Report: A new Nintendo Switch model will arrive in 2019

Enlarge / A new Nintendo Switch is reportedly launching in 2019, so we're flexing with the original model in hopes that the next Switch is more powerful. (Check out our Switch-at-the-gym article, if you're wondering what the heck this image is about.) (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Work on a Nintendo Switch hardware revision, slated to launch sometime in 2019, is currently underway, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The brief report, which went live early Thursday morning, pins Nintendo's plans for a new Switch version (assumedly compatible with all existing Switch software) in the "latter half of 2019, perhaps as soon as summer." Everything we know thus far appears to center on one part of the system's revision: the screen. The WSJ cites "suppliers" as one source of the leaked information, and the report's only firm suggestion about changed hardware revolves around the screen being upgraded from an older LCD manufacturing process. (WSJ's report does not explicitly narrow down its "supplier" sources as part of the screen-production industry.)

One insight missing from the WSJ report is that Nintendo's original primary supplier of LCD panels, Japan Display Inc, made far fewer Switch screens in 2017 than it did in the system's 2016 run-up. According to one Nikkei report, that switch may be due to JDI shifting gears as a company and focusing more on OLED panel production than on LCD in the past year. That report did not hint at JDI making such a switch in anticipation of Nintendo demanding higher-quality panels for future hardware.

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