Finding a Nintendo Switch 2 in stores should be easy, compared to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, as a huge amount of consoles should be produced during the first fiscal year of availability.
How can Nintendo Switch 2 surpass its predecessor? | Opinion
09.01.2024 - 18:13 / gamesindustry.biz / Nintendo
We all thought Nintendo Switch would be a disaster.
I've told this story before, but I enjoy telling it. Nintendo fully revealed the console almost exactly seven years ago. It held an event at Hammersmith in London to showcase the product to media, retail and assorted industry people and celebrities. A group of us convened in a pub afterwards and the view was unanimous: this might be Nintendo's last console.
There was reasoning behind this analysis. Nintendo's previous machine, the Wii U, was a flop. As a home console, Switch didn't seem to offer anything over what the PS4 and Xbox One could do. As a handheld, it was more compelling, but handheld gaming appeared to be in terminal decline. 3DS sales were respectable, but mostly in Japan and it sold half what its predecessor managed. Meanwhile, PlayStation Vita had lost all momentum. The belief was that mobile gaming had killed the portable games machine, and Nintendo's own push into smartphone games was further proof of that.
What's more, we felt the console, the games and accessories were priced too highly, and the launch line-up was weak. The only day one game of note was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which looked fantastic, but Zelda wasn't a huge seller and the game was also coming to Wii U.
No, this wasn't looking good.
We were wrong, of course. But I think I speak for most of us when I say that we all were. Shortly after the console came out and did well, Nintendo started talking optimistically of Switch maybe matching the Wii's 100m lifetime sales… it currently sits on over 130 million.
Going back to that pub conversation, every one of us thought Switch was doomed, but every one of us had also pre-ordered it. The games looked great, and as media types who were running around the world covering video games, the idea of a console we could take with us… well, that was the dream.
What we hadn't grasped was that this flexibility also appealed to everyone else, too. In fact, it had long been the trend in entertainment. We weren't just watching shows on TV anymore, but on our tablets and phones. Analysing Switch as a handheld or a home console missed the point; it was both and more than the sum of its parts. If PlayStation and Xbox are cinema – a high-end experience tied to a single location – Switch was Netflix, not as technically impressive but considerably better suited to our lifestyles.
It also did something Nintendo hasn't always been successful at, and that's appeal to a hardcore gaming crowd alongside the family demographic. For core users, Switch was a very strong handheld games device. For families, it was a console that could be played individually or together in most scenarios – in the living room, on car journeys, in the restaurant,
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