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JWeinCom on 19 December 2020
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curl-6 said:
JWeinCom said:

Not sure if you meant hardware to apply to XBox One, but in terms of hardware, it's fine. It's not like I can really tell much of a difference if I play a game on my PS4 or Xbox One. But Microsoft handed off its two biggest franchises to third party devs, and didn't really create any new franchises. Which is why they're buying up developers now.

I think the Wii U could have been successful. But the marketing team, software team, and hardware teams just couldn't all get together to figure it out. I think the gamepad had some cool applications, and it had some good games, and Miiverse was a really interesting idea. But the various ideas never game together. I worked retail at the time, and it was kind of hard to figure out how to sell the thing. Whereas I think the Switch isn't quite as interesting, but with just the debut trailer they were able to easily explain the main selling point.

But I'm a little concerned with Nintendo atm. Obviously, the Switch is going to break 100m with relative ease, but at this point Nintendo should be setting itself up for the future by using the big install base to launch new franchises. That's something they really didn't do well with the Wii/DS, and it bit them in the ass. Conversely, it's something Sony did really well with the PS3 and 4, and it paid off bigly.

I didn't mean Xbone was bad hardware per se, more that gamers weren't exactly enchanted with playing more for a less powerful box than PS4, with Kinect initially bundled. 

And yeah I'd also like to see Nintendo launch more new franchises with Switch; they have done a few, like Ring Fit Adventure, ARMS, and Labo, but more would always be better.

I get why the Kinect was bundled. It's really had to make a peripheral successful if it's not bundled with the system. Kinect on 360 sold about 22 million units which is great for a peripheral, but 22 million isn't a very attractive userbase for a developer, so few companies besides Microsoft really bothered making anything that required much of a budget.

But, the Kinect simply wasn't good enough to get a Wii Sports kind of gamer to drop 500 bucks, and to the Halo/GTA gamer, it was just an extra hundred bucks for something they'd never use. 

So, I get the logic. Someone at Microsoft invested a lot of money and their reputation in the Kinect and to make it work it had to be bundled. But it was just a lost cause. They should have just admitted defeat and moved on from it. 

Nintendo actually solved that issue very nicely with the Switch. It has basically the same motion control functionality as the Wii, but in a way that doesn't add much to the price. Wish they'd make more games that took advantage of that though. Big area of potential growth.