[bane]

Same boat. After the Wii I was done. If I wanted to put money into gaming it was going to be on PC. The Switch isn't the most powerful, or has the best library (Nintendo first party games notwithstanding), or the most portable, but it's "good enough" at everything in the way VHS and MP3s were/are. It also helps that it's relatively inexpensive to get into, and has a huge indie game scene. So while you may not get the best version of "Soldiers on a Battlefield 2022" or whatever, there are hundreds of semi-exclusives.

Getting a console and a portable in one unit was also brilliant and something that neither Sony or Microsoft can do with their "most powerful hardware first". Nintendo cares about things that affect the gameplay experience, and Microsoft and Sony care more about how cool the software is. Orthogonal purposes but it lets Nintendo, a relatively small company, compete globally and effectively against two 9 million pound mega giants.

[lelandfe]

Without detracting anything from your other statements (the comparison to MP3 is excellent), "notwithstanding" is doing a lot of work in the line, "Nintendo first party games notwithstanding." Nintendo's games are the reason folks buy a Switch.[1] It's pretty unbelievable the record they (and especially EPD) have:

1. Breath of the Wild was game of the year for most publications, is considered by some the greatest game of all time[2], and single-handedly sold the console for many people I know

2. Super Mario Odyssey is generally heralded as one of the best Mario games ever made and shipped 22 million copies

2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best selling fighting game of all time

3. Mario Kart 8 is the best selling racing game of all time, and the 7th highest selling video game of all time

4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the 13th highest selling video game of all time (2nd highest in Japan)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_... (and apropos of nothing, compare to PS4's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... - Switch's top 6 best sellers all moved more than PS4's #1)

[2] https://www.ign.com/articles/the-best-100-video-games-of-all...

[nmfisher]

Every single Nintendo console I've owned has basically been a very expensive Zelda machine. In a hypothetical world where Sony/Microsoft/someone else acquired the rights to Zelda, I'd expect Switch sales to be at least 50% lower. The incredible strength of their first-party titles is why Nintendo can get away with underpowered hardware, shoddy controllers, crappy software and a big whopping Nintendo tax.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I always wonder why hardware matters. Look at the retro game market. I’ve spent more money lately re-buying old games than new ones. BOTW looks spectacular simply because of artistic choices. And I quickly racked up far more hours on my Switch than my XBOne simply because I could play on the TV, pull it out of the dock and play on the go and never had to turn it off. It just slept. Booting up a console is so archaic. And for what? Graphics that I tuned out eventually?

Which is not to say good graphics are bad. But there’s certainly diminishing returns. After a point it sure as hell isn’t giving me more entertainment value running a space heater.

[iso1210]

There's been over 100 million switches sold and 26 million copies of Zelda. Even if every single person that bought Zelda would have not bought a Switch, that would still put over 75 million switches sold.

Even the best selling game - Mariocart - is on fewer than half of the consoles.

[hackinthebochs]

Momentum has a lot to do with whether third parties invest in your console. The fact that BoTW pushed console sales early on gave third parties incentive to develop content for it, which then allowed the buy rate to be sustained past the boost BoTW gave it. So the fact that only a quarter of the consoles are bought with/for BoTW, its importance to the consoles success is much greater than the buy ratio would suggest.

[fullstop]

I don't know if this holds true for BOTW, but historically Zelda has not sold well in Japan despite its success in Western markets.

[iso1210]

I don't do games much - I've got KSP and Civ 6 on my desktop, and we had a Wii, and now a Switch.

The killer games on both Wii and especially Switch are the Lego ones.

I've not heard of Zelda before.

[yucky]

>I've not heard of Zelda before.

This is such a fascinating statement from anybody, regardless of how often you game.

[nirvdrum]

A surprisingly large number of first party Switch titles were on the Wii U first and didn't drive sales. It's amazing how much marketing and even the product name help. I think Nintendo made the right call to delay BotW on Wii U for a dual platform release. In the end, I'm surprised they bothered with the older console at all, but it probably engendered good will amongst its die hard fans.

[ace2358]

It did this one. I bought the WiiU and waited 4 years for breath of the wild. If they had moved it to be a switch only title I would have cried and bought a switch :p

Ms did it with flight simulator. They said it would be on XBox One. But it never came :(

[cableshaft]

Not really surprised, the new flight simulator is super ambitious and requires crazy resources. I doubt the Xbox One could have done it justice.

[ace2358]

I understand. But it was advertised as coming to the Xbox one. Then it quietly never happened. You can’t even stream it as part of their Xbox cloud gaming service which is really annoying. It’s especially hard to get a series X in AU. I’m not sure they’ve even been officially released here at some retailers.

[Aeolun]

> were on the Wii U first and didn't drive sales

Have you seen that thing? No matter how great the software. That ugly lump was never going to sell.

[nirvdrum]

I've got one and my family still has a blast playing it. Aesthetics are obviously personal. I won't say it's the nicest looking fixture in my living room, but I also think the PS5 looks ridiculous. Its name was probably Nintendo's biggest misstep.

That said, my point was that the Switch's success isn't due to the library alone. Due to Nintendo's decision to port most of its Wii U exclusives to the Switch, we have the rare ability to compare the sales performance of the two.

[yucky]

The Wii U is both the most underrated console ever, and most poorly named console ever.

[bane]

That's a really good point. In fact I did buy the Switch to play both BotW and SMO. I keep forgetting that Nintendo first party titles are so dominant in sales vs. other large franchises. I keep thinking they're just large on the one platform.

[cableshaft]

Yeah I own like 100 games on the Switch at this point (most first party, several good third party, and some cheaper retro or indie games), and those two games are still the best games to me on the Switch, by far. I kind of doubt they're going to be topped, even by their sequels.

BOTW, SMO, Baba is You, Persona 5 Royal, Outer Wilds, Subnautica, The Witness, God of War (2018 version), Nier Automata, Slay the Spire are all masterpieces of design in the past 5 years, for my tastes.

[celticninja]

BOTW was a huge factor in the switch's early success IMO. Not just because it was a Nintendo exclusive but because it was such an amazing game. For me GTA IV AND GTA V are the pinnacles of their time for great games. BOTW was the equivalent but for a wider audience.

Unfortunately for my kids it was one of the first games they really played, so they have been spoilt, very few games will ever get close to that, especially in a world of Fortnite.

[pdimitar]

...And not to detract from your point as well but I absolutely didn't buy the Switch for Nintendo games. The only one I actually like is Mario Kart 8 and even that I play like once every 3 months for a few hours.

I bought the Switch for Diablo III and a good number of bullet hell / beat-em-up games. Bought plenty of those and I am thoroughly enjoying them.

I recognize I am an outlier but the Switch is very capable of giving you a lot of enjoyment if you hand-curate your picks from the indie scene well.

(As a personal opinion, the Mario franchise being milked to eternity is exhausting to watch sometimes.)

[duskwuff]

> (As a personal opinion, the Mario franchise being milked to eternity is exhausting to watch sometimes.)

It's not a traditional game franchise, though -- there's no overarching Great Mario Plot that's being advanced through a series of games. It's more of a set of familiar characters and a barebones setting that Nintendo can apply to a wide variety of games, ranging from the traditional platformers to RPGs (Paper Mario), minigame collections (Mario Party), sports games (Mario Tennis), puzzles (Mario's Picross), dancing (DDR: Mario Mix), pinball machines...

[morelisp]

An aside: are you using an arcade stick? I’ve been thinking of getting back into STGs after a 10ish year break and can’t figure out which of the (pricy!) Switch sticks are any good.

[pdimitar]

No but I'm just about to order the HORI mini-stick. I have the Pro controller and it's definitely an improvement over the joycons but the arcade stick is something else entirely when playing games that don't require the right mini-stick on the controller.

[morelisp]

Yeah, I have a Pro controller for Monster Hunters, but DoDonPachi was hard enough when I was ten years younger and owned a decent (Xbox 360) stick. I don't think I stand a chance today on anything you have to hold while you play.

[pdimitar]

Hah, I just added DoDonPachi to my wishlist yesterday. :D

And yep, exactly. I don't want to play everything with keyboard and a mouse but controllers are also pretty meh for many games. I just can't get comfortable using them. I mean I do but it always feels like... something important is missing.

Hence, I am getting the HORI mini arcade stick and will play my bullet hells and beat-em-ups with it. A few 2.5-dimensional RPGs, too.

[noobermin]

To help the thread, this is the Nintendo way of "lateral thinking with withered technology.[0]" They for example choice lack of color for the Gameboy for the sake of battery life, that is, using cheap technology that can be replicated and mass produced well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_... From the venerable Gunpei Yokoi, who helped develop the original Metroid and the Gameboy

[zitterbewegung]

Nintendo figured out when the xBox came out that if you weren't Sony and or Microsoft you would have a really hard time competing in the space so they tried just to focus on making consoles that had some kind of gimmick and optimizing on having fun and they had a clear domination over the mobile space.

I would say that the Switch is their response to Apple as being off balance on the mobile space and they were easily defeated by just focusing on a fun and portable console that also can be plugged into a TV. Really the Switch has a NVIDIA Tegra 1 and the rest of the console is Nintendo's design.

[jmcgough]

Way before xbox, this has been their strategy since before they were making video games. Gunpei Yokoi, who came up with the idea (and practically nintendo's entire electronics division), called it "lateral thinking with withered technology" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_...).

[lelandfe]

Classic example of this:

Sega Game Gear: full-color screen, $150, 4hr battery life

Nintendo Game Boy: monochromatic screen, $90, 30hr battery life

[celticninja]

Yup the game gear was technically better but the cost difference meant the Gameboy was more ubiquitous and so that's what sold.

Also for the switch, a lot of kids who had Gameboy's when they came out are now working and can afford a souped up handheld alongside their main console.

[mcphage]

Technically more powerful. Better… well, not with no battery life, it wasn’t.

[jmcgough]

Honestly I think the games library is why gameboy outsold game gear, and why nintendo continues to dominate the mobile console market

[hajile]

The two feed on each other.

Nintendo bootstraps this with with a cheap console and their great IP.

Once the console starts to outsell because of this, other game designers focus primarily on that console which drives sales and the cycle repeats.

[bobthepanda]

I think my favorite summation is that Nintendo laughs about being second-rate all the way to the bank.

To Apple's disadvantage, only touch is a pretty terrible interface for a lot of video game genres, and also mobile pretty quickly became pay to win crapware.

[dorchadas]

> To Apple's disadvantage, only touch is a pretty terrible interface for a lot of video game genres, and also mobile pretty quickly became pay to win crapware.

The latter is why I hate gaming on my iPhone. And battery life after a year or two as the apps update to handle the newest and best specs, leaving older phones behind. I do enjoy some of the ports, but I can also buy a lot of those on my Switch anymore, so there's no need.

[pa7ch]

I think the switch just runs a modified freebsd for an OS too.

[jayd16]

>Getting a console and a portable in one unit was also brilliant and something that neither Sony or Microsoft can do

Actually the PSP had video out. Really just a marketing thing.

[djrogers]

Did it have a dock and come with removable controllers like it was always intended to be used with a big screen? Nope, it did not.

It’s not ‘just a marketing thing’ when a product is designed in a completely different way, with different goals.

[jayd16]

I mean, it was the controller in an era of wired controllers.

[philistine]

What if you needed to recharge your PSP battery while playing? It had video out, but it was never designed for a couch experience. It was the typical Sony let's do all the things at once mentality. No one bought it for that reason alone, but it, and all the other weird features of the PSP, probably helped it become the only viable portable competitor to Nintendo in 30 years.

[salamandersauce]

You plug it in? It's literally plugged into your TV already it's not a big deal to plug the AC adapter in the other side. The PSP Go had a dock for connecting to your TV and supported using a DS3 controller for TV play. Of course nobody bought a Go and nobody bought a dock for it. But they did kinda sorta get the concept.

[philistine]

Yeah but is the cable in the box long enough? What if the only plug in your living room on the other side?

There's a reason the PSP was not perceived as couch adjacent, and the Vita didn't have video out.

[alpaca128]

Too bad Sony then decided to get rid of the video output in the PS Vita even though it was possible (the dev kit had HDMI) and contrary to the PSP it actually made sense as at this point mobile hardware was so much better due to the smartphone industry. One of many small mistakes that made the Vita much less enjoyable overall.

[reissbaker]

The (affordable) technology of the time didn't allow for easy dock/undock experience like the Switch does. That doesn't mean it was "just a marketing difference," the product experience was worse and wasn't designed to easily be used as both a portable console and a dedicated living room device.

[Aeolun]

> If I wanted to put money into gaming it was going to be on PC.

I think people that are otherwise PC gamers make for a great audience for Nintendo. They don’t need any power, they already have that on the PC. What they want is to be able to carry the thing around and play anywhere they want.