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Wyrdness on 14 November 2018
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Mnementh said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:
I am surprised how pessimistic most people were on the Switch. I thought it was pretty obvious that the Switch would do well from the get go.

I guess most people assume the previous generation affects the next generation. Clearly it doesn't. The Gamecube sold terribly. The Wii sold amazingly well. One did not affect the other. And also the Wii's success didn't help the Wii U at all. Likewise the PS2 was the best selling console of all time. The PS3 was a financial failure. Every generation is a huge reset button. Each console has to be evaluated on its own merits instead of basing it on the previous console.

It's not that easy though. Switch and Wii suceeded for completely different reasons. Wii offered new ways to play and offered the games for that. Switch does offer one new way to play: play seamlessly mobile and at home. But the point here is, that the games haven't to be changed for that. Therefore Switch adds value to any game releasing on it, even if it is ported unchanged. That's why old ports and indies do so well, Switch adds value without the game developer anything at all.

But this was not clear from the presentation back then. The hybrid nature was visible, but it wasn't clear it would add so much value to games, you would have to try for yourself. And therefore it wasn't clear that ports would sell that well, and that resulted in big support. That is why Switch has so many games and 3rd-party support that shapes up to be more substantial than what the Wii had. Back then I didn't even calculated with serious 3rd-party support. But the 3rd-party support changes the image. Think how Switch would look, if support was similar to WiiU. Still a great device for Zelda and Mario - but that's it. That makes a big difference.

I don't fully buy this point of view because even with the presentation which wasn't even that bad tbh I don't know what some people were expecting the was one thing clear back then and that Switch would be the only portable device on the market and all the 3DS and Vita consumers would have to go somewhere and that alone called some of the pessimistic views into question.