potato_hamster said:
The Switch is being marketed as a home console. That means there are expectations people have of home consoles. There is a difference in perceieved value. A home console that struggles can't match performance of the $299 is worth less in the eyes of the consumer. Think about the X1 vs the PS4 on release. Not only was the PS4 cheaper, it was more powerful, so the X1 struggled. People perceieved the X1 as being less valuable. The Switch is in the same boat. Like it or not, Nintendo is competing with Sony and Microsoft for space under people's television. The Switch at $299 is not going to fly. |
X1 struggled because Microsoft fumbled on PR well ahead of its launch, and Sony capitalized on it in a masterful way. The "perceived value" had NOTHING to do with power, and everything to do with marketing, message and the perception of each manufacturer.
The vast majority of consumers don't give a crap about power. Go out and talk to random people on the street about the difference in power between X1 and PS4 and guage how much they really care. Ask random people why they chose their console of choice. I guarantee you very little of it has to do with the console's raw power. Unless they are PC gamers or message board dwellers like us, they don't give a shit and they couldn't tell you a thing about screen tearing, resolutions, FLOPs, anti-aliasing, framerate or GPUs.
Getting back to the Switch, if it doesn't meet the expectations of customers, it will be because the games aren't there, not because Random Game A can only output in 900p on Switch instead of 1080p, or Random Game B has fewer shaders on the Switch than the other two.
