Lots of respect to both of you for hanging out in these threads for the past years. Some folks seem to conflate incessant and militant pessimism with realism.
If it meant the TV-only model would be cheaper, then hell yeah. As a Wii U lover/apologist, a tv-only Switch is anything but pointless. I'm thrilled to death that Nintendo went hybrid for development unification reasons (Links Awakening and a bunch of 3rd party indies would have been 3DS games otherwise, for example) and obviously the market wants it and I love to see Nintendo do well. But if they had some system where an account and save data could be easily shared between two consoles, I'd very possibly buy a tv-only Dane and keep my Erista for the very rare occasion where I take a trip and have a lot of hotel time.
At that point, the third seems pointless and it would be better if they take a more Apple like approach.
Nintendo can't fix the shortages, but they don't really need to. Established hardware companies can and have been launching new products all throughout the pandemic. It's an inconvenience, sure, but one that's not likely to have all that big an impact on their plans unless they get particularly unlucky.
The bigger problem with this proposal is that you're forcing people to buy multiple devices to get the optimal experience. The hybrid Switch is designed as the flagship device, and having a revision that surpasses it in some way fragments the platform. The only way a TV only Switch is at all likely to happen is as a cheap model that performs exactly the same as the equivalent hybrid when docked.
oh my god are you me
giving up hope for a way to play animal crossing without frame drops would be a sad way to live
For me usually with Nintendo, I want affordability and something uniquely Nintendo about the hardware that’s neat that the others don’t offer, and that games just look… nice. Heck I was playing my 3DS earlier today and yeah it’s now powerhouse, but the games still look pleasing to my eyes.
This is why it will be the Dane chip late this year or March '23 depending on when BotW 2 is ready. 2024 means no major software outside of a new Mario Kart.
[laughs]
what
A console's lifespan can continue past the launch of its successor. Nintendo's last handheld in particular is rather infamous for this.
That’s Nintendo laughing at profit margins even while letting their 300 year old tech choke trying to run modern games
I’m not sure they’ve mentioned explicit years in references to lifecycles since, but I’m assuming they’re continuing to mean time until a successor launches.
well I don't play profit margins
This is where the Switch as a hybrid sort of muddies the waters, because, with the sole exception of the NES (or probably more accurately the Famicom), Nintendo's home consoles have stuck very closely to the 5-6 year average and died immediately after their successor launches. Even the handhelds haven't been overly consistent at pushing too far past that threshold, and are being carried a bit by the even more anomalous Game Boy. The 3DS was basically the first solid attempt since the Game Boy, and it didn't go very well.
You will
That's not really how this sort of thing works. Hardware launches don't just come from nowhere, they take years of planning.
Nintendo is always planning new hardware, whether it be prototypes that never come to fruition or hardware that actually makes it to the stages where it's being planned for and releases to the mass market.
Sure, but the decision to actually bring something to market is something that has to happen pretty far in advance of the actual launch. Likely multiple years in the case of something like the expected Switch successor.
The thing with DS is it's basically just 3 games, if you ignore the late localizations. I'm fairly certain Kirby Mass Attack is the only other first party release that was after the 3DS in all regions. As Nintendo handhelds go, the DS fell off unusually quickly.
menacing
most think the line is meaningless, which imo (and this is just me) basically means it's a pro
"Pro" vs "2" is kind of an ongoing semantic debate over how the hardware will be positioned and what is a "successor". The "2" side has mostly won out at this point, but that definitely wasn't the case yet when a lot of these rumors were initially surfacing last spring. This is why we'll sometimes use more neutral names like "Dane" (the rumored codename of the SoC) because that's ultimately the common thread in the rumors. It is a more powerful system that will substantially resemble the Switch based on Nvidia's latest architecture. Any name ascribed to the hardware at this point is an arbitrary shorthand informed by the bias of the source.
The window likely isn't all that large. I'd be surprised if they could move the launch by more than 6-9 months.
Huh?
We won't get the new financial year forecast until late April or early May, when they do the final briefing for the full 21/22 FY. The next briefing is the 9 month briefing for 21/22.
I completely disagree. 20M is exactly where I'd expect a year with a new launch to be. Q1 should be somewhere around 2-3m coming off of a big Q4 shipment with Pokemon. Q2 is when the new model would have to be announced so it'll probably do about 2-3m if not less. Q3 the new model will sell out but that'll only be about ~5-8m in all likelihood, then the base Switch will probably pick up the other ~3-5m for no more than 11m total. Then another 3-5m combined in Q4 depending on supply and software to get them to a total of 18m-22m.
That's three games, one of which is GaaS, so it doesn't exactly have to launch with a new model. Zelda and Bayonetta are more geared towards the enthusiast early adopters anyway.
