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[Maxinas]

This would be much more interesting if it was anonymous developers giving their real opinions.

Pretty sure any game developer would be excited to try out the Switch (or any new console), but doesn't necessarily mean they will develop for it. There might be a small group of haters/fanboys out there that wouldn't dare touch the Switch.

 

[JustenP88]

"Ask Persons with Vested Interests in Console's Success What They Think of Console"

This sounds like a Polygon article alright.

I don't know what kind of journalist thinks it's a good idea to ask influential members of the industry they cover for their opinions on a big upcoming event for said industry... Pathetic journalism. Fake news. Sad.

 

[AmyS]

Tom Kalinske offering up a solid serving of Sega Pride was pretty amusing too, haha!

Yeah.

First of all, I still have remained antagonistic towards Nintendo [laughs] and I don't have any Nintendo hardware in my home, so it's hard for me to give them advice. ...

lmao

Also, this guy is a real 'trip'.

Trip Hawkins

(Former CEO, The 3DO Company, oversaw the 3DO launch)

Nintendo for, literally, a hundred years was a great toy company. ... In their first several years in the video game business, they were a really great toy company in this new electronic toy category, and basically their products were purchased mostly by children. And then when it became a medium, and it became a platform and they had to start competing against the likes of Sony, it got to be a lot harder for Nintendo and they began to think of themselves [as], "Oh yeah, we're a media platform company and we're competing against PlayStation."

Well, they're not going to make it in the long run with that kind of thinking. And if you think about what's really great about Nintendo it's the games that they have invented, like Mario and Pokemon, that they have popularized [these] incredible brands. They're now beginning to realize that, yeah, they really need to allow those brands to flourish on all the other platforms that are not proprietary Nintendo platforms, and that's a big change because they never used to do that. They used to basically drive the sales of their own proprietary platforms by restricting these famous brands to be the killer apps for those platforms. But I don't think it's viable for them to think of themselves as a generalized console platform company. They really shouldn't make a hardware system anymore in the future unless it's kind of a great toy. Like, for example, when the Game Boy came out, that was a fabulous toy. And it came out with Tetris, and then Pokemon came out on it, and that was really all you needed to know to decide that you wanted to have a Game Boy.

I think the Switch is going to disappoint. I think the optimists are saying it's going to sell 40 million units, and they're saying that because they're looking at Wii U selling 13 million units and they're looking at the original Wii selling 100 million units, and they're thinking, "Well, it couldn't possibly go as badly as it did with the Wii U. And, in my opinion, it could go just about the same, because their price point is really high. The Switch is 300 bucks, and that's not a toy price. That's a media platform price. And they can't win that game, even with proprietary, you know, killer apps. I just think that they have to have more modest expectations when they're in the hardware business, that if they have a low enough price point, maybe they can get the 20 million units sold and it's going to be a very successful toy for them. And their future value and future profit is going to have a lot more to do with what they do with their great brands and their capacity to create new games on all the platforms, not on their own.

 

[darkazcura]

Yeah.



lmao

Also, this guy is a real 'trip'.

With the Switch, the big thing that has stuck out to me is how out of touch some are with the handheld/portable market. Some of the most negative people with regards to Switch are constantly putting it up against Nintendo console sales as an indication of potential failure, and yes, I know Nintendo is selling it as a console, but they are doing it as a portable console..a market Nintendo has seen a ton of success in even in the iPhone/tablet era.

We'll see what happens, but I guess my point is that some really shouldn't ignore Nintendo's potential marketshare in the handheld/portable realm.

I also find his opinion on pricing so interesting because it completely contrasts Japanese developers who find the Switch pretty cheap. I wonder if this will be a common split of opinion between American and Japanese developers.

I personally don't understand the criticism for the pricing because I am comparing it against tablet pricing and the Shield TV pricing. When I consider that market and how much the Shield TV goes for without a screen, half the storage, no joycons, no battery, etc, I think the pricing is pretty appropriate. When you compare it against One/PS4, I guess I can understand it, but while Nintendo is competing in the same market as those consoles, the form factor plays a huge role in the pricing and needs to be compared to other similar consumer electronics with the same form factor to assess the pricing.