Mainly the part where it is exactly what he asked for. The WiiU is not a portable console with a dongle to anything. It is a very stationary console that allows limited range remote play on the gamepad.
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The Nintendo Switch Console Thread
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Mainly the part where it is exactly what he asked for. The WiiU is not a portable console with a dongle to anything. It is a very stationary console that allows limited range remote play on the gamepad.
Yeah that was the original hope, especially mine.
Having a touchscreen handheld unit and a wireless "dongle" or "base unit" that can hook up to the TV to use as the main screen, or as the "top screen" for the DS or Wii U games. The handheld unit will have a cart slot to not only take NX games but all 3DS/DS games as well.
(I am thinking Playstation Vita TV - it is really neat to play PSP and Vita games on a large screen with a surround sound system).
One can only wish...
I'm a little confused about your comment regarding the dock they're including. It isn't a fancy dock at all by my understanding, it is instead pretty basic and nothing too special. Essentially just a piece of plastic with passthroughs for power and video. Including a wireless dongle for the video would be more expensive. (Was looking for a /s tag but didn't see one.)
I do agree that $300 may be a hard sell if the other consoles are retailing for $250, or even if they are still at $300.
Unfortunately, I believe that if Nintendo hadn't included the gamepad and instead gave us the pro controller, people would have been even more confused as to the difference between the Wii and Wii U. Assuming, in my opinion at least, that it was simply an HD Wii, and not something with different capabilities.
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I like your dream about how this would work. It would have been pretty awesome if it were something accomplishable. (I have no clue how that would work though... Neat idea)
That's a great point. Maybe it'll be as simple as some games have touch options (like Pokemon Sun/Moons virtual pet feature) and access to them is hidden when the unit is docked?
Because of the 3DS and in spite of the Wii U, which is why I specifically said the Wii U generation, not the eighth as a blanket.
It had the install base, yet it did not get the games that it's competitors did. Why? Nintendo's comparatively underpowered components and its integrated hardware/software philosophy. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, provided one major caveat: the downside pressure of customer base marginalisation must be offset by high margins to be viable, and those margins must be sustainable over a hardware generation. The default example of this is the iPhone. This doesn't work in gaming however, for obvious reasons:
1.) Gaming is a single-provision product category. Unlike mobile phones, that provide numerous functions, gaming hardware is geared only toward entertainment content consumption at best, and, in the case of Nintendo's gaming hardware, only with poor support for secondary consumption types.
2.) The generational lifespan in gaming hardware is too long for that degree of sustainable margin, especially when console gaming's primary competitor, PC, operates in the same annual refresh cycle that mobile hardware does. Indeed, the mid-generation refresh of the PS4Pro and Scorpio are attempts to avoid having to face the dual problems of decreased margins from late-generation revisions and loss of software variety as devs move beyond hardware limitations.
Yes, each console had their exclusives, yet only one console did without those huge titles, and you can probably guess that the console was not made by Sony or Microsoft. The issue with dismissing the importance of third-party support simply because of the success of the Wii despite that soft support is that to do so one must assume that the traditional gaming audience, the one that wants multi-plats, was responsible for that success. It wasn't; it was a singular event during which you had a broad casual market with no casual hardware till the release of the Wii. How can we know this with reasonable certainty? Look at the install base erosion of Nintendo since the release of their first console:
NES: 62m
SNES: 49m (-21%)
N64: 32m (-35%)
GameCube: 22m (-32%)
Wii U: 13m (-41% vs GC)
This is the install base trajectory being viewed without the outlier of the Wii, and represents a trend of increasing erosion per generation on average (GC was flat, but that was a result of better licensing deals and the early loss of the Dreamcast). Before crying foul that this is bad maths, you ought to recognise the install base decrease from the Wii to the Wii U represents a steeper decline than does the increase from the GC to the Wii, effectively erasing its statistical weight. The point is that the feverish assertions of the Nintendo fanbase that Nintendo doesn't need strong third-party support, and by that I mean support equivalent to its competitors, are patently false. Remember that the numbers above are not normalised versus gamer population. They have been facing these enormous declines in the face of an increasingly large prospective customer base.
Marketing is the conveyance of value propositions. As I've gone to some pain to belabour, the value proposition of the Switch in terms of arresting the trend in install base erosion shown above seems insufficient to anyone that is not already a Nintendo fan, because catering to that group, especially teh Japanese base of that group is all that Nintendo can understand. It doesn't know how to step beyond that. All one has to do is look at the selfsame NES classic that you use to point to positive interest in Nintendo. The NES classic does not represent positive interest in Nintendo, it represents a positive interest in old Nintendo games, and these are not the same thing. The games in question are classic, some even legendary, but all of them have been on the eShop since 2007 at least. Why is it only now, ten years later, that Nintendo is having success translating the value proposition of those games into sales of hardware? Because the upside of the NES classic trumps the downside; it only plays those 30 games and only ever will, but costs a quarter of what the Switch will cost (costs nothing if you include the eShop cost of getting those same titles on any 'real' Nintendo console) and represents a consumption method that is unencumbered by hardware/software integration. No wonky input methods, no novel interface experiences. Plug up to television, hold controller, play.
As always, I freely admit that I could be wrong and I'll admit to such if the Switch is the runaway success that you hope it is. I'm a PC gamer primarily and have moved away from modern consoles because of the wonky goings-on, so I haven't a dog in the fight. That said, I've seen nothing this year and last that boarded the hype train and wasn't thrown from it bloody, twenty miles of rough road from where they hoped to be. The next few years are going to be difficult, even Darwinian, for games and I have very grave doubts about Nintendo's chances in with what it's offering. I suppose we shall see.
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Or maybe you'll just have games that are touch and console only and can't be used on the TV. I don't think Nintendo has officially said every single game has to be the playable on the TV as well as the console. You can still play the console at home without a TV so that's still a "home console" as Nintendo likes to refer to the Switch as.
Also on Jimmy Fallon, Reggie showed that the Switch can be hot inserted and removed from the dock. There's about a second of nothing till the visuals move to the other screen. So what you want is very possible. Would you want to be inserting and removing the console from the dock that much though? Probably not, but if someone could make this mechanic work well and not feel cumberson or annoying, I'm sure they'll try it.
This is probably so. But the days on the 3DS propping up the home console will soon be over. If the Switch really sells well, the days of the 3DS might be numbered and the replscement for it will ne nothing. Just the Switch existing as it's portable (in a tablet sense).
The PS4 and XB1 didn't get:
- A good karting game like MK8
- A relatively good art application like Art Academy
- Much in the way of family friendly fun (expecially for the pre-teens)
- Touch screen in their games (for the most part)
- etc etc
I will agree that gaming is entertainment primarily. It can be education secondly though. But I think we can both agree that the big 3 want the games on their console to entertain most of all.
The PS4 Pro and XB Scorpio might as well be new different consoles. What I mean what is the difference between the PS1/PS2/PS3/PS4 and XB/360/XB1. Ffor the Playstations and the XBoxes the only difference bewteen them all is the internals. Each one is way more powerful than the last but how you play with them is the same. The same type of controller in your hands. For the most part you play a PS4 the same way as you did the PS1. Sit on the couch, controller in your hands and watch the television screen. The PS4 Pro and XBScorpio is no different. They are also better hardware that allow for better games with the same way of playing them. (VR is the exception of cause and that's totally new).
Sure in a programming or internal way of thinking the consoles are different, but in a game play experience way of thinking they are all just the same thing or just console updates. Nintendo on the other hand has really tried to shake up the way people interact with the consoles. Sure one could argue the NES -> GC is just the same thing, ass on the couch, with a controller in your hand. I can agree with that. But the Wii, WiiU and Switch are all vastly different in terms of how you interact with the consoles. In terms of gameplay they are totally new ideas, not jsut the same thing rehashed.
The WiiU had it's huge titles. That's a fact. The only catch is they came on the WiiU 2 years too late. The WiiU Launch was barren of good huge titles. That's what killed the WiiU.
Also you didn't mention the Wii's sales here. They exist and should not be forgotten. We all know now why the Wii sold so well. It's not the exact market you want as a console maker but it's a great lesson for Nintendo. That along with the WiiU has taught Nintendo so much as to what the customer base want and don't want.
We are on an Apple site here, so everyone hee (you included) should know that smart businesses value profits voer raw sales any day of the week. Apple have about 45% of the smartphone market but around 95% of the total smart phone profits. Nintendo are not in this position, not even close with gaming. But Nintendo only need to make a slight profit andf they are ok. Sure Nintendo would like to have Wii sales for every console. That's impossible and Nintendo know it. That's why Nintendo are looking to (hopefully) learn the lessons of the past and keep their IP brand recognition high. In terms of gaming IP brand recognition, the Mario IP is more well known than every other gaming IP (worldwide) combined. The Japanese president even wanted Mario in his Tokyo Olympics teaser. Nintendo only found out much later, after this decision was made and they were pleasently surprised at it.
My point? Nintendo is not going to sell the most consoles or games. For the time being Sony will win that. Nintendo will however have the most memorable IPs and it's these IPs that keep Nintendo in business. People only buy Nintendo consoles as the price of admission to access their favourite Ninrendo IPs.
I agree the MiniNES says nothing about how popular the Switch will be. It's just a $60-$100 impulse buy to fuel the nostalgia hit that many older folk have from their tiem gamng in the late 1980's. The fact that the MiniNES is just plug and play is not really a factor here. The price point and fueling nostalgia are the two makor reasons fueling it's success. But Nintendo can ride the wave though. An example of this? Pokemon Go was just catching Generation 1 pokemon. That's it. it's not even a game. It's just an augment reality tech demo. But people loved it. And Gamefreak rode that popularity wave with Pokemon Sun/Moon. Sun and Moon has sold very very well. In part because people like Pokemon, and in part because Pokemon Go reawoke people's interest in the series and people wanted more than the Pokemon GO tech demo. They wanted a full game now and Gamefreak supplied that for them.
Can Nintendo ride the wave of MiniNES hpye till march for the Switch? No. Harsh I know. But people are buying the MiniNES as a impulse buy nostalgia hit. At the very least the interest in Nintendo as a whole is there. I say this because half of the MiniNES games are pure garbage. There's way better NES games out there. This si not much but I guess Nintendo need all the luck they can get now.
I think everyone needs to see the Switch do well. It's good for the industry, in the sense of promoting game play innovation, and not just more technilogically advanced consoles every 5 or so years that the customers interact with in the exact same ways each time. if this innovation sells narative that Nintendo has been pushing hard for about a decade now really catches on, I thinkt he whole industry as a whole can benifit.
Sony's VR is a good start. At the moment the heatset need a Johnny Ive "we made it 75% smaller" upgrade. it's jsut way to big and bulky. Also I do believe the tech (ie the base console) that is required to power it properly (at 30/60 fps smooth) is way too expensive now. But give it say 10 years and this could be very affordable and in a more functional. But all tech has to start somewhere. To this end I thin Sony doing this now is a good thing. When this segment of gaming matures I think it'll be great. It's good that Sony is branching away from the usual style of sitting on the couch with a controller in your hand gaming that has existed unchanged since their PS1.
Haha, there's a lot to reply to there! But yeah the industry does need the Switch to succeed. There's one side of the industry that's homogenising PC and consoles, and pretty soon the two will comfortably collide. What I'm interested in is where that side is going to go - are annual hardware upgrades on their way? Will there be some minimum standard that must be met so games released on gated hardware (like PS2, PS3 etc)?
PSVR like you said is another step in the right direction. I find it interesting that Sony are playing both the "homogenised" and "creative" cards. Being able to stream PS4 to PC and Mac? Cool! Being able to play games in VR? Also cool! They're the ones to watch I think. They've made some mistakes in the PS4 Pro not being much more powerful, and not letting all games run at smoother framerates, but we'll see what comes with firmware updates.
I'm sure I missed some other points. Probably do another post later
Why do desktops or TV based consoles exist? One answer is because they can do what portable consoles can't and at a beter price point too. One day however, portable computers and consoles will be so good that there will be little need for a home only console. A console at home to power the very high level VR is the only reason I can think. I believe the Switch is the future. If you can play the modern 3D games on the go (ie current at the time tech can do it at an affordable price) why would you not do it? The Switch is the first console to seriously try this approach. Sure people will work out the limitations and compronises that the Switch is making. But the Switch is just like Sony's VR in that regard.
How?
Both the Switch and Sony's VR are steps into brave bold new worlds. One is VR. The other is merging the portable and home console so they are both one and the same thing able to play everything from 8-bit games to the modern HD, 3D masterpieces. Both are great concepts and the future of gaming but the tech is not yet there make this a great reality. Both Sony and Nintendo are hoping the early adapters will buy in to the concepts and fund the next level of tech research on the tech to make these two concepts have an even better end user experience.
I guess I am saying both the Switch and Sony's VR need to be a success. This happening will improve the entire industry.
Sony hace to play both cards. They can't ditch their standard TV console business and go purely VR. The tech is just not ready or affordable to do it. But as a side business for the time being it's a good thing. I think wait 10 or so years. By 2025 or 2030 the VR will be a much better experience. That's if Sony are ok with having their base TV console business cover the initially low sales of the VR side of the business. Sony's VRis really just a glorified beta at the moment. But one day when it's really finished and is it's own thing, I am sure it will be quite amazing. Not just for gaming. Things like driving, flying, surgical and other simulators can really use VR as a better way to train and educate people in those fields. I do think Sony need to branch out from purely gaming with their VR and allow the hardware and SDK be used by approved third parties. Just like with iOS devices, we are constantly amazed with what the public can do with tech. A lot more than we ever cound have thought of.
I'll be happy to read it. I always like reading your posts. As you do not editoralise anything. You just share the facts and let us make our own mind up on them. It's refreshing and I appreciate it.I'm sure I missed some other points. Probably do another post later
Hah, I just say what comes to mind. I work in the industry but haven't made a console game for a few years so I don't have any insider knowledge these days. Anywho!
In regards to the Switch selling well- I doubt it too. I think it'll do alright but no Wii for sure. I don't think any console manufacturer is going to get the Wii again, that part of the market is with mobile devices now. But then again! If the Switch gets marketed as a 'tablet with physical controls as default that also conveniently plugs into your TV' then they might grab part of that market back again. They'd need to be aggressive with it and frequent firmware updates to keep up with apps. Pricing would help. (Just realised I had a dream last night where I saw the Jan presentation and it was priced at £250 for the base unit. How odd!)
Part of me thinks this is Nintendo's natural conclusion. A single, ultra-flexible device. Customers don't need to worry about deciding what platform to get a game for, and if it's a success and everyone you know gets one then local multiplayer will be easy (as everyone would have those split controllers to hand).
Gosh I hope it does well. And that they release a SNES Mini next year. And that there is an small-fee upgrade programme in place for transferring key Wii U and 3DS games, like how they handle VC Wii U games currently.
I would like a SNESMini to be released too. But I don't think that will happen. In my opinion the NESMini and Super Mario Run are just the Christmas cash injection Nintendo needs (because there is none from the WiiU and games and little from the 3DS and games). Just a little revenue to tie them over till Marchand the Switch. The March release is no surprise, it's exactly then to make sure their financial year (ending March 31) looks better.
The whole idea of the Switch replacing the 3DS and there only being one console, not 2 anymore I think is one option. Just like the Gameboy Advance and the DS. Nintendo would have kept the Advance as a thing but because the DS sold so well, they were justified in letting the Advance die. If the Switch sells so well and the 3DS sales weaken as a result then I'd not be surprised if the Nintendo let the 3DS die. But Nintendo could also keep the 3DS strong too. They have many options to choose from. I quite like the killing off the 3DS idea. Why? So there is no need to have cheap 3DS ports of WiiU games. Examples? Smash Bros, Hyrule Warriors, Super Mario Maker, Yoshi's Woolly World. I don't hate the fact they exist. I hate the fact that the customer has to choose. Better HD graphics and better gameplay on the WiiU or more game modes and features on the 3DS. Neither version of the games has everything. If there is one console only then there is only one version. It will have everything on it.
Also assuming the majority of the 3DS customers migrate to the Switch then there will be one version getting all the sales, not two different versions getting vastly different sales numbers. Development time will be saved as there's no second version to make. And thirdf parties don't have to choose a console as there's only one. There is one catch. If Nintendo do ditch the 3DS as a thing, then Nintendo have shoehorned themselves into making home/portable console hybrids (basically better and better Switches). This is because Nintendo customers like playing their games on the go. As least one Nintendo console has to address this. If there is only one, then that one has to address it. I think that is not necessarily a bad thing. The world is moving more and more towards mobile with notebooks, phones and tablets. Already now phones and tablets totally wreck desktop computers of the early 2000's that were pretty good at the time. So moving towards a world where potable consoles can play the modern HD, 3D games is not a bad thing. I do think the days of being tethered to a desktop screen (for anything not pro or business level) are slowly becoming a thing of the past. A lot of the prosumer market is now portable. The Switch (as well as the PS4 and XB1) are the prosumer hardware of the gaming world.
I am pretty sure there will be some method of transfering your WiiU VC to the Switch. There has to be or the backlash will be large. I am not sure all of the games will be there at launch. Thaty's easy as the base rom is always the same, you only need a new emulator attached to the rom that is Switch compatable. What is an issue however is the other eShop content. Quite a bit of it on the Wii eShop never moved to the WiiU eShop. I have a few original digital Wii games that are stuck of the Wii. There is no way to transfer them to the WiiU. I do think the same will happen for a number of the digital WiiU titles. Don't expect them all to be transferable to the Switch. Some of them like Affordable Space Adventures (one of the best WiiU games ever) literally can't be played on the Switch as it requires the player to use both screens at once (something so far rumoured to be impossible on the Switch).
I don't have too many digital WiiU titmes I'd miss when I move to the Switch. Probably 3 or so. That's why people shouldn't sell their WiiU's for a while. Untill they are ok with not being able to play these games again and not being able to play the more obscure games that will not have a remake or sequel on the Switch. There's not all that many very good games on the WiiU that are not rumoured to be getting some like of sequel/remake treatment on the Switch. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is one I can think of, but there is more, I am sure. This is why we all need to wait till the January 13 keynote and see what Nintendo will and will not address about the Switch. They could spill all the beans or they could do an Apple and just tell us what we need to know and keep a lot of the tech specs hidden till ifixit and others tear it down.
The rumours are US$250 for the base unit and US$300 for the pro unit with Splatoon and a pro controller also in the box. Could it be £250 in the UK? That's quite possible. I don't know how affordable that is as I'm Australian. Here the WiiU at launch cost $350 for the base and $420 for the upgraded console. All rumours say that the Switch will be around $300 to $350. Tough call as Nintendo has said they will not make a loss per console sold. But they also are all into affordability for the customer too. With that in mind I think the Switch will be sold for as close to at cost (ie a zero margin) as they possibly can. Letting the games make them the profit I guess. That's a smart move in my opinion as Nintendo has no other departments (like Sony and MS have) to cover the slack if the hardware is sold like a loss leader to get people into the Switch ecosystem.
How well will the Switch sell? I think that's all up to how many of the 3DS market is willing to make the Switch (no pun intended). As well as non Nintendo fans making the switch as well. Nintendo need to push the "playing your favourite modern HD games on the go. Sure the console (not docked) is rumoured to be 720p only, but that's a heck of a lot more resolution than any other popular portalbe console (3DS and Vita). Only things like the iPhone can complete with that kind of resolution but they are not designed for gaming primarily. The world's best totally dedicated to gaming portable console. (If that's not true ut's pretty close). I think if you push that hard by showing how you can paly all the PS4 ports (and Nintendo games) on the go easily it'll get the sales. Sure it's more play it at the different places you go (like in a hotel room or at a mates place), than while travelling, like on the train (but I'm sure people will try that too). Push it, not that being portable is the awesome bonus. Push it like being portable is what is required in this modern world andnot being portable is so stuck in the year 2000 and so backward and people will feel that they need the portability and get the sales. Make people feel they need the features of the console. Apple use this sales tactic pretty well. Nintendo could do the same.
So Digital Foundry seem to reveal based on Venture Beat leak the Switch is essentially the nearly 3 year old Nvidia Shield !!! Tegra X1 albeit running at a lower clock speed to boot !!!
Given the Shield ports of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles leave a lot to be desired performance wise, the Switch will only be a tiny (if any) upgrade power wise of the Wii U (if we assume Wii U was more powerful than PS3/Xbox 360)
Looks like it won't even be as powerful as the Pixel C tablet, and with the CPU clock speed at HALF of the Nvidia Shield at 1,000 MHz as opposed to the 2ghz of the Shield so it may not even be as powerful as a console that barely can handle PS3 720p ports of the likes of Ninja Gaiden 3.
Anyone fooling themselves in thinking we will see third party developers port current gen titles to the Switch or create Switch versions will be very disappointed. Forget the likes of Mass Effect Andromeda or Red Dead Redemption 2 ever appearing ...
Given the Shield ports of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles leave a lot to be desired performance wise, the Switch will only be a tiny (if any) upgrade power wise of the Wii U (if we assume Wii U was more powerful than PS3/Xbox 360)
Looks like it won't even be as powerful as the Pixel C tablet, and with the CPU clock speed at HALF of the Nvidia Shield at 1,000 MHz as opposed to the 2ghz of the Shield so it may not even be as powerful as a console that barely can handle PS3 720p ports of the likes of Ninja Gaiden 3.
Anyone fooling themselves in thinking we will see third party developers port current gen titles to the Switch or create Switch versions will be very disappointed. Forget the likes of Mass Effect Andromeda or Red Dead Redemption 2 ever appearing ...
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I strongly believe these are the specs of the demo or in development units. The final units we will get in March (I think) will have slightly different specs. I think we will either get the information on January 13 (at the keynote) or in March when folk like ifixit open up the Switch to show us what's inside.
It just seems this as the article says "Recently, Venturebeat essentially reconfirmed a Digital Foundry report from July". We do know that the development units the 3rd parties and others were using to make their Switch games were not the same as what will be released in March 2017. Digital Foundry did say back in july that their information did come from test/development hardware, not anything the end user will get to play with at home.
"There are some anomalies and inconsistencies there that raise alarm bells though."
The article also says this. The specs mentioned right after this statement in the article make no sense on an end user console. No HDMI 2.0, 4K, 30Hz output makes no sense, 307.2MHz is portable mode etc etc. Seeing BotW on Jimmy Fallon and how well it played portable, makes me think these specs are not of the final machines we will use.
To me the biggest question is how much different is what we will get in March compared to this leak? I do think a lot of it will be the same. I can't say what will be different though but I don't think it'll be anything major . . . but this is Nintendo here. They do want to sell the Switch not at a loss so I think they'll put in the weakest stuff that'll get the job done. This is essentially a compromise console after all. But a step in the right direction for the industry as I have said in many other posts here.
I'm not taking these numbers as gospel yet as we don't have proper confirmation yet that these numbers are not just the demo/development unit numbers.
It IS bad maths - or at least misleading. You dismiss the Wii as an outlier in order to exclude it from your list to demonstrate your pretty downward curve.
The bottom line is that the Wii sold more than 100 million units and outsold both competitors by a significant margin.
"It sold about as many units as SNES, N64 and GCN combined, but hey, lets just forget that. For my next trick, I'm going to show that Playstation is a failure by dividing their sales figures by 10. Before crying foul that this is bad maths..."
No, it's not bad maths, both contextually and procedurally. Using a basic interquartile exclusion test, the Wii exceeds the upper bound—by a lot. That coupled with its successor falling reasonably near the downward trendline is mathematically more than enough for me to disqualify it as an outlier. But that's not my only reason for doing so, as I'm about to explain.
No, not really. Its two competitors were the XBOX360 and PS3; with an average lifetime sales total of 86m units, the Wii outsold it by a mere 15% and, despite that oversell, had a overall attachment that was 15% lower (average 11.2 units per on 360 and PS3, vs 9.5 on Wii) and had a representative library size shortfall of roughly the same amount. Moreover, look at the five best selling titles on the Wii:
Wii Sports
Mario Kart Wii
Wii Sports Resort
Wii Play
NSMB Wii
The only core gaming titles there are MK and a 2D Mario which was also the first one to be available on a home console in two generations. Wii Sports, a game that is non-gamer casual appeal in its very essence, oversold its next closest competitor by 230%. Why is this important? Because I've gone to some length to explain that the Wii did not maintain its core gaming base from the GC and transplant it to the Wii U when the Wii's generation was complete, instead reverting to the downward trendline. Ex the casual audience of the Wii, which I argue constituted at some 70% of its install base (the Wii, I'm sure, did convert some casuals into its core gaming audience), the console posted the best overall sales numbers for its generation yet had the single worst conversion rate to successor of any game console from the third generation on, and that includes the disastrous ones (PS2 -> PS3) and the catastrophic ones (Genesis -> Saturn).
You see, I'm not discounting the Wii's success in and of itself. The numbers it posted are unassailable. My issue is that from the standpoint of evaluating the trend of core install base erosion, and for the purposes of prognostication where the success of Nintendo's upcoming console are concerned, the Wii is ultimately meaningless because its imaging and audience are fundamentally different than its predecessor and successor. The audience that moved the Wii to success is gone and it's not coming back for the Switch. These reasons are why I excluded the console from my evaluation.
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Yep, my biggest concern is quite simple. If it is this far from current gen and that's excluding PS4 Pro variant and forthcoming Scorpio then we will not see the plethora of multiplatform titles that keep these devices alive during the vast lull periods between first party titles. This even more an issue on Nintendo hardware.
So if we are once again looking at a Wii and Wii U scenario of the only games worth getting outside of limited third party support are Nintendo titles, then we are looking at 1 - 3 titles per year at most with gaps anywhere between 8-18 month between titles. Buying a switch for the potential hope of finally playing a FZero game in maybe 2020 !!!
As much as I like the first party Wii U titles, the Wii U is my most least used console for a number of years now and holding out the switch will be any better is pointless.
Developers are not going to make a poorer multiplatform port and one that has to scale down even further if it is to run on the lower clocked mobile GPU when undocked. It simply would mean far too many sacrifices and based on the specs from DF a 1ghz processor and 300mhz GPU would put it actually behind even a lot of smartphones theses days.
Read my comment above. That will give you the context you are lacking with your comment I quoted here.
What's the solution to a successful console launch?
DO - release good 1st party games.
DO - release good new 3rd party games.
DON'T - release bad 1st party games that fail to advertise the features of the console
DON'T - release old 3rd party games that everyone already owns and has no want to play and repurchase again.
The WiiU launch was full of games in the DON'T category above. So many remade ports no one wanted cause they either never wanted them ni the first place or already bought them years ago and had moved on. Also the first party games did not make good use of the gamepad at all.
The launch failure of the WiiU was nothing to do with it's internal power and totally to do with the games at launch. The same can be said for the Switch. It's power is really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It just needs to advertise well the portability feature and have good new 1st and 3rd party games people want to play. Multiplatform does not matter as long as they are new and people still want to play them.
No, no, no. You're approaching this from an ethusiast standpoint, which is a mistake. You have to look at the Wii and the Wii U from an overall consumer standpoint. Compelling sofware is a major component certainly, but compelling software as a facet of value proposition is not merely a point-of-sale consideration. When someone picks up a console, they aren't just thinking about the games that they're going to play the first day, they're thinking about the games that they want to play over the lifetime of the console. When you have a hardware platform that is deliberate and openly underpowered versus its competitors, the innate expectation, and reasonable one, is that robustness of the platform's library and its foreword longevity in terms of third-party support is going to be less than those competitors, decreasing the value proposition overall.
Moreover, you're neglecting the influence of brand equity over a purchase, and outside the Nintendo fan base, and games publications which want to maximise ad revenue from as many sources as possible, Nintendo does not have forward-leaning brand equity or strong equity outside of its particular niche. It has nostalgia certainly, but that nostalgia, as I have shown repeatedly, does not and will not lead to console hardware sales; obviously, I'm not referring to Raspberry Pi-esque toy like the NES Classic. I'm talking about their masthead hardware. The perception of the majority of its target audience views Nintendo as a 'brand for kids and casuals'. It's been that way since the GameCube days and it's persisted since. They'll pay homage to what it was while dismissing what's on offer from it today. Even its home audience in Japan has defected massively from the brand, despite that country having far greater interest in mobile gaming and Nintendo being the only name in town for dedicated mobile hardware.
Lastly, Nintendo suffers from the same founder's malaise issue that BlackBerry suffered, and which ultimately took it from the global standard of smartphones to a sub-one per cent market share. Nintendo has persisted, and clearly shall continue given the Switch, outside the notional standard of game console category which is what BlackBerry did: in the face of near universal preference of the glass slab, it persisted with small, power-efficient smartphones with a unique interface paradigm (noticing a parallel here?) because it believed that it knew better than the market and conflated its past success with a successful contrarian understanding of the present. I'm obviously arguing that they will have the same degree of success, which is to say increasingly small, that BlackBerry did.
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I agree with you totally. I am one of those longer term thinkers. I thought, I really want a WiiU but there is no games I wanted on it at launch. I was even at the midnight launch. So I waited a year for games I wanted to be released, then I bought the console. I know a lot of people who similary waited. This hurts the 3rd parties who are looking to launch window console and game sales to see if developing further for said console is viable or not. This is Nintendo fans and non Nintendo fans. People just wait for the games they want to play. Few people (I know) are willing to buy a console if there is no games theey want to play on it.
As a brand Nintendo (and as a side Mario) are the most known thing in gaming, worldwide. Everyone knows what Nintendo is. That's huge, in a marketing sense. The catch is the world is not buying gaming consoles, only gamers or potential gamers are. As you correctly said much of Nintendo potential market views what Nintendo is as a company unfavourably. Portable gamers are all hooked on the 3DS though, it's basically the one must have console. more serious gamers though who are not already Nintendo fans dislike what Nintendo is because they feel Nintendo will not make the games or the hardware to cater to their gaming wants. That's why why bought a PS4 or XB1. I believe this is one reason why the Switch is portable. Nintendo get portable gaming but for a long time have never understood what the serious (non Nintendo fan) gamer wants. The Switch is trying to change this up. Lets see how this ends up.
I actually disagree here. Blackberry failed because in part because it stuck to it's outdated hardware styles (physical keyboards and such), outdated software and outdating networking solutions for much too long. The writing was on the wall day 1 when Jobs did his first iPhone keynote. The idea that phones (at the time) were designed wrong was a bitter pill to swallow. Few are willing to accept that someone else has invented a better way of doing things. Samsung has accept this and just clones the iPhone now. In a way that's a smart (though questionably immoral) way to handle the situation.
The Switch is like the first iPhone. Both devices are weaker than their respective competition. Both have less core features than their competition. The iPhone was 2g only and the Switch is not UHD (or even HD is portable mode according to some rtumours). But what both devices to bring to the market is a revolution. Look at the iPhone now. It's full touch screen and other features are still there from day 1, however many of the iPhone 1 compromises are now a thing of the past and not existent on the modern iPhones. Nintendo's future consoles will have less and less of the compromies the Switch had to make but keep all the portability and other features.
The iPhone 1 was not perfect but people bought it. Look at the iphone now? It's the hightest profit making Smartphone by a long shot. The Switch is not perfect but people will buy it. In the future Nintendo consoles will be better? Record profit making for Nintendo? I don't know about that but they'll great consoles.
The iPhone 7 could noe have come if the iPhone 1 did not exist (a severely compromised device). Just like Nintendo'd future consoles can't exist if the WiiU and Switch didn't exist. You can say the Switch is Nintendo's iPhone 1 in a way. A totally different take on an existing market and trying to switch it up (no pun intended).
"in the face of near universal preference of the glass slab"
in the iPhone 1 days that universal preference was not there. That took years to develop. Just like The universal preference for the ability to play for favourite big budget HD 3D games on the go will come. Just give it time.
"Nintendo has persisted, and clearly shall continue given the Switch, outside the notional standard of game console category"
Just like the iPhone 1 persisted outside the notional standard of most smartphones of the time.
The smartphone world changed and Blackberry refused to change with it and died. The gaming industry is changing (Nintendo being the driver for this change). Will Sony, MS and the rest change with it or will they stick to their guns? Sony's VR is one way Sony is trying to move away from the tratitional way of playing games sitting on your couch infront of the TV, which has been the standard way for home consoles since the Atari days.
One could argue that this started with the Wii and WiiU as they are not the standard way to play video games. But in my mind they are more ideas Nintendo wanted to test. If you believe the rumours, the Switch has 95% of the game play methods that the Wii and WiiU had.
Jobs said "internet, phone, ipod" all in one device - in his famous keynote.
The Switch is "motion controls, touch screen and traditional controller gaming" all in one (multipart) device.
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I trust Digital Foundry's technical analysis far more than any single 'fan' opinion here or on any other forum. Period....venture beat was NOT a leak. It was a "according to an unnamed person who claimed to know". Nothing but clickbait.
And your quoting that?
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Then you would know all this talk is based off numbers Digital Foundary released around June of this year. Nothing recent. The Eurogamer rumour was just someone saying these numbers have been confirmed supposedly. Looks like the June 2016 numbers might be correct.
Are these the dev kit numbers? Or are they final customer unit numbers? No one knows for certain as there's been no official word and surprisingly little rumour of this specific point.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1327012
Switch UE4 display profiles included in latest version
Someone will fully understand what this means. As far as I read it, it's the different modes (TV and portable) of the switch.
Switch UE4 display profiles included in latest version
Someone will fully understand what this means. As far as I read it, it's the different modes (TV and portable) of the switch.
Theranos has massive recognition as a company. It also when from $9b market cap down to functionally zero because they were a scam cooked up by a CEO with more social justice narrative cred than brains. The point is that recognition is not helpful if that recognition has a indifferent or negative aspect.
We've gone back and forth on the nature of the portable gamer and I have shown you the numbers, repeatedly, why they will not, as a whole, have any value prop added with the Switch over existing hardware. The sales numbers and attachments rates for the 3DS do not support that triple-A gaming in a portable setting as a positive attribute from a sales perspective. The serious gamer (hardcore) and the portable gamer, while each moniker can apply to the same individual at different times, is only a tiny section of the gaming population to which both apply simultaneously where the actual gaming experience is concerned.
Lastly is the abject lunacy that the portable market represents Nintendo's area for growth. Dismissing the hardware sustainability issue, i.e. that portable gamers, especially in Japan, are dumping dedicated gaming hardware in favour of mobiles, the attachment rates for dedicated mobile platforms is dreadful in comparison to home consoles; the 3DS, as you say the only name in the game for portables, has an attachment rate in the low 4%, whilst the Wii U managed to eek out a 6% despite being Nintendo's worst selling console of all time. When you take the overall attachment rate, and factor in which titles actually sold on the platform, the image is not of a gamer that wants a plethora of deep, immersive multi-hour titles with rich story media like pre-rendered cutscenes. It's of someone that buys a handful of cheap, grindy titles that allow for 5 - 10 minute gaming chunks. That is not what is on offer with the Switch, at least not whilst providing anything that will make a portable gamer of that stripe go with it over the 3DS, which is again cheaper, with proven technical performance and reliability numbers, and a massive library from which to choose their small handful of titles.
There is nothing revolutionary about the Switch. Nothing. It is the continuation of the false triple-A on the go narrative that doomed the Vita. When you view the Vita in the context of the numbers in which the 3DS sold, and what software sold on it, its sales are perfectly understandable and imminently predicatable. In the end, in fact, the Switch is just a Shield 2 tablet with a Nintendo coat of paint on it, and it will fare about as well as the first iteration of that device did. It's chasing a market that isn't interested.
People bought the iPhone because Apple was cool. It had the cachet of a rebel company that didn't play like the stodgy suits. It built that cachet on traditional products that did provide a better experience than its competitors and was able to leverage those products to sustain the original iPhone because Apple knew that the experience there would shore up any shortfall that the iPhone provided in the immediate term. Try to imagine if Apple had immediately divested itself of its desktop and notebook operations when it released the iPhone. I can say with near certainly that this conversation would be taking place on NintendoLife, as there would be no rumors for Apple to spawn.
Well, Nintendo has taken that leap. They have pinned their entire hopes on the Switch and have done so because there is not sufficient brand equity to soften whatever compromises are in the Switch and their install base has nowhere to go but down doing what they've been doing. So they've targeted their most profitable segment, given it some ability to perform as a home console in the hopes of not alienating their entire Western audience, and crossed their fingers. This is not revolution, it's a drowning man grabbing whatever he can find in the hopes that it will float.
The problem is that Nintendo is only interested in evolving the inteface aspect of gaming whilst ignoring the technical advances in the ingestion attribute of the media. You and several others in this thread have a real hard-on for novel input schemes; I use novel because there's nothing innovative about it. That was the problem with the Wii and why it appeal to casuals whilst alienating gamers. The motion controls were contrary to the establishing and efficient input scheme that dedicated gamers expect. Keyboards have been with computers since their inception and they shall be for at least another generation. Why? Because keyboards represent the most efficient means of translating thought to execution, with the least learning overhead and the lowest failure rate. That's just how it is.
Building on the theme of efficiency and reliability, the slab gained prominence because it simplified the input paradigm (no styluses, click-wheels or hard buttons), decreased failure over the life of the device (unlike mechanical keyboards that could fail at individual letters, whatever would cause a VKB to fail would cause the device as a whole to fail) and they maximized real estate for the consumption of the content that it was displaying.
Which you can do if you increase your value prop by doing something better than your competitor or through consolidating product categories. And before you argue that Nintendo has done that in making a device that is both a home console and a portable gaming device, that's a false syllogism. What sells a home console is different, and often diametrically opposed, to what sells a portable console. The same is not true of someone that, in 2007, was in the market for a new mobile phone and a new PDA and a new MP3 player. Each of those is a portable device, and consolidation of their categories was synergistic; the situational aspect of their function was identical. That is fundamentally at odds with a home console/portable hybrid. The essential language of such devices, and the sort of gamer that each attract, is often inherently contradictory.
The industry is changing because it has become unsustainable. The amount of overhead and fat that has been added to business is absurd; couple that with an industry whose quality of content has declined dramatically (and that includes Nintendo) in the past two software generations, and the past few years especially, and you have an industry in crisis. I agree that the Switch and VR are a symptom of the same phenomenon, but I disagree that it's about innovation. It's about trying various sorts of novelty to court a hostile audience with decreasing discretionary income. Need proof? Look at the VR sales rates versus its projections. More to the point, look at the low-ball projections from Nintendo concerning Switch sales. Whatever else Nintendo does incorrectly, you're absolutely correct that they understand dollars and cents better than any other game company, and they know the score with the industry at the present time.
And we saw how much those input methods helped sell the consoles to their present target market. Gamers, as a whole, don't want novel input schemes. I understand that you're charmed by them but, given that you view the Switch as a net positive value prop, that doesn't surprise me. You fall into that statistically tiny segment of the gaming population for which it ticks the boxes, but you don't represent some silent majority that will vault the Switch to the successes of the Wii or the 3DS. The numbers aren't there.
The iPhone succeeded because it consolidated product categories. All the Switch, like any console does, is play video games. It doesn't play music, doesn't let you check your bank balance, doesn't give you realtime navigation whilst driving, doesn't let you call a taxi when you're pissed, doesn't let you find a date or share the kids' latest escapade with the grandparents. It plays video games.[doublepost=1482336863][/doublepost]
Yeah, it means that rather than simply downscaling the resolution to 720p on in handheld mode, the Switch is going to hobble the 'triple-A experience' by decreasing texture resolutions, anti-aliasing, dynamic lighting effects and draw-distance. Means loads of muddled textures and pop-in, and it would be consistent with the recent rumours of significant underclocking whilst out of the dock. Yay for triple-A on the go.
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