Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal felt like a lightning bolt delivered straight from Zeus himself for everyone except, well, most people. In fact, since the console – which fans have spent years clamoring for – looks so much like its predecessor, some analysts predict it’ll have trouble appealing to a general audience.
“I can imagine ‘normies’ being a bit confused,” gaming industry consultant Serkan Toto tells GamesRadar+. “The device is bigger than the original Switch, but not comically large. The form factor, button layout, and overall design are very similar to Switch 1, so I can imagine issues arising when potential mainstream buyers look at the new device.”
The Switch 2 is very likely to struggle, but this consultant’s reasoning is dumb as fuck, and belittlies average gamers as ‘normies’. His analysis of why it will struggle, and why the WiiU failed is off base. The average person doesn’t look at the PS5 and PS4 and go “but why, they look the same.”, they understand that its the updated version with imrpovements.
Nintendo is going to struggle due to:
- Handheld PC alternatives that outperform and have much larger game libraries for similar cost.
- Pissing off the emulation crowd
- Pissing off fans for fan project shutdowns
- Pissing off fans of Smash Bros Melee
- Joycon drift denial
- Stealing fan art.
- Failing to adapt to a rapidly changing gaming market.
- 500 other things.
If I were Nintendo, I’d be working quickly as possible to getting their virtual store available for Windows/Linux/Mac and developing a brand for the platform to feature games that reflected their consoles.
Those concerns are so super niche, I doubt they’ll be a big problem for Nintendo. I know it may not seem that way, but handheld PCs are not a widespread product.
Yet. There is a ton of models coming out, some more shown army CES, and the SteamOS news shows the direction of what low end gaming laptops are going to become over the next 2-5 years.
As an indsutry insider, I there is lots of people discussing this and more studios and publishers starting to look into the cost/benefit analysis of getting Steamdeck Verified.
Nintendo has been staunchly anti-emulation since even before the N64 launched, and it hasn’t hurt them yet.
I’m a proud Steam Deck owner, and I’ll be the first to admit that I predominantly use it to emulate my old games collection (PS1-3 & PSP), plus SNES out of sheer spite at Nintendo.
However, my relatively tech-savvy relatives (even those in their 20s), baulk at something as complex as SteamOS.
I think Nintendo’s safe for at least one more console generation, before the normies get on the portable-PC wagon.
Bro like maybe 5 people care about anything you listed and 4 of them will still buy the switch 2
Yep. Hardly any of that registers as a blip on the mass market. People have been calling for Nintendo to give up on hardware and just make games for other platforms for decades. Then the DS line happened. And then the Wii. And then the Switch. Each one pushed the boundaries of what the gaming space could be, despite the spec nerds raging at the lack of horsepower.
Nintendo does a lot of shady shit, but once Sega exited the market they were the only true gaming company left in the console space. PlayStation? Xbox? Just a small part of larger corporate empires.
I’m fucking thrilled that Steam picked up on the hybrid format. Not everyone wants to screw around with maintaining a PC. I was in corporate IT for 25 years and want nothing to do with any of it anymore. Enormous PC game library, consolized experience, and a big push to Linux, all with the Deck? That’s awesome from every angle. It’s always good to have more options. And if they can sell a hundred million more units, Nintendo might start having a problem. Until then, I’m pretty sure they’re just going to continue to print money.
