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| burninmylight said: Bolded: Damn, I didn't even think about that, but good point... I mentioned people putting each other in headlocks at the store to get one (I'm being facetious in case anyone can't tell, I don't think this literally happened), but I didn't even consider the scalping market. If people were paying north of $400 USD to get their hands on a $250 console, they'd pay $400 for a 360 with a Wiimote in the box. Nintendo would have made a bit less money, fewer consoles, fewer game sales, more expensive game development. Most likely. It probably doesn't sell 100 million units at that price, and assuming that it still had the infamous Nintendo level of online service, I don't think it's pulling too many people away from CoD, Battlefield and Madden off of XBL and PSN. However, I do think that it gets some of the generations greatest hits that just weren't capable on the Wii that exists in our current timeline. I'm confident that if Capcom could have put Resident Evil, Street Fighter IV and Turbo HD Remix on it as straight ports, it would have. Konami would have brought the Metal Gears and that Castlevania reboot. Sega would have brought Bayonetta, Yakuza and Sonic '06 Generations. Ubisoft would have brought Assassin's Creed. We know that there was a prototype build of Arkham Asylum for the Wii that never got far off of the ground, so Eidos/WB were interested in getting Batman on it. With a more consistent serving of third party hits, the Wii has stronger legs near the end of its lifecycle and doesn't hit the same cliff it did around 2010. For all I know, those games could have flopped on the HD Wii like they did on the Wii U for the few ports it got. But a big reason why they flopped on Wii U was because Nintendo spent an entire generation sending the message to the kind of gamers that those games appeal to, to go elsewhere for those games. The other big reason was that the Gamepad didn't add any appeal to people to abandon their current ecosystems. It's possible that an HD Wii would have allowed Nintendo to send a more inclusive message with its marketing to say, "Our console is big enough for casuals AND dedicated gamers!", and Nintendo wouldn't have had to spend years digging itself out of that hole in terms of image. Of course, as the OP suggests, this is all just a thought exercise. |
Agreed. The Wii trajectory would have been a bit slower but also longer.
I don't feel they're digging themselves out of that 'hole' at all, rather the opposite. The refusal to add a home version of the Switch and Switch 2 shows me they've chosen the mobile market as their main audience. No surprise after the Wii U. (I loved that thing, hud / map in your hands instead of on the TV was great. Touch screen inventory management, super mario maker level editing then playing on TV by just looking up)
The Switch 2 is plenty capable but holds little appeal to me. Switch docked was not a great experience, the joy cons weren't either. Switch 2 is sticking to the handheld experience first. So Switch 2 might have more capable hardware, it's still not interesting to me. The value isn't there when it comes with a screen and joy cons I will never use, while it still has to sit upright in a dock not fitting nicely under the tv, only 256GB storage included. In a Wii form factor coming with a 'normal' controller and 1tb SSD I would have been more interested.
Anyway we'll see how Switch 2 is going to do at $450 and going up.
