Some of the stuff he says I agree with but this is one of the things I'm going to have to greatly disagree with.
For a very long time by remember literally predicting this is what Nintendo was going to do for very obvious reasons that I think some of the community could not really get their heads around it's as if they could not see the forest from the trees. The combo of having to install bases and one for dedicated Home console and one for portable worked for Nintendo... the Wii and 3DS combo work for Nintendo but I believe the ridiculous amount of casual consumers that purchase the Wii may have gave Nintendo a false understanding about their install base as in they did not know that they had a fluctuating install base that was not healthy consumers but individuals who were not even Gamers who had no real intent to return so these inflated numbers made Nintendo believe that there was more people looking to purchase their home consoles...
I believe the GameCube might be the most realistic representation of the amount of Hardcore consumers that really actually cared about purchasing Nintendo systems as actual Gamers to game on.
Nintendo for an extremely long time has had the majority of their core install base actually be there portable Market. So when a lot of that Wii fad died down their portable Market was the one that was the most solid and remained. The Wii U's failure may have came as a surprise to many people but to me I felt like it was completely inevitable because I did not really buy that the individuals who purchased the Wii were actual healthy consumers as in people who legitimately want to be part of that ecosystem and will continue purchasing Nintendo products...
The only obvious solution was to Simply make a system that was portable that gave the option that out with an HDMI. They could not afford to split their install base as it simply did not make any sense anymore. So when you have 3DS selling 75 million units which is literally half of what DS sold and you have the Wii U selling even worse than that it's simply does not make sense to continue to fragment that install base. The number of consumers who actually want to play the top Nintendo properties on a television or not as much as people realize considering it moved 14 million..
Let the theoretically say those consumers are fucking triggered that Nintendo did not make a dedicated Home console, who the fuck cares? There's such a small amount of consumers I don't really buy that they're honestly going to care that they're simply playing a portable connected to the television because Nintendo at the time wasn't even making the most high-tech Home console anyway which meant simply making it a portable came down to complete semantics.
Even when the codename was NX I knew that it was simply because it was them making a portable with an HDMI out option as X in Japan usually means the term cross, like cross over. They Don't Really carry the same meetings in the United States so I had a feeling that the theory I had in regards to where they were headed was likely very correct.
The way the mobile market is right now and the type of games Nintendo creates I do not see a benefit for them to ever split that install base.
lol agreed. I feel that isn't the majority though. Wii U vs 3DS likely shows most simply are not doing that, but that simply shows that it was the correct move by Nintendo. I don't believe they have a large enough market to really do dedicated home consoles anymore and it makes more sense to focus on portable and offer a HDMI out solution to the rest of us that care about gaming on the TV.
I'd rather game on a portable connected to the TV KNOWING I'm able to play 100% of what Nintendo is making, then have them make a home console and know I'm getting only a fraction of what they are putting out. With 3DS vs Wii U, its clear Wii U got the short end of that stick, but it should have NEVER been an either or.
So I agree with him on the part of "Pachter said that the Switch’s hybrid concept isn’t one that gets a lot of use" as its very, very likely that true, but even if they sell the fucking dock separate as an OPTION next time around, it will still be better then only doing a portable with no option to out.
You do stretch over a lot of big topics, but you do have some points.
The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube both struggled, the Playstation 1+ 2 was absolutely crushing them and it must have put a lot of fear and frustration into the Nintendo ranks regarding home consoles. But unlike Sega, Nintendo had a very finacially stable business model, very successful handhelds and several franchies that sold in the millions a year, so they could afford to take a gamble in the console market to try and create a product that seperated themselves from Sony and Microsoft, hence the Wii.
Even though I can agree that Nintendo managed to hit upon a casual bubble, they still should have been able to translate more consumers than they did over to the Wii U's install base. I think the Wii phase died off long before the Wii U came out, and Nintendo didn't realize it, even when the Wii was selling well gamers and casuals alike started to understod just how much more was on offer on Xbox and Playstation in terms of games and services.
I think a lot of people were burned on the Wii, that machine had insane draughts with no games and people got sick and tired of motion controls. The name itself, Wii U, invoked the very consoles people wanted to move away from, and the lack of original games to the slighty flimsy hardware, the Wii U was not gonna work out. It was a bold idea though and followed the premise of Nintendo staying away from Sony and Microsoft by making unique hardware.
I think Nintendo changing their practices and releasing more games and not having to focus on 2 platforms (handheld/console) is a big reason why the Switch is what it is. They had 2 games on metacritic with a 97 score in their launch year (Mario/Zelda) and has mananged to produce more product on the Switch than on the Wii and Wii U by a large margin. It has created a thrist for Nintendo, and cultivated a whole new fanbase. Almost every major Nintendo franchise is on the Switch now, which is unheard of on their other consoles after only 3 years.
