Nintendo is a toy company. You don’t buy their hardware thinking that you’ve got a device which is going to take over your living room, delivering television and games and voice recognition and baking you cookies. You buy a big ol’ expensive toy. The kind meant for kids, but also the kind that’s such a good toy that you’ll love it even if you’re not a kid.
The Switch, of course, did it perfectly. Daaaaaad don’t want to go out I haven’t reached a save poi... oh wait. Can’t play Switch because your mother is watching TV? Yes you can. Want to play Mario as a fun, motion controlled casual scroller? Yep. Want to play Mario as the single best speed-running title around with a pro controller? That too.
The Wii was a fantastic toy! Well executed motion controls, with games that took advantage: The kind of game that a six year old and sixty year old could play against each other in a fair match.
The DS, a plasticy clamshell with the heritage of the bomb proof gameboy, was in the hands of kids everywhere, that graphics by necessity somewhat simpler, but no less satisfying.
And then: the Wii U. It was not whatever the aforementioned things were, or maybe it was in a failure-of-execution sort of way. I never saw a kid particularly excited about playing the Wii U. Too much video game, not enough toy.
The Switch doesn’t have gimmicks, it has features. It’s not a primarily first-party console, it has hundreds of indie games on the Eshop from a dollar up. It’s not great because it can be played in the hand and on the TV, it’s great and it can do those things.
Nintendo is also a 128 year old entertainment company.
These are some of its recent toys, and to their credit it seems to me they deeply understand (like Disney) how to serve as a home for beloved characters and re-release new twists on their adventures across decades.
Other characters, now homeless with their platforms and companies shut down, now make appearances in the Nintendo-world.
> And then: the Wii U. It was not whatever the aforementioned things were, or maybe it was in a failure-of-execution sort of way. I never saw a kid particularly excited about playing the Wii U. Too much video game, not enough toy.
Well, my kids love it, and it hits a few of the points you mention. My 8 year old son loves the fact he can play with a few friends (or his sister and a couple friends. They play Minecraft on it all the time, and when it's just him and someone wants to watch TV, he uses the Wii U tablet to play without a TV. It really is the midpoint between a Wii and the Switch. Add to that stuff like Just Dance and New Super Mario Bros (which allows 4 players at once, in coop or less than cooperative styles), and it really is a good toy for groups of kids.
Excellent comment. "Resurgence" only makes sense in a business horserace, or in measuring media coverage.
Nintendo has always been going strong, knows exactly WTF they're doing, executes with precision more or less, and is pretty much always successful. A resurgence in attention has nothing to do with the company.
> Nintendo has always been going strong, knows exactly WTF they're doing, executes with precision more or less, and is pretty much always successful
Perhaps, but I'd definitely class the Wii U as a misstep - sold poorly and clearly wasn't the right device for the market at that time. I really don't think Nintendo was sure at all what it was doing with the Wii U.
I've seen some theories that the reason the Switch has been so great is that given the relative failure of the Wii U they didn't have time to screw up the Switch with the usual supply of badly implemented software features that Nintendo have a bad habit of doing. Unlike the Wii, 3DS etc there is no step counters, web browsers, virtual console, streaming services, audio recorder, pointless low quality stereo cameras etc at launch on Switch - just a simple, lean focus on fun games. The 3DS and Wii were especially bad for pointless built in extra software. I'd honestly be perfectly happy with my Switch if none of those features, perhaps with the exception of Virtual Console, ever come back.
I also love how Nintendo are really embracing the indie game community with the Switch, a pleasant surprise given the less than brilliant relationship Nintendo has had there in the past.
> I'd honestly be perfectly happy with my Switch if none of those features, perhaps with the exception of Virtual Console, ever come back.
Perhaps? Man, the virtual console is a major draw for me. I only have a few games on it, but I view it as integral to the device. Every Nintendo platform needs a way to play the first four Super Mario titles, the early Zeldas, Metroid and Super Metroid at a minimum.
And Wii U would have succeeded, had they called it something else. Most people were like, oh a "Wii"? Got one already, check, keep browsing for Christmas presents...
Product differentiation was a big problem for Wii U. At one point a friend of mine asked me how much a Wii would sell for, this was well after the Wii U launch. I asked "Wii or Wii U" and she said "What's a Wii U?". The Wii U Gamepad failed at delivering the play however you want, whenever you want, experience that the Switch successfully executed on. It was the right direction but the implementation wasn't quite useful enough. I wouldn't have bought a Switch if I couldn't play it as a handheld, for example.
Also true, but my main point was that they even managed to miss the people who always buy the latest and greatest gadget for their grandchildren. Free money. On the table.
I hardly play any video games. When I heard about the Xbox One X, I figured it was the successor to the Xbox One like the Wii U is the successor to the Wii, but I found out that it's actually a high-end version of the Xbox One. It can be confusing!
Agreed. It wasn't until about a year after it was released that I realized it was a different system. It seemed like a new controller for the original Wii.
Gamecube was a success. It wasn't a wild success. It also was the hardware foundation for the Wii (seriously, the wii is a gamecube and an arm chip smashed together).
Wii U was probably profitable. Not a success like a company like Nintendo needs, a strategic misstep that didn't impact their fortunes significantly. Hardware-wise it was a very direct descendant of the Wii (and gamecube). Relatively low development cost. The games developed for it are being ported to the switch to great success.
Just a quick correction, the Wii was still PowerPC based like the GameCube. It just took both the GPU and CPU and upped their power a bit, but was not different from the GameCube in any real significant way.
The Wii did have a few distinctions from the GameCube. However they abstracted them in an interesting way
The Wii itself was still a G3 PPC chip, just add a few hundred Mhz
It also had more RAM (which allowed the "Twiizers" attack over a decade ago)
All the Wii-centric functionality (USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, SD card, etc) was abstracted away inside an ARM co-processor inside the GPU. Named "Starlet" by the homebrew community
Wii software was then written that would simply poke at the API's it exposed to add that functionality
Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. are coowners of The Pokemon Company, but Nintendo is the sole owner of every related trademark.
It might be possible for Creatures Inc and Game Freak to have The Pokemon Company create a Pokemon game for PlayStation (it's not known how ownership/control is divided), but it couldn't use the name Pokemon, the Pokemon logo, or any of the existing Pokemon characters.
And regardless of who owns Pokemon, Nintendo is the one selling Game Boys and DSes to play it on.
If you look at the Switch and the Wii U, it feels to me that they probably stemmed from the same pitch:
"Wouldn't it be great to have a home console that you can take away to the other room for when someone else wants to use the TV?"
The difference is that the tech with the Wii U wasn't good enough yet to make a really great product. With the Switch it is now cheap enough to make a really high quality product.
A toy is by definition only for children. The Switch is a video game system for all ages, so it’s not a toy … unless you think video games are only for children.
I'm not sure I agree with this definition of a "toy"; to me is an item used primarily for "play" (or not exclusively for "work"/"productivity"). Play is most definitely not restricted to children.
Either all major video game consoles are toys, or none of them are. And since they are designed for all age groups, I wouldn’t call them toys, because that unnecessarily associates them with children.
Yes, and I call my cat baby. That‘s fine but in discussions, we should stick to the words’ actual meanings. When you say, video game consoles are toys, you‘re (inadvertently) making a statement that video games are for children. That‘s what you sound like, whether you like it or not. It‘s because most people associate toys with children. So let‘s acknowledge that, and use terms that highlight that video games are for all ages, instead of the opposite.
I am quite nonplussed by your linguistic prescriptivism. It is, however a moot point in a discussion about Nintendo's products. I appreciate your efforts to remain cordial, however.
(In case you didn't get it: All of those words once meant or possibly still currently mean the opposite of the way in which they're being used in this comment. Language is what you make of it.)
Think you might want to re-examine your logic there, my friend.
Just because something is for one group, doesn’t mean that it’s illegal for another group to use it.
Yeah, I think the Switch is for children. I think it’s designed to appeal to kids and be sold, primarily, to kids. I also think that a lot of adults appreciate it regardless because a good toy can appeal to more than just the young.
If you think adults can gain no value from a toy, you are definitely not living the happiest life you could live.
Based on Nintendo’s marketing, the Switch is targeted at young adults. Why do you think it’s for children? The colorful controllers? The art style of the games?
I like the distinction that a game has specific goals, but a toy is just to play with. You can make up your own games to play with toys.
So the more sandboxy a game is (Minecraft) the more it is a toy, but the more you are on rails or limited in what you can do (Tetris), the more it is a game.
A dictionary explains a word’s meaning. I‘m going by the dictionary. You’re free to make up your own definitions, but according to the dictionary, a toy is intended for children. Video game consoles are intended for all ages (equally), so they cannot be considered toys.
A dictionary describes some common uses. It is not comprehensive or authoritative. It changes with the language, not the other way around. Language defines the dictionary, sometimes with a very long lag. Several people have told you of a definition not present in whatever dictionary you referred to. This is meaningful.
If you were to ask any group of people whether toys are intended for children, the majority would say yes. Do we at least agree on that? If would be more useful for all of us, if we, in discussions, used terms in ways that align with what the majority thinks those terms represent. Because if we don’t, we create confusion. This is unnecessary and just wastes our time.
>> If you were to ask any group of people whether toys are intended for children, the majority would say yes. Do we at least agree on that?
No. This is, in fact, the point of contention here. I've heard ads and people calling boats, cars, tools, new games, and so on toys. A few dictionaries I checked agree. Several people in this very thread have the same opinion.
Well, fine. But as someone who has a lot of experience with people telling me to stop playing video game because I’m not a child anymore (as have many if not most young adult gamers), it seems to me that people who call video games toys just reinforce that narrative, so it‘d help if they didn‘t.
Nintendo fucking nailed it with the Switch. It captures the dream of having one "computing" device with you for everything and all of the play modes are so polished they don't feel like gimmicks. Back during the Wii days, there were comments that compared Nintendo to Apple in terms of philosophy and industrial design. This is them at the top of their game again...everything just works...no muss, no fuss. There's a very simple and elegant core philosophical concept to the Switch that they relentlessly pursued until all the edge cases were filed down.
Turn it on, you pick up your game right where you left off in about 5 seconds. Controllers sync in seconds, the dock as a charger and TV connector is seamless, the joycons work beautifully, the mobile experience is top-of-the-line. It comes out of the box ready for multiplayer, something no console has done since maybe the SNES. And the initial software releases are diverse, fantastically produced and incredibly enjoyable.
This is the part where Nintendo's fundamental DNA as a toy company comes into play. It's their job to generate joy, not wow with consumer electronics. It's like every interaction with the system is designed to instill confidence and a preparation for fun. The system is powerful enough for general computing, but they've cut out all that stuff and focused it on gaming. It doesn't even come with a web browser.
There's some knocks against Nintendo for not getting on-line play, and I think that's true. But philosophically, Nintendo wants you to get together with your friends, because that's more fun. I can imagine whiteboard meetings at Nintendo where they analyze the shortest path to joy and maximization of player fun as serious discussions.
I just hope they can keep the software coming so they can sustain this. Nintendo deserves to be top dog for a while. This is a great time to be a gamer and this makes Sony and Microsoft just look like their going through the motions at this point.
If they made a Switch with LTE capability and a web browser, that would also be awesome.
When I see how people react to their phones now that they are used to handhelds - with the constant feeling they've lost control and breaking changes are inevitable - it's only a matter of time before Nintendo wins other markets.
Maybe that would play in other countries, in the US I think would work just as well as the 3G support on the Vita.
I had one of those come up but surprise surprise I never hooked it up to the cell network. Why would I? Just cost a whole bunch of money for something I’m not really going to use.
Look at what happened with Apple. They managed to get “special deals“ from the carriers to allow the new Apple Watches to be on for ‘only’ $10 a month. Of course it was something like $17 or $18 after all the taxes and fees. And they were had been Android smart watches you could add to your plan for only five dollars a month before hand… but the carriers were nice enough to “fix” that.
I’m not a huge online gamer, but even if I was I don’t feel like $20 a month just to use my switch. If I want to do that I’ll use the free tethering I have.
If I had kids? I don’t see why I would pay $20 a month for each of them either.
The idea of putting cell radios and everything seems nice but the truth is that in the US it’s worthless because it’s so expensive to use.
As for a web browser? I have my phone. Frankly I’m happy that the switch is nothing more than a gaming machine. I can sort of see the idea of using it for Netflix watching since it has a decent size screen.
I can’t imagine myself ever opening the web browser once. Featuritis one of the problems that Microsoft had this generation. The WiiU had it also. It’s nice to have a focused device.
It could be, but I feel like the relentless focus of the device is what makes it so great. I would guess that almost no time at all was spent thinking of ways to compromise the system to make sure browsing was a good experience.
I don't play many games. I played my share of Xbox One but the last console I bought myself was an Xbox 360 on launch day.
I just got a Switch and ... wow. What a fantastic piece of tech that's unique in every way. Every design decision is so thoughtful and it all "just works". Playing Breath of the Wild is more fun than any game I can remember. I feel like a kid with a new toy for the first time since I was an actual kid.
I wouldn't say every. The charging of the Joy Cons is a pain. Having to remove the straps, put them in the base of the system, then do the reverse. If you have 3 sets of Joy Cons it's just straight up absurd unless you buy additional accessories, and then you still have the strap song and dance.
Considering the relative tameness of the motion controls in the post-Wii era, I think you can safely forego the straps. It would definitely simplify things if nothing else. I've only used the straps on mine very briefly, and find them more comfortable without them anyway.
Do most people use the straps? I've literally never put mine on my joycons, and I've never felt uncomfortable holding them or worried that I was about to drop them or anything.
Yeah, I don't play many games either, and I picked one up recently. It's a wonderful console to use. I really did not expect to like the portability so much, because I've never been interested in portable consoles. But that ability has turned out to be a really nice feature.
In college, I got to hear a guest lecture from the CFO of Nintendo of America. Some interesting take-aways:
- Unlike their competitors, Nintendo is not diversified in the least. Microsoft could lose a billion dollars a year on the Xbox and wait for a profit. Nintendo can't. So they try to position their products as complimentary to the other consoles.
- Internal culture has zero tolerance for self-congratulation. Apparently there was a memo once about the success of the Wii, and the person was disciplined.
- Very HQ centric. Nintendo of America is only considered a marketing/translation arm. They get virtually no decision making ability.
> Very HQ centric. Nintendo of America is only considered a marketing/translation arm. They get virtually no decision making ability.
I think that is a really big problem for Nintendo going forward. For a long time now I have gotten the feeling the Japanese executive decision making apparatus is very very out of touch with the American / European consumer demands. They understand the Japanese gamer market but they have continued to "not get" the western marketplace at all. The fact they depend on strong sales of their first party franchises should be a strong indicator that Nintendo is not a healthy organization. That will work for awhile as they sell of nostalgia but newer kids don't have the same attachment to Mario, Zelda, Metroid etc. The Nintendo online story is still a joke compared to Sony and Microsoft.
There are many things about the Switch which I love but there are a lot of lessons that Nintendo is having to re-learn the hard way since they’re not watching their competitors.
I remember there was an interview a few years ago with a flat out mentioned that when building an online service they never looked at Xbox live. At all.
That’s how you get to the point that in 2017 you launch consul that doesn’t support cloud saves and ties purchases to the hardware instead of a single account. If something goes wrong with my switch all my purchases die with it. I have to send it in to Nintendo and have them fix/replace it and move my purchases over. And of course if something happens (including a bad software update) I could lose all my progress in all my games.
Sony and Microsoft of had solutions to this forever. You have to pay money for the cloud save back up (which really annoys me) but my games are tied to an account and not the hardware. When my Xbox 360 died? I just bought a new one and all my stuff re-download it. When I bought a PlayStation 4 Pro I could easily move all my stuff from my PS4.
There are a few things were Nintendo could make some small adjustments and make life MUCH easier. I know numerous parents would love the ability to buy a game once and play it on two or three consoles (one for each kid) the way you can with stuff on iOS or the PS4. Instead you have to pay 60 bucks a kid.
I love Nintendo for making fun, interesting, colorful, lighthearted games. It’s nice to have something other than the latest major zombie shooter to play.
I remember working at a console developer about ten years ago, the Japanese developers I worked with said when Nintendo first showed them the Wii, the Nintendo guys had to ask my future coworkers (non Nintendo developers ) about online features of Sony/Microsoft consoles when they were asked about Wii online features because they had no clue what was going on there.
Before that, was on this project to look at Gameboy Advance cartridges and that was kind of a weird racket. All these numbers are from memory and could be wrong. Your development company had to pay something like $10 a cart to Nintendo (which seemed a bit excessive when the retail price was ~$30 for Nintendo carts and other cd/dvd consoles charged $10 per disk and the retail price for those was $50 to $60, PC gaming I think we got about 50% of each sale at something like Best Buy for full price sales so losing $10 of $15 pre retail sale to Nintendo is a huge margin) and reserve production at the official Nintendo plant a year in advance at that point, so you had to correctly predict how many carts you needed or you could lose big because you made too many and had unsold carts or didn't make enough and needed to wait months for an opening in production to meet demand which would be nicer problem to have. So Nintendo may be just too attached to making money off per unit sold to give it up for online convenience.
A friend who works at a fairly large toy manufacturer in Japan says there is a serious problem at the top with management across the various entertainment companies. The aging population leaves large number of of older execs at the top with less and less new talent and ideas coming in. Decisions that once could be made by a single person to take a chance on a talented junior now have to go through and be approved by multiple people so theres less risk taking on new ideas instead of just going with what worked in the past. Many of the global household names, including Mario, were risks on a younger employee.
Nintendo seems to be thriving despite this but it might just be the larger than life people like Miyamoto that are preventing this
That's probably not a problem with Nintendo currently. At least for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, an important part of game designers are composed of fresh blood that challenged the established ideas of what a Zelda game is supposed to be.
> newer kids don't have the same attachment to Mario, Zelda, Metroid etc.
What makes you think this? I know plenty of children who have been exposed to Mario, Zelda, etc. relatively recently and they’re just as attached as you might consider “older kids” to be.
It's not surprising that Nintendo stays HQ focused. They learned from their competitors over the years not to let the local offices get too autonomous. Those of us who remember the bewildering array of hardware from Sega and the mislaunches understand why. Sega of America was notoriously at war with Sega of Japan and even did simultaneous console R&D on their own.
Most traditional Japanese companies were set up like this. The overseas branches are basically distribution companies who make a percentage of their revenue. They are just like any other reseller. Their only leverage is that they can make customization requests if the potential sales increase is there.
This mode has almost killed all Japanese CE companies because the rest of the global market did no longer buy in to the 'paternal' model.
Nintendo is one of the last Japanese companies working in such a mode. And because they always go against the mainstream, they may just be different enough to make it matter.
Nintendo is perhaps the last remaining large company that makes significant effort to include whimsy all over their product experience.
Of course, some of us remember that Apple used to have very whimsical behaviors and interactions throughout their software too, but that has been bludgeoned out of the OS experiences over the last several years.
One more argument: When I turn on the Xbox and the PS4, all they seem to do is download gigabytes of updates that I missed over the last months. I don't play often, so that annoys me. The Switch does not do this. It turns on and off right away and the updates are always optionally executed and have already been downloaded.
This is almost my single favourite thing with the Switch. Not played Mario for almost week, I pick it up and bang, I'm right back where I left off in less than a second. Even my wife commented how great this was after seeing endless load bars on other platforms - download/update system firmware.... download/update game.... watch logos / intro videos... find/load save point... loading screen...
I was really happy to find this too, as the update experience (and system software in general) has been pretty terrible on previous Nintendo home consoles.
I wonder how much of Android they are using at the low levels? Android has recently gotten much, much better at applying system updates, adopting ideas from Chrome OS. Building on Android would be a really low friction way for them to get started on the system software, since they're using a Tegra chip, and it could also explain the improvement in general system software quality in Switch over Wii/Wii U.
my PS4 is set to auto update. I only use it about once every 2 or 3 months but I've never had to wait. I just get 20 notifications when I turn it on about all the updates that happened.
This is not really the case tho - games are now shipping half on the cartridge and then you have to download another few tens of GB - LA Noire for example.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my Nintendo Switch, and is one of my favorite consoles ever. I mostly use it in TV mode, but love that I can take the games with me if I need to.
Due to my busy schedule I'm still playing through Breath of The Wild, but I did restart halfway through when the 1st expansion was released so I could play in Hero Mode. Even though this is the 18th game in the series, it is clearly evident that it was developed with the utmost care and craft, and not yet-another-installment, unlike other big franchises.
I have a brand new copy of Mario Odyssey waiting for me to open up as soon as I have time for it. I'm really happy Nintendo has been able to continue making excellent games in this free to play era.
I've been working my way through Mario Odyssey and I have the same observations: the care and attention to detail is hugely impressive. The game deserves all the positive attention it's been getting from reviewers.
We have a Wii-U. It's actually a very nice machine - if anyone wants a another way of playing Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon I'd highly recommend it. It also has the virtual console, which plays lots of NES/SNES/N64 titles. The machine is also compatible with Wii games, and they look a lot better through the HDMI output.
The Wii-U's mistake was more of a marketing one. People didn't even realise the existence of the product. The gamepad looked like a new 3DS or something, and games didn't take advantage of the touchscreen - like games did for the 3DS.
The other thing that has propelled the Switch were other console companies intended restrictive DRM practices. The kind of market that loved the NES, SNES & Wii were families who just wanted to have a laugh playing games together, and don't take it too seriously.
It was more than marketing. The fact that they made the gamepad drastically increased the price compared to if it was TV only. At the same time they needed the TV side of things because they couldn’t put enough horse power in a portable cancel.
And of course a 480p resistive touch screen didn’t look very good.
The end result was the system was too expensive to be competitive because the graphics were too poor, even if people actually understood what it was.
You’re right that much like some of the stuff on the feeder it ended up being a pointless costs in case people didn’t even really use it to its capability. It was so different from the other consoles that no one was going to put the time into it since the box never sold enough in the first place.
That said? It was a great system, and you’re right that all those games were fantastic. I LOVED super Mario 3-D world, it was one of the best games I’ve played in years.
I admire Nintendo because they have an original vision and they stick to it. They come up with crazy ideas and execute without regard to what competitors are doing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but when they fail they don't fall back to following the crowd, because they believe in their unique vision.
It's a small nitpick, but I've seen this repeated several times and it's just not correct that Wii U was Nintendo's worst selling home console. The Virtual Boy owns that title.
Nintendo seems more like a content company that likes to invest in expensive hardware experiences than a tech company. I'm glad they've managed to hold on to relevancy for another console cycle, but their days have to be numbered right? How many times can you mine Zelda nostalgia in an age when kids have dozens more, and often better titles available for $0.99? Have there been any major 3rd party games developed for their platforms over the last ten years? Is there a game developer that would prioritize Nintendo over either XBOX/Playstation, or iOS/Android?
It's not like they've done what Lego has done, in terms of being a company that was on the brink of failure to becoming the #1 toy company in the world and creating new brands that actually outsell their Star Wars license.
That said, Nintendo was founded in the 19th century and is still kicking. Don't want to write their obituary just yet :)
I'm not sure if you played Breath of the Wild or Odyssey but I don't think they're mining nostalgia with the Switch. There are certainly callbacks but those games are as fresh and as impressive as I've seen in my ~20 years of gaming. YMMV, of course...but I have really been impressed with Nintendo's approach to refining gameplay and genre.
The Switch has seen some pretty decent third party support on the Switch (Doom, Rocket League w/Crossplay, FIFA, NBA, Elder Scrolls) that haven't really been around in prior generations. It seems like indie games are flooding to the Switch. We'll see if large third party support sticks around but I think as long as the games sell, people will port/develop for the Switch.
I love Nintendo's approach this generation. I've really enjoyed diving into their games after barely playing the Wii and completely skipping the Wii U. This definitely feels like a resurgence - but obviously we'll see in 6-12 months. But they're definitely back on everyone's radar.
Breath of the Wild is the best Zelda game in the series (IMO, and I haven't played either the Gamecube or Wii U games). On top of that they are still releasing content for it! I bought the switch to play Zelda (back in March) and I'm still playing it now.
Admittedly I don't have that much time for games and I'm trying to 100% BotW.
I wouldn't call it the best game. It's a good game, and quite popular, but also very flawed. It's probably the best 3D-Zelda, but personally I prefer the 2D-Zeldas anytime because they work better as a game. BotW is more an experience that happend to also offer some game-elements.
Breath of the Wild is the the most different game in the Zelda line ever made. It completely broke with established Zelda tropes and "tradition", the most since Skyward Sword in 2011 when they publicly assumed their wish to break new ground and not fall into nostalgia baiting. So I think it is quite a bit unfair to say Nintendo is simply cashing in on nostalgia, or that 99c App Store games are often better in quality than the almost universally acclaimed Zelda titles.
Also, Lego wasn't exactly on the brink of failure when Knudstorp stepped in, and actually what they did to improve their profitability was precisely go back to the origins and hire people with knowledge and understanding of Lego culture.
I'd agree that they need more than just Zelda and Mario[kart]. There certainly are games available, but there are not too many of these that I'm particularly enthusiastic about playing.
However those titles are extremely good - they're not just churning out sequels for the sake of it, they're genuinely producing great games. They're just not making too many :-/
Keep in mind the DS/3DS has an extensive library of excellent third party games. A lot of folks tend to overlook just how overwhelmingly successful the 3DS is and has been -- Nintendo basically prints money with it. It's actually one of the best game catalogues for any console out there.
I strongly suspect we'll see many of these titles migrate to the Switch over the next several years, which could end up making it a very compelling package.
The "problem" is that Nintendo consoles usually have a decent amount third party titles, but they a) tend to be of niche genres b) most Western Nintendo consumers specifically buy their consoles for the first party titles c) either Nintendo or the publisher does a poor job of marketing them in the West (because of a and b).
I don't play Zelda games for nostalgia, I play them because they are flipping good games, with only a couple duds over the last ~30 years. No 99 cent game can compete.
Nintendo claims 47 third party developers have planned to develop on the switch.
You had a bunch of pretty good answers already. I just wanted to say that I can tell you haven't played any desktop console Zelda game. I can't find any game of similar quality and length in a phone. The closest I've seen is Oceanhorn in iOS which was pretty good for a mobile platform, but very short, easy and linear compared with console games.
This could potentially be argued about Nintendo before their most recent Zelda and Mario. But Breath of the Wild and Odyssey redefine their respective genres and put just about all other third party games in those genres to shame. They took more risks with these games than pretty much all other major companies put together in the past 5-10 years.
Shameless (don't tell Nintendo) - but if you're interested in casually playing classic NES games in your browser I've scrapped together an emulator that includes:
- 30+ classic games
- Full screen mode
- Save/load game
- USB Gamepad support
- Mobile support
- No Flash, all JavaScript
Nintendo found its niche. They couldn't compete with MS or Sony in the home console market. But they OWN portables. Especially now that Sony bowed out after the Vita.
I don't think it's that they couldn't, it's that they consistently choose not to. Nintendo's first party titles are arguably much stronger than those of Sony and Microsoft, but Nintendo is not particularly interested in the graphical power arms race.
They'd rather build something that fits in the pricing segment they've always been in, and maybe try to innovate on how people interact with the console.
Their strategy makes Nintendo somewhat unattractive to AAA third party developers but they're profitable on every system sold, and they sell plenty of copies of their major franchises.
Cellphones have completely cannibalized the portable market. I will never buy a portable; I've got multiple generations of Samsung phone equipment happy to step into that niche
>Of course, there’s no guarantee that Nintendo’s current momentum will continue.
We have seen this story from Nintendo before so the cynic in me is hesitant to say that this is a resurgence that has any lasting power. The dual mobile/console functionality of the Switch seems to be almost as gimmicky as the motion controls of the Wii. The success of the Switch sales are largely built off two amazing games in Zelda and Mario while the Wii was built of the excellent of Wii Sports. It is also worth noting that those Switch games are single player compared with the multiplayer Wii Sports. It is therefore unlikely to have the same type of viral growth that the old console had when someone would have fun playing the game on a friend's system and immediately want to purchase one of their own. Meanwhile both Sony and Microsoft have released revamps of their consoles to increase their lead in performance compared with the Switch. That difference will only get worse as games start to target the newer hardware of those updated systems. I would want to give it another 6-12 months before declaring that Nintendo is truly back.
> The dual mobile/console functionality of the Switch seems to be almost as gimmicky as the motion controls of the Wii.
As someone that was extremely skeptical of the Switch but ended up grabbing one anyway: it's not as gimmicky as it seems. The truth is that while the Switch is being advertised as a hybrid, the real strength of this console, to me, is that it's super agile to use, while still being a console in the traditional sense. Like a smartphone or a modern laptop, you can wake it with the press of a button, play for a while, then put it to sleep with the press of a button again, then resume playing instantly later. That's less about the gimmick and more about what a modern videogame console ought to be today, but it's not immediately evident to the naked eye until you start playing with it regularly.
I personally find that I play more often with my Switch than with previous videogames consoles I've owned, simply because of that agility, because I can fit it in my life without making time for hours long sessions.
Pfft. I'm a switch owner, and while I do agree the dual nature of the Switch looked gimmicky, it turned out to be surprisingly useful, more than I expected. But that's besides the point.
The thing about "performance" is that, in the end, nobody gives a crap about that. Really. What the customer cares about are what games are available, and how much fun they can get out of it. The console market is one where walled gardens fight with the IP they have, not with the performance of the consoles (though that does help strengthen the IP). Now Nintendo is in a super strong position there : They've got Mario and Zelda, basically the icons of video-games. They also don't exactly target the same age-range. Nintendo is all about family games, targeting a very wide age-range. From what I've seen of the "lead" games of Sony and Microsoft, they've all but abandoned that segment.
I don't think Nintendo ever really declined. They screwed up with the WiiU, but that's basically the only screwup in recent history.
I guess the benefit of the mobility is highly dependent on the user, but from what I have heard is that for many people the system might occasionally travel with a user, but it is played while attached to a TV an overwhelming majority of the time.
Regarding your other points, everything you said there has been true about previous Nintendo consoles. However the Wii U sold worse than the Gamecube which sold worse than the N64 which sold worse than the SNES which sold worse than the NES all while the industry grew as a whole. If you are looking at the success of Nintendo's home consoles, the Wii is a huge outlier. I don't think the focus on "fun" and "family" has yet been proven to be successful in comparison to Sony's and Microsoft's strategies.
> but from what I have heard is that for many people the system might occasionally travel with a user, but it is played while attached to a TV an overwhelming majority of the time.
Why go off of anecdotes? In a recent investor Q&A Nintendo revealed their own figures that show 30% of people primarily use it in portable or tabletop mode [1].
Personally, I primarily used it in portable mode until a few weeks ago - and now I use it docked to a TV much more due to Mario Odyssey benefitting from using separate joycons.
> If you are looking at the success of Nintendo's home consoles, the Wii is a huge outlier.
Only if you don't consider portable consoles like the 3DS, where Nintendo has been dominant for a long time. Even against the technologically superior PSP/PS Vita.
Edit: it's also important not to confuse sales volume with profitability. If modern, 4K console games are as expensive to make as EA and Activision claim the underpowered nature of the Switch is a benefit to Nintendo as it keeps their development costs down.
The NintendoSwitch subreddit polled their userbase on how they used the console, they got 7192 responses, and it looks like TV use versus handheld use is split fairly well down the middle.
Anecdata: it's around 50/50 in our house. We'll play a multiplayer game, and afterwards undock it so one person can play while someone else watches TV.
People including yourself have been missing the point with Nintendo's raw performance for decades now. The Xbox, Playstation and Switch are all using off-the-shelf components, the days of console companies developing custom hardware really ended in the 90s, at best the early 2000s (PS3).
This means that today the fact that Nintendo has a slower console is purely a pricing and strategic decision, not some lack of ability to execute. Nintendo knows that when they release a console they might get some AAA games released on it in the first couple of years, but after that devs of AAA will leave it behind for more powerful consoles.
They're fine with that, if you want AAA games you buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. Nintendo's comfortable in their market segment. They're willing to ignore the AAA market to bring their costs down.
There's a name for the 3rd console that tried to compete on performance with the big boys, the Dreamcast.
> The success of the Switch sales are largely built off two amazing games in Zelda and Mario while the Wii was built of the excellent of Wii Sports.
I mean, the Switch does not seem to have an issue with its library. There are several multiplayer games right now: Arms, 1-2-Switch, Mario Kart, Splatoon 2. They have huge first party franchises (Mario, Zelda, Super Smash Bros, Pokemon, Metroid) and less huge franchises (Kirby, Donkey Kong, Fire Emblem, etc, etc) to draw on. Plus, the Switch has already seen great third party dev support with Skyrim, Rocket League, Mario/Rabbids, and others receiving Switch ports.
It's just up to Nintendo to not botch it's first party releases. But given how incredibly polished both Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey were, I don't see that being an issue.
> It is also worth noting that those Switch games are single player compared with the multiplayer Wii Sports. It is therefore unlikely to have the same type of viral growth that the old console had when someone would have fun playing the game on a friend's system and immediately want to purchase one of their own.
Really? As mentioned above, there are plenty of multiplayer games for switch. Plus, the Switch is portable. You can take it on vacation, kids can bring it to a friends house, and so forth. I don't think either exposure or lack of multiplayer is an issue it currently has. I personally played a co-worker's Switch at lunch during work (3 people playing Mario Kart at a lunch table) and plan on picking one up for myself for Christmas.
Probably tangential to the article, but this quote depressed me more than it probably should:
> “During Thanksgiving break, when I go home to see my family, I can play Legend of Zelda while I’m up there instead of being like, ‘Man, I can’t wait to go home so I can go play my console.’”
Videogames are great, and I have a great time playing them. But man, time with family is so limited. You only get one trip around the block in this life, and at the end of the day, I'd rather have spent more time with loved ones than with a videogame.
You say this, but what do you do when everyone has run out of things to talk about and everyone is just watching TV? Heck, going back for spring festival is this times ten. I’m all for family time, but I’d rather spend it doing something together.
Not only that, you can get some pretty good party games for the switch. Both the latest jack box party pack which is a ton of fun, and overcooked or available. I’ve had a ton of fun with my family with both of them.
I believe this is also the point of 1-2 switch, but I haven’t played that.
Oh c'mon. You go to see relatives and it's often great, but there's a lot of downtime. If I'm into something, _anything_, it's going to be on my mind during those periods, and the switch helps with that.
Playing the Switch with my wife and 2 boys is family time. Currently Mario Kart, but there's more than a few other co-op split-screen games when that runs out.
We did the same with MK, Smash Bros, New Super Mario on the Wii. And the early years of my marriage involved a lot of time together playing Mario Kart (again!) on the N64. There might have been tequila too... we've eased up on that these days.
This Thanksgiving I played Jackbox Party Pack on the Switch with 7 of my other brother/cousins. There was a lot of fun with family had that day, and it included the Switch.
People love Nintendo for some reason, but they just don't move the needle for me. But I'm first and foremost a PC gamer pretty far out on the grognard end of the spectrum and always have been; I'd rather play Crusader Kings or War in the East than twitchy platformers.
I just got a GPDWin. It's definitely underpowered compared to the Switch, so the only possible interpretation of your "gimped" must refer to the range of games available. (Mainly because the GPU sucks.)
It's more favorable to compare it to the DS line for sure, but the fact you can run whatever you want, are only limited by the hardware, makes any other mobile gaming platform comparably gimped. The GPD Win has been able to run Skyrim, Doom 4... The Switch will run them better, sure. On the other hand if you're home you can set up Steam for in-home streaming from your full powered gaming rig. The GPD Win just makes a lot of great tradeoffs.
Literally never heard of this before, and the reviews are mixed while price is high. Mario Odyssey and Zelda: BOTW are some of the most amazing games ever conceived. Tons of content and countless hours of fun. I think the safer bet is on the Switch at the moment.
Yeah the Amazon link I gave is about $100 more than it should be. On Gearbest it's currently $50 less... welcome to non multinational megacorp hardware I guess? :) Same with less than stellar reviews. Performance may be greatly improved by properly applying thermal paste.
Steam has a ton of games equal to or better than the 2 big Switch games on basically whichever metrics you like, and many of those will run on the GPD Win. From a price per hours of mobile fun metric, there's no comparison. Still, good Nintendo games have a charm that resists straightforward comparison on metrics, but that's why they've remained relevant. After however many years it has been since Galaxy 2, we finally have a proper Mario game again, yay.
The Switch, of course, did it perfectly. Daaaaaad don’t want to go out I haven’t reached a save poi... oh wait. Can’t play Switch because your mother is watching TV? Yes you can. Want to play Mario as a fun, motion controlled casual scroller? Yep. Want to play Mario as the single best speed-running title around with a pro controller? That too.
The Wii was a fantastic toy! Well executed motion controls, with games that took advantage: The kind of game that a six year old and sixty year old could play against each other in a fair match.
The DS, a plasticy clamshell with the heritage of the bomb proof gameboy, was in the hands of kids everywhere, that graphics by necessity somewhat simpler, but no less satisfying.
And then: the Wii U. It was not whatever the aforementioned things were, or maybe it was in a failure-of-execution sort of way. I never saw a kid particularly excited about playing the Wii U. Too much video game, not enough toy.
The Switch doesn’t have gimmicks, it has features. It’s not a primarily first-party console, it has hundreds of indie games on the Eshop from a dollar up. It’s not great because it can be played in the hand and on the TV, it’s great and it can do those things.
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