The success of the Wii wasn't down to the fact that they created a sub-par spec'd console with a lack of 3rd party. It was down to the low price point and pack in-game that gained attention from the casual crowd. Maybe Wii didn't need 3rd party support from a business standpoint as Nintendo was making money on each unit sold from the get go, but they definitely need 3rd party support for the Wii U and they didn't get it due the low userbase and lower spec'd console compared to Sony and Microsoft and pricing strategy.

Whether people like it or not, consoles need a sufficient userbase for developers to create games for that platform otherwise the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Wii U didn't have the userbase for 3rd party support and relied too heavily on 1st party output.

That's why if Nintendo wanted to be different from Sony and Microsoft, they should have focused on their strengths which is portable gaming and unify that into the home console side of the business.

If they are trying to unify their systems into one, what is the point in creating a two seperate consoles where the developers then have to split resources again between two platforms?

@chobobot: I'm not suggesting they create two different platforms. I'm suggesting they create two different configurations with the exact same specs. Your 3DS-successor would have the same processing power and run the exact same games as your Switch would. The point in that would be like having a Galaxy Note or a Galaxy phone. They run the same stuff, it's just a different use case from a practical standpoint.

As for the rest, I think the Switch is being dismissed a little too quickly. The Wii proved Nintendo's strong side is not just their handheld gaming device. The Switch has not proven itself yet, but it's also way too early to already dismiss it as a mistake. It might end up being incredibly successful. It's clear you think from what is shown so far the chances of it being successful are abysmal, but I don't think it is. On that we really have to wait and see.

Just responding here, but mostly specifically to the bolded. I think it's still fair to criticize Nintendo for missing the mark here. What audience is this exactly for then? You said it yourself, it's not designed for gaming on the go it's designed to be portable. Why can't I do that with my Wii U? With a touch screen, with Mario Maker and Zelda on it as soon as March. Hell I'm pretty sure the Wii U Gamepad has more battery life than the Switch undocked. I just don't see what market Nintendo is serving here that isn't already served. That was the whole point of designing a stage and swap platform on the go for them. Because they don't have any market but the 3DS. They are getting CRUSHED in the home console market, software wise everyone is getting crushed on the PC space. The one thing Nintendo had going for it is with the lack of focus on the Vita and the primarily touch screen based controls of any other handheld platform (mobile/tablets) they were your go to for long flights, car rides, playing something while binge watching an old show etc. But now they are nothing. They are a home console that I can dock to play Nintendo specific games since I don't use their home consoles for anything else, and to top it all off the only interesting software Nintendo has going for it at launch also happens to be coming out on a system that most who buy first party Nintendo games already own. Oh and did we mention that system has access to arguably one of the only other first party games that people liked that being Mario Maker? A game that some still wonder if it'll even get remade or put onto something like the Switch due to the nature of editing etc.

Like the entire company is in a mess. There really is no way else to explain it imo. Even in terms of launch lineups, which are generally weak they have leaned harder and harder into the casual software side, a side they have repeatedly tested into the ground of evidence. Casuals don't buy software. They go up and down on the wave of whether or not gimmicks are cool enough or interesting enough for them to mess with for a set period of time before moving on. See Wii Sports, Rock Band, hell you could throw Call of Duty and Skryim even in those categories. Nintendo isn't selling a system to these casuals, and you have to wonder if their inexplicable ability to deliver a system that fans and more "involved" members of the gaming community have been clamoring for ages will begin to show even more sales holes. It's easy to see a world where this console abjectly fails to be honest. It's not that big of a stretch. I mean there are 50 million PS4's out there almost by comparison. And the Switch's only hook over a home console is that you can undock it to play a game...for 3 hours of battery life. :P Even it's gimmick it doesn't do well.

@zevvion said:

From both a consumer and business perspective this would not be ideal, why would a consumer buy a home and portable console with the same specs that runs the same games just to play it in different environments. Now you may say that the consumer doesn't have to buy both which is true, but from a business standpoint it costs money for them to research, design and manufacture two platforms.

The success of the Wii was an exception for Nintendo when you compare it the Gamecube and Wii U. Their strength is with portable gaming which something Sony and Microsoft isn't good at.

@chobobot: I'm not going to claim the costs of creating a fully portable Switch are nonexistent, but I dare bet they would be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Remember they are not making an entirely new platform at all. They are just creating slightly different hardware at that point. It's like the 2DS or New3DS they put out. They do those revisions when they don't really have to. Granted, it's not exactly the same thing, but it's far closer to that than to an actual new platform. A handheld Switch would basically be a smaller Switch tablet, altered in some respects. It's not that unlikely.

@devise22 I mean, sure the Wii U gamepad should have more battery life than the Switch, that would make total sense. Except it doesn't. It only has longer battery life if you use it as a controller. If you are playing your game on the actual gamepad it depletes after 2-4 hours. The updated battery they brought out later increased that to 3-5. That's still comparable and you can't take your Wii U gamepad with you.

The market they are serving is me. Yes, I own a 3DS, but that's more so I can play those games rather than me wanting the system to have that particular configuration. I actually love the sound of the Switch. I would want to play 3DS games more comfortably and/or on a proper screen, hell yes. It is far more than a 'gimmick to play a game for three hours'. I've illustrated my own use case for it many times, but when I go to a friend's house which I do regularly and want to show her a game or play a game with her, there are 0 systems out now that do that.

I can't take my PS4 or PC over to her house realistically and comfortably. I can use her laptop but at that point I'd have to download the game in question first onto it which will take more than four hours with her connection. And then, we can't even play together. We'd have to do old school 'watch me play if I die it'll be your turn' stuff. I can bring the Switch, easily, comfortably. I can show her a game without any delay and we can even play together immediately. Being able to play a bit myself on the train ride over is just a bonus, it's not the reason why I'm getting the thing.

Make no mistake, I'm not arguing the Switch will be a success, but I don't think dismissing it this early is appropriate either. Apart from its cool use case, it is Nintendo on top of that. That means Nintendo games. That means Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem and all of the sort. Can you imagine if this actually takes off and you get all the Nintendo games on one thing? Come on, that is something.

The price is the biggest problem. Here in Sweden they say the price will be 3599SEK. I just bought a PS4 Slim for 2290SEK. You don't need to understand the currency to see that the PS4 offers more value.

I always buy Nintendo's handheld devices but it is too expensive as such. I paid 499SEK for my 2DS. Granted it was a one day deal and a cheaper version of the 3DS but even at the regular price of a New 3DS it is Half of the Switch.

I'll stick with my Vita for handheld which is what I use the most anyway. I barely use my 2DS. And I've not had a Nintendo home console since GameCube which I sold after a few months. I'm just not that into Nintendo. Have not been since I was 12 when I got a PS1.

Nintendo has been doing things wrong for a long time so I wouldn't worry. Sure the Switch seems like a hybrid lab experiment engineered by people without a clue/care what the gaming world wants, but that's Nintendo in a pastel nutshell.

Also it has Zelda, so, I've pre-ordered, cuz it looks fun.

I like fun.

Think it was the ONLY logical direction they could have taken, where they have slipped up a bit is the price, 50 dollars/Euro over expected retail, turns this from impulse purchase to weighted decision against there competitors.

The OG 3DS's battery life was pretty bad, and even the XL's isn't great (my Vita lasts longer).

@zevvion: I think most people were with you until they spent 30-40 minutes talking about garbage from the Wii era that most people look at with not the fondest of memories.

@chobobot said:

Dual screens are rad though! Gives you a full screen to do stuff without having to deal with any annoying HUD or UI (which is a real problem in portable gaming where the screens are smaller). Then occasionally you get mind-blowing gems like 999 or TWEWY which really use the design interestingly.

Provide a docking bay that the portable would connect to for televisions

I'm not sure I understand, you are saying this is what they should have done but the Switch does this...and only uses one screen.

• Instead of using controls on the portable which would be docked anyway, a Pro Controller would be provided within the package

It's quite rare for console to provide two controllers at the start right? They normally give you the barebones to play it with unless you play extra. They want people to try these things that they've designed, why would they nullify that by giving out a 'standard' controller free.

The Wii was the Pet Rock of its time, nothing more. Most people bought it, played Wii Sports or Wii Fit, then chucked it in the closet. I give Nintendo credit for tapping into the mainstream market like no other gaming thing ever has, but if they think lightning is going to strike twice, well good luck with that. The point of all this is just to implore you not to use the Wii as a reference point for anything moving forward.

I think your proposal is way more interesting and elegant than the Switch with its 12 peripherals and gimmicks. That's the thing though, since the Wii (or maybe the DS), Nintendo can't make hardware without weird gimmicks. Your idea is exciting, straightforward and plays to Nintendo's strengths with a key differentiating factor compared to other products in the market.

It's just not weird enough for Nintendo though. They'd much rather go back to motion controls and touch screens so they can make like 3 wacky games in 5 years and hope those will win over casual consumers. That won't happen. Because of those gimmicks the hardware and peripherals are too expensive and there is no pack in game to make a case for any of it. Watch them apologize for their dumb decisions like they did for the 3DS.

Hopefully they refocus their efforts on games afterwards.

Yeah, the Wii was in a weird way the worst thing to happen to Nintendo, mainly because they took completely the wrong lesson from it, and chose to focus on a bunch of motion control/second screen bullshit as opposed to recognizing the vast untapped market they had uncovered.

The Wii's genius was that it appealed to people who had never really gamed before. However, those people can be divided into roughly three groups:

1. People who tried the Wii, decided video games still weren't for them, and went back to whatever those types of people do with their presumably boring lives.
2. People who tried the Wii, liked video games, but decided the Wii was "enough" of a hobby.
3. People who tried the Wii, liked video games, and became big fans who wanted more

The people in the first two groups aren't really a problem, but group number three represents a big lost opportunity for Nintendo because they failed to follow up on the Wii with a more powerful/serious system.

Take for example, my Dad, who was not really into gaming before the Wii, but who caught the bug after trying it. He wanted to get more "into" gaming, but wasn't sure how. So what did he do? He asked me, because I'm the hardcore gamer of the family, what he should do. And what did I do? I pointed him to other systems because, at the time, the WiiU hadn't been released yet and even when it had, I would have told him it was an inferior system compared to what else was on the market. I ended up giving him my old 360 once I got a PS4, which he has happily been using ever since.

Wii was the "gateway drug" if you will, but because Nintendo had a shitty follow up to the Wii, that gateway didn't lead to Nintendo, but straight into the arms of Microsoft or Sony or PC, all of which had better systems with better games. Had Nintendo done things properly, they would have dropped the motion control boondoggle and focused on making a powerful system, gotten a lot of third-parties on board, and traded in the brand-loyalty they'd built with the Wii into much larger success then they are likely to see with the Switch.

@pierre42 said:

I never said dual screens were bad, but removing them would conserve more battery life for portable use and would help game development since the transition from portable to television and back will be 1:1 with a single screen.

In regards to the docking bay, I know Nintendo are doing this with the Switch, I just highlighted this as part of an alternative strategy if they focused the Switch's form factor on the 3DS rather than the Wii U.

The reason they would give players a Pro Controller is that if they went with the form factor size of the 3DS XL or Vita, they wouldn't need to bulk it up to balance out as a primary controller for the home aswell.

You wouldn't need to detach the controllers from the screen as it would already be built-in like a standard portable is. The user can game on-the-go easily. When they get home, they can dock it to the TV (charging it also), grab a Pro Controller and crash on the couch.

@lawgamer: Hasn't this been Nintendo problem since the SNES their audience always moves on and their core fans get smaller with each generation, Nintendo makes great content for everyone but doesn't cater to any specific group so in most cases they grow up and move on.

Option 3 were never big spenders which is evident by the Wii's attach rate, they were never going buy into an expensive platform like the Wii U even with the right messaging the vast majority all move to mobile instead. Nintendo makes great software but they never made anything close to another Wii Sports, Sony & MS failed hard as well that gateway doesn't seem to exist.

Switch battery life is stated to be anywhere from 2.5-6.5 hours, depending on the game. As an example, they said that LoZ: BotW would clock in at around 3 hours when played in portable mode.

People more widely appear to understand that this is a brand new console, so... already, I think it's poised to make a bigger impact than the WiiU, whose reveal events were fraught with people wondering, "so, is this like an accessory for the Wii, or...?"

Well as it stands right now I must be bat shit crazy. I'm thinking it won't even hit the 13 million Wii U did if year one is any indication. BUT I'm hoping by 2018 Nintendo has announced a shit load of first party games. If they haven't, then well we will know it will be a repeat of the Wii U, or worse.

After reading all the posts. I really wonder if the Switch was originally suppose to be a new Nintendo handheld. I'm sure they have had plans for the Switch for years and was going to be a compliment for the WiiU. A replacement for the WiiU controller that you can actually take on the go. However because of the lackluster sales of the WiiU, it was decided to design the Switch for a multipurpose machine.

Nintendo does know how to support their handhelds. People complaining about battery life should wait, the battery life of the 3DS was not great at the start either. There will be revisions that will make it more powerful, longer battery life, ect. They always do.

The games WILL come. Pokemon, Metroid, Mario, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, all on ONE console. And that's just to name a few that will eventually come out to the system. The system will sell, just because of all the first party games. The handheld portion of the system is the strong point, Nintendo supports it and people buy it. If it's as easy as they claim it is to port games over. You will see 3rd party games on it. Nintendo handhelds DON'T fail.

I don't know how it'll do. There was a lot of pre-launch optimism which has been dampened by the actual reveal. They do have a killer app there at launch with a potential Christmas rush sparked by Mario. The online subscription thing might not catch many beyond the Splatoon devotees. In many ways, they don't want to catch themselves out with unsold stock and they do sell their boxes at cost.

What I wonder is whether Nintendo commit to this system for the long term. They've decided they can't compete directly with Sony as a conventional box so they've come this experimental company. It'll be fascinating to see it play out. Hopefully it doesn't diminish them. Without Nintendo, this market space becomes a lot duller and progressive.

@chobobot: I personally think that this is about the best that Nintendo could do. There are several things going for and against it in some ways.

Chiefly, assuming the dates hold up for these games, the first year of this console on a 1st party basis is quite good. People are expecting a Mario game, Zelda, a great version of Mario Kart 8, a game that was well liked and maybe more people will play on this system than the Wii U. Splatoon looks great and I hope that the much greater interest in the Switch than Wii U will get people to play that game. I understand that it isn't completely confirmed, but Euro Gamer put out a story about a corssover Pokemon game for Switch. If that is to be believed, it starts a precedent that the Fire Emblem Nintendo Direct showed, of having a 3DS and Switch version of the same game. Making good on that will definitely help people like me who like the 3DS and having a home console, bridge that library gap in a way that makes me excited.

There are also signs of life on 3rd party, while Skyrim is an older game, it being on the Switch is a great get and shows that maybe other games of that ilk will come to the system in 2018 as well. I wouldn't be shocked to see a version of Fallout 4 end up on Switch. There were also other games announced on that system from 3rd parties that looked great as well and many more devs haven't announced games, which means that there is still interest on that thing.

While I agree 1, 2, Switch should be a pack, no question about it. Having the Switch have some of that motion functionality like the Wii and Wii U is important. While it's much clearer this time around that motion is taking more of a back seat this time around, having that functionality is important because it still leaves the possibility for Nintendo to put out things like Wii Sports, and Wii Play on the Switch. Games like 1, 2, Switch and Wii Sports can really bring people together who don't play games. While I understand and see why 1, 2, Switch and Wii Sports are viewed as "gimmick" games, they are in some respects, having that motion stuff are what get people like my Parents and grand parents in the door with this stuff. Back when the Wii came out, Wii Sports was that thing that got them to start sharing in that hobby of playing games together. So considering how Nintendo is making the hardware more suited traditional input and motion control stuff, It's starting to look like I can get my family more involved and still have great games to play that aren't motion games.

All these things stated above are great things that the Switch can do for me personally, but there are also factors that are working against it.

First and foremost, the cost on these things is very high for what they are. I think the system as is is priced accordingly, but everything around it is not. A set of Joy Con should not be $80, the same can and should be said for the Pro controllers and the other accessories. Seeing as how many games like ARMS use multiple Joy Con, it will be a big ask to have people buy a new set just for games like that. But, hopefully the system sells well and people have there own set of Joy Con to play with.

On the games front, no pack in is a big mistake. 1, 2, Switch is the poster child for this console, and it not being the pack-in is criminal from a business perspective. Also on the games front, the lack of quantity of games at launch is concerning. However, I would argue, that there is certainly a lot of quality on display. Also, there aren't the big tent pulls out that you would like to see, COD, Battlefield, and other franchises haven't been announced yet so that is a little concerning for potential owners. However, I think that Nintendo has a lot of Directs, and other platforms to get games out there certainly this year and 2018. I would be shocked if the release calendar for this system across 1st and 3rd party was not bigger by the time we look back at this year.

My final quibble is that I'm a little scared that the graphical hardware gets left behind too early. The chip in that console is a great chip for what is being done, but what I don't know is how it will stack up over time. Hopefully the chasm can be traversed and games can still be supported more easily across all 3 consoles. It is worth noting that the Switch is supporting unity and unreal engine, amongst other engines, that the Wii U and certainly the Wii didn't support nearly as well. So maybe the multiplatform situation will be quite different.

Overall, there are some concerns over the Switch. But I think there is very real potential in the Switch. The promise of console, DS, and 3DS games on one machine is excellent, even if not every game is supported in this way. Also, it looks like big games on Switch from companies like Bethesda and Activision are going to be a thing now. While not everything will come out on Switch, I think it will be much different to the Wii U in the way that it will get support for the Fallout's, Madden's, and COD of the world, maybe not now, but in the future it will more than likely happen. Listed qualms aside, I'm looking at the Switch as an investment in several key areas. And while launch is looking soft, I've never played Zelda, so that will be a good thing to start with.

It will do better than the Wii U, not as good as the Wii

'Gaming on the go' is a market that is already saturated by smartphones, which is why we're starting to see nintendo release games for smartphones. Consoles are reducing in popularity to PCs and Nintendo hasn't even 'competed' in the console market in years

What nintendo are creating is one device that will allow people to play their games both portably and on the big screen, in addition to recreating the 'party' vibe that made the Wii such a hit. It's lowering the barrier to entry to buy Nintendo games as much as possible and coalescing the user base so that you only have to buy one item for every Nintendo game

It's an attempt to save the company in a changing world and I think that it's as good as an attempt as anybody could have hoped for