even with all these months that we have been kept waiting, we know that it is absolutely inevitable.
