Kyuu said:
Mnementh said:
I feel like the power question is always misleading. Because the WiiU probably had more power than was used, but nobody bothered to really invest time, effort and money to make it work, because it was not seen as a system which made the investment back with game sales. For Switch on the other hand that works, which means with more effort studios are able to create "miracles". And that is not something specific for Switch and WiiU. More successful system especially in regards to game sales will result in games that make much more of the hardware available.
The second misleading thing here is the assumption of how much the horsepower influences success. This is a pretty clear lesson of game system history: the most powerful system seldom wins. Overall power has only a minor part in success. Much more important is how the perceived (subjective) value measures up. And that is strongly defined by the games on display. Switch could early on build a high perceived value, just because of how Breath of the Wild is a great game everyone wanted and still wants. More power doesn't automatically leads to more desirable games, which is why power has only minor influence on success.
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If power didn't matter, generations wouldn't exist.
Corporations sell us hardware primarily as a vehicle for software sales and subscription services, so why would they ever stop supporting established system with large install bases? Why did Sony ever think of dropping Playstation 2 and instead selling PS3's at huge losses right off the bat? Why do concepts like "generations" and "system requirements" continue to exist?
Power is generally a huge factor, but it comes at a price. If you want your system to be portable AND affordable, you're going to be forced to compromise power coz the alternative is impossible.
Provided all variables are equal (price, launch date, brand recognition, consumer-base size, ease of development, etc), a significantly more powerful system would have a major advantage over the weaker system. So Switch obviously has an advantage over a hypothetical half as powerful Switch. Otherwise Nintendo could have launched a much weaker Switch and profited more by overpricing it the same. Or priced it lower and sold more units and by extension more content and services.
If Switch was only as powerful as the 7th gen consoles or Wii U ("power" as in realized results, not some hypotheticals), that would have hurt its longevity to some extent, reduced the number of 3rd party ports, and prolonged the porting period of some games and made them more expensive. The 1st party lineup could've looked and played worse too. The system would have objectively been less appealing for consumers and developers alike, it's just common sense.
Every Playstation console barring PS3 (which is complicated) and PS5 were the most -or arguably the most- powerful consoles at the time of their launch, not to mention they were the better value propositions than the competition. Power is important, but of course if your competition has it already, it wouldn't necessarily be a huge selling point by itself, that's not what I'm arguing.
The relationship between the different selling points is a very complicated one to breakdown. And it evolves over time (for instance people nowadays are willing to pay more for more, hence the lower demand for Switch Lite and Series S). But provided all but one variable are "fixed", the different variable will become a big selling point. Switch is running some games that were originally designed for PS360 at around twice the resolution, more stable fps, and higher settings. It's not an insignificant power gap like Series X vs PS5, or PS360 vs Wii U, or even PS4 vs Xbox One.
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