Video: Digital Foundry Considers the Future of Nintendo, the Switch and NVIDIA

On 2019, I predict it will be released Switch 2.0, Redesigned of Docker, Available in White color too.
I don't ask much for Switch but I want White color of Switch.

I predict they'll still complain regardless.

3 months...it's been 3 months.

@StarmanSSP Lol seems so! I mean, I know these nerds must be super excited about the Switch's concept, but going on about a refresh is just ridiculousness

@Hikingguy Three years is a lot of good stuff coming out that you're going to miss...

If there is a hardware revision in 2-3 years time, then I hope Nintendo has a better way of allowing their customers to manage their own save data. Because right now, there is no such method. Give the consumer the ability to store save data on their MicroSD cards or finally reveal a cloud-based storage plan as part of your paid online service. Right now, if I were to have to get a new Switch, I'm completely reliant on Nintendo Customer Service to put all my long hours of Breath of the Wild on a new device, or have to play the game all over again. I'm also not a fan of cloud-based storage as anything online is open to hacking. I'd rather have the ability to store my data on MicroSD and then have some kind of system transfer method like the 3DS had.

Personally I'm glad that Nintendo went with Team Green. I like the portable concept even more than a stay at home console. Now how about access to better batteries that benefit the power efficiency of X-2. Until that time comes I just want more titles that are not just ports unless they are bayonetta, Xenoblade, and wind waker HD.

This has nothing to do with this but the Joy-Con in the picture isn't even turned on...

@DarthFoxMcCloud Best comment.

Let us use SD Cards or reveal cloud storage, but please don't let it be cloud storage.

Nintendo working with Nvidia is truly a great combination. With Nvidia's GPU tech and knowledge on SLI we can end up with a future Switch Dock that has it's on GPU to give the Switch an even greater performance boost and graphical capabilities. This could open the door to VR games or 4K gaming in docked mode, if Nintendo sees the demand for it.

@StarmanSSP

@DarthFoxMcCloud
this is a must have feature especially in this day in age. Lets see what the switch online service offers

The problem w/ vids like this is I feel no one can predict Nintendo. Will there be a new remodel of Switch? I'd say 100% based on pretty much their entire gaming history. Add into that it's a modular device so it's just begging to be tinkered with.

But find me the one company who predicted Wii Mini dropping internet, 2DS dropping 3D and New 2DS going back to a clamshell design, then I'll listen.

And like the article said, it's probably years away anyway. This year is set, next year in 2018 if they are so inclined they can just sell the Switch w/o the dock for $50 less if 3DS sales have slowed too much too revocer. Then who knows, maybe they'll forego a more powerful Switch for a cheaper less powerful Switch like the 2DS dropped 3D and Wii Mini dropped the internet.

Ninteod will do something, and and maybe half or a quarter of us will guess correctly, but it's all just guesswork about something perhaps years away.

Weird off-topic question to all you Brits:
As an American, when someone can't say their R's correctly, it's considered a speech impediment. Is this the case for you as well or is it more a of a dialect thing depending on what region you're from?
I suppose the same can be true here as well in that sometimes people from certain regions of New England don't really say their R's properly, but I feel like that's a bit of an anomaly.

EDIT: I hope this doesn't come across as ignorant or insulting to anyone. I really am just curious.

@FiveDigitLP The chap in the video struggles with his "r"s. That's it!

It has nothing to do with being a British/English dialect. Although we do have some hum dingers of dialects/accents over here!

And, as per your Edit, it is simply a quirk of his voice. We all know people with such quirks. Glad to hear you weren't being nasty about it

@FiveDigitLP
Considered a speech impediment when "R"s sound like "W"s (see Johnathan Ross). But can just be a dialect. E.g. people from Liverpool region say "R"s as "L"s.

Ah come on, we all know what will happen. In 2018, nvidia will just produce a better, upgraded version of the Switch, but without the Nintendo branding and games.

It's fun to speculate about future upgrades, and more realistic to speculate about a pocket able downsized unit to replace 3DS, but before worrying about how we can upgrade the Switch overall for 2.0, shouldn't we be first focusing on in what YEAR demand for the 1.0 version will actually be able to be met?

@Anti-Matter my wife and I were laughing the other day that nearly all of our modern consoles are black, due to waiting a year or two past the white console phase that Nintendo has. Used to have a white X360, but when it red ringed, we went out and bought a new one. Only model they had in store was black. My Switch dock in rebellion has a wooden looking Zelda sticker set covering it, so there's that. Yes, I know its removing the black plastic finish and I could care less, my consoles need to look happier! Lol.

@shani Without the (patented) dockable motion controllers, licensed games, Nintendo OS, physical distribution network, wouldn't that just be called a tablet? On the inside the machine could be the same as a Switch, but without physical games on store shelves with the Nintendo brand on them, it'll be just another Shield to ignore. A WonderSwan, Jaguar, or 3DO for the modern age!

I'm not even thinking about possible revisions. It's WAY too early, and no one can predict Nintendo anyways so, what's the point.

What we see is what we get for the foreseeable future, and that's A ok with me.

@DarthFoxMcCloud I'm hoping for both. One shouldn't have to rely on a paid service for save backups/transfers, and shouldn't have to rely on internet at all. So I favor local backups. OTOH, because saves aren't stored on cartridges, I'm also hoping for cloud saves as I intend to have two Switches like I did for 3DS and when I rotate my half played game to the other Switch at that point, right now, I'd have to start the game from scratch, meaning it can't work. I'd like to just slap the cart in the other machine and keep going. So I also favor cloud saves. (I used to subscribe to PSN for that until they jacked prices up into absurdity.)

@Meaty-cheeky People keep praising the "supplimental comuting" idea, but if it wasn't built into the USB-C as a eGPU lane, or proprietary format of such, it can't work on Switch 1.0. I suppose it could have been but that seems likely. And while rendering 4k or rendering more things at 1080/60 might be viable at some point, it can't be used to drive graphics too far ahead of the handheld viability or it breaks the core raison d'etre for Switch.

@NEStalgia Yep, that's what a would imagine. IIRC Nvidia did actually mention that they're planning to produce more Shield tablets in the near future.
But yeah, another Nvidia shield tablet without all the Nintendo stuff would be pretty boring indeed.
Just wanted to emphasize that Nvidia won't stop doing their own thing regardless of what happens with Nintendo. And it seems likely to me that they will use their experience with the Switch however they can. ^^

Who knows what's coming? Nobody. If I was to guess though, I'm sure there'll be a redesign at the very least. The Switch feels rushed and forced. Maybe a proper home console version that can compete with the competition and get proper 3rd party support for once. It's not too much to ask for. Fix all the inadequacies of the current Switch model out now.

Yeah, I definitely imagine they'll use what they learned from Switch (though I also imagine they will be careful not to step on the toes of Nintendo too much to not risk disrupting what is proving to be a very lucrative contract!) At this point, they've been in the games business long enough that unlike a lot of tech companies they probably know what it takes to build a platform/library and that their strengths in that are non-existent, and that Microsoft's generalization of the console concept is kind of bombing out big time

Are we still referring to the chip as "custom" when it was proven that it's a standard T210 chip with a lower clockspeed?

This video is not about the future of Switch. It is speculation about another console after Switch. Misleading title.

@RedMageLanakyn But...but...but...Nothing. It's what Nintendo have done for quite a while.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE It's so good to see a pathetic hater like you crying all the time. Nintendo success never was been so sweet. More Salt please.

So if a "normal" dock costs £80, what's the cost of an improved dock with supplemental computing device going to be? Gulp.

I expect I'd still upgrade, whatever...

I personally think Nintendo will use a Tegra X2 in their potential Switch revision to decrease heat consumption, thus improving the battery life and (possibly) removing the fan. There could be a specs upgrade ala the DSi and New 3DS, but Nintendo won't magically make the Swtch more powerful than the PS4/XBO.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Making a Switch on par with PS4/XBO powerwise will not do much if anything by itself to help Nintendo gain 3rd party support.

I have Nvidia Shield and the Switch, but still think this has nothing to do with them.

@NEStalgia I believe you're right unless Nintendo comes out with a new Nintendo switch model that has an additional port for a GPU based dock. So I guess our only option for the original Switch would be more of a cloud-based solution, but I think cloud computing is still not where it needs to be.

Nintendo is not going to release a new and more powerful Switch in two years already. They have never done that.
It took how many years before the New 3DS was released? And besides Xenoblade Cronicles 3D we have yet to see another New 3DS exclusive title.

The Tegra X2 is too expensive and is dedicated to the automotive industry, so the chances for that SoC to end up in a game console is slim at best. Even NVidia's own Shield devices still use the X1.
And so far, what we have seen on the X2, the performance improvements aren't exactly stellar other than efficiency optimizations.

@samuelvictor @Yas @JamesNighthawk Thanks, guys. I really appreciate your informative responses!

@GrailUK my friends keep telling me that the Switch is a failure and everything goes to PS4. I have to remind them of the same thing you are saying... sigh.

@iChadman Nintendo just need to procure the parts to make the bloody things. Every shipment is selling out.

@NEStalgia Xbox just had a really bad launch and having a hard time returning from that but their sales numbers are still decent and will continue to be. People complain they have no games as soon as a bunch of games came out this year for PS4 and they forget XONE just had Quantum Break, Forza Horizon 3, Dead Rising 4, Recore, Gears of War 4, and Halo Wars 2 within a span of one year. Also if they are able to work with Gigantic studio long term that will be nice too. They're doing great things like complete and free backwards compatibility and the new Xbox Game Pass is being excellently executed. Also the Xbox Cross Play is a nice plus. I don't think its anywhere near bombing. Also there is Scorpio and while I was saying it was a waste before, it's still going to blow the PS4 Pro out of the water and that may be a splash Xbox could use. Depends on their execution come E3.

@brutalpanda XBox's issues run deeper than a bad launch on the One, and they now run deeper than ever because a lot of their prior market they built up during the 360 have become Playstation loyal as a result of their bad launch. Their main problem is they don't really have an identity. Nintendo is the House of Mario, and their quirky, sometimes kiddy, VERY Japanese identity is well known. Sony is the home of the interactive movie, high production values, AND quirky Japanese gaming. And with the PS4 they've even taken over some of the mantle of what XBox held.

XBox has a much smaller focus on identity. Their exclusive games, short of Halo and Minecraft are fairly middle of the road safe ventures, without any kind of iconic identity or with much franchise potential. The platform itself doesn't have the "gamer" identity of Playstation or the "quirky/family/retro" identity of Nintendo. It looks like exactly what it is: A small, cheap Windows PC.

The ORIGINAL XBox, awful as it was in some areas, had a lot of unique identity to it and was genuinely exciting. But the original XBox was more or less Dreamcast 2.0 more than a wholly Microsoft product. The 360 scrapped most of that identity and they shed a lot of talent in the company. It sailed ahead mostly because Sony blundered the PS3 badly for the first half of its life and Wii was a "different" market. And they blew a lot of that good faith this time around to the point that coming ahead again will depend mostly on Sony screwing up big (to be fair there's always a high probability of that )

Scorpio, while it can win the "most PC-like of the PC clone consoles" award is going to be hamstrung by having to be backward compatible with the One. If they made it an all new console I think it would have made a bigger splash. But then they'd have thoroughly ticked off most of their current customers. It has the power to have been a new machine. Instead it MUST be limited to being an expensive X1 that plays the same games prettier. And that runs the risk of hurting the Xbox Two when they get around to it. More importantly it shows them doubling down on having little identity other than being "basically a cheap PC. And it even runs Windows 10!"

But beyond all that, there's the deeper problem. XBox's market is more or less limited to US, Canada, and UK, and their market share is uninteresting beyond there. Their numbers aren't great, and most importantly they're losing money on an epic scale and the Microsoft board/investors has wanted to eject them for quite a long time. Ballmer committed to keeping it going as a pet project, Nadella wanted to end them day one. They've been hemorrhaging cash since the OG XBox (but it paid off then by securing DirectX as a development standard), and MS is getting sick of hiding their low sales and negative cash flow behind other divisions earnings. If Scorpio bombs, I suspect there will be chatter of a sale or closure before an XBox Two ever happens (Why do you think Phil is being so nice to EVERYONE in the industry?)

I'm not anti-XBox at all, and I'm glad they have their audience. I don't want to see the brand go down...it's our last link to Sega consoles no matter how indirect, and any instability in the console market is a problem for all console gamers, and I hate seeing ANY of these 3 companies get TOO successful because they become arrogant and abusive to their customers when they do. But their position is very, very not good once you take away the constant cash infusions from the increasingly impatient parent company. They're only going to keep bleeding the Android revenues and dragging the Surface figures down for so long. To date, XBox has never made a single dime and has spent considerably, and Scorpio certainly isn't helping their operational expenses! I fear Scorpio is the VERY wrong machine at a terribly wrong time. Holding it back another year or two and suffering the X1's bad sales a little longer before making Scorpio a whole new platform would have seemed more long-term focused.

Speculation. It's obviously likely that they will continue their relationship, as they will likely use one or two generations beyond Volta in five to six years. Volta will be out this year and it will not be cutting edge then. With that piece of SoC I hope every talk about performance will cool down, since the Nintendo Switch already bring good graphics to the player and the Nintendo Switch 2 can't be less than perfect. There is no need to push forever in the graphics department (sure they should use latest mobile technology for every launch but let's not be so mad about it). Even now it's good enough.

@NEStalgia

On identity:
I have had one since the original and although I was anti-Xbox One around launch, I eventually came on board and have barely used my PS4 since. On your point of identity, I'm not sure if you have an Xbox One or not but I do feel it has a strong identity. Its under an ecosystem of Microsoft products and can be used very easily with those if you own them. Going from PC to Xbox, I am looking at almost the same UI style. I can play a game on my PC from my Xbox if the TV is taken, or I can download specific Cross Play games if I'd rather not stream. These examples of a growing ecosystem allows the console to be a part of something greater and utilize features other consoles can't. I think the core identity of Xbox One is one that offers on-the-edge fun, more raw and provides more competitive online experiences than the other consoles. It's got the best multiplayer infrastructure and most of its IP's primarily focus on that. The Elite Controller with the pads in the back is the only one you would ever use for third-person, racing or shooting games because you never have to take your right thumb off the stick. It allows complete customization and offers the most competitive experiences. The games are always edgy and/or have a get-your-hands dirty feel: Forza Horizon, Gears of War, Halo, Sunset Overdrive, Crackdown, Dead Rising 3 and 4, Killer Instinct, State of Decay, Ryse, and even Minecraft is about digging in the dirt.

On Xbox falling:
Xbox is run under Microsoft which is a company leagues bigger than Nintendo and Sony put together. Losing a little here and there right now is not a big deal. A lot of gamers on Xbox are supporters of Windows products and are integrated into this ecosystem. For them to pull the plug all of a sudden would disappoint millions of fans. We would also be losing the best online experience in console gaming. It's not going to happen. Microsoft just invested a huge chunk in Minecraft and is developing AR, they are interested in sticking around with games. They are on the bleeding edge of tech and if they have a fully operational video game console business occupying people's living rooms, I doubt they are going to give that up because its bleeding a bit at this moment.

Restructuring:
I think the terrible Xbox One launch impeded a momentum that was coming off the Xbox 360 and they are just getting it back. They're doing a great job. They are constantly adding meaningful features to their console, something which PS4 is not doing enough of. There are a plethora of new features and UI additions since launch that are mostly executed very well. For instance, their new game streaming service is not streaming at all and is half price of PS Now, this could become a norm in the industry. They also deliver features they promise such as Dolby Atmos.

Scorpio:
I think it would have been bad to wait until next year to release Scorpio as a non-backwards compatible console for the next gen. That would leave people with the half-baked PS4 Pro as the most powerful console for too long. People like myself wouldn't mind an excellent 4K capable console for their new 4K TV's. Also, making it backwards compatible is not going to limit its hardware if it is built that way from the start. They will continue to use their in-house emulation for Xbox 360 and are possibly getting publishers' past games ready for the launch. They can still leave room to transition into next gen, or make a module for the future. Much better to be getting your games free over the course of generations than Nintendo nickel-and-diming fans for the same 20+ year old games on every platform or like Sony stopped supporting back-cat in a newer version of PS3 only to now charge consumers money for PS2 games they already own. Gradually, and in these little ways, Xbox One has turned into the healthiest package while non-fans weren't watching and once it releases a console finally stronger than anything on the market, people will lean more with that again, especially people looking for the best 4K experience.

I agree it does have more problems to face beyond that, but Xbox is far from falling. Like all video game console brands, it is naturally going through a trough and crest cycle, currently climbing out of its trough.

Nice name btw.

@brutalpanda You know, a few years back when WiiU had bad droughts, and simultaneously PS4 had naught but ports, I was actively trying to convince myself a reason to buy an XBox One. I wanted "that other platform", and was just in the mood for "that new console smell". I figured it could close the gap. I searched and tried and tried to find SOME reason to justify buying a One....and I ended up walking away empty handed. I just couldn't find one. So I don't have a One, not for lack of trying to find a reason to justify buying it, but because of just not finding one The OG XBox was great, and the 360 started out great....but it got worse as time went on, mostly after they brought out Kinekt, and they never picked up from that slump when the One launched.

Identity: I think what you're describing as identity is actually the lack of identity. It looks like a Windows 10 PC. It looks like a Windows 10 tablet. A console that looks like a bunch of general purpose computing devices doesn't have much of its own identity. That's really it's flaw, it's synergy with the Microsoft ecosystem makes it come across as just another PC. And to a degree that really is what it is (and what it was designed to be.) And while it might be true that the games are edgey, it's hard to say Sony has less edgy titles available. And MS has comparatively few (Phil infamously saying that exclusives aren't important...) I'll give you that its main draw is the online experience, it has been for some time and that's a big advantage, though less so in that so much f its player base has moved to PS. It used to be you bought an XBox because your friends bought XBox so the online tie-in was important. But now that a lot of their customers have moved to Sony, and Sony copied a lot of their features in a lot of areas (copying is what Sony does best of course) that XBox circle is a little smaller. Ultimately the market MS is aiming for is the PC gaming market. The edgy games, the online/competitive experience, the lack of focus on exclusives and focus on multiplats. They're very clearly selling XBox as a PC that even looks like a Windows PC, but yet lacks the power of a Windows PC, and as cool as the play anywhere feature is for PC/XBox gamers, though I can't help but think....if your PC can already run XBox games....why buy the XBox (and online subscription? ) The whole appeal is it's a cheaper Windows gaming PC.

But in terms of identity, I will give you that the online focus is the one identity it does have. And with the Elite controller the competitive focus....though the catch is the highly online-focused competitive gamer is in most cases going to be a "PC Master Race" gamer that shuns consoles, so they've targeted their console identity at a specific group, and mostly only a portion of that group, which is probably why they're struggling with the One in trying to find an identity for it.

XBox "failing": That one's not opinion or speculation. That's their actual position right now. It's not a matter of sales. From day one of the XBox program they've spent considerably more than they pulled in. The point of XBox was to stem the bleeding of games development away from DirectX dependence that kept them locked to Windows, while Sony was pushing OpenGL during the height of PS2. It was harming the Windows monopoly on infrastructure. So they started a "DirectX Box" codename project that became XBox, as a matter of "spend as much as it takes to secure the development API dpenendence in the industry, AND get Windows into the living room." In short XBox was merely a leverage tool for securing Windows, and THAT was worth any amount of money.

And boy did they spend....all on a system they didn't intend to sell for too long.

The problem is between their continued subsidizing of console prices under cost, plus the RRoD repairs, buying game delivery through bidding wars, subsidizing games development for other companies.....they still continue outspending what they pull in. It wasn't an exaggeration. Xbox, not the XBox One, the whole XBox division has never made a single red cent. They've racked up debt. Even the X360 lost money. Microsoft has padded the money losses by funneling Android royalties into the books to keep them looking neutral, and recently they stopped reporting sales figures for XBox, instead a "combined hardware operations" figure that includes Surface (dragging Surfaces numbers down to make XBox not look terrible.) Investors have very vocally wanted to divest of XBox for many years. Former CEO Steve Ballmer for some odd reason loved XBox as a pet project and promised to keep it. Sadya Nadella promised day one he'd look into getting rid of it. The company is big and worth fortunes, but no matter how big, no company keeps a division that costs them money forever. At the top, on the inside, there's continuous pressure to divest of XBox. And if Scorpio shows a continued trend of stagnant losses, those calls will get very loud, and unlike Ballmer, Nadella never liked XBox to begin with. He's positioning them as a cloud services company. XBox is baggage to his vision.

NOW, that does not mean that XBox will go away....but a lot of things can happen to it. They COULD try to close it but they'd probably sell it. It comes with a lot of debt though, so who would buy it (unless they agree to eat the debt just to make the sale.) It depends on the asking price. Samsung and Apple, or LG could be interested in the console business. nVidia or AMD itself could show interest. EA has close ties to them and always seems to be trying to be a platform holder even though they're not. It could interest them to buy a platform (if they can afford it.) If MS spins them off it doesn't mean it goes away, but it will be different. Possibly better without the MS corporate structure dragging it in weird directions.

But yeah....MICROSOFT isn't going anywhere, but XBox isn't on the best of terms with its parent organization who created it only to secure their more important product: Windows. My own speculation is that Scorpio is their test. If they can make money (even before operational expense) they'll hang onto them longer and see what they can do. If it shows more of the same, they'll start quietly looking for buyers. It would be a pure business decision.

Restructuring: Off topic, but yes, my acknowledging of the problems XBox faces as a brand doesn't let Playstation off any hooks. We all know the only reason PS4 got the momentum it did isn't because of PS4, it's because XBox blundered their launch catastrophically and flipped off fans. Similarly, though, the only reason X360 got the momentum it did was because Sony blundered their PS3 launch catastrophically and flipped off fans. It's like a metagame PS4 hasn't done much special and so many features are underbaked and underdelivered. PSN is a mess. And, personally, I will never EVER like Dual Shock controllers. XBox controllers are infinitely nicer! But while Sony spends every year talking about all the exclusive games they're bringing their platform, Microsoft seldom talks about games at all. They talk about hardware. They talk about features. They talk about graphics. There's a market for that, but it's not the biggest market in gaming. And most of that market plays PC. It's a definite issue they face.

Their hardware, is nice. Their ecosystem has pros and cons. Good features, but little identity. Their online focus is somewhat unique, but it also draws from an audence that's already mostly dedicated to their OTHER platform, while not offering much to other audiences. If they'd spent the money the spent designing Scorpio half way into the generation on producing CONTENT instead, they could have really made XBox One a must-own platform to get that content. That's where they dropped the ball, a lack of focus on content and a greater focus on specifications and services. And everything they've showed (so far) for Scorpio indicates they are not changing that direction. We'll see during their Sunday pre-E3 show if they've really changed direction or not though.

Scorpio: Everything about the hardware and its marketing says "new generation". And it could have been good at that. But tethering it to XBox One means the games MUST be limited for it to the original One's limitations. That limits any gameplay innovation to be chained to what there was if there was no Scorpio at all. All Scorpio can do as a result is render prettier graphics. Not because that's all it COULD do but because that's all it will be able to do since the game must run on One (unless they let devs really cut down games and sell inferior versions on One...which will result in very bad backlash, and I don't think they're that foolish.) I'm not sure "an expensive X1 that renders things prettier and for 4k owners" is the solution they needed for their X1 dilemmas any more than Nintendo needed a "WiiU Turbo" to fix WiiU's dilemmas. They had to kill it and move on. X1 isn't in THAT bad a position (but financially it's worse since they're subsidizing hardware) but I think they needed to ride the storm and then really hit a homerun on a new platform. Scorpio, IMO will do little to help X1 as a platform overall, and will also detract from the "wow" when they have a new platform ready. The urination contest between Sony and MS for "the worlds most powerful low power PC!" is what's leading to this. Who cares if PS4 Pro is the most powerful console for a few more years? It's not even true 4k! PS4 was more powerful than One too. Both of them racing for parity with each other will kill one of them. Instead of timing their strategy to wow consumers with great value, great performance, or both, they kind of went "safe" down the middle and risk wowing no one, while their main rival announces a bunch of actual content.

I get what you're saying about emulation of the back catalog....and that's a good point, it's a great feature, and I'm surprised they're pulling it off. I'm not a fan of Sony's business practices as a company (not MS either though), and anything that forces these two to reverse their abusive decisions is a winner in my book. That's why I don't want to see XBox go away. But I also want to see them get their act together and produce a compelling platform. And that does mean going beyond "competitive online gaming" as their target market and producing content to appeal to broader groups. (And I definitely don't mean Kinektimals That was just embarrassing )

XBox has a reputation as the "Dude Bro" console. And by and large that's a fair assessment. It's good they could find a niche to corner...but that's not a niche they can thrive on alone. As someone not much a fan of sports games, racing games, online shooters, or MMOs, but a big fan of adventure games, RPGs, JRPGs, SRPGs, platformers, action games, open world games and a variety of other genres, XBox is offering very little to compel me buy their platform, even as a third system. But what's so strange about that is what a reversal of direction it is for XBox. The original XBox was arguably the BEST platform for most of those games in its day! Trouble is they lost a lot of the people that made the platform. That would be like Nintendo suddenly becoming an eSports platform without many Japanese games at all.

I'd like to see an actual healthy console competition like the first half of the 7th gen was. 8th gen has been a 1-way trip to Sonyland. Switch...some call it 8th gen, it's really 9th gen...and I don't know what Scorpio is....it looks like 9th gen yet is really just an 8th gen up-market SKU. At first when they announced it I was glad to see them offer the X1 compatibility. But over the past year when I thought about it, I realized that's probably not a wise move. Great for customers actually...but probably not great for the platform's success. Especially since we all know Sony will take whatever Scorpio is and announce something 3% more powerful and call it a day.

Edit: Wow that post was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be Sorry about the text wall! And thanks for the compliment on the name!

@NEStalgia I think the identity thing can go either way. Some people may enjoy it being a part of an ecosystem but some may think its weaker because of it. I think a lack of identity is also coming from their lack of a big game represented by a known character. Halo 5 took out the Master Chief from the forefront while Gears of War 4 no longer had Fenix. No Banjo from Rare, no Alan Wake from Remedy. The only character people immediately know is Frank West in Dead Rising 4 but he was never associated only with Xbox before. So we are left with no icons even though some of these games are great. Halo 5 has one of the best multiplayer in the series and Forza Horizon 3 is arguably the best racing game ever made but is also probably their only 10/10 worthy game and the number one exclusive to buy the system for, even if you think you don't like racing games. They really need to have franchises that can continue without losing the icons in them. Link, Zelda, Mario and all the Nintendo characters are not going anywhere. While Uncharted is ending Drakes story, Naughty Dog is the actual icon there. I think their biggest folly in this day is trying too many new things with their game projects at once. Its creating a great mix of games but there are no icons to keep them all together. That is something they responded to when looking back at halo 5, saying they now know to keep it about Master Chief. I do hope they announce some really great games at E3 and I hope they invest more money into system seller IP's that are of the RPG/Action Adventure genres. That exploring of stories and worlds is weak on Xbox.