I went in with low expectations. Walked away unimpressed and, sadly, not surprised.
Nintendo has been stumbling down a path of tone-deafness in the console market for over twenty years now - and not a damn thing has changed other than the company finally having the realization that they can try to make more money in other areas of their platform like online services.
You know what? I take back my "low expectations" statement.
After the WiiU's historic failure and years of practically jack shit nothing, I did expect Nintendo to come out strong last night. I expected they realized the failure that was WiiU, essentially abandoning it years ago, and went full-speed ahead with Switch development in order to win back some of that lost market share. This led to an expectation that they'd have a bombardment of quality games and maybe even better 3rd party relations; not just for the year of 2017, but for launch.
Instead we get a $299 (US) priced system that doesn't match up on a power level to the now over three year-old PS4 and X1 (and those have similar or lesser prices PLUS pack-ins now), an as-of-now mystery priced online structure from a company that is grossly behind its competitors in that realm, overpriced controllers, low internal storage space, and worst of all - a software line-up that, aside from Zelda, frankly looks lazy and uninspired.
I was initially happy to see a new Nintendo IP in ARMS... but the more I watched, the more the gimmick started to show. Maybe after more is shown I'll change my mind, but the game looks really shallow from the first impression. 1, 2 Switch? Why isn't this game a pack-in? So much positive word of mouth with the Wii came from Wii Sports, which everyone received with the system. You could invite friends and family over and "Hey, come check this out!". A port of a 6 year old game in Skyrim that won't even make launch? A $30/$40 Super Street Fighter II HD Remix with two new (reskinned?) characters? Essentially a 'special edition' of Mario Kart 8 that will be almost 3 years old by the time of Deluxe's release? A proper 3D Mario game that not only can't make the launch, but as of now just has a vague 'Holiday 2017' release date? I see people are already fearing a delay to 2018... and I don't blame them.
I thought Nintendo might come out swinging, but instead the whole thing just kind of went off like a wet fart to me. They spent all that money in the presentation, but in the end it felt like the same old, same clueless Nintendo.
As a powerful part of my childhood in the NES/SNES days, Nintendo still commands a (albeit small) place in my heart. I was really hoping this might be a new-look Nintendo; a Nintendo that wanted to fight again. Instead, all I see is the unfortunate precedent set by the Wii: a Nintendo that's given up the fire to compete and is instead just chasing the next gimmick trying desperately to corral the casual market, hoping that their feverish fanbase continues eating this stuff up.
It didn't work for WiiU and I don't think it'll work for Switch.
