I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it was a commercial success and likely saved the company. On the other, it marks the end of Nintendo's home console business. Before, Nintendo had two products for sale, handhelds and home consoles, and they offered two distinctly different experiences and software lineups. But with Wii-U's failure, they abandoned the latter and went with what still worked. So while I am happy that they (likely) made the right choice for them, I am saddened that the Nintendo I knew is no more. Same with software. They still make great games, but they don't make software like SMB 3 or OOT where you go, holy *&*, I have never experienced this before! It's becoming more predicable, more paint-with-numbers. The innovation isn't close to what it once was.

Still, I'm happy they're around. And I'm happy people keep buying their products. An industry without them would be dreary, indeed.

A solid 8.

Nintendo's second-best console, behind the SNES (rated 9.5).

The Exclusives are great, lack of backward compatibility drags the score down just a tad little, but weak third-party support is the real problem.

I'll keep it brief: I consider PlayStation exclusives to be better, though I acknowledge Nintendo's quality. But even if the exclusives were on par and I could only choose one console... I certainly wouldn't pick one that can't play RDR 2, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, GTA V, etc.

Scoring 8 looks fair.
It's a hybrid device that works as portable and home console. Enough quality in games to be called "Great", but not enough to be "Excellent" or above by itself.

For me, it gets a 9/10.

About the only thing holding it back is that it didn't get a new Mario Kart or Donkey Kong, other than that its first party catalogue is superb, there's plenty of good third party games to fill the gaps between them, and the form factor is clever and makes it more flexible and accessible than any prior Nintendo system.

For me, it is second only to the SNES.

I mainly use it for portable gaming, and it's been great so far. Now i need a switch 2 for ocarina

It's the Nintendo console with the most exclusives, the highest rated exclusives and the best selling exclusives. And it got amazing 3rd party and Indie support. 10/10

The console itself is a great portable that be used as a console. That's a strong 8 from me. However, the graphics and performance are kinda wacky. The 8th generation 3rd party games weren't very good performance wise from my experience. Definitely better than Wii and NES.

I voted "9", but really, the Switch is a 9.5/10 for me and rounds out my top 3 systems of all time. It has an excellent lineup of some of Nintendo's best games ever made and the switchable concept is fantastic. However, it's not quite a "10" like the NES or the SNES for a couple of reasons.

First, the NES and SNES had both excellent Nintendo games (my favorite game company) and god-tier 3rd party support.  The Switch has good 3rd party support but lacks parity with other consoles of its time.

Second, the Switch is just not as good straight out of the box for me because I hate the dinky buttons and sticks of the joycons, whereas the NES and SNES came with great controllers.  I have to buy a pro controller to enjoy games while playing on the TV and extra controller parts (like Hori's) to attach to the handheld in order to enjoy the stellar library of arcade and console classics available for it.  It's a shame that the company that pioneered the d-pad doesn't include it as a standard with the Switch.

In the end though, all three of these systems sit comfortably above any other game systems for me and will likely remain that way for the rest of my days.

I mean, it's much easier to be innovative when the medium is in its infancy and so many genres were a blank slate; much harder after 30+ years of evolution and iteration, there was simply far less unbroken ground left in the 2010s/2020s compared to the 80s and 90s.

That said, I would argue games like BOTW, TOTK, Ring Fit Adventure, LABO, Mario Kart Live, etc were quite innovative and that most of Nintendo's Switch 1 output was not at all "paint by numbers".

In the first twenty years of my life, I saw gaming go from Atari 2600 to PS2. So you'll have to excuse me for having higher standards when it comes to innovation. I'm spoiled.

I'm not quite that old but I did see gaming go from the SNES and Megadrive to Wii/PS3/360 by the time I was 20, and having experienced Atari and NES as well, I'm very cognizant of the progress made.

Still though, it's easy to make progress in an uncharted field compared to a mature one. The age of gaming innovation moving in leaps and bounds was largely over by the time Switch 1 arrived, that's not really Nintendo's fault. I would argue Switch's hybrid form factor and the way it bridged the console and handheld audiences while making gaming more accessible and flexible was in itself one of the more innovative concepts to take hold in gaming in the past decade, actually.