| Chrkeller said: Interesting points, l will have to think about it more. For some reason I wasn't surprised by the success of the ps4, but was blown away by what the Switch accomplished. I was dead wrong about the switch. It sold 2x what I expected and become my second favorite platform of all time, only behind PC. Even little things I was dead wrong about. Mario with guns made me laugh, but here I'm with the opinion mario vs rabbids is one of the best strategy games in the last decade. So I'm not sure why, but for me the ps4 met my expectations while the switch decimated my expectations. |
I feel like the Switch's success was more surprising to a lot of people for two reasons.
1. The dedicated handheld market was thrown into question amidst the rise of gaming on iOS and Android. Since your smartphone can play high quality games, why do you need a separate device just for gaming?, was the sentiment of many people. Plus, Handheld/Mobile gaming always had a bit more of a novelty factor in the West vs. Asian territories, making it less important compared to home consoles. So despite the 3DS' success, many questioned if Nintendo make a dedicated portable game console as big of a phenomenon as the Game Boy line or original DS again. Compared to Sony and the PS3, where despite its initial struggle and subsequent turnaround, home console gaming was still very strong in the west. So PS3's comeback leading into PS4's dominance was pretty much expected to a lot of gamers.
2. Wii U's failure was still fresh in everybody's mind, and with the exception of the Wii, it continued the historic trend of Nintendo home consoles selling less and less every generation, and loosing more and more developer support. Home console failures get more media attention in the west for the reasons listed above, that combined with the diminishing returns of Nintendo's home console sales (sans Wii), led a lot of people to believe the Switch wouldn't do much of anything to reverse that trend.
But you can look at the Switch's success one of two ways. The optimistic perspective is that Nintendo used its years of experience perfecting and innovating portable game consoles to save its dying home console business, by making the Switch a home console you can play anywhere. Or the pessimistic perspective, which is that Nintendo's last home console flopped so badly, they got out of that market, and instead decided to give its next handheld system a bunch of home console-ish features instead. Either view could be accurate. The Switch has the control scheme, games, and features similar to home consoles. But the actual hardware, and much of its third party support, has more in common with Nintendo's handheld systems than its home consoles.
Last edited by TheMisterManGuy - on 04 September 2024
