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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king. I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables.

If you ask me, given my experience owning a Switch and watching my PS4 and gaming PC gather dust, the most compelling product Sony or Microsoft could make right now would be releasing a system with PS4 / Xbox One level power in a portable form factor (and the latest smartphones do push more gigaflops than those systems). As has been said many times about smartphone cameras, the best gaming system is the one with you.

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Don't forget that, with the Switch, there was the opposite argument: "Smartphones are so common, nobody would buy a separate gaming device! If you want gaming on the go, you just download Candy Crush on your iPhone."

So the "lateral" thinking, here, was actually... quality. Smartphone games suck. The monetization strategies are downright predatory and touchscreens are a bad input device for a majority of game genres.

So what Nintendo did was make actually great games for a tablet device. Being able to put it on the TV and detaching the controllers is secondary, it's mostly about having great games!

This is why I'm a little pissed at marketing analysts turning this into some kind of stroke of business genius. The Switch is basically a Wii U with the GPU moved into the tablet part and the Wii U flopped hard. No market analysis could have predicted the Switch's success. It was a stubborn believe in quality, the worst thing they could do, what every "business advisor" would have warned them against. Market analysts were hilariously wrong and that's the history lesson to learn here, not "predulating quadrilateral core-market flibbugasting". The Switch is not a win they can claim, it's a win for quality and idealism.

> Being able to put it on the TV and detaching the controllers is secondary, it's mostly about having great games!

If anyone doubts this, the Switch Lite sold 1.95 million units in its first ten days, and you can neither put it on the TV nor detach the controllers.

The real beauty of Nintendo's strategies, I think, is that they validate many forms of analysis.

The design in them is never just great hardware, or great software, or great marketing, or any one objective quality metric, but some kind of blend of these things that defines the problem they are solving such that they avoid risking catastrophic failure in any one of them.

And this strategy whiffs on occasion, but it generally does so in a recoverable way: Wii U underperformed, but that meant that they didn't have to shepherd along the base with backwards compatibility. The biggest titles on it instead got ports or sequels on Switch. Nintendo never sells consoles at cost, so they lost development money but still came out of the endeavor with a refreshed game library. It's very much a "fast is smooth, smooth is slow" kind of notion.

And this is something you rarely see elsewhere in the tech world: The focus there is not just on making a gadget, but a world-beating gadget that boasts unsurpassed specs and rushes to beat the competition in doing so in the "move fast and break things" fashion. That approach leaves these companies with no room to build a legacy of the type Nintendo has, because their ambition was to skim some cream off the market, and maybe attain platform lock-in for a time, but not to really curate their own work or become something people refer to over the long term. And this is even true of most of the other game publishers, too: They burn through their franchises with casual abandon and trust heavily in their sales and marketing organization to make up the difference.

I can't see Sony getting back into portables after seeing how they let the Vita wither on the vine and die. It was a very powerful system for its time and did decently faithful renditions of games running on consoles of the time. It is really too bad: the Vita is great. I just bought one a short while back now that it has been hacked wide open. With an affordable SDCard & adapter in place of Sony's proprietary and expensive memory cards, the Vita is an emulation powerhouse on top of all the original content made for it.

Nintendo's portable efforts have been honed since the Gameboy. The content really helps sell those handhelds and keeps people glued to them. Games like Animal Crossing ("Gotta play every day or I get weeds in my town!") or Pokemon ("Gotta get 'em all.") are like crack. And a lot of their other content is simply top notch.

I have a Vita, and it killed me on the Gaming UX side. But aside from that here's why the Vita failed to me.

- I hated the touchpad on the back. I'm in that subset of people who thinks the original 'Texas' Xbox controller is a good size for my hands, so I know that's very subjective. But I could never get comfortable with it.

- Using it doesn't feel as smooth as my times with a (3)DS or even the original PSP.

- Speaking Sony killed a shitton of goodwill with their winddown of the PSP for me. Yeah that's a nitpick but I think others had it as well which impacted uptake of the Vita.

- Proprietary memory cards that are too expensive. At least with memory stick I had a couple of options. Yeah I get that the new formats were to help with the piracy issues, but then making your proprietary cards so expensive just makes me feel soured.

- Loading times on the Vita still remind me of playing on a console with a hard drive.

That being said Nintendo has a lot more experience both from a hardware and software perspective so they are very hard to out-compete. The biggest indicator of that to me is the dearth of titles that are easy to do a few minutes on with a Switch/etc versus the kinds of games I have on my Vita which typically are better for something like a long flight or car ride.

- Using it doesn't feel as smooth as my times with a (3)DS or even the original PSP.

I think the biggest difference is that Vita wasn't clicky; hit a button on a Nintendo handheld, and you get a very pleasant tactile sensation. Pressing a button on Vita felt like you were smooshing the button, which isn't a great experience. The PS3 controller ran into a similar problem because of the analog face buttons it had, but it's not as noticeable on bigger controllers.

I don't care for portable gaming, but Nintendo's portables since the Gameboy Advance have had libraries in many respects better than any contemporary console. Some portion of their success is surely because of the library, and despite their portability (though, yes, many value the portability, I'm sure). I don't know how the controls would work but I'd love something like the Playstation TV (a stripped-down Vita that plugs into a TV and uses Playstation 3 or 4 controllers) for the GBA-3DS libraries (yeah I know about the add-on for the gamecube but that's just the GBA, plugging in non-HDMI devices is getting increasingly inconvenient, and Gamecube-era hardware's starting to get pretty janky)

There are people working on it for the GBA.

https://www.retrorgb.com/gba-consolizer-an-hdmi-720p-gba-kit...

Analogue is doing a "gameboy" with an HD screen which has the possibility to be plugged on a TV, it's called the Analogue Pocket. It will play gameboy and gameboy advance games with near perfect emulation (thanks to FPGA).

Their previous products are great so I can't wait to get this one. It should be released this year.

https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Visual_Boy_Advance_GX

>releasing a system with PS4 / Xbox One level power in a portable form factor

The reason the Switch doesn't hit PS4/XBox One levels of power is because it's hard to hit that mark while staying within weight considerations, having decent battery life, and also coming in at the price points console gamers intend to pay (<$400).

It seems like they're trying to back into it by turning the consoles into in-home gaming servers and have you use your smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. as a display that the console streams to.

> I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables.

My school took us on a tour of companies with west coast offices that were looking for data talent. Nintendo was one of them. We met with their data science team. It was... one guy. For all of Nintendo of America. He was trying to get it to two guys.

I think very highly of nintendo's management because they're very willing to try zany things and fail (ring fit, wii, wii u, switch, nintendo labo, two screen ds, 3ds, etc. etc.). I find their games to be excellent and their hardware to be way more interesting than competitors. They're not really a video game company so much as a toy company at heart. And they are definitely not data driven.

That insight happened 30 years ago. Nintendo's best selling consoles and games have always been portable systems.

I think you're forgetting the massive powerhouse that was the Wii.

Nintendos influence goes very deep into all gaming these days. Portable games started with Game-n-Watch and Gameboy, NES started off the popularity of game consoles, etc.

Wii was the third best seller, and the only non-portable in the top 5.

It's true, but compared to its seventh-gen contemporaries (the 360 and PS3), it sold about 15m more than either.

(The Wii U, on the other hand, sold abysmally.)

Sony made several portable gaming devices (PSP, PS vita, PSN compatible phone).

The market didn’t really care for them.

Which makes sense. People already have a phone, they don’t want an additional thing to carry around. People want a flagship phone, not a worse phone that’s more expensive because it can play some exclusive games.

The Nintendo switch was the right form factor, but only Nintendo has the IP to pull it off. If MS or Sony were to make a Switch-like, it’d fail much like the nvidia shield has.

> Sony made several portable gaming devices... The market didn’t really care for them.

Except for the PSP, which sold 81 million units.

Yes, you picked the one that did well, which also happens to be the one that sold before ubiquitous smartphones were a thing. I wonder if there’s a relationship.

Still have mine for LocoRoco and FF Tactics.

I immediately sold my DS to fund getting a PSP as it actually had decent games I wanted to play with much better graphics. Now that I have a job, I'd love to buy a Switch, but again...not very many games that are really appealing as I haven't been big into Pokemon and games in that arena since Red came out. I think Doom and Diablo III and Skyrim are good to see, but I'd need to see more in that arena.

Some Indie games are just great on it too. I played through Hollow Knight, Blasphemous and Dead Cells far more than I would have done if I got them on PC or PS4. They were fairly cheap too.

The PSP did fairly well.

The Vita on the other hand, I maintain it was the high cost of the proprietary memory cards (combined with the high price tag of $250 for the console upon launch) that sealed its fate. They should have been giving those memory cards away for free (or used SD) because the online shop would have blown up. Instead they pigeonholed themselves by using more Sony proprietary cards and no one could afford the thing _on top of_ a cell phone.

The Vita has excellent games and it's my second biggest collection, behind the Switch.

I think one of the biggest not-talked-about factors that has contributed to Nintendo's and Switch's success has been the amount of exclusives, especially in modern times.

Looking at the PS4 and XBOX debate, going forward the architectures of these two consoles will be increasingly similar, which is translating to a very low amount of exclusives for each platform. This is harsh as exclusives used to be one of the best signals for console performance.

With Switch focusing on portability infra + Nintendo's strong portfolio of exclusive IPs, its a winning combo for sure.

I think you hit the nail on the head with exclusive titles. Nintendo console are worth owning if not only for the ability to play the Mario and Zelda franchises, but when you add in Smash Brothers, Pokemon, and all the other titles people love, it is a truly unique offering. I've been loving Super Mario Maker 2.

I don't think architecture has been the driving factor for console exclusives as much as intellectual property. MS and Sony have been in an acquisition war for studios for years in order to lock down exclusive IP. This is a pretty costly enterprise because Sony and MS have to buy and maintain entire companies to produce exclusive IP.

Umm, you should check that thought. The architecture of the main consoles before ps4 and Xbone were insanely different. This is coming from folks in the industry.

The reason they were locking down studios is exactly because of the hard road of making some game for both consoles. You have it backwards.

It's become a cliche that Sony and MS focus on specs while Nintendo focuses on content and experience.

>It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king

Amen to that. I pretty much only have time to play on the go, so the fact that Xbox and Sony (don't even get me started on how they treated the Vita...) have completely given up on portability means I'll never purchase another Sony or MS console again. Simple as that. I want to play portably, and Nintendo has consistently been the best at it.

Currently I've been really into the PSP scene that I missed (because I was too busy on my DS at the time), and I've caught up on a few years of Vita releases already. They really are some great systems, and I cannot believe in this age of "entertainment everywhere" that two of the three titans in video game consoles couldn't care less about portable gameplay.

If your gaming PC is gathering dust but you play the switch, you probably are falling for the marketing.

PC has nearly every game switch has, and more.

Nintendo is a big marketing company, advertising when you were a child and unaware. Now people nostalgia and automatically but their products.

My best example of this is BOTW which is an average game, but the fans have claimed it's the greatest game of all time. (Which people have been saying about Zelda since TP)

Game quality is of course subjective, but if you think BOTW was average I have no idea what you think an above average game is... Maybe saying it wasn't to your taste (too easy or handholding or something) would have been more accurate.

I think this is a bait, but, I'm curious: if BOTW is average, could you provide me with ~25 above average games? I would love to add them to my library and play them. Or even just 15?

I don’t think I would describe Breath of the Wild as average, but it probably falls under my top 10 most times I consider such a list. I could probably get to 15 games I find better, all of which are older than BotW. I’ll list some of you really are interested.

Let me guess, you've been playing Zelda since you were a child.

It would be a stretch to say that’s, I did not own any Zelda games before Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64 (I didn’t even like it enough to finish it), I had played some of them via rentals. I also have not played any of the Zelda series after Ocarina of Time. So, just for context I have owned consoles, handhelds, and had a PC to play games on since 1986, so it’s not like I did not play games during my childhood, but the Zelda series was never really one of them.

Sure, btw this list has a lot of 2, you don't need to play the originals.

Assassin's Creed 2, Bioshock, borderlands 2, call of duty modern warfare 2, (divinity Original sin, combat was great, hated the puzzles), doom 2016, elder scrolls (hardcore start with Morrowind, otherwise oblivion), fable, factorio, fallout 3, far cry 3, Gris(short, get it on sale), half life 2, magika, shadow of Mordor and war, saints row 1 and maybe 2, the Stanley parable, Kotor 1, Minecraft(and Terraria if you have someone to do coop with), maybe West of loathing.

Those are at least botw tier.

But the question was, if Breath of the Wild is average, what are _above_ average games, in your eyes?

I could, personally, point out about half of that list that I found just... dull, compared to Zelda. But games are subjective, so I'll let you enjoy what you enjoy!

I've played most of those and BotW ranks right along with them.

For an initial experience, I'd say few of those topped that of BotW (Bioshock and Doom 2016 maybe, Morrowind and Kotor 1 Definitely).

Longer-term I'd say BotW ends up somewhere along the games you mentioned. Not as good as the best of them, but not as bad as the worst of them (Oblivion, CoD).

Anyways, definitely not below that list. And that's a conservative assessment, I'd say.

I've played about half of those and the only games that have gotten as many hours out of me as BOTW in the last decade or two have been KOTOR and Mass Effect 1/2. The Fallouts in particular were huge letdowns to me (Fallout 2 was a key formative game).

You can disagree, of course, but in being declarative about it you overestimate the broadness of your own taste in style, I think. For instance, twenty years ago I was the one arguing with my friends about how Majora's Mask was overrated and there were so many better games on PC...

I'm pretty sure that a significant portion of the developers for those mentioned games may not strongly agree with your opinion.

So, I have an 8 year old. The switch is probably the most fun couch gaming we can do together. We also have an xbox and a pc for games, and we usually ignore them both in favor of Nintendo exclusives. Pokemon, BOTW, Smash Bros.

It's honestly a really good co-op couch experience. And when we go on road trips, it's better than the days when we would load up a fat crt tv in my parent's van and plug in the SNES.

Also, if I'm working in my office, he can bring the switch into the room with me and play while I work. Portable is nice.

Are you me from the future? I could have posted this exact same comment and have it been true for my 10 and 4 year olds. And while I admit I may be suffering from nostalgia, but I have super great memories of playing SNES in my parents can on trips.

I do most of my non-kid time gaming on my pc, but I think the Switch is a great console.

Sure for kids the switch can’t be beat. But the best games are all on Sony (some on PC too) Witcher 3, horizon zero down, god of war, uncharted 4, the last of us, persona 5, nier automata, assassins creed oddysey, red dead redemption 2, Spider-Man, etc.

Your list, with the exception of Persona 5 and somewhat Nier, are all games in the same, 3rd-person-open-world-AAA action/adventure genre. Claiming that ‘the best games’ are all one only one platform and that they are all in the exact same genre says much more about personal preference than the quality of game play experience on various consoles and PC.

— Edited a typo —

You seem to be confusing your opinion with fact here.

Rereading my comment, I see that I underplayed how important the portability of the switch is to me.

I think the industrial design of the Switch has a very smooth “fun per minute of setup” and I think that’s a big edge it has for families with younger children.

Or, a user doesn’t need to set up a computer and install a digital client like Steam. Switching input mappings is easy, and taking the entire device with those same input mappings to another room is simply picking things up. I love to play games on a computer, but it takes a lot more work compared to a console, let alone the Switch. I think that’s why it’s kept such a strong attach rate.

as a lifelong pc gaming and hardware enthusiast, I've never had much interest in consoles. imo, a good PC is a far better platform to enjoy most singleplayer experiences as well as "serious" multiplayer games.

there's one use case where the PC really sucks though: playing games with other people in the same room. handing around a controller for a singleplayer game or splitscreen multiplayer is much more natural. back in the day, LAN parties where everyone brought over their laptop were a lot of fun, but it's an undeniably clunky experience.

the cpu heatsink in my main pc alone weighs more than twice as much as a switch+joycons. the platforms address very different use cases.

I don't really see how the Switch is a good case of this lateral thinking, nor withered technology. They just got nVidia to make them a powerful gaming tablet, something nVidia was push hard to sell at the time. In this way they were able to continue to dominate the mobile market and hedge their console strategy.

The SoC (Tegra X1) was released in 2013.

The Switch came out in 2017.

So it's not really that new.

Also Nvidia has failed to sell it to the tablet/mobile market.

They sold to Nintendo so I see it as a major success. Any way I look at it, Nintendo is using the switch hardware as originally intended. I guess you could say any use of older tech counts but I don't think that's as much in the spirit of the article as, say, the Wii's use of RF for motion tracking.

I think it’s more that the commodity smartphone technologies were used “laterally” to make a game console that can be played portability. Or, smartphones have been iterating on graphics chipsets since the 3DS was released, so it seems sensible to capitalize on them in a way that a smartphone wasn’t going to.

I think it worked really well for Nintendo too, as they’re very much still a toy company compared to Sony or Microsoft. The budgets for handheld games were likely going to be bigger compared to the DS and 3DS for the next decade, so it makes sense to start to look at them as the same as console game development.

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