In anticipation of tomorrow's Nindies Showcase, Nintendo have released a video showing some of the Nindie titles coming between now and the first few months of 2018.
SPOILER ALERT: There are four games within this video that have previously been unannounced for the Switch.
I've posted about it before but right now a Sony "Playstation Switch" is probably a non-starter for a few big reasons.
The biggest are actually probably in the marketing and positioning of such a device. Casual consumers don't follow the market very closely. To advertise and promote a "Playstation Switch" you have to lead on its portability and accept that it's weaker in specs and performance than a home console. Those attributes become associated with the Playstation brand...
...But Sony has built the success of the PS4 around the laser focused idea that Playstation stands for being the most powerful console. They'll have to rethink this in the face of the XBox One X but they can't abandon their position to vainly chase after Nintendo's market.
In large part the Vita failed because Sony couldn't position it at the same time as positioning the PS4. Sony are marketing gods but there are limits to what can be achieved - even for them.
Then there are the technological limitations. How much more powerful can you go in a handheld? Can you really make a handheld that's noticeably more powerful than the Switch in 2017?
All of this is before we even get to the games. A "Playstation Switch" would need its own ecosystem of games. Can/will Sony draw the majority of their resources away from creating games optimised for home play to create the types of games that lend themselves to shorter play sessions and a different audience (but which are sufficiently "big" that they couldn't show up on the existing Vita)? If they do the biggest winners would be Microsoft and if they don't they'd end up with a console that couldn't hope to compete with the Switch library.
And even then - if Sony could overcome all of these issues - there's an elephant in the room - the Switch itself has a strong beach-head. In the video games industry competing against an competitor with an established user base for a console of comparable power has been repeatedly shown to be very difficult.
There'll be at least 10 million+ Switch owners in the world before the earliest possible moment that Sony could launch their own equivalent. They'd be launching against a console with a growing library of games (and more development based on the sales to date) - launching a new premium console against one that would be just starting to see manufacturing cost reductions.
It's a mountain to climb on just about every level and - even worse - climbing it only strengthens Nintendo's position because it doubles the incentive for big publishers to create handheld scale-able versions of their games that could be easily ported to Switch.
My guess - if Sony are planning new hardware - is that they're planning to announce a PS4 Pro+ that ups the ante on the XBox One X and spoils its launch. It just makes so much more sense.
@StuTwo I believe they already confirmed that when they release their next hardware, it will be the PS5, so a Pro+ is unlikely. I don't see the point either, because I don't think the One X will be a huge success. The Pro only accounts for 20% of the total PS4 sales, so the One X at $499 will probably do even worse. Without any true exclusives, the hefty price tag, I wonder how big the actual audience is for this system...
I think they also said that the Xbox One X was also meant to be a "premium" option, not for the mass market appeal? I'm not sure on that so take that with a grain of salt without a source.
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@Octane They can call it a PS5 or whatever they feel is the best option from a marketing perspective but it'll almost certainly build on the same architecture as the PS4 and play existing PS4 games.
I take a different view on the success of the PS4 Pro and the likely success of the XBox One X. There is a clear audience for those things. 20% of PS4 sales means there's a lot of PS4 Pro owners in the world already! Those owners are - almost by definition - wealthier and likely to buy more games. If you don't have the PS4 Pro you have nothing to up-sell those customers to and you're leaving their money on the table.
Just from an marketing perspective the PS4 Pro (and One X) have tremendous value. Why spend ÂŖ100 million trying to convince the world that your console is the most powerful when you can just make your console the most powerful as an optional extra? With the added advantage that the customers will pay you for the privilege and the more powerful version is the one that reviewers and YouTubers will be using.
@UmniKnight Maybe the other pre-orders were absolutely awful? Anyway, difficult to say without any numbers, but I would be genuinely surprised if it becomes a huge success.
@BLP_Software There's no point in higher res screens without a PS5. Best thing is to build the PS5 with that little VR box included, that would eliminate 4 cables, and all you have to do is plug the PSVR directly into your PS5.
Vive feels more like high-end tech that's quickly improving. PSVR is more aimed at a casual VR audience and I think that replacing it this soon would alienate a big chuck of that audience. The Vive can get away with it because it feels more like a 3D printer; expensive new tech that get replaced almost every year, and those buying the Vive are probably aware of that.
@EvilLucario - Actually no they can't sell a system at such a loss to undermine Nintendo. Sony is hemorrhaging money in practically all of their investments save from TVs (which has been a roller coaster) and their gaming, which has been dominant this gen. They cannot afford more losses so rapidly, investors would pull out and Sony doesn't need that.
Even if there is a hybrid announcement, sony cannot keep that up and the PS4 Pro simultaneously. They've proven multiple times they cannot multitask. They would have to prey the third party picks up the slack. And with third parties, they will probably just attempt to maximize profit as they did with Vita and sell consumers the same game twice... and looked how well that went over.
This doesn't happen with Nintendo due to the systems being drastically different. You practically HAVE to make a new game on the 3DS if you want that version to even exist. Sony knows they couldn't replicate this due to not enough man power themselves, and third parties wouldn't take that great a chance to do something different enough to not maximize their return.
I was watching the indie sizzle reel and Huntdown really caught my eye. I just had a search for any more info on it and found this trailer, it looks great.
I had no idea this was already announced for Switch at E3.
@Paraka Course, a system is far more than a deal, but if they're haemorrhaging money, then the deals they've been making would've been very risky to say the least, right?
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