| RolStoppable said: XL models of the DS and 3DS sold well and they were more expensive than the regular size models. There's no good reason to doubt that more convenient revisions extend the life of portable video game hardware. Since Switch is Nintendo's only platform going forward, there's no good reason to be concerned about the amount of first party games. That leaves third party, but there is hardly any week without new game announcements for Switch. You are mistaken about the chances for new hit IPs from third parties to emerge, because pretty much every popular development engine supports Switch. And remember, every Switch game comes with the benefit of being portable by default, so it isn't detrimental for Switch if such third party IPs are multiplatform. Minecraft is going to be big on Switch despite its age, Rocket League too. Your third paragraph seems to be derived from Nintendo's statistical data for Switch's launch quarter. You should not be surprised that males are much more likely to buy new technology and you should also not be surprised that adults are more likely to have the money for new video game hardware. The demographical breakdown for Switch ownership is guaranteed to change over time, because the hardware price will come down eventually, there are going to be gift-giving seasons and the software lineup will become more varied. So many of the concerns you raise are pretty much a given to be properly addressed by Nintendo. It's like wondering if Nintendo will increase Switch supply to ease up the current shortages... it's something that they obviously work on, so it isn't a guessing game or something that warrants uncertainty. Maybe the approach needs to be changed. In which aspects do you see the Switch at a disadvantage in comparison to the 3DS? |
The lack of engine support didn't stop third party games from releasing on the 3DS, the biggest change with the Switch is supporting Unreal Engine 4. (The 3DS already supported Unity.) I don't think I'm mistaken about lower chances of new hit third party IPs. (There's arguably less new games being made today on home consoles or portables then compared to back then. There's 1800+ games to be had on the DS compared to just over 1200 games on the 3DS and so far of the 320 or so announced games on the Switch around 40 are exclusive (3DS has just under 200) which translates to a lower ratio of exclusive games compared to the 3DS. The competitive advantage of exclusives cannot be denied when all of those 3rd party exclusives I listed for the 3DS benefited from are either full exclusives or signficantly timed exclusives.) In short, yes there's a benefit to the portability factor but you overrate it in comparison to having exclusive games when we look at the 3DS as an example ...
I do realize that it's too early to measure the demographics of the Switch but it still remains to be seen whether Nintendo has improved upon that issue or not ...
If you wanted to know from me what aspects the Switch has a disadvantage compared to the 3DS you should've asked me earlier but here's a list ...
Price
Lower chance of big emerging third party exclusives
Less chances for revisions (3DS had the XL line, 2DS line, new 3DS line and all sorts of other mixes where as I only expect two more SKUs with the Switch)
Less new higher value production games in general (hole could be filled by just porting old AAA games from the last generation)
Lesser important matters such as the lack of backwards compatibility (porting a few popular WII U games doesn't seem so bad but porting the a small portion of the 3DS library is a mammoth of a task unless they use sequels as a solution instead)
