Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Chrkeller]

Hardstuck-Platinum said:

Vinther1991 said:

I am not sure actually. I think it always made sense for their GameBoy and DS lines, affordability and decent battery life were more important then.
With their home consoles, I think theyopted out too early, it was a massive gamble for the Wii, luckily for them, people got really excited about the motion control thing. Had that not gotten so much excitement, Nintendo would have killed themselves with the weak hardware, as they would have had to sell the system on their core franchises only. Today you can still get a solid amount of cross-platform support with hardware a full generation weaker than the competitors, especially because of indies. In 2006 that just wasn’t possible. The gamble mostly paid off, because people initially were hyped about the wiimote, but Nintendo payed the price for the weak hardware in the Wii’s twilight years and especially with the Wii U.

From Switch onwards the strategy is the right one. There is very little to gain by competing with Sony and Microsoft on hardware specs.

Little to gain eh? What about The Witcher 4? GTA 6? COD? Battlefield? but yeah very little to gain. 

Weaker power means cheaper software development costs.  Nintendo makes a living on selling Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Metroid, Pokemon and Animal Crossing.  Keep development costs down via weaker hardware is worth far more than having those titles.  And to be fair, those might come anyway.  Games are scalable as crap.  People can game on a 2050 up to a 5090...  games scale.  Porting isn't what it used to be.

edit

speculation, but GTA6 minimum is supposed to be a gtx 1660, the Switch 2 fairs well against a gtx 1660.  Sure GTA 6 on the Switch 2 will be 30 fps and low resolution, reduction in crowd density + draw distance.  But it is doable.  Nobody is making games that aren't compatible with weaker hardware.  Steam is loaded with stuff like 2050, 3050, etc.    

Forbidden West on the PC can run with a 1650..  the Switch 2 is well beyond a 1650.  I am not sure why people think porting to the Switch 2 is magic.  Games are designed to be scalable.  

Last edited by Chrkeller - 4 days ago