Anyone hoping for a more powerful Switch console to launch this year is set to be disappointed.

As Nikkei Asia reports, Nintendo is preparing for a dramatic slowdown in Switch hardware sales this year. The prediction is just 15 million console sales, but Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa admitted during a press conference this week that even that could be "a bit of a stretch."

The Switch is now six years old and combined sales of the Switch, Switch Lite, and Switch OLED models have been steadily declining. Sales peaked in 2021 at 28.8 million units, then fell to 23 million in 2022 and just 18 million in 2023. Total sales now sit at 125.62 million, which places the Switch third in the list of best-selling games consoles behind the Nintendo DS (154 million) and PlayStation 2 (155 million).

As Bloomberg reports, no new or upgraded hardware is factored into Nintendo's annual forecasts and none is expected to be announced. However, Furukawa did point out that selling more than 10 million units of a console at this stage in its life cycle hasn't been seen before and that, "we are now in unknown territory."

The imminent release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is sure to give Switch hardware sales a short-term boost. When you consider the Switch OLED outsold all other models during the 2023 financial year, it's fair to say gamers will be pleased when a more powerful version of the handheld is announced. According to a source close to Nintendo speaking to Nikkei Asia, we should expect one to appear next year, but not before March.