RolStoppable said:
The DS and Wii successors could have been mere power upgrades (both) and improved motion controllers (Wii successor) and they would have worked. The PSP successor wouldn't have stood a chance, PS Move fell flat fast and Microsoft's Kinect didn't have much staying power either. A key part of the Wii was that its motion controller wasn't just an add-on and that the console was more than just motion controls, so games could be created beyond that. But with the 3DS and Wii U Nintendo wanted to push other things, so we got those abominations. Nevertheless, even the aforementioned hypothetical DS and Wii successors would have run into the issue of increased development times for games, so they wouldn't have been as successful as the DS and Wii due to fewer Nintendo games getting released. The entire point of Nintendo's differentiation was that both Sony and Microsoft had deeper pockets, so they could sell the hardware at a loss to provide better specs at the same price, and buy up third party content to tip the scale in their favor. Now with Sony being eliminated from the handheld market, Nintendo's hybrid console design comes with the built-in differentiating factor of portability, so innovations in control or otherwise aren't necessary anymore. I just hope Nintendo doesn't forget about this and stays their course instead of taking a stupid route along the lines of "our developers want to do something crazy because they would be bored otherwise." |
Agreed, there's no longer any need for further unnecessary differentiation now that the hybrid model is a proven success.
Fingers crossed they simply improve on what the Switch already nailed; more power, better Joycons.
Hopefully the need for games to be played portably will prevent them adding many mandatory gimmicks in regards to input.
