Nintendo Switch Breakdown(Pt.2): Nintendo and Innovating Consoles

Last time, I talked about how Nintendo's new Switch made such a splash. This time, I'm talking about how the Switch came about, the nature of Nintendo as a company, and about how reinventing the wheel can cause a fundamental change in an industry.

Nintendo has always been a strange company. They have a very, shall we say, unique way of innovating. Rather than innovating their games constantly and simply upgrading their consoles to be more powerful, Nintendo has always tried to reinvent the wheel and innovate their consoles constantly while their games have been lacking in new ideas, usually relying on cheesy gimmicks. This strategy has, as anyone who pays attention to the gaming industry knows, been rather hit and miss. The Wii had hit home particularly hard, especially with grandma, who, despite you telling her at least a thousand times, can't differentiate between R1 and R2. And between the square and x buttons. And just left and right in general. So motion controls were useful for her. The Wii U on the other hand, well...

That crashed so hard it made that Great Depression-level stock market crash that that astronaut saw as he was exiting out of orbit way too fast as all his systems blue-screen look like a rock dropped from shoulder height.

Too much? Too- OK it was too much. But it's true! That thing was a tablet I watched Netflix on and that's about it.

The Switch is the culmination of years of learning through this method. But one important lesson they learned was that, frankly, you NEED those innovative games. The Switch marked the return of Nintendo as a gaming giant, not only by merit of their console making, but also the sheer number of fun and innovative games that they have hammered into that console. But at the same time, the Switch made those games all the better by making them mobile. This combination is what blew the competition out of the water. And might come close to conquering the Steam sales as for wallet destruction.

HA. Kidding.