Nintendo has broken its silence on the swath of leaks surrounding its next piece of hardware.

In a statement to the Japanese daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun, the gaming giant said alleged images of its next console, colloquially referred to as the ‘Switch 2,’ are “not official.” Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen numerous purported renders of the Switch 2 and even apparent actual pieces of the hardware itself, like the motherboard and Joy-Cons. These leaks pointed to the Switch 2 featuring the likes of magnetic Joy-Cons, a mysterious ‘C’ button, a mouse-like Joy-Con optical sensor and a U-shaped kickstand.

Most recently, accessory maker Genki was at CES in Vegas to showcase a mockup of the Switch 2 it claimed was based on a real model of the console it had seen. This replica seemingly corroborated many of the aforementioned hardware leaks. Interestingly, though, Genki is now walking back everything, telling the Japanese publication Game*Spark that it hadn’t actually seen the Switch 2 and had simply based its mockup on leaked information that had already been circulating. This is despite the fact that Genki was insistent on having seen the Switch 2 just days earlier and even launched a webpage (which is still live at the time of writing) to more widely promote its mockup.

Given all of this, it seems more than likely that Nintendo threatened Genki with some sort of legal response, given how brazenly the accessory maker was talking about another company’s unannounced hardware. It should also be noted that Nintendo saying the leaks are “not official” isn’t the same as flat-out denying their validity; it simply means they didn’t directly come from the company itself.

Ultimately, though, we’ll have to wait for Nintendo to formally reveal the Switch 2 to know more definitively. So far, the company has only officially stated that the Switch 2 will be revealed before the end of March and that it will feature backwards compatibility with the Switch. Hopefully, we’ll get a reveal sooner than later given the rampant leaks.

Source: Sankei Shimbun Via: IGN