Nintendo Switch 2: a flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful ...
Nintendo Switch 2
Oh Nintendo, you scourge of my passion for gaming. I can't say that when I was a little Lukas I hopped around as Mario with a pacifier in my mouth - the first years of my life belonged to the Sega Mega Drive, not the NES and SNES - but with the Game Boy and at the very latest with the N64 I "switched sides."Table of Contents
1 The last will be the last 2 Again at the top 3 And then? 4 At the crossroads 5 Obligation to innovate 6 All at once 7 Staying optimistic Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Co. were made up, from then on I fell for the Mario needle; And it is probably no coincidence that my career in game journalism began as an intern at our Nintendo magazine, N-ZONE (yeah, a chance for surreptitious advertising! Here, N-ZONE subscription! Buy!)Recommended editorial content Here you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. In any case, as long as I've been a Nintendo fan, the company has been driving me crazy. Because with every great idea, every innovation - and there were masses of both - there are decisions that make you want to pull your hair out. And since I don't have too many of them anyway, that's pretty dangerous for me!
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Nintendo Switch 2: A flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful .... (5) Source: Square Enix It started early, with the N64. Previously, Nintendo was the unquestioned top dog on the console market, Sega was quite successful, but still far behind the number 2. The trend in the mid-1990s was towards CD as a new data carrier for games, it is much cheaper, offers more space and also has a few other advantages .
What is Nintendo doing? Insist on modules because they are a bit more secure when it comes to pirated copies. The result: exorbitant purchase prices, no video sequences because they swallow up too much space, compressed data and the migration of well-known developers to the competition, above all Squaresoft (now Square Enix), who are helping the PS1 to a relevant extent with Final Fantasy 7, to success will. The title was planned for the N64, but was then deleted because the developers simply saw no chance to implement their vision - they had to switch to the technically much weaker Sony console.
Well.
The last will be the last
You shouldn't be the only ones, just think of Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Co. I don't want to mention all of Nintendo's numerous misconducts here and in detail List them, therefore a rough summary: Mini-Discs at the Gamecube, the oversleeping of the Internet age, the renunciation of trophies, the much too late building of a meaningful digital download shop, miserable and customer-unfriendly account systems, the idea of voice chat as an evil to be combated, insisting on movement control for far too long and the casual target group being grazed by, and, and, and.This contrasts with successes such as the Wii and the strong handheld area, a But anyway: These and many other mistakes were almost always due to the fact that Nintendo misread trends and developments and ultimately ended up being a loser, completely self-inflicted.
Once again at the top
Nintendo Switch 2 : A flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful .... (4) Source: Nintendo And then came the Switch, the device that Nintendo finally brought into the modern era and gave the company a relevance that it hadn't enjoyed since the heyday of the Wii . Suddenly Nintendo's kiddie reputation is only a sideline, indie developers love the device, the mix of console and handheld is more or less in keeping with the spirit of the times.That doesn't mean that the Mario group is now making no mistakes more power, oh no! Dedicated servers, for example, are still a foreign word for companies, the in-house games in online mode are therefore sometimes practically unplayable, and the account system still works more badly than well. Add things like the inherently suboptimally designed Joy-Con controllers, where the damned analog stick drift has not been fixed to this day, and you come across enough construction sites. But still, in the Switch era, it seems, Nintendo knows, grosso modo, what to do.
So it seems.
And then?
Nintendo Switch 2: A flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful .... (6) Source: Sony Because when I look into the future, I don't know whether the future of the group is as rosy as one would like it to be as a long-term companion. It starts with the technology. Sure, the Switch serves its own (large!) Niche on this side of PC, Playstation and Xbox. But it is not as if it is only now, with the new consoles of the competition, falling behind technically.It is technically de facto roughly on par with the PS3 and Xbox 360, which were in 2005 respectively They came onto the market in 2006 - but only appeared in 2017 (!). We are at the point where the implementation of modern games is getting harder and harder because the console will soon no longer be able to cope with textures and superficial elements, but also physics calculations and the like.
You can be weaker as the competition and still successful, that was proven by the Wii, now the Switch, before that it was the Game Boy and the Nintendo DS. But if the gap is so wide that two or three generations of hardware have happened in between, then at some point you will again have to rely on in-house developments and the favor of third-party manufacturers and in the same situation as in the Gamecube and Wii-U times. Indies can only carry you so far.
At the crossroads
The problem I see: I don't think Nintendo itself really knows what to do after the Switch, and After four years on the market and in view of the extreme performance deficit just mentioned, this is a problem. You have achieved this really impressive success, probably to your own surprise, and now it has to go on at some point. After the Wii came the Wii U, probably the biggest flop in the company's history, and now - yes, what now?The most logical decision and also the one I would prefer: a direct continuation of the switch concept. Significantly stronger hardware, better installation quality, a consistent ironing out of what is bad with the switch. But then a lot of investment would have to be made, because the technology should not be below the level of a PS4 Pro in order to lose the connection. So, if it would appear now: In view of the fact that Nintendo sees a good four years for the Switch, you have to be more interested in the scaled-down PS5 performance. It is difficult to stuff that into a mini-tablet, I understand that, but in my opinion there is no alternative.
Compulsion to innovate
Nintendo Switch 2: A flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful .... (3) Source: media agency plassma But that might be a pointless train of thought anyway, because what did Nintendo recently say to investors? The Switch successor has to be innovative, has to dare to try something new, you can't just bring a Switch 2 onto the market.I say it as civilly as I can: innovation by the ass. You can see where it is going on the Wii U, or, to go back even further, on the Virtual Boy. If Nintendo was successful with innovation, it was because the medium of games itself was advanced through it, for example through the analog stick of the N64. After that, innovation at Nintendo happened far too often according to the motto "somehow different". The Switch was never innovative, it simply combines Nintendo's strengths from the console and handheld business in one device that cannot be surpassed in logic.
So I hope that "has to be innovative" meant is that the Switch 2 is simply the stronger device I have dreamed of, with which you can then sniff the bacon at Cooking Mama using an optionally activated odor sensor or what I know, some gimmick that you can also use like the 3D display in the 3DS can simply safely ignore.
All at once
Nintendo Switch 2: A flop with an announcement? That's why Nintendo has to be careful .... (7) Source: Nintendo Alone, I think Nintendo is stuck and doesn't really know where to go. This also shows the rumor about the supposed Nintendo Switch (buy now) Pro, which, we're realistic, would be pretty pointless anyway. Squeezing a bit more power out of a completely outdated device is like trying to tackle the crack in the shark tank with tape.Nintendo wants to preserve its well-earned or at least assumed reputation as an innovator, is apparently also very keen not to have to invest too much in the production of in-house hardware (unlike the competition, the maxim that every console sold must generate a profit, not just the games) has been in effect for a long time somehow half possibly possibly technically not completely lost touch - and all at once.
Can that work? I don't think that strokes of genius like the Wii or the Switch don't exist every day, and then you have to build on these surprise successes without thinking that you can do the same trick twice or have the patent for innovation. The Wii U wanted to be jack of all trades without any of the (sometimes very good!) Ideas having been thought through, it was by no means a logical further development of the Wii. She was a Frankenstein's monster, only the villagers weren't interested in hunting her.
Remaining optimistic
This fate, I hope, remains with whatever Switch- Successor spared, but at least I see the danger of a similar development. Who knows, maybe I am interpreting too much into the statements of management, and with Shuntarō Furukawa Nintendo has had a president for some time now, who, it seems, makes logical decisions with a view to the prospects of success, not just on the basis of what one is for can proudly pat himself on the shoulder for his ingenious ideas.That wouldn't be the worst.
