Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Buy what?

Digital eshop codes, only one PlayAsia has is the $100 one.

@UmniKnight
Switch Sales Outpace 3DS

And how bout this

So. The vast majority of users bought it for its hybrid gameplay. Fact. See above. Switch is selling far better than both their last pure handheld and last pure console. Fact.

Now, the question is do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise? I think not, because it would fly in the face or what we see. Besides, the Switch is flying off shelves, Nintendo's fastest selling console next to the Wii and DS... And you're questioning the approach?

@DiscoGentleman

I don't know about it doing them much harm but I'm not sure it'll have much impact. Depends why they're doing it. Personally I think it's just to reinforce that they're staying in the business and to aid the brand image by once again having the most powerful system on the market. It'll also low their Devs to get used to 4K rather than having to make a big leap next gen. Can't see it actually selling many though!

Do you have any facts backing up your claim? According to Nintendo themselves, the vast majority plays in both modes.

I repeat, there is no business reason to take away the docking. None at all.

@JaxonH @Therad I'm looking at the reasons why it sells, and thinking why they aren't going all in on that, if that's where they're strongest, the prime reason the Switch is bought, why not go all in? They could probably put more resources in improving stuff like battery then, who knows!

Also, that's the people who registered. How many people did not register, and how do they play?

One part of it stands in an oversaturated market that wants power, the other in handheld where Nintendo stands strong. Says enough, to be frank.

Also just to add "Nintendo’s concern internally is that allowing consumers to attach large external drives to the Dock will cause players to see the system as less inherently portable, harming their core branding for the system as a portable home console." http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/10/report-nintendo-switch-... Tells me how Nintendo looks at the Switch.

@UmniKnight

Oh my gosh dude.

This is a classic example of how people react when they don't want to believe something. It doesn't matter how many facts are presented, how much evidence is shown, or how much common sense it makes... person refuses to believe anything other than what they want to believe there's no point in trying to convince them otherwise.

@JaxonH Ironic, I could say the same of you. But what you don't know, and probably don't believe, is that I'm playing Devil's Advocate to find legitimacy in the dock. I'm merely exploring the outer corners here.

Switch will go cheaper over time anyway. While it sells the price is fine. Making it handheld-only would be making it cheaper at the cost of greatly reducing the functionality. It would make sense if nobody ever used it docked but that patently isn't the case.

I also don't think they care about people comparing the resolution of third-party games on the Switch to the equivalent on PS4 as long as it's selling. Certainly not enough to drop the entire USP of the Switch and throw away their remaining presence in the home Console market.

As for competition, they wouldn't have any less by going handheld-only.

Why are you trying to find legitimacy in something that all available statistics show a majority of existing users take advantage of? I genuinely can't think of how you could need any more legitimacy.

Nintendo see the Switch as a home Console and a handheld. Have done since day 1. That has never changed.

@electrolite77 Which is why the comparison to the 2DS is flawed.

The dock is hardly expensive though, it's just overpriced. The real price savings would come from not having to have detachable joycons with motion controllers and hd rumble. But they've already painted themselves into a corner by releasing games that make use of all the different configurations of joycons. It would probably be some consumer backlash if you couldn't play all Switch games on all Switches.

@UmniKnight
No you couldn't say the same of me because I actually have evidence on my side.

I form my beliefs based on the evidence I see, whereas you are the complete opposite. You form a belief first, and then accept or reject evidence depending on whether it supports said belief. If I saw evidence that suggested a pure handheld sold better than Switch then I would say ok, that's clearly the better method. But there is no evidence suggesting that. In fact the evidence is exactly opposite of that.

This hybrid system is out selling the 3DS. It's right there! Right there. If handhelds sold more then Switch would be doing worse than 3DS. The fact it's not only doing better but blowing it away, and doing so 7 years after the 3DS launched which even then the handheld market was shrinking... it's irrefutable evidence. Irrefutable.

And the study that shows how many people use the system as a hybrid cannot be dismissed. You can do statistical tests on the sample size and generate a margin of error. Normally distributed populations of data can be predicted with extreme accuracy with only a few thousand samples. It's how politicians and news outlets predict the outcomes of elections with a margin of error of just 2-4%... EVEN IF you assumed the data was biased, it's not going to be off more than a few percent.

The data is irrefutable. The common sense of the matter is irrefutable. If you illuminate either half of the hybrid system you throw away 50% of the demand right then and there. And for what? For what? A $50 lower price tag? If you throw away the handheld aspect it fails miserably. You throw away the console aspect and it will still succeed and do well, but clearly not as well. The more people the system appeals to the more people will buy it. The whole reason the system has caught on like wildfire is specifically because it's a hybrid. Take away either half and it's no longer a hybrid and it's no longer a sensation.

Now, you can believe it or not, but that's what it is. Clearly Nintendo knows more than you do and all their experts and market analysts deemed this the best approach to take. And I don't think UmniKnignt knows better than a multi billion dollar corporation with 30 years experience in the console market on how to stay relevant and appeal to both console and handheld gamers and solve the issue of not having enough first party software to support two platforms at once and how to make a hit platform in today's market...

@electrolite77 "As for competition, they wouldn't have any less by going handheld-only." I'm guessing you mean mobile?

You can say that, but that message of not wanting the system to seem less portable, tells me they wouldn't do anything with their computing device patent either, since that would DEFINITELY make it less portable: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae1552f627634d2e5ecc11a1... And yet that patent device would only enforce the home-console part of the hybrid.

So, that brings us to another discussion: What is that patent for?

@JaxonH I'm not saying I know better than them, but for all their infinite wisdom they also made Wii-U, just saying.

@Agriculture Fair point on the dock, I'm still sad they didn't make better use of all that empty space.

You can't just take a number out of context and think it proves anything. All consoles that have ever sold well have done so because of the games you can buy for them. The Switch had both Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Nothing on the 3DS even comes close to those games.

Then there's the whole issue of who is buying the consoles. The average person who has bought a Nintendo Switch is way older than 3DS-buyers (http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/average-age-of-switch-owners-skew-higher-than-for-the-3ds-which-is-why-they-continue-to-support-it.454963014/). Older people tend to have much more disposable income, which makes it easier to be an early adopter of the Switch.

@UmniKnight Backup, a good company needs to be able to adapt to the situation at hand. If the data showed that most people were using the Switch as a handheld then Nintendo would think about making a dockless only version of the Switch and if it was the other way maybe Nintendo would consider a docked only version of the Switch. But the data shows that the hybrid nature of the Switch is used the most so Nintendo will stick with their current version and monitor as time progresses.

Time is the key here, the data now may not be the same as the data in a few years and Nintendo's games will affect it. For example, the mainline Pokemon games suit handheld mode more than docked mode.

@Agriculture Didn't the 3DS do really bad until it got a price-cut and a Mario game?

@Grumblevolcano You think we'll see any other games, save for those like Voez and Severed that NEED handheld only for touch-screen, that relegate stuff to either part? It would clash with "hybrid", so I'm sceptical.

What the fresh hell is this site collapsing into.

NeoGAF 2.0

Yep, I've been skipping pages of comments which I've not done since Biasedsonyfan was here.