I honestly don't care anymore. Yeah the Switch is aging hardware; but it's Nintendo's biggest money maker since Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advanced. I know folks will point out the DS or 3DS or the DSi, but I don't think they sold as much as the entire Gameboy line.
I never really got Nintendo and their obsession with 'gimmicks' with each of their consoles. I get wanting to be 'different' and 'unique' and all of that but look how that went for Wii U. Exactly. All they really need to do is make a more powerful switch with BC (backwards compatibility) and that's an ezpz 10 million console units sold IMO. But Nintendo has just never been like that I guess.
I can understand the 'gimmicks' from a programmers perspective and if I can invite you for a moment to just entertain this thought as you're free to dismiss it and tell me to blow it out somewhere that hurts.
From the dawn of video game's, we had only one way of interacting with games; a proper controller. From the classic knobs of the oversold PONG game's (Which, if you have someone to play with, it still has a fun factor), To keyboard before we experimented with the WASD keys (Arrow Key's were the popular choice) and... well, skipping a ton of history, the basic NES controller, 4 buttons and a D pad. Time goes on and you want to make more complex game's and I mean COMPLEX complex beyond what you can do with a NES controller; I mean, most of the OLD NES titles had to do button combinations to perform complex actions; such as Castlevinia and pressing UP + B to use your sub weapon or if you played the Sega Genesis and played Wonder Boy in Monster World, you had to use other complex button combo's to cast spells, play your flute like something out of Legend of Zelda, and so on and the Sega Genesis at that time had 3 Buttons. Button Combo's were getting annoying for some developers having to work within limitations to a point where Sega released their famous 6 Button controller; The fact that most fighters used or required more than 3 buttons should have set this whole thing up for how annoying console limitations were getting... So, Sega had a leg up over Nintendo with 4 button controllers(Start, A, B, C) for about a year. Nintendo then pushes forth for a 8 button controller, Shoulder Buttons, Start and Select, etc.
Soooooo what's this all building to? Well; it's building to marketing a console. We both know that all of Nintendo's stuff is under-powered based on their design philosophy which is a saving grace I like seeing from a developer stand-point to do more for less. But you have the other guys threatening to take your portion of the pie such as the Playstation 2, Microsoft coming in with their XBOX and your old rival at Sega is planning to drop their Sega Dreamcast. All of them are promising and showing a bunch of stuff your next planned hardware can't do... yet. Online gaming, ergonomic controllers and experiences you're not prepared for; thus you need another method of bringing customers into the folds and something to show your investors that you are still in the game as a company. But what CAN you do?
Online gaming with consoles was seen as a Gimmick until Xbox blasted that out of the water with HALO and soon, online gaming became a must have on your next generation of consoles. Sony was planning the same thing, but their online network got floored with the success of HALO which still rings true to have a ton of marketing to back it.
As Nintendo, you don't have much to offer the mature crowds and even kids are performing their rites of passage with their first Mature-Rated things with an M rated video game where most of your market is going. You can't win them back with another game as Halo set a new standard for software. You can follow the trend of set them and the most basic of trends is a console, your controller and a video game... So you setup a new method for people to interact with a video game except you do it better than your predecessors but you have to evolve outside of the basic controller. Motion Control gaming was a thing with the NES and the POWER GLOVE when they were trying to draw more people in to buy a NES console which I think Super Mario Bros. 3 did that more than the glove; just brush off that tech you have patents for, study why it failed and see if you can do better.... and whether you were there or not, we both know the Nintendo Wii sold out, fast, too fast. South Park did a whole episode about waiting for the Wii and it's still hilarious. Since then, their 'GIMMICK' is now their 'Call Sign' where if they can give you another method to EXPERIENCE a game and have more control over it to feel like you are in it and they give you that control; then they will give you that control and technically, I can't blame them.
I mean, I can complain, moan and feel frustrated; if anything from a developers perspective, I'm quite infuriated with them if not verging on kicking *** for various reasons as both a programmer and a fan that making a whole post about them would violate this forums TOS for the language I would use about them... HOWEVER, I have to give credit where credit is due and they temporarily set the trend again in more ways than one. Sony steals their ideas with their own tech and Microsoft explores giving more players control with the failed Kinect.
