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Soundwave on 05 January 2017
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RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

OK, putting aside Nintendo franchises, for $199.99-$249.99 what proposition from a games perspective does a Switch offer above/beyond a PS4 or XBox 1 both of which will have thousands of games just as the Switch is getting it's 25 games?

You can't use the Wii thing, there is no Wiimote "hook" here, if there was Nintendo would've made it front and center the focus of the machine from day 1. 

I didn't like the Wii but I did predict it would do very well on the market, there was a clear hook there and a clear audience that was under-served and a completely different way of playing. Switch doesn't have any of that. 

The 3DS base has to be the one that shows up to this party, because it's not a very appealling party to other people who don't really life/eat/sleep Nintendo franchises. There is no $600 PS3 to take advantage of here either, as I said by giving Sony/MS almost 4 years to get their costs down, both of those systems could be $199.99 next year. 

Nintendo didn't even show that Switch has a touchscreen in their reveal trailer. That's because after the Wii U reveal they were stunned because of the negative reactions they received for showing anything that wasn't about the hardcore gamer. No, Nintendo wouldn't put audience-expanding features and games in a short reveal trailer after the beatdown a few years ago. Kimishima confirmed in an interview that the Switch reveal trailer was specifically tailored to show things that please core gamers.

If you think we've already seen everything about Switch, you will be in for a surprise. I mean, it's obvious that the Joycons can also function as motion controllers.

The prices of PS4 and XB1 as well as their game libraries won't matter much if we are dealing with asymmetrical competition and that's where we are heading.

Fairly doubtful they have some kind of amazing hook that would sell tens of millions of systems and they would chose to not show it while showing the sysem being played in about 6 different configurations first. That doesn't really make a lot of sense, if they had that, I doubt the system would even be called "Switch", because they'd build/brand the system around that cool feature. 

"Switch" is the name, because that's the main unique feature of the system, that's for better or worse the best they could up with after 5 years. 

It will do well enough I think but mainly with the 3DS base Nintendo has already established (y'know where 85% of Nintendo's fanbase actually is). 

As a console, it's not really going to be IMO the console of choice for most people who really are crazy about home consoles. It's a fairly compromised product without any big advantage in pricing or software library, there's just not a whole lot of compelling reasons to use the Switch as your main home console over a PS4 or XB1 other than the usual "but it has Mario/Zelda/DK/etc". That hasn't won the day alone for Nintendo in the past. 

If you want to believe this is the next Wii, that's fine, but I don't really think so. There's no new, compeletely different way to play here that's going to magically bring forth an untapped audience that currently does not games and would need a Switch in order to enjoy any type of gaming.