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zygote on 16 April 2017
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Soundwave said:
zygote said:

That may be one appeal in the current Switch popularity, while not the only one.  The point with making a mini Switch would not be to combat that appeal, but to accommodate for a 3DS replacement that is viable to the existing handheld developers as well as to the younger players who would drive the sales.  If they were to bring those into the Switch fold, then the Switch library would explode as well as sales and in turn even more titles, and so on and so forth, in a cycle that would ride the system's life and possibly carry into the next few generations.  It is a needed step in the transition.  Who knows where the potential will end with Switch, but it must be taken advantage of while it's cultural and commercial definition is being established.

Here's the thing with that though -- kids prefer tablets to the 3DS. 

Go take a 3DS and a tablet and get a bunch of kids and see which one they want more, odds are more will be fighting over the tablet. 

Kids like the bigger screen themselves too. 3DS has been getting spanked by tablets for a while now, every time I'm in an airport I see literally like 10-15 kids with a tablet versus the very rare one with a 3DS. It isn't even a contest anymore. 

So the tablet like form factor of the Switch may be more desirable even to kids. Wouldn't surprise me at all. 

That may be true.  I've seen kids playing on both, but most families have more access to tablets by default.  Parents download quick games for their kids to keep them occupied.  I'm sure kids would be fine with a tablet, but Nintendo's observations are going to be the ones that make these decisions, and likely they are going to be concerned with the size of the switch in contrast with the past DS and 3DS models, the more "child-centric" designs.  Developers who are used to developing exclusively for Nintendo's handhelds are also going to be asking questions about the direction.  For instance, as it stands in terms of the handheld market, what truly separates the Switch from, say, the Vita, the next Vita, existing tablets, or smartphones that are just as viable as platforms.  In the past, Nintendo's handheld line has been consistent and distinctive: the support, the branding, the design, etc.  If Nintendo starts messing with the key parts of that formula then a lot of questions come up.  If Nintendo loses either the developer support or the userbase at any handheld generation, then they could be signing their future away 2 generations from now.  I'm not sure Nintendo would be willing to take those risks at this sensitive stage.  Not with their most consistently successful market.  Most likely they will try to adopt their past trends that have proven successful. 

Seeing this play out will be interesting.  The merging of these two lines will be an industry first and Nintendo obviously has some good ideas on how to do it.