Soundwave said:
Nintendo could probably release a home only console today and it would do well but it would be a companion to the Switch (ie: the speculated original NX concept) and not a device with a completely unique library. Those days are over, no one can support two distinct platforms anymore. So it's not necessarily an either/or scenario.
Things have changed. XBox is basically on its way out of the industry, so that leaves a fairly sizable open market just sitting there. Not everyone wants a Sony home console and Sony's own market has a declining roof, the PS4 capped out at about 114 mill, it looks like PS5 won't even reach that.
So the opening is there especially if XBox is headed to irrelevance.
The GameCube was just a very different time and circumstance. The popular culture of the day (circa 2001) was hyper obsessed with being "cool" and grittiness, that isn't the case today. In 2001, something like Minecraft is probably not a hit, today pop culture has mellowed and nostalgia for one's childhood is the name of the game. In 2001, Eminem was the most popular star in music, today it's Taylor Swift. Anything cartoony in the early 2000s was frowned upon, today's it's not a big deal. It was just a bad time for a system like the GameCube to launch into, like trying to climb Mount Everest in a massive storm.
Also at that time, XBox was the sexy "newcomer" and Halo was a huge breakout hit that upstaged things like Metroid Prime, whereas today XBox is the tired also-ran and Halo is a massively declined brand that MS hasn't been able to replicate again.
Meanwhile Nintendo's brand has grown immensely while Playstation has levelled off and XBox has declined a lot. IP like Mario (just hit a massively huge movie), Zelda have never been more popular, Pokemon continues to be huge, and things that people laughed at in the GameCube era like Animal Crossing have ironically today become massive blockbusters.
Nintendo is on the upswing, XBox is dying, Sony is kinda just stuck on their treadmill well below PS2 levels. In this environment, sure I think a Nintendo home console could do reasonably well, but it would be in addition to Switch, not at the expense thereof. It would probably just be something that runs Switch titles at home at higher settings and can share games. But something like that at this point is probably more appealing than the freaking XBox which is toast. |
