The thing preventing a lot of games from being ported is increased performance requirements. The games themselves can’t run on the Switch at all. It’s not powerful enough. It was designed as a low-power console from day one.
Everything that can run on a regular Switch is being ported generally already.
If you made a Switch with increased performance, the ports that needed the “beefier” Switch would ONLY WORK ON THAT SWITCH. Nintendo gains nothing. You can’t make those games work on regular Switches.
Even worse, the third party developers also have no incentive. They’d be chasing a small subset of the Switch market. The value to game publishers is the wide install base.
4k is a separate matter.
Both 4k and improved performance to be on-par with these other consoles are fools’ errands. Neither is strategic for Nintendo. There isn’t enough of a market of people who want, care about, would pay for, and are willing to sacrifice form factor for, 4k to even bother.
I learned long ago to recognize when I’m not the target demographic, and when my demographic is vanishingly small.
First of all, just about every game is coming out on Switch these days. Exactly which 3rd party games are NOT being ported to Switch that you are so concerned about? Name one game that would have been ported to Switch, but won’t be, because of the lack of 4K.
Secondly, if you look back historically at each console generation, the most powerful consoles have rarely been the best sellers.
Let’s go back to PS1 vs. N64. N64 was more powerful graphics wise. PS1 won by A LOT.
PS2 vs GameCube vs. XBox. The PS2 was arguably the weakest of the three, performance-wise. XBox the strongest. PS2 had best sales.
GameBoy vs Game Gear - obvious.
GBA/DS vs PSP - obvious
XBox 360 vs PS3 vs Wii. Wii was way way way weaker, and absolutely dominated.
Wii U was a piece of junk. PS4, XBone? The lost generation.
Switch vs. PS5 vs I don’t even know what they call the new XBox. Anyway, Switch is absolutely dominating and is the weakest by far.
Graphics and horsepower and pixels do not drive sales and do not make better games.
You’d better tell Nintendo then, because you hold the secret to massive profits they’re just leaving on the floor. Surely they don’t know what you know.
Nintendo has never relied on ports. Nintendo relies on heavy brand differentiation. Nintendo relies on first-party and collaborative party games. And they make plenty of money.
Why even bother competing in a space with three major competitors (Sony, Microsoft, the entire PC market)? It’s not worth it. Nintendo made their own space, where they are king.
Go back and read my previous posts. I already covered this.
Let me turn your question around on you… Is there a single third party game for the Switch that runs better than on the PlayStation or Xbox? If I have a Switch, why am I constantly left with the crappier version of games I want to play?
And that was the last generation of PlayStations and Xboxes. As the current generation becomes more widely available, the differences in capabilities between PS and Xbox and Nintendo will only further increase.
Come on now. We both know that Nintendo is far from perfect and makes business decisions that sometimes doesn’t make sense. Their entire online experience is terrible and they don’t give any indication that they’re willing to make quality of life changes that everyone wants them to make. Online profiles not tied to a specific console? Friends Codes? Digital backwards compatibility? I could go on.
Those games which are so demanding as to be too powerful for the Switch are best played on other systems, yes. Which is why people who actually care about playing the games at full graphics, full frames, competitive play, are not playing them on Switch. This is why we have PCs with Steam. Any game of that nature, I buy on Steam. I almost never buy a game of any kind on Switch if it’s available on Steam, but especially ones that are more graphically intensive.
Those pared down versions of the games that are released on Switch are on there for the vast majority of customers who simply don’t give a shit. They’re happy to play a less fancy-looking lower frame rate Doom: Eternal, or more likely, they don’t even know it’s a weaker version. Some are intentionally accepting a weaker version because the graphics and frames are a sacrifice they are willing to make to be able to play on their Switch that they prefer.
I use my Switch for Picross the most. That would be pointless if it couldn’t be undocked. Imagine me complaining that PS5 was too graphically powerful and could only be used with a TV because I like Picross and PS5 doesn’t have Picross. “SONY should serve my personal desires specifically! Why do they continue to serve a different customer base that does not include me?” Of course that’s a ludicrous complaint. PS5 isn’t FOR Picross. Switch isn’t FOR whatever AAA Call of Duty whatever.
All third party games are worse on the Switch compared to the other consoles.
Most gamers own a Switch and some other videogame platform (PC, Xbox, PS).
Nintendo makes decisions that are not optimal for their consoles and repeatedly make these decisions over and over again (Online stuff).
Nintendo has already made a different Switch model to cater to a subset of gamers.
How do we know?
How do we know that Nintendo isn’t leaving money on the table by continuing to make an underpowered console and gamers always getting a Nintendo console plus something else? How do we know that if Nintendo didn’t make a console comparable to the PlayStation 5 or whatever that that wouldn’t be the only console that people buy?
Isn’t the assumption that
just that? An assumption?
If Nintendo released a $500 Switch II, that was just as powerful as the PlayStation 5, AND played Nintendo first party games AND was portable, who’s to say that the Switch II doesn’t just completely dominate the console market?
Mostly true. Not all are inferior. Games that don’t push the limits of the hardware are no different, and sometimes perhaps better, on the Switch. Also while games are “worse” they are worse in a way that doesn’t matter to the vast majority of customers.
True.
Optimal in what sense. Yes, their decisions regarding online play and such are sub-optimal in the sense that they are not what people who take video games very seriously would like to see. They are not sub-optimal in terms of what Nintendo cares about, or with regards to hurting sales. Every Smash Bros. player wishes for better online play and Nintendo to treat the eSports scene better. But I don’t see them quitting Smash.
Yes. Nintendo has historically had several different models of their consoles going back to the top-loading NES. This new Switch and the NES top-loader are basically the same thing.
How do we know it wouldn’t be the only console people buy? Well, why doesn’t SONY make a PS5 that you can carry around undocked? Wouldn’t that destroy Nintendo? Because exactly as SuperPichu said. It’s impossible to make something with those specs that you can carry around. Forgetting supply chains and chip shortages. Something that powerful will be more expensive money-wise, more power hungry (less battery life), hotter, and larger. Probably needs active cooling fans. Even if it existed, it’s not something that kids are going to be playing Pokemon on in the back seat at that price point.
The Switch 1 already dominates the console market. Nintendo is in first place by a lot. That makes me think they know what they are doing. Here you are calling them fools for not doing what the distant second place is doing.
Are you sure about that? A quick Google search tells me that Nintendo has sold 84.59 million Switch consoles. By contrast, the Playstation 4 has sold 114.9 million consoles.
But even that is the wrong metric to measure by. Sony doesn’t make the majority of its money based on the sale of the individual console itself, they make their money from licensing fees when people buy games. The more games people buy, the more money Sony makes.
When you buy a PlayStation, just to pick a random example, you get access to all the Sony games and all the great third party games. By contrast, when you buy a Switch, you get access to all the absolutely amazing Nintendo first party games, and all the inferior third party games.
You yourself buy games on Steam because the ports aren’t good on the Switch. So isn’t it at least possible that if Nintendo makes a more powerful Switch, you would buy more games on the Switch and Nintendo would make even more money?
No, never. Personally, the better graphics and frame rates aren’t even the primary reason I choose Steam, just a side benefit.
The first reason is that many games are best played with mouse and keyboard. I wouldn’t have bought Doom: Eternal on Switch even if it was 10x powerful as my PC unless the Switch had a mouse and keyboard.
The second reason is that the Switch eShop will one day die. All the pre-Switch Nintendo eShops are dead, or soon dead. Steam is 17 years old, and shows no signs of slowing down. If I buy a game on Switch, it’s likely that someday that game will be permanently gone, and I will not be able to re-download it. If I buy a game on Steam, it’s somewhat likely I’ll be able to re-download that game even on the day I perish from this world.
But that’s just me personally.
If you want actual game sales figures, they are very hard to find detailed comparable information without paying money to various services. But what meager data we do have suggests that Nintendos game sales are ludicrous compared to the competition.
For example:
Just a couple months ago only the newest and hottest games like Resident Evil: Village could beat out Mario Kart for the Switch. A game that is 4 years old and was also released on the Wii U. And that excludes all the digital sales on the eShop. Just the cartridges.
Look up any publicly available recent video game sales figures. By any measure, Nintendo is the champ, and it’s not even close.
There’s a pie of all people who buy console video games. SONY and Microsoft compete for a slice of this pie labeled “hardcore”. Nintendo owns the entire rest of the pie and absolutely nobody competes with them for it. Some people in the hardcore slice also have Switches just for Nintendo games.
Why are you asking why Nintendo doesn’t fight harder for the slice where SONY and Microsoft are squabbling? Why not ask why SONY and Microsoft leave Nintendo entirely unopposed on the entire remainder of the pie?
Just to chime in, I too am a primary PC gamer, who bought a Switch for access to nintendo exclusives and to have a portable copy of a lot of the 3rd party indie games I like on PC (Hades, Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire). I’ve jokingly thought about buying the Witcher 3 port to Switch because its one of my favorite games but also I know the downgrade in just about every visual aesthetic would materially affect a game where the art presentation was such a key part. I’m perfectly happy with the Switch as the “bonus console” and I think it exists in the niche for a lot of “hardcore” gamers or older nintendo fans with disposable income.
The thing is the switch is the sole console for a plethora of kids/casual gamers who just want easy access and simple fun in what is a largely more family friendly brand and eshop (yes I know there’s some more mature things in the Nintendo eshop but if you compare it to steam or whats available on PSN/XboxLive its the most family friendly storefront.) The handheld nature and lower price point also facilitate families having multiple consoles to share. If you go back to the original Wii marketing Nintendo simply leaned into the brand reputation they already had and doubledowned on the casual/kid/family market and just owns in a way nobody else can even really compete.
Also those sales figures for total units sold, PS4 released in 2014 and the switch released in 2017. Here are the sources to make a comparison. I might come back later and add it up for the first X years and do a direct comparison that way.
Actually, Nintendo has made advancements in this area. The Switch eShop is full of softcore almost-porn. They still keep out anything that shows actual nudity, but they’ve got plenty of almost-hentai in there these days. IIRC the SONY store is actually more restrictive and is keeping that kind of stuff out. Steam’s history with it is a little on again, off again. After itch.io is the Switch eShop the most permissive of major digital video game stores?
Of course, if you activate the parental controls you can keep your kid from seeing that stuff in the shop, or keep them out of the shop entirely.
I would hard disagree with that. I would bet material amounts of money against that.
It would also literally cost a lot more than $500 for that kind of hardware, if it were even feasible in the first place. It might not actually be feasible at all with current technology.
The current-gen “powerful” consoles are huge for a reason. The Switch was, at the time it was introduced, the best possible compromise of power vs portability vs price. That calculus has not changed materially yet.
While yes, the ping pong ball is probably fake. However, this hardware that can play games at 4k60fps needs a fan blowing out the top that is so powerful and loud that the joke was believable.
If Nintendo can manage to produce a thin and portable device like the Switch that can put out 4K60, they’ll make more money selling that shit to Apple, a military, or whoever because it will be superior to every personal computing device on Earth.
But also, just about every indie game these days is coming out on Switch, because why not.
Excerpt from this article
the Switch has at least 30 games come out a week, while Steam currently sees around 50 new games a day
They’re talking about visibility from a developer’s perspective here. But it’s relevant to the idea that the Switch is somehow starving for 3rd party games. I think not. Unless somehow you believe only a AAA game is a game.
Yokoi said, “The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.” He articulated his philosophy of “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology” (枯れた技術の水平思考, “Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō”) (also translated as “Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology”) in the book Yokoi Gunpei Game House. “Withered technology” in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. “Lateral thinking” refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting-edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview he suggested that expensive cutting-edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product.
