| TheMisterManGuy said: With the Nintendo Switch being the most successful platform Nintendo's had in years. I feel like Nintendo should adopt "Nintendo Switch" as the official brand for all of their Gaming Platform related products. Similar to how Sony and Microsoft established "PlayStation" and "Xbox" as their official Platform brands. In the past, Nintendo would change their entire platform brand every generation or so in accordance to the direction the company would take. But with the Switch already being a culmination of all of their previous platforms, I feel like they should just embrace "Switch" as the name for all their gaming-based platform ventures. To do this, they would need to move all online marketing for Switch products over to a dedicated "Nintendo Switch" YouTube channel and Social Media presences. That way it would help further establish "Nintendo Switch" as its own distinct Nintendo brand. |
I'd argue against such a move for two reasons; The name "Nintendo" in itself is synonymous with gaming, so adding an additional permanent gaming brand is simply unnecessary. Instead I would suggest that Nintendo needs to stress the name Nintendo in all their future hardware products, as they have in the past with quite a lot of hardware systems, ei;
NINTENDO Game & Watch
NINTENDO Entertainment System
NINTENDO Gameboy (later versions in the Gameboy line didn't use NINTENDO in their brandnames, which I consider a mistake even though they were successful)
Super NINTENDO Entertainment System
NINTENDO 64
NINTENDO Gamecube
NINTENDO DS (or NINTENDO Dual Screen)
NINTENDO 3DS
NINTENDO Switch
etc
Wii and WiiU are actually two of very few hardware plattforms that didn't use NINTENDO in their brand names, which at first glance might seem weird. But remember that Nintendo desperately needed to reinvent themselves when they released the Wii. So dropping the NINTENDO brand for the Wii made totally sense back then, and might actually have added market value to the Wii.
WiiU is a story in itself. I think Nintendo wanted to do too much with it, making it virtually impossible to brand it and market it. It was also clearly rushed to the market, making things even worse.
Nintendo made some strategical blunders with the Wii which let them lose momentum, and I believe those blunders were what forced them to rush the WiiU to market. Already in the summer of 2009 Nintendo should have bundled Wii remotes based on Wii Motion Plus technology with every Wii, instead of waiting until May 2010. By waiting that long, Nintendo let PlayStation 3 capture part of the Wii market with their superior PlayStation Move. I also think Nintendo should have released a WiiHD in 2010, and perhaps also a Wii Remote with a built-in analog stick (similar to PlayStation Move). By doing so, they could have extended the life of the Wii, and not rush the WiiU to market. I think that WiiU would have been a totally different product without the rush.
