From my jump from the VTech CreatiVision way back in the 1980s until now, I've been a pretty solid Nintendo suporter. To those of you too young to realise what happened at the time, Nintendo's ideas towards numerousgame genres like Mario, Zelda and Metroid were considered revolutionary at the time. Compared to the previous gen of game consoles, the difference was phenomenal, and as such I've stuck with them this whole time. Only in the past 15 years or so have I noticed things beginning to falter. Then comes the present, and I can honestly say that with the announcement of the Switch, I'm not impressed.
Firstly, everybody needs to accept the facts: Nintendo is no longer a home console maker. This occurred when they merged home and portable hardware divisions. Nintendo classify it as a console as a way of saving face, to not cause a huge stir by saying they're exiting the home console market. Doing so would generate fear in potential buyers of the Switch. "Should I get it? I heard they pulled out of home consoles. They might not be able to support it for 5 years...". It's all about marketing.
Secondly, the Switch is the successor to the 3DS, NOT the WiiU. A system with only double the RAM and the same solid state memory could hardly be considered a generational upgrade. Granted, the switch from PowerPC to ARM was commendable, but I suspect this has more to do with the fact that the Switch will indeed succeed the 3DS.
Third, there wont be direct ports of AAA titles from the PS4/XBOX ONE to the Switch without major graphical downgrades or engine restructure. It just wont happen. Nintendo should have stuck with 8GB of RAM like their competitors and not cheaped out on the 4GB option. In terms of AAA support, it will be "WiiU, Part 2".
Lastly, there will not be a significant price cut to the Switch anytime soon. See below for my reasons.
Now, my gripes about the Switch itself:
1. For a portable system, it is way too damn expensive, and I'm not just talking about the US price, subsidised by Nintendo consumers in every other country. The Switch will be AU$100 more than I paid for the WiiU, at AU$470. Compare that price to the initial price of the 3DS, which Nintendo had to quickly drop in the wake of poor sales. How do you think this will work for the Switch?
Ever wonder why the WiiU never got a price cut? With the numerous little features added to the system, particularly all on the gamepad, even a die shrink for the console would not have yielded enough of a cost saving to pass on to the consumer. In other words, Nintendo painted themselves into a corner when it came to price cuts. Now, compare this to the Switch, and the motion controlled joycons with Kinect-like additions, as well as another LCD screen. Can anybody seriously argue, with the many little gadgets and features of the Switch, that a future die shrink of the Tegra SoC will yield any significant cost benefits to the consumer? Nintendo are trying to use Apple's playbook, and it's not going to work. The only way that the Switch could get any cost saving would be to trim features, like the 3DS had to do in order to make a more cost-effective 2DS. This will also be unlikely to happen, as I explain below.
2. The battery is starting to push the boundary of why most of Nintendo's portable competitors failed. A portable isn't too portable if they have to be in the vicinity of a charge socket every few hours.
3. Nintendo have pushed themselves into a dwindling portable market that would not take much to disappear. Why? the untapped market of good quality games on smartphones. Sure, Mario Run couldn't do it, but consider the following scenario: In the wake of the Pokemon Go craze (despite Niantic trying so hard to kill it), GameFreak see a huge potential for a proper Pokemon game on smartphones. They either buy Nintendo's share of The Pokemon Company themselves as an investment, or they approach Apple to do so. How quickly would the market shift? Just like the days of the PlayStation, all it would take would be a few big names and big titles to jump ship, and the rest will follow. Why would GameFreak jump ship?....
4. Nintendo appear to have incorporated the worst aspects of paid online subscriptions and taken out the best parts. Should Nintendo do with hundreds of classic titles at their disposal? Hand them out, but only for a month at a time. Yeah, I'm sure that will get people enthusiastic to pay for their online Nintendo play, which I have to say, besides the cost, has been leagues behind their competitors. Pokemon online play...now comes at a cost. Smash Bros online play....now comes at a cost. How might GameFreak take any potential dip in Pokemon sales because of this?
Nintendo had the worst possible outcome with the Wii; it succeeded significantly. Ever since, they have been relentlessly pursuing motion controls in all of their equipment, and it's making their systems a lot less cost competitive. Still believing that the same blue ocean is out there, they refuse to believe that the trend has been and gone. They will hold on to motion controls right until they are no longer a hardware manufacturer.
All that being said, on to the topic at hand. I was originally against Nintendo becoming a 3rd party publisher/developer, mainly because I saw the sorry mess that it left Sega in. However, upon discussion with a few old school gamer friends of mine, I was reminded that Sega was in a pretty bad financial state when they made the move to 3rd party. Talented developers had jumped ship by that time. Nintendo, on the other hand, still has plenty of coin in the bank, and the transition wouldn't be near as much of an upset that Sega encountered. However, these savings are dwindling over time (even when Nintendo makes a profit, it still needs to appease its stockholders). So now I have changed my mind: In light of Nintendo's bungle with hardware, they need to exit the hardware market and become a 3rd party publisher, and the sooner the better, lest they end up with a similar fate as Sega. I don't want Nintendo to fail....I want most important aspect of their company (the games) to succeed, even if it comes at the cost of their hardware division.
Now before anybody accuses me of being some kind of anti-Nintendo collaborator posing as a fan, I point to Exhibits A and B, my posting history and my game library. I have stuck by Nintendo's side unconditionally since the days of the NES. I own all of the old consoles and still do. However, the Switch will be the first Nintendo console that I will most likely pass on. With each generation of Nintendo hardware came bigger droughts. The GameCube suffered a 6 month drought, the Wii was 12 months. This was enough to make me reconsider my purchase of the WiiU, which I eventually went ahead with because the store offered $50 off at launch. In gratitude, Nintendo treated me to the longest drought yet on one of their consoles. Yes, I am a burned WiiU owner.
I'd like to hope I'll be wrong, but I can see the same problems plaguing the Switch as the WiiU suffered.
