Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa declined to comment on whether Nintendo plans to release new Switch hardware this fiscal year, after previously saying no to the claims.
In the past, Nintendo has proven to be pretty open about the fact that it's usually working on some kind of new hardware or at least that it's got some ideas for consoles in the future. The Switch has been a bit of an outlier for the company, with recent claims from Nintendo that it thinks it's only halfway into its lifecycle five years in.
This honesty about what it's up to has previously led Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa to deny that any new Switch hardware would be released by the company in the near future when asked during financial reports, which is what he did when asked about new hardware following the launch of the Switch OLED.
However, as noted by Bloomsberg reporter Takashi Mochizuki, Shuntaro Furukawa actually declined to comment on whether Nintendo planned to release new Switch hardware in the next fiscal year, which is different from denying it all together and makes it seem as if something is in the works at Nintendo.
Mochizuki's tweet reads, "Nintendo President Furukawa declined to comment today when asked whether it plans to release a new Switch hardware this FY. Two years ago, when it didn't release a Switch hardware, he clearly said there won't be".
One of the most consistent rumours of this generation is that Nintendo is currently working on a more powerful version of the Switch that will bring it closer to other consoles. Nintendo has previously denied these claims, but with Shuntaro Furukawa now declining to comment instead, it seems a little more likely to happen.
The financial report also revealed that Nintendo console sales have dropped by 20 percent in the 2021 fiscal year, which Nintendo says is due to the ongoing chip shortages. In response, Nintendo said that it expected to sell two million less consoles during this fiscal year.