[Image by Fred Wood]
Compared to the Wii U, the Switch is doing fantastic, with the fastest selling Smash game of all time, plenty of broad-appeal 1st party hits, and 3rd party support the likes of which Nintendo hasn’t seen since the SNES days. On the other hand, the console is poised to fall short of meeting its initial sales target of 20 million sold in fiscal year 2018. That’s particularly bad news seeing that the 3DS is essentially running on fumes at this point, and that outside of Pokemon Go, none of Nintendo’s mobile offerings have gone on to be market leaders.
More than anything, Nintendo must want to return to the Wii and DS days, when they had the two most popular consoles on the planet, each with an install base of over 100 million, and an attach rate of +10 games per system owner. Of course, achieving that probably isn’t possible for anyone anymore. The market is nothing like how it was 10 years ago. The new generation of “gamers” logs onto Fortnite and Minecraft on phones and tablets daily just to hang out with friends and pass the time while keeping Facebook, Youtube, and their homework open in other windows. They don’t necessarily see the point of traditional story-based or high-score-focused games, let alone traditional game consoles. That’s probably why Nintendo collapsed the portable and home console markets into one with the Switch. As the system’s success has shown, putting all their eggs in one basket was the best way to hatch success across the board.
That said, there is no way Nintendo is going to rely on just one console and a smattering of mobile releases for long. Here’s a few ideas on what else they might have cooking.
Source: Destructoid Switch SP? Gameboy Classic? What do you want from Nintendo’s next dedicated handheld?