3 reasons that made Nintendo Switch a succes

[sethnintendo]

Wyrdness said:

sethnintendo said:

I thought it was already general knowledge that the gamepad held back any more power.  It wasn't like Nintendo was out of money like you said because they have billions in the bank (I believe they drained it under 10 at that point).  Nintendo doesn't usually sell consoles at a loss and they don't want to sell a bloated system for over 400.  So because they went the gamepad route which added cost to the system they could only make it marginally more powerful then the previous systems the competition had.  They just had bad marketing at the time and people are apparently stupid because even after putting out the brochure that it was a new system they still thought it was an addon.  It would have been more clear maybe if they called it the Super Wii perhaps.  Anyways their failure with Wii U lead to some changes and now you have the Switch.

Gamepad costs would not have given power to challenge the PS4 that's his argument read my above post for reference, Gamepad with out added graphics would have put the console at selling break even going by the estimated costs flying around (some say 50 quid some say 70) essentially a bit lower returns than GC achieving tiny profit, going for extra power instead of the gamepad would have still resulted in a loss look at the PS4 part in my above post it still sold at a loss at higher price point (100 quid more at launch) but Sony made money back with PSN and their licensing structure that Nintendo didn't have.

So even if the gamepad was dropped for power they'd still have to sell at significant loss and would still be well below the PS4's ability especially as Wii U would have been built on 2010 tech compare to the 2012 tech PS4 had, you've fallen in the same trap thinking 10bn in the bank meant they could do anything, Wii U caused a 387m loss in its first year offsetting any profit from the portable market meaning the money it cost them was higher the figure is the end result. 387m is over a third of a billion and that's with as he put it a bare bones HD console that 10bn is a lot when you have a viable business model but not when you incur losses like these over time especially when you're dominating the portable market and still making these losses otherwise you end up like that travel company Thomas Cook who had a bank and still went under.

I'm starting to grasp what you are saying but still dont think Nintendo consumers care about top notch graphics.  Sure it helps if you can get 3rd party ports but most the blame goes to Wii U marketing and branding team in my book.  They went from perfect let's play Wii commercials to terrible commercials.  If they didn't have the gamepad they could have enough power to get downgraded ports like the Switch is getting.  Problem was that it was such a failure that third parties gave up on it within a year.  Switch seems to be getting good 3rd party support granted most are old games but there are some companies porting their new games like Bethesda.  Switch is decent upgrade from Wii U but it isn't mind blowing.

I still think if they continued supporting the Wii and waited another year or so and dropped the gamepad then they would of had a system that would be close enough for 3rd party ports of PS4/Xbox One games.  That's if the system was more successful and even then some third party companies don't even give a damn about that.  Just look how much EA hates Nintendo.

Last edited by sethnintendo - on 18 January 2020