Nintendo has been in a little bit of tough spot these past few years. With Microsoft and Sony surging ahead with the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, Nintendo's Wii U is looking pretty obsolete these days and the only thing that seems to be churning out the most success for the underdog of the Big Three is the 3DS. Nintendo has had a new console codenamed NX in the works for while now and it could supposedly be their ace in hole to put them back in the running against Microsoft and Sony, but not much has been said of it... until now. Say hello to the Switch.
The Switch is a radical new hybrid console that incorporates both handheld and home console elements into one package. The actual power lies within the tablet portion which can be docked into a base station linked to your TV or taken on the go. The controller system is very clever too with the slide out pads on each side of the Switch can be fitted into a traditional controller body or to the sides of the tablet. You can also kick out a stand in the back of the tablet and use the two controller halves as separate Player 1 and Player 2 controllers. Wow.
Now if you guys remember from the end of my Wii U review I said this:
"However the real scary thing is that the Wii U can almost be seen as a foreshadowing of Nintendo's possible demise. It's backed itself into the same corner as the old Sega Saturn, the underdog in a three way fight with two giants. The rumored NX which there has been very little information of as of lately could be their Dreamcast, the end. We don't know, we can only hope that they make the right choices with the NX. I believe that in order for the NX to succeed in a market dominated by Sony and Microsoft, they would have to go above and beyond what the One and PS4 are capable of, win back third party support, and add features that the people actually want. They need to cut the cutesy nonsense and get more serious about everything, bottom line. I'm not saying this because I want to destroy the image Nintendo has built over the years but I want to see them last. Keep what works, but build something that truly appeals to everyone and make it justifiable over the competition. Nintendo isn't my go to for gaming but I don't want to see a company that made history fall to pieces because they didn't understand the market. I hope the NX changes that, it might win not just me, but a lot of people over but only if it does the right things."
None of what the Switch looks like at first represents these same views I took back in that post. I was hoping the NX would be a run of the mill "Do-Everything" console like the PS4 and One that took no risks, and catered to everyone under the sun. The Switch looks like it takes a plethora of risks with the whole hybrid concept. However looking at the market at this very moment, Nintendo really doesn't have many other options. The One and PS4 have been around over for several years now with more powerful models on the horizon. If Nintendo were to suddenly jump into this fight with a equally matched or more powerful console, any advantage Nintendo would have had with a regular One/PS4 fighter would quickly diminish when the more powerful Scorpio and PS4 Pro release. It wouldn't sell bottom line, because the consumers have already established themselves with either the PS4 or the One and selling something on par or possibly better than them would not work at this stage. So they take risks and build something radically different instead.
This as history has shown hasn't worked in the past. The original Wii I believe was what set Nintendo back so far. It was underpowered compared to it's competition, carried only by it's key gimmick: motion controls and it worked damn good for a while too, but the gimmick wore off. The Wii U tried ditching that in place of a new gimmick that appealed to a broader audience: the second screen feature with the Gamepad but it was too terribly flawed and the rest of the console was still plagued by the sort of cutesy rubbish that made the Wii U still look like a "kids console". Both of these set them back significantly; a whole console generation behind and with the 4K powerhouses from Microsoft and Sony looming overhead, that gap will only get bigger and taking risks now seems like suicide.
The thing is though is that the Switch could very well take a chunk out of an area of Sony and Microsoft's share of the market. The console seems to be a near perfect model of the remote play idea which Microsoft and Sony have established on their consoles but with one key bottleneck: the Internet. I've tried remote play on both the PS4 and the Xbox on any platform that can support it and it's glitchy and the reaction time is horrendous. Microsoft has tried solving this with "Play Anywhere" games but that still requires a high powered Windows 10 PC to work properly. With the Switch the console comes with you, meaning the bottleneck is gone. The power is in your hands and not floating over some unreliable piece of air. That's huge; having stable console quality games on the go with the option to just plug it into your TV and kick back on the couch. However this begs the question: how much power does the Switch actually have?
Suddenly the ideas behind the Switch become much more problematic. Nobody really knows exactly what's been crammed under the hood of that tablet. How powerful is it? Will the battery life be good? Any of these in the negative can surely kill the Switch. Nintendo has however revealed that NVidia is powering the graphics behind the Switch and according to them it's powered by a custom Tegra processor and a GPU based on the "same architecture as the world's top performing GeForce gaming graphics cards", all specifically optimized for the Switch. If Nvidia's latest 10 series graphics cards are anything to go by, this is some serious shit. The launch video also prominently showed off what looks to be Skyrim: Special Edition happily running on the Switch. Call this a stretch considering how small it is but it might actually have One/PS4 competitive power. Battery life will be the sole determinant of whether or not this feature will pick up any steam but for now, this is exciting.
Speaking of Skyrim, does it sound like Nintendo is getting third party support back? It sure looks like it. Nintendo also released an image of all the developers that are going to release games for the Switch and it's a pretty big amount so far. Even developers like EA that abandoned the Wii U are coming back to develop for the Switch so that's a good sign. The console looks to be going to small cartridges for games but I would imagine digital downloads are going to be the prime form of game delivery with the Switch.
With those in mind the prospect of having a hybrid console with good power and a solid amount of support seems pretty good. As far as Nintendo carrying over the sort of kiddie content that alienated much of the Wii U's potential audience, the video seems to suggest the Switch is going to try for a much wider audience in a way similar to Sony and Nintendo. Everyone in video is probably in their young-adult years and it showcased everything from Splatoon to Skyrim as I mentioned earlier. I didn't see a single Mii in the video and personally that's a good sign too.
Going back to hardware the Switch has the option to use it's slide out controllers for two player games on the fly or dock them into one body for couch gaming. During the Skyrim bit on the plane, and I noted this earlier, there is a kickstand in the back of the tablet and you can detach the two controllers, one in each hand and keep slaying dragons without craning your neck over the thing all the time. There is also a dedicated home controller that looks better some more serious button mashing. The layout has gone to a traditional Xbox style controller completer with offset sticks although Nintendo has kept their button layout with the B and A buttons swapped. For long time Nintendo fans, this layout is fine but for Xbox or PS4 gamers coming to the Switch it will throw them off like the Wii U did for me. I think they should change it to the standard layout or provide in console settings to change it.
All in all I think the Switch might have chance here. It's not what I totally expected the NX to be; it still seems like it's going to try and cater to the masses like I hoped it would but in a totally typical Nintendo way, and I think that's a better route than going for "Generic Home Console No. 3". Nintendo said it's not replacing the 3DS or the Wii U but I think that's far from the truth here. If it's more powerful and packs the best of the two systems into one package then I'm almost dead certain the Wii U and maybe the 3DS will get canned, especially if the Switch proves itself worthy of attention in March. I'm personally going to wait at least a month to see if the Switch ends up being as good as I hope it's going to be and if so, you can expect a review of it come April. It definitely has my attention, hopefully it stays that way.
UPDATE: I just got word that the Wii U, along with the Wii brand itself is indeed dead. The last Wii U is rolling off the line this week and in all honesty I can't be surprised. The thing totally had it coming considering the PS4 and Xbox One, let alone their predecessors were better than the Wii U and it just didn't seem logical to keep a dying console around while you roll out what could be the next big thing. Rest in peace Wii... unfortunately you will be forgotten.
UPDATE 2: Nintendo has apparently denied this claim that the Wii U is ending production. Again, I don't totally believe it since they've been inconsistant with similar claims in the past but logically, if the Wii U isn't getting killed, production would probably be massively scaled back. We'll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment