| barneystinson69 said: The Switch reveal has confirmed this, and how I believe this is because Nintendo knows it can't compete with Sony or Microsoft anymore. They don't have the 3rd parties, the online infrastructure, the fanbase, ect. Now I'm sure I'm going to have people say "OH, THE SWITCH IS A HYBRID, ITS TECHNICALLY A HOME CONSOLE AND HANDHELD!!!" Let me say one thing: The switch is a handheld console, that has a dock in order to make it look like a home console as well. Lets just look at the specs for example. For $299, you're getting a console that is around double the power of the Wii U, so roughly 1/3-1/2 the power of the XB1 (which is also $299). Now this looks bad enough, but when we look at 8.5 gen consoles (Scorpio and PS4Pro), the gap is even larger. Now I'm going to assume the Scorpio launches at $399, just like the Pro. For $100 more, you get consoles which are 6 and 8 times more powerful than the Switch, and both are likely to see price cuts as well. If the PS4Pro is 349 for the holidays, are you seriously telling me the gap in power is only worth $50? These specs sound more like a console that is primarily a handheld than a home console. If its half a generation behind the XB1 and PS4, than it definently is in trouble with the PS4Pro and Scorpio. Now you could argue specs don't matter, and thats true - to a certain extent. However, when the gap is this large, its definently a problem. The Switch will definently struggle to get 3rd parties, and ultimately fail if its treated like a home console. If its treated more like a handheld, it has a far better chance. Now you could very well argue against me, but Nintendo is looking to put 3DS games on it, and says that they won't be replacing the Wii U with anything else. So Nintendo fans can treat this as whatever they think it is, but Nintendo from now on will make handheld consoles and mobile games, and that is it. The era of true home consoles for Nintendo is over; they already blew it with the Wii U, and I just don't see them ever recovering from it. RIP |
Alright, so I'm gonna go through this point by point.
First of all, Nintendo hasn't been directly competing with Microsoft and Sony since they released the Wii a decade ago. It was even the company mantra. There was an even a brief "Wii60" friendship between Nintendo and Microsoft fanbases because it was possible to buy a Wii and 360 for the price of a PS3. What you say about Nintendo's online infrastructure, third party support, and fanbase goes back even further, all the way to the GameCube days, when Nintendo put absolutely no effort into buildings it's online infrastructure, continued the bleed of third party support which began during the N64, and saw their fanbase shrink to a mere 20 million consoles.
Your specs and price argument also ignores precedent. Both the Wii and Wii U launched with a higher price vs specs compared to their competitors, despite featuring bigger gaps in their specs vs their competitors than the Switch currently does. The Wii launched at $250, a mere $50 less than the far more powerful Xbox 360's cheaper unit, which had already been out for a year at the time. The Wii couldn't even run Unreal Engine 3, an industry standard engine for HD consoles at the time. Heck, there was even a time in 2009 when the 360's Arcade SKU was $50 CHEAPER than the Wii was, despite the huge difference in specs. And this largely came down to two things: Nintendo wanting to profit on Wii consoles (MS and Sony sold their consoles at a loss that gen), and the Wii featuring some unique bells and whistles, like motion control.
Wii U was a bit cheaper than the Wii was versus its competitors. But it's situation is basically the same as the Switch's will be versus Scorpio Pro, except it lacked portable functionality, was sold at a loss, and ALSO couldn't run industry standard engines like Unreal 4.
Of course, unlike Wii vs 360 and PS3, or Wii U vs One and PS4, Switch vs Scorpio and Pro isn't really as relevant. Unlike Switch, these consoles are not meant to replace their predecessors. They are merely meant to run their predecessor's games at higher resolutions and/or frame rates. So the Switch never really needed to compete with these system anyway, since their only purpose is to appeal to gamers with 4K TVs. When comparing Switch to PS4 and One, the power gap is actually at its smallest since Nintendo started doing this with the Wii.
Power gaps also don't matter too much when it comes to third parties. GameCube was comparable to PS2 and Xbox in terms of power, but was still passed over by many third party games. Wii, meanwhile, despite being way less powerful than 360 and PS3, recieved the most third party support of any Nintendo home console since the SNES. And while there was a lot of shovelware in there (common for a market leading console in those days), the Wii also got a bunch of quality third party exclusives and ports of certain mass market third party games like Call of Duty. Then with the Wii U, Nintendo was AGAIN past over for multiplatform games, this time games that were cross gen or last gen exclusive that it was perfectly capable of running, like MGS5 and Assassin's Creed Rogue. Specs certainly DO matter when it comes to multiplatform games, but not third party support. If Switch sells a lot, third parties will come.
And...aw yes, the "TRUE SCOTSMEN" argument. This one annoys me. Normally my response to comments about "true games" and "true consoles" is asking if that means there are fake games and consoles, but that obviously won't work here.
But going by your argument, the only real difference between the Switch Nintendo's last two game consoles is that it's portable. All that stuff about price and specs are things the last few consoles feature as well. So yes, you could say "THE SWITCH IS JUST A PORTABLE CONSOLE WITH A DOCK TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A CONSOLE". But you can just as easily say "THE SWITCH IS JUST A HOME CONSOLE WITH A BATTERN AND SCREEN TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A PORTABLE". Neither make much sense, and both ignore key features of the console.
Ultimately, I find these arguments that attempt to pigeonhole the Switch as one thing or another to be rather pointless. Here's what the Nintendo Switch is: it is another Nintendo console with a gimmick. THAT is what it is. Just as the DS had dual screens, the Wii had motion controls, the 3DS had 3D, and the Wii U had touchscren controller, the Switch is a console that can go portable and back to console. Just as Nintendo has never had a home console that can go portable before, Nintendo has also never had a portable that can connect to a TV and be played with a regular console controller.
Tell me, has a Nintendo portable ever had motion control wands? Has a Nintendo portable ever had a stand alone pro controller? Has a Nintendo console ever been able to connect into a base, allowing it to upclock its GPU and display on a TV at a higher resolution? Has a Nintendo portable ever received a brand new, mainline 3D Zelda game day one before? Or how about an open world explorable Mario game? Or a Splatoon game? Xenoblade has been primarily a home console franchise, only coming to portables in the form of a port many years later. Switch is receiving Xenoblade 2 as an exclusive. Or how about the more advanced Fire Emblem Warriors game, ala Hyrule Warriors on Wii U?
In terms of the types of games it's getting, Switch is very much a home console. It features peripherals that only home consoles receive. It can be played like a home console. So how can it not be called a home console?
The Switch is a home console. It is a portable. It even has a mode in between. Whether you want to call it all these things, or a hybrid, what you can't do is pigeon hole it as one or the other. Nintendo is still very much in the home console business, as well as the portable business. You just don't need to buy multiple devices anymore.
