| The_Liquid_Laser said: I'm down with what the OP is saying in a very general way (i.e. the specific details may play out somewhat differently). The main thing I would disagree with is a 2025 date for the Switch's successor. I think it will likely be 2023. When Kimishima says they'll support the Switch for 10 years, that doesn't mean they'll have a later release date for Switch's successor. It means that they want to keep Switch going as a lower end system, so that they can still make money on it. Sony kept shipping PS2's out until 2013. That is more what Kimishima means. They want to keep supporting Switch just like Sony supported PS2. Besides, a company makes a lot higher profit margins on a console's tail end. All of the costs are lower. |
Yes, this. This is exactly what I think about this statement. They will keep the Switch 1 as cheap option like they are keeping the 3DS currently. I can even see a successor as early as 2021, or more likely 2022, depending on how well the Switch sells after the next gen for the other companies starts.
| Nautilus said: Nintendo wont break the hybrid concept and sell only handheld or home consoles Switches. |
And this here is the big point why most of the OP is not working. Currently we already have quite a lot of games that wouldn't work without detachable Joycons and a few that wouldn't work without the handheld mode. And this is without even considering Labo.
Think about it: a family thinks Go Vacation looks like a nice game. And hey, I get the base system for 100 bucks. Let's do that! Now they come home to realize they can't play Go Vacation, because the Joycons are integrated in the tablet in their version of Switch. They have to drop another 70 bucks for a pair of Joycons. Nintendo will not make this happening.
As XD84 is pointing out, Labo also fixes the size of the Switch tablet and the size of the Joycons. Currently Labo sits at 850K in VGC-tracking, without the third kit. So it will have around a million before the holidays. I think Labos future depends a bit on it's legs, so it should sell at least 300-400K over the holidays to be considered successful. But if it does that and Nintendo keeps on releasing new Labo kits, then I can't see Nintendo breaking compatibility with it.
So that leaves us with same base concept. But instead of reducing gameplay options with more models, Nintendo could expanding on it. That is in line with earlier consoles. DS had the DSi which added a camera. For Switch I could think of a dock that upscales to 4K, different controller options that fit into the Joycons slots (like the NES-controllers), a VR kit probably with a dock with additional hardware to add the processing power to keep things crisp in VR, 4G-support for the Switch tablet (and integrating the phone app in this version into the base Switch, so voice chat).
