Topic: My eulogy for the Nintendo Switch.

It's the latter-half of 2017. At this point we're several months past the launch of the Nintendo Switch. Coming off of the Nintendo Wii U I was lukewarm about Nintendo in general. I was unaware Nintendo had even launched new hardware. I was disconnected from the Nintendo news cycle.

I'm knee-deep into the Playstation ecosystem as Xbox made a fool of themselves a few years earlier. You know what happened. E3 2013, you know the meme. TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV...TV. Xbox has struggled in third place ever since. Anywho, so I'm in a group chat over on Playstation 4.

Friend of a friend is in the chat, gushing about Breath of the Wild. Less than six months since the game had released and they already spent a couple hundred hours in the game. Curious, I load up the January 2017 Switch presentation. And I see one of my all-time favorite games, Skyrim, running on a glorified tablet.

I'm sold.

I run out to my locale Target. Purchase the console and a copy of Skyrim. I play through the game again, putting in 100+ hours without batting an eye. The cartridge format used for the game harkens back to my love for the Atari 2600. I've never been a fan of collection CD-based games. Too easy to scratch, too prone to oxidation and corruption.

The obsession for collecting is renewed.

Thanks to the video game industry's trend of leaning hard on remasters and remakes, the Switch slowly became the home to several of my favorite franchises. Only now I can play them comfortably at work and/or in bed before I nod off for the night. Playstation might be where I play with my friends, but the Switch is my preferred platform for everything else.

There's is no doubt in mind that things have coalesced together to make the Switch my all-time favorite platform. As someone who has enjoyed this hobby for 40+ years. As someone who (before owning a Switch) thought PS1 > SNES > 360. The Switch comes along and kicks all those consoles down a peg.

The past seven plus years have been the highest of highs for me in the hobby.

And I'm eager to see how the Switch 2 follows up.

Great to see how much you've adored the Switch.

Although, eulogies are for those who have passed. I think the Switch still has a lot of life in it still. I wouldn't be surprised if we continued to see games for it after its 10-year anniversary. Personally, I still have dozens of Switch games I'm keen to play.

@Buizel

No doubt the Switch has a couple or few good years left.

The 2026 releases for Rhythm Heaven Groove and Tomodachi Life: Living Dream are proof of that.

But any future blockbusters are clearly Switch 2 bound.

@Magician @Novamii Fair, I was going to suggest retirement as the analogy I'd use!

Looking forward to seeing how the transition from Switch to Switch 2 as primary focus will go. Switch was firmly my favourite console of all time only a few years into its life - I think with the Switch 2 looking to be very faithful to the original is a good indicator that I'll love it as much if not more.

Your sentiments are somewhat similar to mine, regarding reigniting a love and interest.

In my case, I was checked out on video games for almost a decade altogether at the time of the Switch's release.

Too many other things going on in the life across that decade - finishing school, going to university, becoming an adult, booze, parties, girls, travelling the world, forging a career, and even the diagnosis of a serious illness; all in the years since my last real dip into modern gaming, which had been about 2008.

The Wii had fizzled out a bit for me after I got it at launch in 06 - the next year I got an Xbox 360 and that ended up getting the red ring soon after. I reckon that's what finished me off. I tried to re-ignite things in 2011 with the purchase of a PS3, but it became nothing more than a glorified Blu-Ray player.

I continued to play my old retro favourites here and there for a nostalgia hit, but modern gaming for me was out.

Fast forward to March 2017 - slightly aware about Nintendo's new console but apathetic all the same, I had no intention of getting one. The night before its release, I got drunk at home, and perhaps the mind wandered - I went on YouTube, had a look at the Switch and what it had to offer, and drunkenly declared I would buy one on launch the next day. Looking back it was probably nothing more than one of those ideas you have when you're wasted, which seems like the world's greatest idea at that time, but once sobriety sets in, it never happens.

But this one did. I dragged my hungover ass out of bed and to the shops the next morning - no pre-order mind you - and grabbed a Nintendo Switch with Breath of the Wild.

I've been madly back into gaming since - and I've got the Nintendo Switch to thank for that.