Rumours of the Switch successor are hotting up by the day, though Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa seems keen to challenge the accuracy of the claims (thanks, Nintendo Everything).

In a recent financial call, the contents of which were written up on the Japanese site Mainichi, Furukawa dug into some of the latest ‘Switch 2′ discussions. Speaking to the claim that Nintendo’s follow-up console was showcased behind closed doors at this year’s Gamescom event, the company president stated, “The rumors online that appear to be public information are not accurate”. (according to Simon Griffin and SatsumaFS’ translation for Nintendo Everything).

Remember, this rumour stated that certain developers had the chance to see a demo of the next Nintendo system at the Cologne conference this year (a rumour corroborated by both Eurogamer and VGC), and that the console was allegedly capable of running Breath of the Wild at 4K 60fps as well as Epic’s The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 demo.

According to Nintendo Everything’s translation, Furukawa also took the opportunity to comment on the company’s dual-screen patent that sparked rumours of the potential ‘Switch 2’ design just weeks ago. On this, Furukawa stated the following:

We applied for a patent knowing the information would be made public. This does not necessarily mean we plan to equip future products with this.

Now, you might read the above comments and want to put all of the rumour talk to bed, and fair enough, but let’s bear in mind that business statements like this are rarely all that simple. It makes a lot of sense that Nintendo would deny (or at least challenge) rumours this close to the holiday season as word of an upcoming console runs the risk of damaging sales for the current Switch SKU as people decide to wait instead of picking one up for Christmas.

Let’s also not forget that Nintendo has been known to make denials in the past only for the rumours to then be confirmed a short while later. Remember the official statement that the 3DS would not be getting a redesign? Yeah, our XL models would like a word…

At the time of writing, we’re pretty certain that no official word on the ‘Switch 2’ will be coming our way this year as all signs seem to point towards a 2024 announcement and maybe release. For the full rundown of everything that we know about the next console so far including chips, features and release rumours, be sure to check out our guide below.