RolStoppable said:
The lower technological specifications would have sped up development times, so Nintendo would have got games out faster than they did in the Wii U and 3DS reality. The combined software output would have also avoided/mitigated droughts. I don't think that the level of graphics would have done much to hurt sales, because sales of Nintendo games and hardware aren't driven by graphics to begin with.
The biggest key point of this alternate reality is that Nintendo would have continued the Wii direction instead of abandoning it. Firstly, the standard controller would have still been a motion controller. Secondly, games would have been developed in accordance to that; doesn't mean that all games would have had motion controls, because that wasn't the case on the Wii either. Thirdly, Nintendo would have achieved a different value proposition for its console.
So there is a number of blatantly obvious benefits here and I doubt such a system would have sold under 100 million units in its lifetime, plus Nintendo would have been able to keep having Nintendo-like profits throughout the generation (defined by Iwata as a minimum of 100 billion yen a year). However, there are also obvious disadvantages for this hypothetical earlier Switch in comparison to the actual Switch that launched in 2017.
The first one is the technology. While the Wii had Xenoblade Chronicles to prove what scope it is capable of (XC wasn't even a big budget game, mind you), it wouldn't have been able to output Breath of the Wild in its actual form. So we'll have to take one system seller away here, but we do have plenty of others of the Wii U and 3DS era, because people would have actually liked to buy the hardware as opposed to the Wii U and 3DS where this wasn't the case.
The second one is the elimination of Sony in the handheld market that hadn't happened yet. In the actual year 2018 it began to show that Sony's exit really forced the hands of third parties, so the actual Switch picked up lots of third party support to bolster its library for years to come. Sony's Vita received more third party support than the 3DS in Japan in the period from 2014 to 2016 despite Sony's handheld being locked in a very distant second place, so I wouldn't think that a hypothetical 2011 Switch would have fared that much better, because we have the evidence that sales data alone wasn't enough to sway third parties, so the absence of Sony altogether was a necessity. The 2011 Switch would have seen a reasonable good amount of third party support (because we know that's what the 3DS got), but it would have been a far cry from what the real Switch got.
The 2011 Switch would have eliminated Sony from the handheld market just like it happened in reality, because Sony's problems would have remained the same: Lack of commitment from Sony themselves, smartphones making multimedia features of the Vita obsolete as a selling point, third parties (especially in the USA and Europe) banking on smartphones replacing gaming handhelds altogether (resulting in lack of commitment). So in this timeline it would only be the Switch successor to reap the benefits, likely scheduled for a late 2017 launch, giving the 2011 Switch a full six years on the market. |
Assuming that 2011 Switch sold similar numbers as 2017 Switch, I’m curious if the perception of success would be different.
2017 Switch will sell 150+ million after 3DS/Wii U sold ~90 million but 2011 Switch would be coming after DS/Wii which sold ~255 million.
I wonder if that would have caused people to view it as underperforming.
As for 3rd party support, if 2011 Switch had similar power as Vita than I wonder if that would have caused both platforms to have better support. 3DS & Vita had some multiplat titles but for the most part games were either 3DS or Vita.
