There is a new reality among the consoles, and that's the mid-gen upgrade. As someone who's actually rather excited to get the Scorpio (I don't have the xbox1 nor do I have a 4k player so it seems worth whatever price they slap on it to me personally, though if I had an Xbox1 I'd likely feel differently) I certainly can't claim to be totally against it, though I do wonder how they'll ever make a clean break with the current generation as it seems it would be prohibitively expensive to outperform these mid-gen improvements unless they wait quite a few years.

Regardless, as someone who's had the Switch for over a month now and has really fallen in love with it, I must admit I've been thinking about how it already trails the PS4 and Xbox 1 (let alone PS4 Pro and Scorpio) in regards to hardware performance and, while its size and price makes that reasonable, an upgrade within a few years is seemingly necessary if they want to encourage the porting of many 3rd party games to their system. Given that they actually have a history of console upgrades (such as the RAM increase on the N64) and have routinely upgraded their handhelds for ages now (can't help but notice people don't seem particularly bothered that a few 3DS games are only compatible with the New 3DS), I feel that it is rather inevitable that Nintendo will join this mid-gen improvement practice.

My main concern for Nintendo is their rather reasonable but limiting business practice, it being their refusal to sell their consoles at a loss. Granted, their timing with the Tegra X1 was somewhat poor as they likely wanted to establish their console before this holiday season and the Scorpio's release, but it seems likely that even if timed well with the development of better hardware the Switch will be rather limited in its attempt to not be prohibitively expensive.

So anyway, I was just wondering if anyone thinks this might be an option: Might it be possible to simply sell the tablet and hardware itself, without the Joy-Cons and the dock/adaptor for those of us who already have those? Obviously they'd have to also sell the complete package as well, but if they're able to establish a large userbase I think such an option that is compatible with the joy-cons and such that you already own would be rather welcome, especially as they'd be able to slash ~$100+ off the price if they so chose and could make a decent upgrade look less daunting.

It really sounds like something that's quite unlikely to happen, but that sort of swapping has been very welcome in the past... I remember being very, very grateful that the ever-breaking xbox360 could simply swap hard drives from console to console. Really, any chance to not have to buy the same thing all over again would be most welcome, and given the uniquely high costs of the joycons and rather high number of peripherals, the Switch seems the perfect console to lop those redundancies out of the final price, thereby allowing for a better upgrade without breaking the bank.

Is such a thing possible? I have to imagine for some things, such as the dock, it would be quite difficult to make the new model fit it properly, but it might be worth the effort.

Of course.

The DS and 3DS had one. I don't see why the Switch shouldn't have one. Hell I do hope that it will actually happen

No more mid-gen upgrades, please. Sure make it bigger or smaller, but we can survive 5 years with the power of the Switch.

Clearly the Switch isn't about power anyway and for the type of games we have seen so far they don't require a high performance level. I think the current high pricing and low battery life means the best upgrade will be a 100% compatible model based on a better fabrication process in a more compact size.

If there is a mid-gen refresh I think it may be a model that supports virtual reality with a 1080p screen. So the new type of games are VR only. This assumes VR gets mass acceptance and Nintendo want their slice of the pie.

Not a fan of mid-gen upgrades, but it will happen :p

Nintendo is designing the system to be "switched" out in many ways. They could just sell a new body for $150-$200 that has upgrades in 2 (likely 3) years for those that have already bought the system since everyone will already have the controllers or even different sets of controllers by that time. Any cost difference would be made up by all those extra controller and dock purchases. Get consumers buying into different components, paying higher for the less expensive and less for the most expensive, and Nintendo could do amazing unthinkable things like release new upgraded console bodies for $100 at release, completely changing the traditional market structure. It's a bait and "switch" so to speak. It's about flexibility and possibilities.

If there ever is an upgrade, it should reflect the computational device patent that Nintendo has. An upgraded device with extra RAM and external videocard for $100-$200 that puts the Switch while docked, on par with the PS4 Pro.

Just make a refresh with the handheld running in docked mode, nobody will be upset, maybe a 1080p screen, would be lovely. but lets not overdo the mid-gen stuff, its a handheld boys. for the 3DS it was a pretty horrible scenario with exclusives and games running horrible on the original hardware

Mid-gen upgrades will be standard for everyone, you might as well get used to it.

For one, it's simply profitable. Sony makes more money off a PS4 Pro than they do off the regular PS4. It allows hardware manufacturers to keep the higher end price point while sliding older models down to cheaper price points. To more than double the PS4's power it only costs Sony like $60 (far less than probably a lot of people on this board would think). The rest of that extra $100 they charge for the Pro goes into Sony's pocket as profit.

It's not in Nintendo's interest either to watch the Switch become out-powered by other devices like tablets and phones either, which will happen if they don't eventually refresh the hardware. It will lose it's appeal as something that can play real console games on the go if the hardware is allowed to become too dated.

And quite frankly there's money to be made by double dipping consumers.

Mid-gen upgrades make more sense for the Switch actually given that portable devices are expected by consumers to have such refreshes these days. With the PS4/Scorpio it's a little bit harder to sell because you really need to buy a separate new TV to get large benefit from that investment, portables come with everything you need right out of the box.