Doug Bowser says Nintendo Accounts will “ease the transition” to the Switch’s successor

As reports mount that the Switch 2 will launch next year, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser spoke a bit about the company’s view on ushering in a new generation of consoles, saying he believes its Nintendo Account system will help “ease the transition.”

While Bowser, unsurprisingly, declined to comment on reports of a Switch successor specifically, he did highlight that inverse (In the same interview in which he discussed unionization at Nintendo) the work the company has done with single sign-on for Nintendo accounts.

“One thing we did with Switch to help with that communication and transition [to a new console generation]Bowser explained, “It is the formation of a Nintendo Account. In the past, every console we migrated to had a completely new account system. Creating a Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players if and when we migrate to a new platform, to help ease that process or transition.”

Nintendo Accounts has served as a unified account system across all Nintendo products since their introduction in early 2016, including mobile apps (starting with Miitomo and continuing with the likes of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Mario Kart Tour), Switch, and services such as My Nintendo.

Bowser’s words echo comments made by Nintendo in 2021, when she discussed Nintendo Accounts while referring to the “next gaming system.” Exactly how the company plans to use accounts to bridge the gap between the Switch and what comes next remains a mystery, but Bowser added that Nintendo’s goal is to “minimize the decline you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another.” Whether it indicates a decrease in releases, a decrease in customers, a decrease in awareness, or something else is not entirely clear.

Nintendo, of course, has yet to comment on the recent reports surrounding the Switch’s successor; In September, Eurogamer broke the news that the company was showing off the Switch 2 to developers behind closed doors at Gamescom with an upgraded version of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Sources also told Eurogamer that the Switch’s successor – which will retain the hybrid configuration of the current model – is expected to launch in the latter half of 2024.