Has Nintendo played with our feelings?

Analysis of the Nintendo Switch presentation

Today I woke up at 4:55AM (Madrid, Spain time) to watch Nintendo’s livestream of the Switch presentation in Tokyo. I was too hyped with the possibilities of the Switch to skip this. Nintendo has been a very important piece of my life, since I’ve owned all Nintendo consoles from the SNES to the Wii and from the Game Boy to the 3DS. It’s the company that introduced me to my favourite hobby, gaming, and to some of my best memories. I’ve admittedly been a fanboy, even during the GameCube era (underrated, but still worse than what my eyes saw at that time).

I thought Nintendo was going to make a comeback with this new generation, after the huge Wii U flop, and I was genuinely excited for this. But what happened is that after 30 minutes of watching the presentation I turned it off and went back to bed. The Switch had so much potential but has wasted its chance to win us back.

When I woke up I couldn’t stop thinking about this, so I finished watching the presentation (no need to do that to yourselves) and decided to go in depth on what should have been done differently.

Before I start bashing on it I want to mention the good things about the presentation. This excludes everything I like about the console that was announced in the first reveal (portable AAA games, local multiplayer on the go, etc.).

Price:
I think, at $299, they’ve hit the perfect price point. More would have been too much for the horsepower you get (it’s still how we subconsciously judge this) compared to PS4 and Xbox One and less wouldn’t have allowed Nintendo to subsidise games, offer promotions or cut the price later on. Here’s a link to console prices adjusted for inflation, it’s clearly not expensive. Price is, after the games catalogue, the most important factor of success, so this is a huge win.

Region free:
Finally Nintendo gets this. Games not being region-free only blocks you from seeing the demand there is in other regions for non-ported games through imports.

Rumble features:
Although this was extremely poorly explained (more on this later), it’s a feature I absolutely love and have been looking forward to since years. The Xbox One controller has this on its triggers and it’s really cool when you’re firing a weapon or accelerating a car. This seems even more advanced.

But that’s about it… sadly.

Now on to the things that disappointed me and how I think they should’ve been:

Launch games lineup:
I think this is the worse launch lineup I can remember from any console. Sure, you have Zelda, but that’s a Wii U port, where you’ll also be able to buy the game with the same features, just slightly worse graphics.
It’s only a total of 12 games and none of those are awe inspiring by any stretch of the imagination.
So why would anyone owning a Wii U or not interested in Zelda buy this at launch? And guess what? If people don’t buy this console, developers won’t create games for it, which will cause fewer people to buy it, etc… Catch 22.

Why is there no pre-order available in most of the world?
This is probably due to a shortage in production of the console, but it’s a big mistake. You want as many people to buy/pre-order the consoles ASAP, because it allows you to go to publishers and developers and show them the success case for them to develop more games. How many people are slowly going to change their minds from now until they get the option of pre-ordering or until the console launches and won’t buy it? Probably a lot.

Companion app:
They announced that the way to invite friends to play and chat with you will be through a companion app to the console. Clearly Nintendo has seen the tremendous success (sarcasm over the roof) of all consoles’ and games’ companion apps and thought it might be a good idea to force you to use one. But it seems they weren’t satisfied with such a great idea, so they decided to put this app’s basic features behind a paywall. Seriously guys? Everyone was shouting for Nintendo to just copy what MS and Sony have been doing these past 11+ years and they decide to take a further step back? But it gets even better… We won’t have any of that functionality at all until fall 2017 when the app launches. Meaning that the online service will be more primitive than the original Xbox’s (2001). Great bloody job guys.

No video streaming? Are you kidding me?
Everyone knows that streamers nowadays have the power to make a game flop or rise. Nintendo needs to regain the hearts of all those gamers it lost many years ago and there is no better way of doing this than by having them stream the games (if there were any) they’re playing so that others will want to buy the system as well. Well, this feature seems to be launching at an unspecified later point in time. Good luck withgetting the word spread about how much fun it is to play Mario Kart multiplayer on the go or about any other game.

Why are there 2 events for the presentation of Switch?
First there was the disastrous Tokyo event, which was completely uninspired. I have great faith in Mr. Kimishima, I think he’s been driving the company in the right direction since he took over. But lets’ face it, he doesn’t have any charisma in public speaking. The whole thing sounded more like a news brief than a presentation, it lacked emotion, narrative and personality. I don’t understand how they don’t nail this after having seen Sony and MS get extremely good at it year after year for the past decade.
After the Tokyo event there was a lot of information revealed online by Nintendo which would’ve been more useful to know during the presentation.
Some other information was then presented at the NY event, making for a big chaos. It’s not possible to just watch one presentation or read one press release and have a full picture about this console like we’re used to with all other console reveals.
Also a big lack of games made them spend too much time with some titles which were irrelevant if compared to the types of titles Sony and MS showcase at their press conferences.

Why does this console launch on the 3rd of March?
Why not just wait for September so it can launch with way more titles, among them some flagship ones like Mario Kart, Splatoon, Dragon Quest, etc.? Besides if it would launch in September, Mario would be just around the corner and there would probably a lot of the standard holidays third party games launching on it as well in the months after, meaning an extremely healthy few months after launch. People want AAA games on the go, it was the Vita’s (failed) promise and it’s what got people excited about the Switch.
Also, giving themselves more time for production would’ve probably allowed them to ramp up production so that everyone could’ve pre-ordered.
A later launch would’ve also allowed for chat and “invite friends to play” functionalities, as well as streaming to be ready at launch.
A September launch with an E3 press conference would’ve solved all of this. It would have been one reveal, not 2 with small pieces of information coming out here and there, and it would’ve given them some much needed additional 6 months to deliver what the Switch deserves.

Backwards compatibility:
Very few people bought the Wii U (13 mm units sold), and even though the original Wii sold over 100mm consoles, most of the people who bought it were casual players who didn’t buy many games besides the bundled-in WiiSports (hence the lack of third party support). The GameCube was also a failure, selling only 21mm units. This means that gamers have been disconnected from all the great Nintendo franchises for 3 console generations, making their relevance in the gaming industry way smaller than it used to be.
This generation of consoles is being extremely successful with both PS and Xbox selling more than previous generations, meaning that the consumer audience for consoles has increase. A huge opportunity for Nintendo to get those GameCube, Wii and Wii U games into the hands of players who missed out on them. Nintendo could’ve monetised on all those financial failures it released in the previous three generations and make up that way for the lack of Switch games being released.
The only two systems confirmed for backward compatibility are NES and SNES, but what about the aforementioned, the Nintendo 64 and the handhelds? I understand playing DS and 3DS games on a single screen is probably very hard, but we could still get Game Boy and Game Boy Advanced games. Nintendo also offers games from a wide variety of non-Nintendo consoles on their Virtual Store for Wii, 3DS and Wii U, these should’ve been included as well.

2 NES/SNES games for a monthly subscription?
Don’t get me wrong, I love myself some NES/SNES classics, especially if the SNES ones get revamped with online features. But Nintendo doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s competing against Sony and MS. Sony gives you every month 2 PS4, 2 PS3 and 2 Vita games and MS gives you 2 Xbox One and 2 Xbox 360 games for free. And more importantly, you can keep these games forever as long as you keep paying your monthly subscription. Nintendo on the other hand allows you to play those 2 monthly NES/SNES games for one month only. Which world do you live in guys?

Confess your sins!
Nintendo has let us down for many years. “Nintendo being Nintendo” is a frequently used phrase to refer to how disconnected they are from their audience. They managed to plant a seed of hope in our hearts with that first Switch video though back in 2016. It seemed they had finally woke up and were “getting it”.
I would have used that shimmer of goodwill in our hearts to ask for forgiveness for all the things they didn’t deliver on because of not listening, because of thinking they knew better than their customers. They should have come out and say:
“We know you hate friend codes, here’s your centralised Nintendo account where you’ll own your games forever and where you’ll share your friends list.”
“We’re going to push an update to your Wiis, Wii Us and 3DSs so that those games you bought digitally are registered in your account.”
“We know we’ve been 12 years behind on launching achievements/trophies, but here you have a better and more gamified version of them than any other system has.”
“We’re sorry, streamers and youtubers, for having put so many roadblocks in your way. From now on you can freely use Nintendo footage in your videos without any constraints. We understand now this is a win-win where you make money while promoting our games at the same time, which in turn makes us money”
etc, etc, etc…
I guess I’m too much of an optimist.

Ice cubes are exciting… really?
Whoever thought using ice cubes to illustrate the new rumble hardware was a good idea has a strange sense of humour. I happen to be familiar with this technology because I’ve been following it for long and I tell you, it’s something very exciting. But Nintendo wasn’t able to pick clear use cases to showcase how it can make a game more immersive. This rumble is able to simulate the different degrees of vibration each bullet from a specific gun would produce based on calibre, length of the gun, etc. It’s capable of simulating the vibration of a steering wheel or pedals in a car based on the car’s motor and surface it’s driving on and it has very interesting applications to gameplay in the sense of small clues. You need to explain hardware to consumers in ways that are understandable for everyone.

Hardware is sold by its software fullstop.
At the beginning of the presentation they showcase how they were taking the best things from every console and learning from them. At that point I was sure that they would include a free bundled-in game capable of showing why this system is so much fun, just like they did with Wii and WiiSports, which was the main selling point of the console. But instead they committed the same mistake as PSVR with PSVR Worlds and decided to sell “1, 2, Switch” separately. At $300 it would’ve been fair to include it.
Also, if you’re going to include and present gimmicky features like the hand tracker, have some software ready to show why it’s a blast. Otherwise just leave it out and save on that cost.

Don’t be cheap and use our nostalgia
Everyone referred to the Wii U tablet as a “Fisher Price toy” because it didn’t feel like premium high tech, it felt like a 3 year old’s toy. I thought they might have learned from that, but no. Here goes the Pro controller which costs 69$ and looks cheap as hell. You can find a PS4 or Xbox One controller, which are way more premium in terms of look and feel, for 50$. Nintendo could’ve gained some more goodwill from us by saying “we don’t want to rip you off, we will price our controller below the competition because we’re on the side of gamers”, or at the very least put it at the same price. Ideally they would’ve taken the Gamecube controller, given it an LZ, Plus, Minus and Stick buttons, thrown a decent right stick into it and made it wireless. That controller was one of the best ever made in terms of ergonomics, why not just reuse it and appeal to our feelings of nostalgia at the same time?

It’s pronounced handheld, not console
Let me ask you a question: would you buy a console that can play some of the games PS4 and Xbox One already play with worse graphics and a worse online system that costs 50$ more?
Now let me ask another: would you buy a handheld that can play Xbox One and PS4 games at 720p and that allows for local multiplayer on the go?
To which are you most likely to respond “yes”? This system needs to be marketed as a handheld that is convertible into a console, not the opposite.

I guess we will soon see Nintendo dropping hardware and finally making games for other consoles, unless things change dramatically