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Phil Spencer: "getting [acquiring] Nintendo would be a career moment for me"; Nintendo's future "exists off of their own hardware"
(www.resetera.com)
Archive link: https://archive.ph/NF2r0
At some point, getting Nintendo would be a career moment and I honestly believe a good move for both companies. It's just taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time.... :-)
Do you realize how large the PC market has become? Games that used to only be available on consoles now sell more on PC than any single console.
Hmmm. I did some research on a few games and you are surprisingly correct. However, I did notice something else too.
Nintendo doesn't need extra sales numbers from PC. Their games sell record breaking amounts while being exclusive. Of the top 50 best selling games of all time, 7 are Nintendo games that are either Switch exclusives or WiiU ports, where they did much better on the Switch. Sony, in total, has 1, and Microsoft, in total, also has 1 (2 if you count Minecraft, as they bought Mojang during the latter's heyday). Half of that list is Nintendo.
That's true, but again, I think they're going to run into more resistance with development time as they upgrade their hardware and the art assets have to rise to meet the new spec and the new audience expectation. Those Wii U ports had the benefit of being ports, which is a situation that will never happen again. Since basically no one played the Wii U, it was more like a machine gun fire of games for the Switch that already had the hardest part done. Also, unlike any time in history except for the lifespan of the PSP, there are real alternative options for handheld gaming now as we head into this new Switch successor, which probably doesn't affect anyone buying the machine for Pokemon in hell or high water, but it will have an impact on the buyer who just wants to play Hades or Doom in bed or on a road trip and now has that many fewer reasons to buy Nintendo's console over a more open platform.
True, but they still had to develop these games initially for WiiU, only for them to bomb there. And the WiiU was an eighth gen console.
If the rumours of backwards compatibility are to be believed, the Switch 2 could just straight up sell Switch games with Switch 2 enhancement patches. Something very similar was shown to developers with BoTW running at 60fps at 4k on Switch 2, and such a patch is known to exist for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
It won't have the same newness factor of the WiiU ports, but it will allow Nintendo's evergreen titles to keep that status until the Switch 2 iteration.
You mean the Steam Deck and clones? I don't mean to burst your bubble, but the least janky of these units has you scouring ProtonDB to check a games compatibility with the unit, and community notes on what to enter into the advanced run commands section or on rare occasions, even what Linux commands to run.
And that's the least janky option. The Steam Deck clones are worse, as at least the SD had the good grace to use an operating system designed for that specific hardware and form factor. Yeah. Switch 2 is pretty safe.
You honestly think they're going to put up with any kind of SD/clone jank?
This is exactly my point though. Backwards compatibility is an expectation now, but if you didn't have a Wii U, like most people didn't, it makes the Switch feel like it's got twice as many original games as it actually had, and they won't be able to repeat that.
I've sat just about the most technically unsavvy people I know in front of a Steam Deck and told them to stick to verified games, and it's been as smooth sailing as a Switch is; which is to say that neither is perfect, and the way they're imperfect is a little different between them. But again, PCs have been steadily growing in gaming market share for over a decade. PCs got easier, consoles became more complicated, and maybe some percentage of the market was also willing to learn what they needed to to further close that gap just like how all of our parents eventually learned how to use the internet and cell phones. I'm certainly not capable of measuring the effect of each of those things on that trend, but this is the way we're trending.
The Switch 2 is certainly safe. In particular, the Switch is a device made for children, which helps it reach a demographic that the Steam Deck isn't targeting and may never target. I'm not so sure the next Switch is going to do as well as this one has though. And in each subsequent generation, I think they'll head in the same direction as Microsoft and Sony or do something absolutely insane instead of responding to what the market is actually asking for.
That's the problem. You have to tell people to stick to a currently small selection of possible games on the system to ensure a console-like experience. Or, you can just pick up a Switch 2 and not have to worry about any of that shit.
I'm a Linux gamer, so I know how powerful and impressive Proton is. But a console like experience, it is not. Many of my Steam games need advanced commands just to run acceptably.
Steam Decks hit their real potential in the hands of someone who is not afraid to fuck around.
Verified games are not a small selection anymore. They're not the entire breadth of Steam, but there are about as many verified games as there are Switch games. Double that if you're including the certified playable games. No Switch tax, no compromised version of the game, no subscription to play online. I get a lot more value out of mine than I do a Switch, and the most I've fucked around on it is installing EmuDeck.