I cannot say that I really understand this product at all. Nintendo is really doubling down on what the Wii U was, but the point of differentiation through untethering the gamepad seems misguided. I simply do not see solutions to the myriad of problems that come with what is being billed as a portable console. Battery life issues are an immense hurdle that I just don't see this overcoming. And even if this device is technically able to go anywhere, nothing about it seems particularly ergonomic. What is supposed to make this design portable? It's not something you can just slide into a backpack or tuck in a pocket. I feel that Nintendo is disregarding the success they had in the portable market, where their products beat out those trying to ape the console experience by being sturdy, having a low entry point, long battery life, and a small frame. It seems like a total miss on the fundamentals of portable gaming. This is not even thinking about the split in game design that exists between handheld titles and console titles. Will every game be broken up into small chunks or have a "save anywhere" feature that make games more digestible while on the go?
Bringing pure power to the handheld sector is something that ultimately bites the portable experience in the behind, but heading in that direction also hinders the Switch as a set top box. The video angles the device as carrying some sort of social element, which makes its impact on the hardware by each handle breaking off into a controller, but to what end? These minimalistic controllers do not look at all comfortable and lack basic functionality that high end games would often require. Hunching over some tiny screen that will find itself often cut in half for split screen just seems so bizarre, especially when the device needs to be set up on a flat surface. Supporting this unlikely use case comes with such a heavy cost, and you wind up with the controller even as a single unit missing a d-pad.
And I don't mean to become some cantankerous old man scoffing at technology, but the presentation of this debut sends uncomfortable messages. Unable to pry yourself away from the game? Now you can bring it with you to the park. The video's repeated contrast between real world events and video games is so off-putting. Is Mario Kart supposed to compare favorably to real life go karts? Is there really a need to play a basketball video game at the basketball court with your friends? Where are people supposed to bring this and how is it social when the cutoff is two players crowded around a device? This device does not really play up a shared experience...it just seems like a very sad way to clutch on to games that were designed to be played in a different environment.
This just seems like a compromise on every front. It is not an efficient and easily portable device. It gives up ground on delivering a traditional console experience. And probably worst of all, this video does not even allude to this really functioning as a tablet, though it is impossible to really imagine Nintendo even being competitive in that space.
