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Nintendo Says Announcement on Switch Successor 'This Fiscal Year'

Anticipation for a successor to the hugely popular Switch is running high. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
Anticipation for a successor to the hugely popular Switch is running high. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
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Nintendo Says Announcement on Switch Successor 'This Fiscal Year'

Anticipation for a successor to the hugely popular Switch is running high. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
Anticipation for a successor to the hugely popular Switch is running high. Richard A. Brooks / AFP

Nintendo said Tuesday it will make an announcement about a highly anticipated new console by the end of March 2025 as sales decline of the hugely popular Switch, which is now in its eighth year.
Despite logging a record net profit in the year to March, helped by the weak yen, the game giant expects net profit to drop nearly 40 percent in the current financial year.
Players and investors have been hungry for news about a successor to the Switch, and the Japanese company said a statement was finally forthcoming.
"We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year," said a post on social media platform X that was attributed to company president Shuntaro Furukawa.
Nintendo said net profit in 2023-24 totaled 490 billion yen ($3.2 billion) -- beating its previous record of 480 billion set three years ago, when the Switch became a must-have gadget to pass time during pandemic lockdowns.
"Good sales were posted for 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom'," it said, adding that new titles in the "Super Mario Bros" and "Pikmin" series had also performed well.
The "Super Mario" movie helped sell games from the Mario franchise and there was a "substantial increase in foreign exchange gains and interest income".
The yen has been on a downwards slide, boosting profits for companies such as Nintendo that sell goods overseas.
But the firm expects net profit to drop nearly 40 percent to 300 billion yen in the current financial year.
Hardware sales for 2023-24 totalled 15.7 million units, down nearly 13 percent.
"While this represents a decrease from the previous fiscal year, sales are steady for a platform in its eighth year after launch," Nintendo said, referring to the Switch.
The company said hardware sales were expected to continue to fall in the current financial year to 13.5 million units.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu said before the earnings release that Nintendo consoles typically have a "six-to-seven year lifecycle".
"Given hardware drives about 40 percent of total sales, its drag on (the) overall top line might extend into fiscal 2025 absent a new gaming gadget," he said.
Hideki Yasuda, analyst at Toyo Securities, said investors have been focused on when a new console would be announced.
"It would be a major disappointment if Nintendo couldn't release it by March 2025," he said.

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Technology

Meta Eyes Record $97.5 Billion Equity Raise to Fund AI Expansion

(FILES) This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP)
(FILES) This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP)
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Meta Eyes Record $97.5 Billion Equity Raise to Fund AI Expansion

(FILES) This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP)
(FILES) This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP)

Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it increased its largest-ever equity fundraising to $97.5 billion as the social media giant aggressively expands its AI infrastructure.

The social media giant said it was increasing the common stock offering it announced on Monday from $22.5 billion to $25 billion, priced at $625.00 per share.

Meta also priced its 250 million depositary shares at $50 per share.

The Facebook parent has launched public offerings worth about $35 billion in common and preferred stock, and said it also plans to launch a separate at-the-market share sale program, under which a company sells shares gradually at prevailing market prices, worth up to $60 billion.

The company will launch the larger share sale program after its new non-voting Class C shares begin trading, expected in the first quarter of 2027, but it ⁠has not yet ⁠finalized the sale's timing and terms.

Meta's fundraising plan, among the biggest by an AI company, has also drawn interest of up to $5 billion in total from Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom for Class A shares.

In a separate statement, Nvidia said it would invest $3 billion in Meta's equity offering.

Their funding interest adds to concerns about an increasingly circular flow of capital in the AI industry, as chip suppliers help finance the expansion of one of their biggest customers. Meta has been pouring money into chips and data centers to compete better with OpenAI and Anthropic.

"We expect investors to continue ⁠to question the financing and potential for future capital raises," William Blair analysts said in a note.

"Overall, we believe the financing reinforces both Meta's confidence in the long-term returns from AI investment and the increasingly capital-intensive nature of pursuing that opportunity."

The company's shares fell about 1.4% in morning trading.

The latest fundraising further underscores a shift among big technology companies increasingly tapping debt markets and raising equity to bolster their AI infrastructure, after previously relying on cash to fund their investments.

In June, Google's parent company Alphabet increased its equity offerings to $84.75 billion.

Separately on Monday, SpaceX said an affiliate of Apollo Global Management will buy AI chips and server hardware and lease them to the rockets-to-AI firm, in a deal with total principal payments of about $40 billion.

Meta has committed to spending about $825 billion in the future, driven primarily by growing investments in data centers, AI-related infrastructure, and cloud computing power.

But the ⁠aggressive expansion has eroded its ⁠historically strong free cash flow.

The company reported a $2.12 billion cash burn in the third quarter, its first negative free cash flow in over a decade, compared with a positive cash flow of $10.63 billion a year ago.

Still, the early popularity of its consumer-focused AI agent Muse and release of a competitive new series of AI models have helped partly justify Meta's aggressive investments.

"We believe that Meta will ultimately produce a profitable AI business and its returns longer-term should help the company diversify, although the path may not be linear," Reuters quoted William Blair analysts as saying.

The company had $82.45 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities and $80.92 billion in long-term debt as of September 30, according to its latest quarterly filing.

Last week, Meta raised the lower end of its annual capital expenditure forecast to $135 billion to $145 billion.

The company said it would issue Class C common stock in January 2027, effectively creating a two-for-one split, to fund acquisitions and retain top talent while maintaining CEO Mark Zuckerberg's control.

Meta agreed to grant Zuckerberg Class C shares he can sell to help pay a potential California billionaire wealth tax, in exchange for his commitment to remain in California.

Technology

How to Listen to Your Favorite Music, Online or Off the Grid

As shown here in the Amazon Music (left) and Apple Music apps for Android, you can temporarily download local copies of a playlist or album to your phone so you can listen later without an internet connection (Amazon; Apple)
As shown here in the Amazon Music (left) and Apple Music apps for Android, you can temporarily download local copies of a playlist or album to your phone so you can listen later without an internet connection (Amazon; Apple)
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How to Listen to Your Favorite Music, Online or Off the Grid

As shown here in the Amazon Music (left) and Apple Music apps for Android, you can temporarily download local copies of a playlist or album to your phone so you can listen later without an internet connection (Amazon; Apple)
As shown here in the Amazon Music (left) and Apple Music apps for Android, you can temporarily download local copies of a playlist or album to your phone so you can listen later without an internet connection (Amazon; Apple)

JD Biersdorfer*

Streaming services have long provided the most popular way to listen to music, but downloading things digitally has its perks. That’s why some people still prefer to buy their music instead of renting it.

Downloaded files will eat into your device’s available storage space, but you don’t have to worry about inconsistent playback from an unstable internet connection or chewing through megabytes on a metered data plan. And, with some online stores, buying music directly puts more money in the artist’s pocket.

So whether you stream, download or both, here’s a guide to storing music on your phone so you can play it wherever you are.

Offline Listening

If the occasional lack of internet connectivity is your main issue with streaming, most major services allow you to download songs to your phone for playback when you’re offline. However, the files are not permanent, and you may need to have a paid subscription at a certain tier.

Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora, Qobuz, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music are among the subscription services with an offline-listening option. In most cases, just look for a downward-pointing arrow or menu with a download option. Then collect the tracks you want to take along before you leave on that camping trip or lengthy flight.

Personal Libraries

Before streaming services, many people kept a music library of audio files ripped from compact discs or purchased from digital stores. If you’ve never gotten around to adding those files to your phone, you can copy them with a few different methods. (Note that tracks that were originally sold with copyright protection might not play.)

If you adopted YouTube Music after Google discontinued its Google Play Music store in 2020, you can upload up to 100,000 songs to YouTube Music from your computer — even with a free plan. Then you can download them to your phone for offline listening in the YouTube Music mobile app.

Go to music.youtube.com in your computer’s web browser and drag the audio files into the browser window. (Or, click on your profile photo in the top-right corner of the window, choose Upload from the menu and select the files.) Tracks in the FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG and WMA formats work, but not M4P files or other copy-protected formats.

If you subscribe to the Apple Music streaming service on your iOS or Android device, you can download files previously purchased from the iTunes Store to the Music app by tapping the download arrow next to the title.

If you don’t subscribe to Apple Music, iOS users can download the files from the iTunes Store app. Just tap the Purchased tab and then Music to see your list. Tap the Download icon to send the files to the Music app.

Alternatively, Apple’s iTunes Match service ($25 a year), uploads the music library on your computer — including songs you’ve ripped from CDs — to the cloud. You can then download those songs on iOS devices using the same Apple account.

Traditional methods of transferring files between computer and phone using cloud-storage sites or USB cables may also work. Apple’s support site has a guide for manually syncing music libraries between computers and its iOS-based devices.

You can also find third-party tools like Droid Transfer for transferring files between PCs and Android phones, and DoubleTwist CloudPlayer for music stashed on file-storage sites.

Where to Buy

Digital download shops have been around since the 1990s, although buying songs now might take extra steps. Thanks to app-store regulations, you now typically buy files from the company’s website, then download them in its separate mobile app.

For example: Amazon Music. You purchase audio files on the Amazon website and download them to your phone from the Purchased tab in the Amazon Music mobile app.

Similarly, the Qobuz subscription service has a music store on its website and mobile apps for Android and iOS to download purchases.

SoundCloud and Bandcamp, both distribution platforms highlighting independent artists, let you stream and buy digital music downloads.

A Windows version of iTunes still exists, but Apple retired the Mac software in 2019 in favor of its Apple Music app — which serves as both a subscription service and the jukebox software for your personal audio library.

You can still buy music directly through the iTunes Store app for iOS, where it lands in the Music app. And the Apple Music app for Windows and Mac computers has an iTunes Store section.

If downloading music brings memories of those peak iPod years, you can visually indulge yourself. Free apps like ClassiPod (for Android) or SepiaPod (for iOS) play your music library and provide a nostalgic interface right there on your modern smartphone.

*The New York Times

Technology

Microsoft Offers Voluntary Exit Packages to 60,000 Staff

The Microsoft logo and a keyboard in this illustration taken October 19, 2026. (Reuters)
The Microsoft logo and a keyboard in this illustration taken October 19, 2026. (Reuters)
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Microsoft Offers Voluntary Exit Packages to 60,000 Staff

The Microsoft logo and a keyboard in this illustration taken October 19, 2026. (Reuters)
The Microsoft logo and a keyboard in this illustration taken October 19, 2026. (Reuters)

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, the company said on Monday, roughly a quarter of its workforce, as the tech giant seeks to cut costs while pouring money into artificial intelligence.

Staff on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and Britain at vice president level and below will be eligible, a Microsoft spokesperson said, while some groups of employees, including some working on data centers, sales and marketing, are excluded.

"The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter," Amy Coleman, an executive vice president and chief people officer, told employees in a memo.

It's the second voluntary buyout offer that Microsoft has offered employees this year.

In April, the company reportedly offered around seven percent of its US workforce the option to retire early.

Around 30 percent of those eligible took the voluntary retirement plan, according to CNBC.

Microsoft had 223,000 employees globally at the end of June, down from 228,000 at the end of 2025, according to regulatory filings.

Around 27 percent of Microsoft's workforce is eligible for the new buyout offer.

The company is expected to report quarterly earnings later this week.