So, I wanted to make this thread for a long time, but was trying to find the rigth time and also work up the courage. Basically, i want to take a look at switch trajectory so far, and what it tells us about nintendo direction, past and current management, and to which public appeals or falls short. I writing this from memory, so i will not provide sources because anyone can fact check. However, there will be a lot on this that is based on my personal observations of nintendo and its leaders.
Origin: Switch came in a dire time for nintendo. After successive failing in launching 2 systems (3DS and WiiU), and only managing to turn around one that was alreadly in its twillitgh years(3DS), Nintendo recived yet another critical hit when the then CEO Satoru Iwata passed away. Besides, they were been constantly pressured in jumping into the mobile market by the shareholder that were eager to take advantage of Nintendo Inestimable catologue IP. And they eventually started dipping their toes on that, at the time, super exploitative market. From all this, one thing was obvious for everyone inside and outside nintendo: if they were going to keep being a plattaform holder, their next attempt at launching a hardware could not fail.
For these reasons, switch came in with a key difference from its predecessors while still holding most of the unique characteristics that nintendo products usually have: Presentation. Since switch reveal, nintendo has showed much more care and regard on showing its products in a slick and modern manner, while also adding a air of grandiosity to it all, even when its not really there. In it's marketing, switch is show as being more of a device that the young adult can bring everywhere instead of the source of fun for the entire family. In its construction, it replicates the look and feel of a modern tablet. Its OS is also snappy and direct. Gone is the "play with the OS" days of the 3DS, that offered multiple options of customization, gamefication and experiements that could or not be fun for some people. It only exist to bridge you to the games. In its games, now all major release have singing and cutscenes that are extensevily used in its marketing. Even the game developed by the division 1 of EPD, that historically are more funny programs than games, like labo and wii fit, are now presented in a more elaborated and immersive world, in ring fit adventure.
However, things were not so different as nintendo and others were claiming to be. From the diconnecting left joycon to the now drifiting sticks, It was pretty clear that the hardware was rushed of the door. Its still unclear how widespread the problem actually is, so its all down to speculation, and nintendo has done everything in its power to deny the need of a recall or redesing, and subsequent models have not helped at all. Of course, the problem is not fatal, but nintendo support has been spotty in some part of the world, and are even under class action suit because of it. Adding to this, switch security and functionality are low. Switch was easily hacked, and came even with a hardware exploit that only a remodel could solve. While it barebones software is probably necessary to have a snapping interface, funcionalities that took a while, but came anyway, clearly point out to development phase behind the schedule. No built-in voice chat, friend code, no browser, no netflix or twich app to this day. Hell, even youtube and legacy games support has ben added months if not years after launch, and they are still far from complete. Exatily like its previous system, those things are secondary for them and recieve very little investment in the grand schemes of thing. This has not changed at all.
Even switch form factor is a combinnation of some of it's predecessors. Nintendo made big changes to its presentation, but that was about it.
Games: Nintendo plattaform has the stigma of being matained by Nintendo games and their games alone. Nintendo has done very little to deter this notion, and sometime is even proud of being able to sustain its plattaform on its own. With switch, something very odd is happening in this regard, but lets first look at nintendo output in itself.
Like I mentioned before, there was a change in the way nintendo games are presented and sold, but not so much in its development. Don't get me wrong, Nintendo games are as good as they have always been, but its scope, deep and dev cycle has not really changed. 1,2 Switch was still wacky. Mario tennis aces had more scenery, but nobody who played the originals call it the best the franchise has to offer. Mario party 10 shock the formula and even added internet multiplayer, but had a very limited number of boards. Smash ultimate offered a a more elaborated singleplayer mode with spirits, but was as good as Brawl emissary? None of these games are bad, obviously, but they all cost 60$. Do they offer the best value? While nitenndo had two separate plattaforms, they could offer a option for those who doesn't want expend much in nintendo games, but still get it's unique stuff, but that option is much more rare now, unless you want a switch just to get your sushi strike fix.
Some claim that with the unified development "enviosioned by Iwata himself", Nintendo solved the problem of running short of development power to have great games released across all year. I dispute that tremedously. HD games cost way more than sd portable games, have different demands in term of scope and budget, so its not a case of we are just getting double the games now, like some seems to be imagining. We alreadly saw that with 2018 not having all much of hits in its catalogue as 2017, because making those games take multiple years. Actually, Nintendo has solved this problem using a more simple approach. Nintendo took great advantage of the failure of the wiiu with the switch, because switch has been recieving port of those games left and ritgh, and those are used to fill gaps to this very day. This also gave space for desingner to try new IPs, like ARMS. Since the mario kart was released closer to launch, and was a enchanced port, the main producer could work in something else. This last year saw a uplift on the quality of the games released, but one of the best ones was originally supposed to come in 2018, and to surprise of no one is the same team that only released games for portable consoles last gen. And hey! Wasn't animal crossing delayed too? Well, at least grezzo didn't delayed its released. But considering those framerates drop, maybe they should. Iwata knew that all that and warned that unifying those teams would not result in double the games, but somehow everyone ignored this part of his discourse.
Probably the team that proves this struggled from going from portable to HD is the pokemon team. Their first game had only 150 pokemon because, lets face, its all they could do in that period of time. Theirs second game will need DLC to have more pokemon but still wont match the content of the portable entries 3 years in.But they all cost 60$ now. So, while nintendo games are great, they are not multiplying, but are getting even more expensive Some are definitily worth, but not all off them, in my opinion.
Nintendo, acting like they always do, is not buying more development studios like other plattaform holders because they believe it takes time to teach developers how to get "Nintendo magic", which i agree, actually. So, more game exclusive for them depends on paternships, and this generation have been great in this regard actually. Astral chain and octopath traveler were a sucess, braverly default 2 and deadly premonition 2 are also coming along pretty well, and even bomberman was ressurected because of it. It must be mentioned, however, that not all those games are to remain exclusive.
In this segway, we now must discuss nintendo 3rd party support in general. Since switch is undoubtly a success, they all are there, but most with a caveats. Its inportant to notice that different from the wii era, switch competitor are doing just as well, so companies are not forced to go to nintendo to have healthy business. What this means is that having a entire team just to make a special version of your game for switch is out of the cards for most of them, so they only port to it if some port house is available to do it and if there is interest within. For this reason, almost every remaster come for the switch, since the porting process is simple enough. Not only that, but some switch owner are more intereseted in that, because the current gen only port switch recieves are mostly full of downgrades, and for those games, people would rather pay for it in the plattaform were it looks better. However, those downgrades don't sell bad at all.
In any way, even obvious games sometimes simple don't come to switch for unclear reasons that you can only speculate. Maybe it's the limited connectivity of the machine to the internet due to its portable nature, maybe it the limited power and storage, maybe its the stigma of nintendo beign a kid friendly company or never really catering to third parties enough. Whatever the reason, being rational or not, there is no guarantees. Of course, every publisher has its own stance. Ubisoft mostly bring last gen ports and mid buget games, but also provide exclusives or cloud only versions. Take two its a about he same, but they also release NBA. EA release only low buget stuff and a horrible port of FIFA. Activision bring PG remakes and most of blizzard stuff. WB bring most of PG stuff, and also mortal kombat. Konami bring everything that is not made in the Fox engine. Capcom bring tons of ports, but mostly late and overpriced, and cloud games too. Square enix really incosistent, but mostly they bring only the good games they make to switch, and even make some exclusives. Standing above all those, is Bethesda, with the biggest number of impossible ports of any publisher, going as far as trying to do day and date on some cases. Basically, take the wiiu support and invert, that is the switch support.
Switch has also become a heaven for free to play games and indies. At the start, nintendo was criticised for being very selective with the indie games that got to the eshop. However, this helped create a lasting impression that eshop was a heavliy curated(not the case anymore) store with quality games, which helped those who got in with incridible sales. There is also a discussion in here to be had that is the fact that seemly the most sucessufull stories on switch for third party are indies, while big AAA companies remain indifferent. Some could say that this is a result of a public more interested charm and unique, but is also plausilbe that people who use it as a portable don't see fit to pay full price for games in the machine, so its only interested on simple or quickier games. Recently nintendo changed the way its talked about its sales to be in term of dollar spent instead of number of copies, which could reflect that.
Leadership: This part is the though one, I will critise a lot of decision of current and past leadership, including the now deceased members, but please keep in mind that I do not mean to offend anyone directly, but actually bring a inspection of the direction nintendo is or not going. Maybe you should skip it.
The switch, since its inception, has gone trough 3 nintendo presidents alreadly, more than any other nintendo console in history. The first one, iwata, used to talk about a development of hardware that had the same internal parts, but mantained the different lines between portable and home consoles. Since he passed way 2 years before the release of the switch, it's unclear if making the switch being entirely hibrid was his decision. However, his ideas still echoed in the release of a form factor that was entirely portable last year, to attend to a market that could put 300$ in the machine. One thing for sure: Iwata firmily believed on the need of nintendo remain in the hardware business. He profoundly believe for nintendo to keep being unique and leverage its strengths, it need a space of its own to do things their way. Being responsible for the wii and the DS, he was probably sure that the highest nitnendo ever met was only possible because of that. so He was willing to keep going this path, even if meant havin a wiiu disater every once in a while. Even as he was forced into the mobile market later one, he express concern over the race to the bottom of that market and wondered what could be do before that businnes model becomes unsustainable.
After he passed way, takahashi assumed, and tried its best to stay true to the course iwata had set. Not having a background in development, he let actual developers run the project on its own, while still dealing with the challenges of launching a console. He managed to make the initial shortage of the switch go away before the holiday period, in order to achieve its selling goal, and manage to launch the machine across the globe in the same day. He also remained true to iwata philosophy of beign a hardware company first, and even on the mobile games released under him, he avoid any predatory pratice, and standed by it when criticised. However, he was not much of a public facing figure, so nintendo direct started to lose the charm, since voice over of PR personal started to taking over all the explanations iwata used to give.
Furukawa them assumed, and made his first main goal to assure nintendo had profit as big in the mobile space as in the console space. Also not having a background in development, he also doesn't interefere in the game development, and has given free reing to developers, which led to innovations like labo, ring fit adventure, and the pokemon controller. He also worried about nintendo switch being too expensive to every kid in a house, so he soon released the switch lite. However, he repeateely expressed his worries about nintendo being a console manufacturer only not being sustainable in the long term. I get his concern, but what ikrs me is under his management, we got 2 mobile games: dr mario and mario kart tour. They are also the games with biggest amount of cricism so far from user because of aggressive monetization model. Also, animal crossing also got a new subscription plan. While the first nintendo games had a more conservative approach in the mobile space, these latter ones are completly embracing what the mobile space has of worse
Mostly, furukawa has let developers run freely as switch has been a success, but what will happen if starts to miss its marks? Also, when questioned about nintendo switch not recieving some multiplattaform games, he was dimisive saying its unreasonalbe to expect that every game comes to the switch. Doesnt sound like someone who want to improve nintendo relations with all developers, does it? Will nitenndo stick to hardware no matter what? That said, i also have to recgonize that under him, nintendo let go of some forms of control they holded to for so long. Nintendo doesn't flag or take cuts of lets play anymore( i still remenber when iwata himself personally annouced they would start flag that kind of video). Switch account system can be shared between devices now too. So, credit to him.
Conclusion: Switch is a sucessfull console, that has got great games, fit really well for those who can only play on the go, and has some of the best entries of the nitenndo franchises. However, its pricey, the hardware can be unreliable, has limited funcionality as a modern device and has no guaranteed support by anyone but nintendo at this point. Those who have seems satisfied, but is not really chaging the industry or pushing boundaries beyond its owns. If you like the games nintendo switch has ritgh now, this year is probably the best year to pick one up, since most nintendo consoles recieved its best games front load as opposoed to other consoles.
Origin: Switch came in a dire time for nintendo. After successive failing in launching 2 systems (3DS and WiiU), and only managing to turn around one that was alreadly in its twillitgh years(3DS), Nintendo recived yet another critical hit when the then CEO Satoru Iwata passed away. Besides, they were been constantly pressured in jumping into the mobile market by the shareholder that were eager to take advantage of Nintendo Inestimable catologue IP. And they eventually started dipping their toes on that, at the time, super exploitative market. From all this, one thing was obvious for everyone inside and outside nintendo: if they were going to keep being a plattaform holder, their next attempt at launching a hardware could not fail.
For these reasons, switch came in with a key difference from its predecessors while still holding most of the unique characteristics that nintendo products usually have: Presentation. Since switch reveal, nintendo has showed much more care and regard on showing its products in a slick and modern manner, while also adding a air of grandiosity to it all, even when its not really there. In it's marketing, switch is show as being more of a device that the young adult can bring everywhere instead of the source of fun for the entire family. In its construction, it replicates the look and feel of a modern tablet. Its OS is also snappy and direct. Gone is the "play with the OS" days of the 3DS, that offered multiple options of customization, gamefication and experiements that could or not be fun for some people. It only exist to bridge you to the games. In its games, now all major release have singing and cutscenes that are extensevily used in its marketing. Even the game developed by the division 1 of EPD, that historically are more funny programs than games, like labo and wii fit, are now presented in a more elaborated and immersive world, in ring fit adventure.
However, things were not so different as nintendo and others were claiming to be. From the diconnecting left joycon to the now drifiting sticks, It was pretty clear that the hardware was rushed of the door. Its still unclear how widespread the problem actually is, so its all down to speculation, and nintendo has done everything in its power to deny the need of a recall or redesing, and subsequent models have not helped at all. Of course, the problem is not fatal, but nintendo support has been spotty in some part of the world, and are even under class action suit because of it. Adding to this, switch security and functionality are low. Switch was easily hacked, and came even with a hardware exploit that only a remodel could solve. While it barebones software is probably necessary to have a snapping interface, funcionalities that took a while, but came anyway, clearly point out to development phase behind the schedule. No built-in voice chat, friend code, no browser, no netflix or twich app to this day. Hell, even youtube and legacy games support has ben added months if not years after launch, and they are still far from complete. Exatily like its previous system, those things are secondary for them and recieve very little investment in the grand schemes of thing. This has not changed at all.
Even switch form factor is a combinnation of some of it's predecessors. Nintendo made big changes to its presentation, but that was about it.
Games: Nintendo plattaform has the stigma of being matained by Nintendo games and their games alone. Nintendo has done very little to deter this notion, and sometime is even proud of being able to sustain its plattaform on its own. With switch, something very odd is happening in this regard, but lets first look at nintendo output in itself.
Like I mentioned before, there was a change in the way nintendo games are presented and sold, but not so much in its development. Don't get me wrong, Nintendo games are as good as they have always been, but its scope, deep and dev cycle has not really changed. 1,2 Switch was still wacky. Mario tennis aces had more scenery, but nobody who played the originals call it the best the franchise has to offer. Mario party 10 shock the formula and even added internet multiplayer, but had a very limited number of boards. Smash ultimate offered a a more elaborated singleplayer mode with spirits, but was as good as Brawl emissary? None of these games are bad, obviously, but they all cost 60$. Do they offer the best value? While nitenndo had two separate plattaforms, they could offer a option for those who doesn't want expend much in nintendo games, but still get it's unique stuff, but that option is much more rare now, unless you want a switch just to get your sushi strike fix.
Some claim that with the unified development "enviosioned by Iwata himself", Nintendo solved the problem of running short of development power to have great games released across all year. I dispute that tremedously. HD games cost way more than sd portable games, have different demands in term of scope and budget, so its not a case of we are just getting double the games now, like some seems to be imagining. We alreadly saw that with 2018 not having all much of hits in its catalogue as 2017, because making those games take multiple years. Actually, Nintendo has solved this problem using a more simple approach. Nintendo took great advantage of the failure of the wiiu with the switch, because switch has been recieving port of those games left and ritgh, and those are used to fill gaps to this very day. This also gave space for desingner to try new IPs, like ARMS. Since the mario kart was released closer to launch, and was a enchanced port, the main producer could work in something else. This last year saw a uplift on the quality of the games released, but one of the best ones was originally supposed to come in 2018, and to surprise of no one is the same team that only released games for portable consoles last gen. And hey! Wasn't animal crossing delayed too? Well, at least grezzo didn't delayed its released. But considering those framerates drop, maybe they should. Iwata knew that all that and warned that unifying those teams would not result in double the games, but somehow everyone ignored this part of his discourse.
Probably the team that proves this struggled from going from portable to HD is the pokemon team. Their first game had only 150 pokemon because, lets face, its all they could do in that period of time. Theirs second game will need DLC to have more pokemon but still wont match the content of the portable entries 3 years in.But they all cost 60$ now. So, while nintendo games are great, they are not multiplying, but are getting even more expensive Some are definitily worth, but not all off them, in my opinion.
Nintendo, acting like they always do, is not buying more development studios like other plattaform holders because they believe it takes time to teach developers how to get "Nintendo magic", which i agree, actually. So, more game exclusive for them depends on paternships, and this generation have been great in this regard actually. Astral chain and octopath traveler were a sucess, braverly default 2 and deadly premonition 2 are also coming along pretty well, and even bomberman was ressurected because of it. It must be mentioned, however, that not all those games are to remain exclusive.
In this segway, we now must discuss nintendo 3rd party support in general. Since switch is undoubtly a success, they all are there, but most with a caveats. Its inportant to notice that different from the wii era, switch competitor are doing just as well, so companies are not forced to go to nintendo to have healthy business. What this means is that having a entire team just to make a special version of your game for switch is out of the cards for most of them, so they only port to it if some port house is available to do it and if there is interest within. For this reason, almost every remaster come for the switch, since the porting process is simple enough. Not only that, but some switch owner are more intereseted in that, because the current gen only port switch recieves are mostly full of downgrades, and for those games, people would rather pay for it in the plattaform were it looks better. However, those downgrades don't sell bad at all.
In any way, even obvious games sometimes simple don't come to switch for unclear reasons that you can only speculate. Maybe it's the limited connectivity of the machine to the internet due to its portable nature, maybe it the limited power and storage, maybe its the stigma of nintendo beign a kid friendly company or never really catering to third parties enough. Whatever the reason, being rational or not, there is no guarantees. Of course, every publisher has its own stance. Ubisoft mostly bring last gen ports and mid buget games, but also provide exclusives or cloud only versions. Take two its a about he same, but they also release NBA. EA release only low buget stuff and a horrible port of FIFA. Activision bring PG remakes and most of blizzard stuff. WB bring most of PG stuff, and also mortal kombat. Konami bring everything that is not made in the Fox engine. Capcom bring tons of ports, but mostly late and overpriced, and cloud games too. Square enix really incosistent, but mostly they bring only the good games they make to switch, and even make some exclusives. Standing above all those, is Bethesda, with the biggest number of impossible ports of any publisher, going as far as trying to do day and date on some cases. Basically, take the wiiu support and invert, that is the switch support.
Switch has also become a heaven for free to play games and indies. At the start, nintendo was criticised for being very selective with the indie games that got to the eshop. However, this helped create a lasting impression that eshop was a heavliy curated(not the case anymore) store with quality games, which helped those who got in with incridible sales. There is also a discussion in here to be had that is the fact that seemly the most sucessufull stories on switch for third party are indies, while big AAA companies remain indifferent. Some could say that this is a result of a public more interested charm and unique, but is also plausilbe that people who use it as a portable don't see fit to pay full price for games in the machine, so its only interested on simple or quickier games. Recently nintendo changed the way its talked about its sales to be in term of dollar spent instead of number of copies, which could reflect that.
Leadership: This part is the though one, I will critise a lot of decision of current and past leadership, including the now deceased members, but please keep in mind that I do not mean to offend anyone directly, but actually bring a inspection of the direction nintendo is or not going. Maybe you should skip it.
The switch, since its inception, has gone trough 3 nintendo presidents alreadly, more than any other nintendo console in history. The first one, iwata, used to talk about a development of hardware that had the same internal parts, but mantained the different lines between portable and home consoles. Since he passed way 2 years before the release of the switch, it's unclear if making the switch being entirely hibrid was his decision. However, his ideas still echoed in the release of a form factor that was entirely portable last year, to attend to a market that could put 300$ in the machine. One thing for sure: Iwata firmily believed on the need of nintendo remain in the hardware business. He profoundly believe for nintendo to keep being unique and leverage its strengths, it need a space of its own to do things their way. Being responsible for the wii and the DS, he was probably sure that the highest nitnendo ever met was only possible because of that. so He was willing to keep going this path, even if meant havin a wiiu disater every once in a while. Even as he was forced into the mobile market later one, he express concern over the race to the bottom of that market and wondered what could be do before that businnes model becomes unsustainable.
After he passed way, takahashi assumed, and tried its best to stay true to the course iwata had set. Not having a background in development, he let actual developers run the project on its own, while still dealing with the challenges of launching a console. He managed to make the initial shortage of the switch go away before the holiday period, in order to achieve its selling goal, and manage to launch the machine across the globe in the same day. He also remained true to iwata philosophy of beign a hardware company first, and even on the mobile games released under him, he avoid any predatory pratice, and standed by it when criticised. However, he was not much of a public facing figure, so nintendo direct started to lose the charm, since voice over of PR personal started to taking over all the explanations iwata used to give.
Furukawa them assumed, and made his first main goal to assure nintendo had profit as big in the mobile space as in the console space. Also not having a background in development, he also doesn't interefere in the game development, and has given free reing to developers, which led to innovations like labo, ring fit adventure, and the pokemon controller. He also worried about nintendo switch being too expensive to every kid in a house, so he soon released the switch lite. However, he repeateely expressed his worries about nintendo being a console manufacturer only not being sustainable in the long term. I get his concern, but what ikrs me is under his management, we got 2 mobile games: dr mario and mario kart tour. They are also the games with biggest amount of cricism so far from user because of aggressive monetization model. Also, animal crossing also got a new subscription plan. While the first nintendo games had a more conservative approach in the mobile space, these latter ones are completly embracing what the mobile space has of worse
Mostly, furukawa has let developers run freely as switch has been a success, but what will happen if starts to miss its marks? Also, when questioned about nintendo switch not recieving some multiplattaform games, he was dimisive saying its unreasonalbe to expect that every game comes to the switch. Doesnt sound like someone who want to improve nintendo relations with all developers, does it? Will nitenndo stick to hardware no matter what? That said, i also have to recgonize that under him, nintendo let go of some forms of control they holded to for so long. Nintendo doesn't flag or take cuts of lets play anymore( i still remenber when iwata himself personally annouced they would start flag that kind of video). Switch account system can be shared between devices now too. So, credit to him.
Conclusion: Switch is a sucessfull console, that has got great games, fit really well for those who can only play on the go, and has some of the best entries of the nitenndo franchises. However, its pricey, the hardware can be unreliable, has limited funcionality as a modern device and has no guaranteed support by anyone but nintendo at this point. Those who have seems satisfied, but is not really chaging the industry or pushing boundaries beyond its owns. If you like the games nintendo switch has ritgh now, this year is probably the best year to pick one up, since most nintendo consoles recieved its best games front load as opposoed to other consoles.
