There is an important distinction to be made between Nintendo in the DS and Wii era and the Switch era. They released weak hardware back then so they could sell it for cheap but the Switch line so far has been fairly capable so they were fully opting out of it back in the former period but now are back to opting in with it in terms of handheld gaming which has paid off in a big way. Before the DS and Wii they would release a weak handheld and a capable home console so in terms of power the shift to the Switch is basically them shifting back to that but with the handheld being capable and the home console being weak.

Ah I see! Okay that makes more sense now lol.

I get a bit depressed by Nintendo's go cheap approach to hardware. I often feel they could have pushed it just a little more and been much better. The difference between when Nintendo succeeds or fails can be little things, launch software, how the media portrayed the console, Nintendo's pricing, whether the gimmicks of that particular console catch the imagination of people or not. I bought a wii u from launch and didn't think it was a bad console. It had some amazing games by Nintendo and interesting controller with screen and compatibility with wii software too. It felt like a great product to me but it had it's flaws, it struggled to match the performance of 360 and PS3 which were much older and had no hard drive just a small amount of flash memory.

Basically my normal approach to Nintendo hardware is wait until there is a good catalogue of exclusive games and pricing is better. I think I went early for wii u as I was a late adopter to wii and wanted to play those wii exclusives with better quality hdmi output. The Switch was basically a console that performed around PS3 and 360 level. Yes it had better graphics and more memory but had much weaker CPU performance so it felt like a 360/PS3 console in the hand which I thought was great as loved that generation of consoles. We now have the Switch 2 that brings PS4/Xbox One performance to handheld, in some ways better and in some ways worse.

I was disappointed with the Switch 2 because of the poor display panel and low capacity battery. I also thought the pricing was far too high in Europe.

I don't think it's been confirmed that the Switch 2 has captured the casual market like the wii and original Switch did but we shall see. Now casual gamers are using their phones, using streaming services and maybe even PCs with the rise of pc gaming handhelds and other forms of PC gaming hardware. Is the Switch 2 competing more directly with streaming services? I've seen videos on youtube where people have no real gaming hardware at all, just a smart TV and using a gaming streaming service with that.

I feel the gaming industry and market has changed quite a lot and the success of Nintendo may be more about the gaming market changing rather than their decisions. I thought it was interesting that on a review of Skyrim on Switch 2 the first release of the software the input lag was much worse than modern gaming streaming services. At some point the business model of Nintendo and Sony may not work in the market and no one needs or wants a console. There may come a point where streaming services keep getting better and better hardware so games just improve month by month because the consumer doesn't actually have any hardware at home. No need to upgrade your console when you don't have one. Surely then no one will want a console that has the same performance level for 7 years or more when their streaming service is constantly upgraded?

The Switch 2 could in fact be Nintendo's last console, not because they have gone out of business but in future all they provide is a gaming streaming service. At that point they will be even more reliant on the quality of their first party games because that maybe the only product they rent use of on their streaming service. Maybe we will get pirate streaming services too as a discount option for the less honest but if that doesn't happen then there will be no piracy for new games.

I do feel the era of the home console is coming to an end but whether that is 5 years from now or 20 years is anyone's guess.

It's working for Nintendo, so it was right for them.

It's not working for me though, Switch 2 is the first Nintendo 'console' I feel no desire in buying anymore. I bought the Switch for BotW, that was a no brainer, but in retrospect, while I kept buying games for Switch, I ended up never playing most of them :/ Switch is still the Zelda, Mario console for me as those are pretty much the only games I really played on it.

I had hoped Nintendo would get into VR after their experiments with Labo, but it was a one off. (Another thing we never finished building, disappointing) or at least release a home version packed with 2 (full) controllers for co-op play. 

Dunno if Switch 2 is going to be as successful as the Switch, I find everything about it underwhelming. My kids (teenagers now) also have zero interest in it. From multiple Switches in the house to apathy. 

I don't think better graphics / a more powerful Switch 2 would have changed that. MKW and DKB were simply not the launch titles we were looking for. Nothing wrong with MKW, but also not something to buy a handheld plus 4 extra real controllers for. If Switch 2 had a home version at release with 2 controllers included as alternative to the handheld version, then I would have gotten that, and likely buy more controllers later.

I think he's referring to the Wii being an overclocked GameCube, y'all. In which case, I mostly agree. That decision kept a lot of good games from that generation off of the Wii, or they got severely gimped joke ports like Dead Rising.

It also got a lot of good original stuff just for it. Nintendo could not do the HD reace in 2005. Not financially smart for them. Gamecube already proved the arms race they lost and were not getting that market share back.

Not financially smart to do an HD GameCube, totally agree. What I'm (and I think what Louie was) trying to say is that the Wii could have been a console in the same ballpark with PS360 while keeping the motion controls. It's honestly amazing what the Wii was able to do marketwise despite its graphical and power limitations.

Imagine Resident Evil 5 and 6, or even Dead Space coming to the Wii with pointer controls like RE4... gangbusters. Imagine Metroid Prime 3 looking close to what MP4 is today. Call of Duty ports that are fully featured. How well would Diablo 3 have worked with pointer controls?

I'll die on the hill that the Wii got a lot of good, original games too. All I'm saying is that it could've gotten even more if the power was there.

That would have killed Nintendo. It's naive and dumb to think otherwise. They had no market share. No one was going to support a 3rd $400-500 console on those other systems level and certainly with devs costs that generation. Nintendo would not be able to split dev costs between two platforms. They would be stretched too thin. You know who also stretched themselves too thin. Atari. SEGA. Nintendo is not selling 255 million systems if they went the HD route. They went with Wii and DS and sold more systems in one generation than any console maker ever has and no one has come remotely close. 

Yes, absolutely.

The Switch 2 is the culmination of what started with the Wii and what took a break during the Wii U generation: Disruptive innovation. The Wii was from the ground up designed to be a disruptive product, which is a term coined by Clayton Christensen. It describes products that are "crappy" by current market standards but that fulfill other customer needs better than current products do. Other examples would be the iPod, steel mini-mills and personal computers disrupting mainframes. 

With the exception of the Wii U (which followed absolutely no strategy whatsoever), all of Nintendo's home consoles since the Wii have been designed as disruptive products. They all "sucked" in terms of upmarket demands (graphics, horse power, etc.) but had other, different strengths that catered to a different set of customers. Specifically ease of use, affordability, a focus on social gaming (couch-multiplayer) and broad appeal (especially to children and women). 

What the Switch 2 is doing now is exactly what the theory of disruptive innovation states: With the Switch and now the Switch 2 Nintendo moved upmarket compared to the days of the Wii: The Switch was acceptable to many people in terms of "old market values" (graphics, power) and the Switch 2 is good enough in terms of power for most gamers out there. Thus, more people buy it, more "traditional" hardcore games are released on the system. Because the disruptive technology inside the system (in this case mobile chipsets) has gotten so good that it is good enough for most of the market.

It's really fascinating to study disruptive technology in light of Nintendo's products, because it all makes sense once you see it through that lens. Again, with the exception of the Wii U, which had absolutely no business strategy behind it.

By the way, the DS was not a disruptive product, but a blue ocean product. And the 3DS, again, had no actual business strategy behind it. That was the generation in which Nintendo got cocky because they'd had so much success with the Wii and DS. 

I think it's more naive to assume the Wii was successful only because it was an overclocked GCN sold at $250. No one supported the GCN when it was $50-100 cheaper than its contemporaries and could easily handle a port from them outside of ROM size concerns for larger games.

If the Wii didn't turn heads and catch national headlines with Wii Sports and Wii Fit, it would have been Virtual Boy Part II. Wii Sports became the zeitgeist of the generation not because of the simple graphics and price but because of the Wiimote. It is not "naive and dumb" at all to see an alternate reality where Nintendo releases a $300-400 Wii with specs in the range of X360 that still ships with Wii Sports and a Wiimote/nunchuk combo in the box and still not only owns the early generation, but now legs it out stronger at the end of it thanks to better third party support.

SEGA didn't stretch itself too thin, SEGA released one popular console after one decently popular console, then failure after boneheaded decision after failure after idiotic idea after failure.