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Fight-the-Streets on 17 October 2021
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curl-6 said:
Fight-the-Streets said:

Don't get me wrong, I have a blast too with my Switch, the most played console for me and it's far from over, even though I play 95% docked (and still will buy a Switch OLED because it looks so damn good, it's worth for those 5%).

I even think I wasn't quite correct in my analysis. As always, as soon as a new console is on the market, they already work on the next console. It is a known fact that the former President Satoru Iwata (R.I.P.) was already involved in the NX project (which later became the Switch). Can't remember the source but in an interview somewhere Nintendo also mentioned that the Switch was conceptualized as a hybrid right from the beginning and if you think about it, it was a very logical step after the Wii U was a console with a separate screen (the GamePad), the Switch was the opposite of it, the console is the GamePad and it can be docked to the TV. In 2012, when the Wii U launched, a hybrid either simply wouldn't have been technically possible or it would had to come with very outdated graphics capabilities combined with a very low battery life. Still, the step from a very unsuccessful Wii U to the Switch hybrid concept was very courageous from Nintendo as on the surface the hybrid concept is just a continuation of the Wii U concept which was a complete failure.

Nevertheless, if the Wii U would have been successful, it's not clear how the successor would have looked like and if Nintendo still would have adopted a two-pronged strategy with a different successor to the 3ds. One thing is for sure, if the Wii U would have been successful, its successor would have come to the market about two years later (2018/19). As they would have had two successful Wii branded consoles in a row, it's very likely that the successor would have continued the Wii brand. We can only speculate what would have come to the market in 2018/19, a more powerful Switch (than the current one we have in our hands) or an even more ambitious console?

I think the two pronged strategy would have been unified anyway as it was simply becoming too hard to make enough games for two separate devices once they reached roughly 6th and 7th gen in graphical complexity.

We may have seen a slightly more powerful Switch in 2018 if Wii U had been successful, (though knowing Nintendo it may have been the exact same just released later) perhaps called "Wii Switch" but I don't think another dedicated home console would've been on the cards.

I guess Nintendo still would have used a Tegra X1 SoC just much more customized for optimization which would have resulted in slightly better capabilities. The best Nvidia could offer by 2019 was a Tegra X2 (Parker) but this SoC was manly optimized for the automobile industry and would have brought basically no technical improvement for the game industry in comparison to the Tegra X1. As the Tegra X2 uses a 16nm FinFET+ manufacturing process compared to the 20nm of Tegra X1 it would have been more power efficient and therefore, would have given a longer battery life. However, as the Tegra X2 was still new in 2018/2019 (and manufacturing of the Switch would have started even earlier) the price for it would have been expensive and Nintendo surely would not have used it.