Nintendo says it will overcome challenges of generational transition with ‘unique propositions’ | VGC
Furukawa insists it’s taking nothing for granted following Switch’s…
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Thread: Nintendo says it will overcome challenges of generational transition with unique propositions'
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Optimus
Member
- Platforms
Well, Switch offered home console experiences anywhere, and since they're not the only show in town offering this anymore, it really makes me wonder what sort of "new trick" Switch 2 has up its sleeve. Hopefully whatever it is doesn't come at the expense of playing Nintendo's actual games at a good native resolution and a steady framerate.
Zog
Member
cryptoadam
Needs a Spellchecker
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Nintendo shouldnt f this up.
MOAR power and MK X/mario/metroid/zelda/animal crossing/pokemon.
Thats it. Price can be 399 as people will pay.
If they try any tricks they will wind up with a Virtual Boy or WiiU.
MOAR power and MK X/mario/metroid/zelda/animal crossing/pokemon.
Thats it. Price can be 399 as people will pay.
If they try any tricks they will wind up with a Virtual Boy or WiiU.
Optimus
Member
- Platforms
Then how would a second screen while docked make sense? Or are you saying they will package a tablet with the Switch 2? Would that be an extra accessory?
There's no good sane reason for this to be the case in 2024. The thing is backwards compatible or its going to pull numbers between Wii U and GCN. lol
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Switch Successor performance should at minimum no longer require cloud versions of games like Kingdom Hearts remix if the rumors of around PS4 Pro performance are true.
Zog
Member
- Platforms
Please don't fuck this up Nintendo. All everybody wants is just a more powerful Switch that's backwards compatible.
Zog
Member
I assure you, if Nintendo just makes a more powerful Switch it will fail like the Wii U did. Since Nintendo won't be making something on par with the PS5 and Series X they need a gimmick. Well the Switch has been done and now there is much more competition in this space with the Steam Deck and the like. People will say 'Eh, it's just a more powerful Switch, nothing really exciting here'.
Optimus
Member
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It's about the games. Wii U didn't fail because it was a more powerful Wii. It failed because consumers didn't understand Wii U was the successor to the Wii! Among other failures like having a terrible CPU and a sluggish OS. The failures were many.
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The Wii U failed for many reasons, first among them they had a gimmick that few knew WTF to do with, then it didn't sell, then the people that DID know what to do with the gamepad couldn't justify dev costs for a platform that didn't sell.
"Switch 2, it's as powerful as a Steam Deck, it's got all our shit, it has indies, it has AAA, and all those fence-sitting devs who didn't know if they should make a Switch port lost out on a 120 million unit player base; they won't make that mistake again! We got Santa Clause dealing coke out of his sled pulled by a team of hookers, come buy our shit!"
Boom, millions of sales.
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Zog
Member
Ok, Wii U failed and I don't care to argue about why. I didn't intend to imply that the Switch 2 would fail in the same way as the Wii U did. I will say that Wii U had good games and they were ported to the Switch which assisted with it's success.
I am saying that Switch 2 will fail (as the Wii U did) if they just rely on a more powerful Switch. They need a new gimmick. There is no wow factor left, especially considering the Steam Deck and the like. I trust that Nintendo knows this too.
Sean Mirrsen
Member
- Platforms
If you think about it, when was the last time Nintendo went through a generational change on a console without some kind of major gimmick or innovation?
Only thing I can think of is Gameboy Color to Gameboy Advance.
Nintendo doesn't do straight-line upgrades. It's always weird curves and zigzags. I fully believe they still have room for that sort of thing. At minimum they could be going for an AR/"window to another world" gimmick if they add some cameras and better position tracking to the Switch body, which could flow better into some kind of basic standalone VR with the detachable controllers, while still keeping the standard Switch console/handheld experience intact.
Optimus
Member
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I still feel like there is a difference between novel design and gimmick. The Switch being a dockable handheld with detachable controllers is a novel design. The Switch's HD rumble bordered on gimmick. When it came time to keep the price and cost down, Nintendo opted to pay for HD rumble while possibly paying for less SoC. In the end, it didn't hurt that much, but it sure would have been nice to play the BotW launch game without poor framerate and ever-decreasing-draw-distances to help alleviate the poor fps. Meanwhile, what actually leveraged the HD rumble to some meaningful effect? Labo. Exactly Labo. Pfffff. And 1-2-Switch!
And that's the chief problem with a lot of the gimmicks. You pay a premium for the gimmick while getting short changed on the console's ability to actually play its software.
In answer to the question, it would have to be GameCube and Gameboy Advance. Neither are a very good case study in what will succeed at market. GCN had major reputation and political problems with both consumer and industry, and GBA had no real competition to face. And even despite the GameCube being largely an iterative design over the N64, they still managed to make a lot of colossally bad decisions from the console's appearance to its hardware design choices. There's good iterative design and bad iterative design. Good iterative design takes all of its predecessor's strengths and builds upon that success like by continuing the Switch concept and making the entire Switch catalog compatible from day-1 as opposed to offering a more powerful Switch 2 that can't play any of the predecessor's games because reasons...
So if Switch 2 is merely a more powerful Switch and it fails, it's going to be because Nintendo feared Switch 2 getting hacked and opted to make it completely incompatible with OG Switch games. I can see it happening, and they're totally stupid for it if they do that.
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Sean Mirrsen
Member
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The HD Rumble is just haptics. It was a much more conventional thing to include in a gaming console compared to the whole detachable motion controllers thing. The IR motion camera is a better example of a gimmick, and even then it turned out to be a surprisingly versatile one.
Gimmicks like funky haptics and IR cameras won't make or break a console fundamentally, but they're quintessential for Nintendo's approach to finding asinine yet entertaining uses for their hardware. The gimmicks are rarely used, but provide for ways to have fun that 'boring' conventional means cannot. I could see Nintendo include a top-facing light sensor on the console because it could be used for better outdoor brightness management, and also because it'd allow them to make another sequel to Boktai.
So with that in mind, I fully believe Nintendo will, or has the capacity to, have both a fundamental innovation in Switch 2, and a host of gimmicks. Because if you think about it, the only thing that separates a gimmick from an innovation, is whether or not it catches on. Motion controls (I'm using tilt controls!) were once a gimmick too.
Optimus
Member
- Platforms
Nintendo wants you to hold their beer...
But seriously, there were cheaper options for haptic feedback, and they chose the one that cost like $25 or whatever. In the end, the Switch ended up costing $299.99 with a margin of profit of $43 on every unit sold. I still feel like if the question was between another 2 GB of RAM or the HD Rumble, they chose HD Rumble. If there was a better cooling solution for Nintendo Switch, they opted to disable potentially useful CPU cores in order to shave costs and possibly improve battery life. For HD Rumble at a $299.99 price point.
It's just the way that they decide these things. There were two futures after GameCube, and one of them was a much more powerful HD Nintendo Wii and the other was two GameCube's duct-taped together. They went with the two GameCube's and I sat through the worst Nintendo generation for 5 years longer than it should have gone on. lol
My opinion is that choosing HD rumble was kind of just like choosing 1T-SRAM for the GameCube. It was pricey! They opted for just 24 MB of it at a time when their most comparable competitor had 32 MB of RAM. In the end, who got the games the easiest? Hint: it wasn't GameCube. Yeah, that's what they did. And instead of two analog sticks like everyone else was doing, they did 1 and some sort of weird c-stick nub. Yeah, they did that. And chose to make their standard memory card 1/8th the size of their competitor's. And chose to make a custom DVD drive that reads discs in reverse and only accepts smaller versions of the discs.
They choose to do things that work for them mostly without concern for whether it works well for anyone else.
Interesting cost breakdown I found for Nintendo Switch:
Zog
Member
Optimus
Member
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And I consider it the absolute worst generation for Nintendo fans.
Zog
Member
Honestly, Nintendo could have gone the route of the HD twins but did we really need three samey consoles? Just like now, we could have had a super powerful Nintendo console to compete with the PS5 and Cable modem box but is that what we want, 3 samey consoles?
Optimus
Member
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It wasn't going to be samey. It was literally a more beefed up Nintendo Wii that would have supported hdmi output. Nintendo had no confidence in the Wii succeeding, and that's what led them to go with the $250 console option.
There's no guarantee a $300 Wii would have sold.
And I didn't hate the Wii during its first 3 years on the market. It just got tired and old, and there frankly stopped being very many interesting releases for gamers after that third year. Skyward Sword near the very end was the rare release that kept me interested.
The funny thing is that I actually remember my Wii U more fondly than the Wii...
Zog
Member
Nintendo has a long history of using outdated tech (cheaper) in their own ways, The NES was using a modified cheaper 6502 (and the 6502 was already old and cheap). The Game Boy line has never been top of the line tech. It's just what Nintendo does. When they did use new tech in the N64, it didn't go well for them.
Zog
Member
I love the Wii U too but we are in the minority. I loved the Wii for Wii Sports and the Virtual Console. I always found using the Wii Remote sideways like an NES controller was very comfortable. Motion controls (outside of Wii Sports) just didn't click with me.
I honestly wonder if I'm one of the few people who looks back on the Wii fondly. I loved that little lump of cheerful, low resolution, simple but fun plastic and toaster parts. It had a whole host of great JRPG's, party games, lighting shooters and sports titles, and for me 7th gen was the single time there was 3 'must have' consoles on the market at once.
Add the PSP, DS and Valve really bringing PC gaming into something worth using for more than just the dweeby enthusiast, and I'd argue it was the absolute peak of gaming, and the Wii was an irreplaceable part of that joyous time.
Optimus
Member
- Platforms
I was too poor (and in college) during that generation to afford more than one console for most of it. For me, that meant buying a Wii and hoping for the best. Of course, being a developer, I also had a reasonably good desktop. But when it came to all the super fun online multiplayer games like we saw on 360, I was pretty much out of luck until about 2008 when I bought a 360.
I do agree that may have been the absolute peak in gaming. I would eventually sell my 360 and buy a refurbished PS3 at a good price. There were just too many must-have games, and in the end the PS3 proved it had more of what I wanted than 360. This was also the start of the collapse of sports video gaming as the number of quality franchises began to vanish. I found that 360 basically didn't have a good MLB video game, and so I had to have MLB The Show.
Joe T.
Member
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I'm still praying against all odds for a modern day N64 capable of 4K/60-120, complete with 4 controller ports.
Sean Mirrsen
Member
- Platforms
I'm still praying against all odds for a modern day N64 capable of 4K/60-120, complete with 4 controller ports.
Well someone's already on the job. They have a decent track record, so who knows.
I probably played more of my Wii U than my PS5 last year. It has amazing games. While many were ported to the Switch, still many exclusives on the system. Twilight Princess HD is my best Zelda by far. I hated the Wii waggle gimmick.
I'm still flummoxed as to why WW and TP HD aren't on Switch.
Both games with the OLED screen in particular would be amazing, but even just the Lite would benefit them greatly, given their origins in 6th gen, for standard def screens, meaning their levels of detail and design aesthetics would translate perfectly to the smaller real estate of a handheld.
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Fuck, that sounds cool. I would imagine it would be at least as powerful as the Quest 3, and having a headset cradle you could slide your Switch 2 into would be awsome.
CAPTAIN RAINCOAT
Member
- Platforms
How to make switch 2
- Upgrade screen to 1440p oled
- make it b/c with switch 1
- add in a more recent graphics and cpu
- make sure it has great streaming tech
- rework the switch paddles so you dont need tiny hands
- sell for the same price
Optimus
Member
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I hope you realize this is not happening, and certainly not at the same price. Chiefly, a 1440p screen ain't happening, and not in any device except maybe a Playstation handheld with half the battery life...
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It would be nice to see Skies of Arcadia, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story Remasters for Switch Successor.