Alternate history: Switch a generation earlier

[zorg1000]

Soundwave said:

I don't think Skyward Sword and Mario Kart 7 are system sellers the way Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 were, they don't have the same kind of scope and as such aren't nearly as impressive software wise. 

I also doubt 2GB of RAM would have happened, Nintendo originally wanted 1GB of RAM for the *Switch*, lol, go look up the Nintendo NX leaked documents, it was supposed to have a 480p screen + 1GB of RAM total.

People are lucky they didn't go with that crap Eriksson chipset + 1GB RAM.

2011-ish was just a bad time for Nintendo, people were too caught up in the initial wave of smartphone/tablet (iPad had just launched) frenzy, that was the new, hot, "must have it" shit of the time and the Wii/DS audience didn't want to hear any different. They were in love with their shiny new Apple toys and it would take a few years for that novelty to become normalized. 

2017 was a lot more hospitable, everyone and their grandma had gotten their fill of iPad so that it wasn't as special anymore and even PS4/XB1 were aging by then, it was the right time, it had enough horsepower under the hood to be at least decently convincing as a home console (not just a handheld with TV output), etc. etc. I think people underestimate how much changes if you change several major aspects of a system, because the logic is "well we only changed about 20% of the basic concept, that means at worst you should only lose about 20% of the sales" ... that's not how reality really works. 

You can alter things just slightly and it completely throw the entire thing off balance. 

I don’t think a device necessarily needs a BotW style system seller at launch (obviously it doesn’t hurt) but rather a steady flow of desirable games. As for MK7 not being a system seller while MK8 is seems like revisionist history. MK8 couldn’t make Wii U sell well and didn’t go on to sell massive numbers until it came to Switch. A game can only do so much if the hardware is undesirable.

Also, I don’t think Mario Kart 7 would be the same game that we got on 3DS in this alternate timeline. In our timeline we got MK7 in Dec 2011 for 3DS & MK8 in May 2014 for Wii U, in this alternate timeline it’s very possible we got MK on Vita level hardware in late 2012/early 2013 and fall somewhere in between MK7/MK8 in terms of size/scope. The same goes for other franchises that got 3DS & Wii U entries relatively close to each like Mario 3D Land/World or NSMB2/U.