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Soundwave on 09 February 2017
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NATO said:
Soundwave said:

In terms of "hardware innovation" no they haven't had a new breakout type of control interface since ... like maybe the Wii Balance Board in 2007? 

That's almost a decade ago. 

All that stuff is a bit overrated anyway. I think hardware innovation like that should happen organically and through need, you shouldn't try to force things for the sake of being innovative. 

3D screen, off-TV play/having a screen on the controller, Vitalty Sensor, even that Pokemon Go accessory they tried to sell ... none of those things have really taken off or in the Vitalty Sensor's case it didn't even make it to market so something must've gone very wrong there. None of that stuff has become standard.

With Switch they basically knew they didn't have a new controller innovation that would really sell systems, so the portability of the system is basically the ultimate safety net ... they know no matter what they can always sell the thing as a portable Nintendo system, and they still do a decent job of that so if all else fails they know they can lean back on that feature. 

it's half assed though, a middle ground where it fails as a portable because of its size/bulkyness (in the same way the vita does because its uncomfortable as hell in the pocket), has poor battery life, it's a tablet but does very little of what a similarly priced tablet would do (while being no faster at doing it). and fails at a home console through lack of power, limited functionality beyond games, and prohibitively expensive accessories/controllers.

The portability came at a comprimise of its home-console mode, and it's home-console mode came at a comprimise of it's portability.

All the while, anyone actually interested in Nintendo handheld games still have the 3DS as a much cheasper and better supported option.

The secret is it's a portable. Really. Nintendo knows this full well and they know that's where they will make hay with the system, they know damn well as a home console company they have huge short comings. 

They want to sell the 3DS for another year, because why throw perfectly good profit down the toilet, and they want to still be able to sell $60 games, so initially marketing the Switch as a "home console" works for them. 

But make no mistake as time goes on they will play up the fact that it's a portable. 

If it wasn't there would be a 3DS successor well into development, not only that it would be given priority over the Wii U successor. The fact that Nintendo has no 3DS successor even in the beginning stages of development tells the real story. Don't listen to the PR bullshit. 

Nintendo knows full well they can die shrink the Tegra X1 chip for smaller (and larger) Switch models down the line. In fact I would bet good money these revisions already exist in Nintendo's R&D lab as prototypes with things like a 10nm Nvidia chip that they won't be mass producing until 2018, the shit we see (the current Switch/NX) is the stuff they were working on largely 2+ years ago.