So the Nintendo Switch is a thing. Exactly the thing it was rumored to be, in fact. Which is also exactly what I'd wanted it to be. Now the question is whether it can live up to that concept.
I'd been a Nintendo fanboy all my life. We had a Sega Genesis and a couple games for it when I was a kid, but I didn't play it much, and aside from that, I didn't own a non-Nintendo console until about 2010, when I borrowed my brother's PS2 to play the Kingdom Hearts games. Kingdom Hearts is the only reason I own non-Nintendo systems, actually. I bought a PS3 in 2014 to play the HD remasters, and got sucked into the brand enough that I bought a PS4 in April 2015 and a Vita in March 2016. (Yes, I bought a Vita. In 2016. I know. Shut up.) And those systems, plus the few Steam games my cruddy laptop can run, are pretty much the only games I play now. I used my 3DS, and then my 3DS XL, and then my New 3DS XL, a lot while the system was in its heyday. The Wii U, on the other hand...
I bought my Wii U at launch. The Deluxe bundle, and a copy of New Super Mario Bros. U on the side. I played Nintendo Land a little bit, and wrote a Miiverse post that said something like, "So much content. But how much of it will I play before I get bored?" Not very much, as it turned out. I doubt I booted the game up more than five times. NSMBU I did play all the way through. It was fine. Another not very innovative 2D Mario game, but those are like the later seasons of a long-running sitcom: professionally executed and amiable even though there's no spark. After that game, though...
Sorry for ending a second paragraph running with suggestive ellipses, but I actually did do the Internet equivalent of wandering off; I switched to a different tab, to look at a list of Wii U games. Because I was about to suggest, as I usually do when asking myself why I never clicked with the Wii U, that there weren't enough good games. And do you know what? That's silly. There are plenty of good Wii U games. I know that because I own them. I just don't play them. And that's because the Wii U is not a very good system.
There are a lot of reasons the Wii U failed, but I think talking too much about things like brand messaging and developer support overlooks the elephant in the room: the GamePad. And that's not a lightly chosen metaphor: the GamePad is indeed bulky, awkward, and undesirably difficult to maneuver. You can see what Nintendo were thinking-- tap (heh) into the tablet market, build on the two-screens success of the DS family-- but they overlooked some fairly obvious reasons that appeal wouldn't translate. Tablets and smartphones are fun because they're compact and portable. You can slide your game into your pocket and take it out the door. The GamePad's not going to fit in your pocket, and it'll lose the signal just past the doorway, even if you leave the door open. And the DS double screens work because they're very close together and one isn't a marked visual upgrade from the other. Shifting your gaze from the GamePad to a TV screen is hard to do smoothly, and the difference between an HDTV image and the GamePad screen means you won't want to anyway.
So the GamePad is less a game-changer, and more a really big controller with a screen in, a screen that very few games even require. I now suspect I'd have been better off buying a Wii U Pro Controller years ago, and when the best option for playing a lot of your games is the purchase of a separate controller that looks like what your competitors offer by default, well, that says something about the value of your concept, doesn't it, Nintendo? There were Wii games that were more natural on the Classic Controller (and why oh why did they never make one of those that stood alone and didn't have to be hooked to a Wii Remote?), but there were also plenty that made the Wiimote essential and enjoyable. The only Wii U game that does that for the GamePad is Super Mario Maker, which is lovely, but not enough so to be a literal only selling point.
The Switch, though, instantly makes a strong case for itself. Any gamer can see the appeal of breaking down the wall between console and portable. The question is what tradeoffs are involved. There would be no benefit, for example, in basically ditching console gaming in favor of a portable with a peripheral that casts its image to a TV screen. That's clearly not what the Switch is, thank God, but the question remains: how can Nintendo, which has lagged in hardware terms even when doing the traditional thing, produce games that will compete aesthetically with other home consoles while running effectively as portable experiences?
It's not about the Switch matching the PS4 and the Xbox One, or the PS4 Pro and the Xbox Scorpio, or whatever next year's iteration of those consoles will be. Nintendo doesn't win by competing in the most obvious ways with Sony and Microsoft, and I think forgetting that was one of their mistakes with the Wii U. (What was the good of putting money into porting Arkham City, getting those Assassin's Creed games, and resurrecting Bayonetta? How much profit did any of that actually bring Nintendo?) But even to match themselves, in keeping Switch games as gorgeous and large-scale as the Wii U's best and having them be playable portably, is not a small challenge. One early point of concern is the battery on the portable unit. It's being reported that the Switch has a "mediocre" battery life that may max out at three hours. If that's a literal maximum, it cuts hard into the main appeal of the system. The 3DS family has pretty crappy battery life, and three hours is more like its minimum than its max. If that kind of battery is an example of what Nintendo is willing to trade off to have something it can bill as a hybrid, the Switch may not be as fun as it looks.
But you know what? It still looks pretty damn fun. There was a lot of the usual why-won't-Nintendo-do-it-MY-way doom and gloom from the gaming press over the lack of news on the NX and the dangers of the rumored unconventional approach. The launch trailer has quieted a lot of that. Eventually the skepticism will creep back in, and (generally speaking) that's as it should be. We should all keep in mind, though, that Nintendo is resilient, and often does its best work not in the aftermath of success, but in the face of failure, because it learns from its mistakes. So I'm hopeful that it understands what the Switch needs to do, and has made smart tech decisions to help it get there.
And even if it hasn't, at least we're done with the Wii branding forever.
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