Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
In total, estimates are 4-5 million Steam Decks have been sold in the three years of its release.
Nintendo sells that amount of Switches in one quarter. They don’t need to compete.
Comment on The Switch 2 Nintendo Direct Will Be 60 Minutes Long, Nintendo Confirms
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 week agoI’m honestly curious is the Switch 2 will follow in that success.
Credit where credit is due; lots of kickstarters and small private companies have tried making something like the Switch for years, but very few people knew or cared about them. Then Nintendo pulls it off, which leads to the Steam Deck, which then compells a whole market to spring up for similar format devices.
Now there is a market, with competition from all sides, and Valve seems to be the one most are talking about for this format. Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
donuts@lemmy.world 1 week ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I was talking about this with some friends. Anecdotally, almost everyone we know who plays games has a Switch, but very few of them seem to care about a Switch 2, for one reason or another. What will undoubtedly still move units are their marquis franchises, not the least of which is expected to be a new 3D Super Mario game. Mario Kart does extremely well for them, but I’ll bet some amount of its success is tied to very cheap console hardware, which the Switch 2 will not be out of the gate, so that parents can buy each of their kids a handheld to play with each other in the car, at the laundromat, at their siblings’ soccer practice, etc., and as the hardware gets cheaper, that probably contributes to its “long tail” of sales.
But yeah, for people who live and breathe video games, consoles have lost their luster. Games take longer to make now, which means there are fewer first party titles, which means we have fewer reasons to buy another machine that plays the same games as some other piece of hardware we already own. That will be especially true for the Switch 2, since they don’t have a Wii U library to plunder for titles that they can port cheaply for people who’ve never played them.
All that to say, my expectations as an armchair analyst whose word isn’t worth anything on the matter and whose predictions may as well be a dice roll are that the Switch 2 will do very well, but I’d be surprised if it did better than the first Switch, and I don’t know that we’ll ever see a console do as well as the Switch, or the PS2 for that matter, ever again.
samus12345@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Agreed. It will hurt not being able to play the new Marios and Zeldas (Maybe emulators will pop up able to do so, but it’s not nearly as likely as it was in the past - at least, not until well after the console is no longer sold), but $400 for what’s essentially a walled garden Steam Deck that plays Nintendo games just ain’t worth it to me. The original Switch was worth it to me at $300 in 2017, but times have changed.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That first part really resonates because I experienced the DS lite. I didn’t see many phat NDS consoles, but kids everywhere had a DS lite. Mariokart did insanely well on that console, but not just because it was Mariokart, but also because of the download play feature.
It seems like Nintendo wants to replicate something like that through it’s virtual game card sharing feature. But it also seems like it’s a feature on the original Switch, so I wonder what new things they’ve planned.
I too will be surprised if the Switch 2 does better than the Switch. The 3DS, arguably the real sequel to the NDS, as opposed to the DSi, didn’t really touch the same highs that the DS lite did.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The same way they have been for a while, by making charming, accessible, and fun games. The average consumer doesn’t care about how litigious they are, unfortunately.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 week ago
For the past 20 years that also included fun gimmicks. They sometimes fail, as with the Wii U, or were good but… Kinda just a gimmick, like the 3DS. But Nintendo has been making their consoles pretty unique from every other console. The DS format and the Wii are still very unique consoles. The Switch 2… Not so much…
I don’t doubt the Switch 2 will see success, but how it’ll stand out from everything else like the Switch originally did is still a question.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I dunno why people are so downvote heavy in this comm…
Yeah I agree that Nintendo has seen the most success when they have a compelling gimmick; time will tell if the same gimmick with more power will do the trick. I doubt the mouse gimmick will be more than a novelty, but we’ll see what they show tomorrow.
Flemmy@lemm.ee 1 week ago
For me it’s not fanboyism more like vibing on nostalgia, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokemon (RGBXYZ whatever), top down rpgs, Mario Party - Kart. And probably some crossovers like Metal Gear Solid. But gonna wait at least a year untill considering buying the Steamdeck is comparable but much of it never going to use although still interested
samus12345@lemm.ee 1 week ago
It also included being considerably cheaper than other consoles because they use outdated tech. $400 is a hefty price tag for a Nintendo console. I’m sure it will do well, since it’s just “Switch but more powerful,” which is what people were asking for. But for me, it’s too pricey for what it is.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 1 week ago
And AND it’s not as though we can expect another mainline Zelda game on launch day. Maybe Metroid Prime 4, sure, but that series has never moved units the way Zelda does (as much as I wish it did).
I agree with your assessment. That’s where I fall too. I’ve got a launch day Switch and an OLED Steam Deck. My Switch mostly gathers dust since I got the Deck.