Topic: Why can't Nintendo just focus on the Switch?

I do agree that, at least lately, the 3DS and Switch experiences are relatively similar. The 3DS is old... battery life is not massively better than the Switch (well, depends on games), and it's really not all that much smaller. Definitely weird when your portable option is only slightly more portable than your console option. But a lot of that is just a symptom of the 3DS being so dang old at this point.

My hunch is that the 3DS line is going to become more portable: smaller, insanely long battery life, a bit more power (obviously), all in the form of.... a return of the GAMEBOY line.

I don't know. Just a guess, but I do think they're gonna transition back to the Gameboy brand. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and it'll further delineate the "full" games Switch will offer while returning to much more compact experiences the Gameboy brand will present. I also think the dual-screen stuff has played itself out. It's pretty clear that mobile/portable gamers are perfectly fine with a single screen (must be touch, though), and fewer 3DS games even use the dual screens in meaningful ways these days.

Imagine: a new Gameboy device with a dozen hours of battery life, a bump up in processing from the 3DS (not hard to do lol), and 100% small/thin enough to fit in even small pocket. Pretty much just a touch screen with buttons in that familiar Gameboy shape! All for WAY under 100 bucks (2DS is already 80 dollars... so I don't know how much lower they can go lol). Can't beat that!

@rallydefault If they got rid of the 2nd screen, they may as well just release a Switch Mini and let the Switch be the only new Nintendo platform.

They're never going to allow SD card backups of saves as that's an attack vector for piracy. The majority of backdoors on the 3DS, Wii U and Wii and all of the most popular ones involved loading some kind of broken save file. By only allowing you to save to the system itself they can control your save data which makes piracy significantly less user friendly.

In terms of them acting like backing up save data was "not important" when the system launch? Come on. Despite the whine on forums like this Nintendo have consistently said they're working on a solution. Blind Freddy could see that they were going to have a cloud saves as part of their online service.

And I know people still find reason to whine but, lets be honest, how often did you actually backup your saves when you had full access? Any manual backup process will end in some tears if you have a hardware failure. Especially if it's a process that involves taking out a MicroSD card. I'm not one for being reckless with important data but I can tell you now that if you came into my house and stole my Wii U and it's HDD? I'd pretty much lose all of my Wii and Wii U saves. I may have a spare SD card with my Wii save data on it and I did have my Wii U HDD copied at one stage... but I don't think either are much of a guarantee.

If they had cloud saves on the Wii U this wouldn't be an issue and, in theory, that save data could have been read from the Switch. That save data could have been shared between the Wii U, 3DS & Switch copies of Smash Bros for example. Regardless of what people say, cloud saves are THE ONLY viable option.

Gosh dang, that's a brilliant post.

Anyways, at the end of the day, they practically are only focusing on Switch. What have they got devoted elsewhere, a cheap Warioware game and a GameCube remake? Are those resources really going to make any significant difference in the content available to the average Switch gamer over the course of the next 5-7 years? I seriously doubt it, especially given the fact we haven't seen any new games announced for the system since.

@skywake
It's true, I never bothered to manually back up my games for all the years I could've done it. This is one of those things where most people won't actually use it, but they just don't like the idea of not having it.

That being said, I WILL use cloud saves. They saved my butt on Vita when my memcard corrupted.

Technically Nintendo didn't shut down their online, their service provider shut down.

And the 3ds haven't had that much support the last year. I suspect they didn't have much support the year before that either.

I still think this feels like a year before new hardware, I am not especially impressed with first party output this year. If we take the combined output of 3ds and switch, we are seeing a meager year IMHO.

Piracy is already here. SX OS is available on any Switch firmware and allows you to play backups.

Nintendo needs to forget about the ancient 3DS and focus solely on the Switch. They need to put out console updates faster and give people what they want. We still only have 2 theme options........How damn hard is it to add other colors?

Nintendo has always been terrible with console updates though.

You're missing the point. No system is 100% secure and there will always be piracy. All I was saying is that by locking down saves they block one of the easier and more popular attack vectors. I also then went on to say that I doubt most people backed up their saves manually anyway.

Complaining about the lack of a manual backup option is stupid when a cloud save option is coming.

I'm not sure if you're responding to me or not here. FYI I've got a bit of heat on various sub-forums on this site for saying pretty much the same. Nintendo does need to reduce focus on the 3DS and put more energy into the Switch... and they are.

This thread only exists because of a comment made at an investors meeting. They were asked a specific question about what their plans for the 3DS were going forward. They responded by saying they were "looking at the options". People's imaginations have gone wild about what that means but it's just PR speak for "we have nothing to say". Actions speak louder than words.

How many upcoming 3DS games are there? Here's the list for 2018/19 in AU:

• Detective Pikachu (localisation)
• Suishi Striker (also on Switch)
• Captain Toad (port, also on Switch)
• WarioWare Gold (compilation)
• Luigi's Mansion (port)
• Mario & Luigi (port/compilation)

........ they don't need to say anything, we know they're retiring this system

Instead of bring out another handle version, why not bring out a home console version instead for people that don't care for the portable mode, and instead of including joy-cons replace them with a Pro Controller instead, and maybe include a disc slot for backwards compatibility for Wii U and maybe Wii Games, and also include more storage with the system.

@skywake I don't think the investor meeting comments are the only reason this thread exists but rather the combination of that and the Switch's announced 2018 lineup so far. For example people expected a lot more from Nintendo's E3 than just a huge focus on Smash and not much else so many will blame the 3DS for the seemingly weaker 2018 lineup.

But they have obviously not looked at the 3ds lineup in that case...

@Grumblevolcano
I get the sentiment to some degree. The internet likes to complain and there are only so many things they can point at. But I don't see how the 3DS can be the target here. More content is being released each month for the Switch than was released for the 3DS in the last year. The last big 3DS game was Pokemon US/UM and even there we now know the next Pokemon will be on Switch.

TBH I think most of the criticism about 2018's lineup is not about the quality of the lineup. It's about the quality of the lineup compared to BotW, Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Mario & Rabbids, Arms, Xenoblade 2, Fire Emblem Warriors, Doom, LA Noire. It's also about the quality of the lineup compared to the imagined lineup of Smash Bros, Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, Gen 8 Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc.

Personally I don't have enough energy to get upset about release schedules. As far as I'm concerned I have a decent library of staples already I can play and Smash Bros on the way. But I get the sentiment. Either way, being upset that you didn't get another epic lineup for 2018? That's not proof that Nintendo are putting all of their energy in a 3DS successor. Pretty much everything of note Nintendo does lately is for the Switch.

@skywake Pretty sure the logic is that the Switch lineup would be better if 3DS exclusives didn't happen after the Switch launch though of course the reality is more complicated (e.g. some of the 3DS exclusives post-Switch launch used existing 3DS engines). Kimishima did say the 2018 lineup isn't fully announced yet so maybe a Direct will remove some of the concerns those people have.

@Grumblevolcano
Sure but how many have there been? If you exclude ports, compilations and non exclusives there aren't many. Pokemon, Metroid, Dillon, Kirby, Detective Pikachu, Pikmin.... that's about it isn't it?

Yeah, but what do you really expect them to announce? Nintendo does have Nintendo Directs year round for game announcements, but they don't really announce major projects in Directs, those are usually saved for E3. He's probably just referring to more ports and digital games. I doubt they're going to announce things like say, the next main series Animal Crossing game or Retro's game or anything like that late in the year, if they had games like those up their sleeves we probably would've seen them at E3.

@Bolt_Strike Depends when the Direct ends up being. A July Direct I'd guess something like:

• More info on already known upcoming 2018 games
• A few Wii U ports releasing September - December 2018 (August being treated as the 3rd party month)
• DLC/updates info for games like Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade 2, Kirby Star Allies, Mario Tennis Aces
• More info on Yoshi
• Paid online info
• Nindies trailer

Whereas a September Direct I could see more surprises appear in the form of 2019 games. I think the days of Nintendo E3 looking far into the future are gone. Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon Switch were likely only revealed at E3 2017 to reduce the backlash of Samus Returns and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon respectively, Yoshi games commonly seem to encounter development issues so maybe it was originally going to be a Spring 2018 game and apart from those 3 Switch games the rest released within 9 months of E3.

They literally announced Smash in a random ass Nintendo Direct. ANYTHING can be announced anywhere. If they never teased Ultimate last March and did that full blow-out at E3, people would be crapping their pants over "how fantastic their E3 was".

This is Nintendo's model now. Spread announcements across the year, only resort to teasing big games like Metroid and Bayonetta and SMT when there is still stuff to show (when Prime 4 got revealed, so did Samus Returns. When Bayonetta 3 got revealed, Bayonetta 1 + 2 got ported to Switch).

These same people wanting E3 to be bigger also demand bigger and badder Directs, which you can't have both at the same time.

@Bolt_Strike
I mean, the Nintendolife's write-up is: "Kimishima stated that Nintendo will reveal more about its full 2018 lineup at the appropriate time, and this includes games that will launch during the competitive holiday season at the year's end."

That's your outgoing president, so I'd certainly assume he knows a good deal about what's coming up.

So that's the fact we know so far. Make of it what you will, but clearly other stuff is out there and will be announced whether or not we think there are "big" events left.

@Grumblevolcano Why would announcing those games help prevent a backlash?

What backlash happened with those games?

@Trajan There's pretty much a backlash every time a 1st party 3DS game doesn't come to Switch. So announcing Switch games in the same franchise as the 3DS game helps reduce the backlash.