Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Octane: No I don't think you are. It was likely deliberately done with a Holiday 2017 in mind. Essentially another year delay.

If the NX is somehow a handheld, Nintendo will have pulled the greatest bait and switch in video game history. They still have never explicitly said the NX isn't a handheld.

@FragRed: Well there's also the potential that the March 2017 NX announce date was a lie to shut the investors up.

Someone was pushing NX as a portable in the other thread. I did not think that likely given the noises Nintendo was making. But I was thinking more about it recently, and thought: "why NOT a portable?"

Assuming Nintendo can only release one new game machine at a time. Which market should they concentrate on?

1. There's the portable market. N has no direct competition. This market is where N has a proven record, dominant market share and is actually making money. Substantial 3rd party support.

2. There's the home console market. A new Nintendo console with 0 installed base, no online community and a handful of launch games will compete head-on with consoles that have sold tens of millions, have a large game library and a large and thriving online community. The competition is ferocious and engages in price wars. N has historically had minimal 3rd party support.

I can see how N might want to go with option 1 to expand/reinforce their position in the market where they have the best chance of success. They will abandon the home console market for the time being, focusing on launching the NX platform on portable hardware. That is why they expect Wii U sales to evaporate: they won't even try anymore. Only after the NX portable is well established in the market will Nintendo attempt to offer an NX home console.

What's the hook for 3rd party support? N might tell them: "Come build games for the only portable on the market sort of powerful enough to play console-like games. There will be lots of users because we own this market. If you build NX games for our portable and follow these guidelines, your game will also run on our upcoming NX home console to be introduced in (say) Fall 2017. You will enter 2 markets for the price of one."

@cwong15: You forgot Micro Console... and tons of other options, but the Micro Console idea is a good one

@cwong15:
I liked the idea of NX being a portable for a while. Not because I thought they wouldn't make another home console soon or that they wouldn't retire the Wii U earlier than an "average" cycle would have. Just that I think the 3DS itself is looking more outdated than the Wii U.

But they have sales estimates for both. Both are slowing but the Wii U decline is very dramatic. They have also explicitly said the Wii U decline is because of the NX. So that's it now. I don't think there's much point in arguing otherwise. NX is replacing Wii U and not 3DS.

@skywake: NX could still be replacing both at the same time but the 3DS not being affected particularly in terms of sales because of Pokemon Sun and Moon as Game Freak pulled the trick of not releasing on new consoles for years once too often (Ruby and Sapphire came nearly 2 years after GBA was released, Diamond and Pearl came out over 2 years after DS was released, X and Y came out over 2 years after 3DS released).

I feel this isn't quite true. Nintendo does have direct competition in the form of the mobile and tablet market. They are the reason there's been a massive decrease in the handheld sales market both hardware and software. And I wouldn't say it has substantial third party support either, not when looking back at previous handheld generations. Most have moved over to the smartphone market where there is a chance to make hundreds upon millions through one single game.

This is my reason as well. Handhelds are a shrinking market, which means that your profits will start to shrink even if you are the market leader.

I think Nintendo will see how it goes on mobile. I think that if it goes well, they will dump handhelds and concentrate on mobile and home consoles. It is quite possible the 3ds will never get a replacement.

Are you sure about that? Any numbers to back that up?

Note the sales trending upwards towards the DS era, and going back down again now. There's also a bit about it in this analysis post linked to the above:

https://zhugeex.com/2016/04/nintendo-fy-2015-report-in-transi...

As for what the NX is, I'm pretty sure it's a home console. It wouldn't be replacing the Wii U otherwise.

@CM30:
That graph looks even more dramatic for Nintendo's home console business. Anyways, I think it's fair to say the portable market is about a third of the size it was during the DS era. But Nintendo now has no competition. With Sony out of the picture now? A 3DS successor could still sell as well as the 3DS has. Easily.

@CM30: I may as well post the software sales then. I don't think the handheld market is in the bad shape as some people make it out to be. Don't forget that the PSV is also a thing this generation, with around 14 million units sold. If you combine the sales of the 3DS and PSV, it's doing just as good, if not better, as the handhelds were pre-7th generation.

Do I think that the market lost a big chuck of the userbase due to mobile? Yes. However, I also think that those people that moved to mobile are the same that caused the influx of handheld gamers in the 7th generation. Last generation saw a pretty big increase in people that gamed on dedicated handheld devices, but those people left the scene just as quick as they entered the handheld market.

It's no different from the situation with home consoles last generation; both witnessed a large crowd of people that came and went.

True, there's still a chance for a handheld system. And to be honest, I want one. I want a 3DS successor with the next Pokemon games, the next Mario & Luigi RPGs, new Wario Land titles, more handheld Mario and Zelda and Mario Kart titles, etc.

But I also wouldn't be too surprised if Nintendo didn't consider a handheld title to be worth the effort. Remember, it also splits their teams' efforts and forces them to support two systems at once. That's partly why they struggled in the last few years. No third party support + two consoles to make games for = software droughts for both systems. Focusing on one means more and better games might come out for the NX.

@CM30: Wouldn't it technically be the opposite if they wanted to only have 1. They'd pick handheld because that's always been the massively more successful one:
. Game Boy beat SNES / N64
. Game Boy Advance beat GC
. DS beat Wii
. 3DS beat Wii U

@CM30: I think that's why we will see more game like Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U. There's no reason to develop two completely different versions of certain games when it takes a lot less effort to port one version to the other system. Games like Smash, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and those other one-per-generation games are a perfect fit for this model. 2D Mario also exists on both systems and even Donkey Kong Country got ported to the 3DS; why not have these games on both systems in the first place?

I don't think Nintendo explicitly said that about the relationship between the Wii U and the NX. But in any case, it's not mutually exclusive. From a business perspective, focus will shift from Wii U to NX. That much we agree on, so in that respect NX "replaces" the Wii U. But NX could still be a portable. Nintendo never explicitly said it was a home console.

Your reasoning seems to be "home console sales are worse, so N should focus on improving that niche". Another line of thinking could be "home console sales are worse, so N should abandon it and focus on where it's strong". Why not?

The problem with the handheld market going forward for Nintendo is that they're now also making mobile games. A lot of people could rightly say, why should I buy one of Nintendo's handheld systems? Why don't they just focus on games for my phone and tablets.

They'll ask themselves do I want to spend £150 - £200 on a handheld plus £30 - £40 per game or just play free to play and real cheap games on my phone and tablet?

@FragRed: The thing is, those mobile games and handheld games are different. Some might think mobile games are "good enough" to not have to spend money on a handheld device, but those people are already not buying handheld systems mostly. Nintendo is going to use their Mobile games to try to entice people over to their main consoles/games, not the other way around.

Well it doesn't matter what I think. Until a couple of months ago I thought that the NX could be a portable. I still think that releasing a portable first has a lot of merit. But they have now downgraded their estimates for Wii U and pointed to the NX as the reason why. So there's not much doubt anymore.

Does that mean I think they won't replace 3DS now? Well no. I think we'll get a new portable within the next couple of years. They're not going to drop portables for mobile I don't care how "dead" people think portables are. So we will get one it just won't be NX.

Oh, and the bit where they say NX won't be a "simple replacement"? I'm not sure it's worth reading too much into that. You could have said the same about the Wii, DS and Wii U.