GamerJM
Chain Chomp
Okay, so here's the thing. I've been around in the online Nintendo fandom for a long time. Not longer than everyone on this site, but I'd wager longer than most people. I started browsing forums near the latter part of the Gamecube's life. It's been almost two decades. And I kinda....never really stopped. A lot of people probably would and did. Partially due to forums being niche now, but also partially due to just changing interests, either in Nintendo or gaming as a whole. And personally, I'm not exactly a mega Nintendo fan either. That's not the fault of their output (although, most of my favorite Nintendo games released in the 2000s). It's more just not me really being a megafan of anything in gaming any more, aside from maybe competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee and visual novels directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi. I'm more into gaming broadly, and a lot of the medium's history interests me more now than anything coming out in the future (my most anticipated game of 2022 might be the Live-a-Live remake, with it being its first ever official English localization). So why do I come here? Well, mostly because, to me the Nintendo fandom is home. It's where I grew up on the internet and it's a place I can't ever imagine not spending time talking and reading peoples' takes.
But given my history, I was curious to see peoples' motivations for being interested in the Switch. I was interested in seeing what the general attitude towards the platform is, and what draws people to it. I'm interested in comparing how those takes are to what the general consensus used to be about Nintendo generations ago. Because I’ve been a Nintendo fan so long, and because attitudes I have ingrained in my brain as “what Nintendo fans are like” may not necessarily be true.
So, I ran this poll, asking people why they're drawn to the Switch in the first place:
https://famiboards.com/threads/what...tform-nintendo-games-or-its-form-factor.2326/
I hypothesized that people would either be drawn in due to Nintendo games, or due to the hybrid nature of the platform, as anyone who didn’t care about those two things could just buy another console. My poll options reflected this. It ended up not entirely being 100% the case, with user Yzz calling out the console’s aesthetics, and user chocolate_supra bringing up the fact that he mostly played third-party games but didn’t think there were enough exclusives on other consoles to warrant buying them. I added the latter point as an option in the poll.
These were the results:
So, let’s dig in.
I’ll start with the result that surprises me the least: the option with the most votes is “It’s basically 50/50,” sitting at 39.4% and 78 votes. I expected this to be the most popular option because this appears to be the general sentiment a lot of this site holds. Nintendo games are awesome, and so is being able to have them portably and on the big screen. I imagine, for most fans happy enough about the state of Nintendo to seek out a Nintendo-specific site that deals primarily with modern releases, this would be the case. Maybe some would prefer a stationary console with more power, but Nintendo’s cultivated a fanbase that seems to be less concerned with visual fidelity. In fact, I expected this sentiment to be so common, that I tried to bias the poll voters against this option a bit to obtain more meaningful results, emphasizing in the text of my topic that if you lean a specific way you should vote for that. Still, I’m not surprised, given this sentiment.
I think I’ll jump from the least surprising result, to the result that I think may be the most surprising to me: “Nintendo games, because I mostly just play Nintendo games,” sitting at second place with 21.7% of the vote, and a whopping 43 total votes. This is fascinating to me. I didn’t know how common this brand of player was. Speaking of my history with forums, during the 2000s, there seemed to be a much bigger overlap with Nintendo fans and non-Nintendo fans, and I don’t think I often met someone on a forum who just straight up only played Nintendo games. And the people who did were like, competitive Smash/Mario Kart/Goldeneye players or people who obsessively speedran a few games, communities which this site doesn’t seem to have much overlap with.
I did later realize this brand of Nintendo fan existed, though. I think the first time I noticed them was when I would consume GameXplain videos during the Wii U era, and occasionally they’d made videos about non-Nintendo subjects. These videos would get significantly lower view counts and even a bit of backlash. I know Arlo right now faces the same issues as well. I think I at least partially chopped this up to Nintendo fans just not being entirely unified in what kind of non-Nintendo content they wanted, more than anything.
It’s possible I could be drawing too strong of a conclusion from this result, though. Ultimately, it only got 21.7% of the vote. That’s not astronomical, or anything. Additionally, “most” could just mean “the majority of,” meaning over 50% of what you play. Given that Nintendo releases games on a near monthly basis and how most people have pretty limited time, that could just mean you play a handful of Nintendo releases a year, and then some indie games and the occasional interesting third-party game, and that alone is enough to sustain your gaming habits whilst remaining a major hobby.
I also added another option partway through the poll in response to poster choclate_supra, “I’m drawn in primarily by a combination of Nintendo games and third-party games and only own a Switch,” which only got 4 votes, 2% of the vote. This poll option was added late, though, so another possible explanation for the earlier high turnout for the previous option is that a handful of people voted for it instead of this. I didn’t think to include this because I imagined that anyone who cared enough about third-party games would either buy another console or care a lot about portability, but I suppose just wanting a Switch for Nintendo games and then sticking to its third-party titles to save money on buying another platform when it gets a lot of what you’d want anyways makes sense. But either way, it didn’t get many votes.
Another result I found pretty surprising was “Nintendo games, because I have other platforms for third-party games,” only getting 14.1% of the vote, with a grand total of 28 votes. It was only the fourth most popular option. For full transparency, I was one of the 28 people who voted for this option. The reason this surprises me is because, again, going back to the Wii days, the idea that you were “supposed” to have another console if you wanted to play all of the big notable third-party games was just common sense. One of the most common points of discussion I saw back then was whether to buy a 360 or a PS3 to supplement the Wii.
I can think of a few possibilities as to why this is different. First of all, the other options don’t preclude buying a non-Nintendo console; you can favor the hybrid style while also owning a PC, PS4/5, or an Xbox. Second, the Switch has by far the strongest third-party support for a Nintendo console since the SNES days. But lastly, I also have a theory that Nintendo spent the decade prior to the Switch cultivating a fanbase that doesn’t really want a lot to do with modern AAA gaming. Their design philosophies are the antithesis of the modern triple-A game. Favoring gameplay over everything and being designed without games-as-a-service-style engagement in mind. Remember those people I mentioned who talked about whether to buy a 360 or a PS3? A lot of them I recall ending up disappointed with the big marquee titles; the Elder Scrolls, the GTAs, the Call of Duties, the Uncharteds. I bet a good number of people here just don’t really mess with the kinds of games that motivate people to buy PlayStations and Xboxes anymore.
The option “The Hybrid Form Factor, because it’s a lot better for my lifestyle” earned 14.6% of the vote with a total of 29 votes. It was also the third most voted option. I expected it to be about the third most voted option. Being a hybrid console seems to be very important for a lot of people here; not the driving factor for everyone, but for at least some people. But strangely enough, the raw numbers for this one are lower than I expected. When I look at the poll overall, I feel like the reason is because the votes are actually fairly well spread out, with the numbers between the non-”It’s basically 50/50” options being somewhat close aside from a couple of the niche options. This tells me something a bit more interesting; Famiboards users have a diverse set of reasons for being drawn to the Switch as a platform. There’s not really a super strong consensus answer, because there are several factors working in the Switch’s favor. Some of them matter for some people, others matter for other people.
“Its Hybrid Form Factor, because prior to the Switch I mostly played on handheld platforms” got 7.6% of the vote with 15 votes. This option was mostly supposed to represent the niche of 3DS/Vita-only people (or people who mainly played on those platforms) who basically just went to the Switch directly as it was the closest thing to a successor to either of those platforms. Not sure if the way I phrased this communicated that perfectly, but either way I expected this group of people to be notable enough to matter but not notable enough to compete with most of the rest of the options, which is what basically ended up happening. Again, this is a somewhat niche group of people, but they do exist.
And lastly, “I’m not drawn to the Switch, and mostly post here for retro gaming content/other reasons” got .5% of the vote with just one vote. I didn’t expect this option to do well or really be anything other than the last place option but I expected more than one vote as I think I’ve seen multiple people on this forum say they don’t own Switches. I do think this is a bit interesting as it shows that there’s really basically no overlap with the retro-only community and the modern Nintendo community, when I always felt like there was a bit, plus the forum is literally named after an 80s Nintendo console. I guess Famiboards’ emphasis on modern releases kinda puts a damper on that.
I don’t really have anything else to say. I think the results of this poll are interesting and it’s cool to see what the general sentiment on something like this is. I’m also glad it got enough votes for me to be able to do this!
But given my history, I was curious to see peoples' motivations for being interested in the Switch. I was interested in seeing what the general attitude towards the platform is, and what draws people to it. I'm interested in comparing how those takes are to what the general consensus used to be about Nintendo generations ago. Because I’ve been a Nintendo fan so long, and because attitudes I have ingrained in my brain as “what Nintendo fans are like” may not necessarily be true.
So, I ran this poll, asking people why they're drawn to the Switch in the first place:
https://famiboards.com/threads/what...tform-nintendo-games-or-its-form-factor.2326/
I hypothesized that people would either be drawn in due to Nintendo games, or due to the hybrid nature of the platform, as anyone who didn’t care about those two things could just buy another console. My poll options reflected this. It ended up not entirely being 100% the case, with user Yzz calling out the console’s aesthetics, and user chocolate_supra bringing up the fact that he mostly played third-party games but didn’t think there were enough exclusives on other consoles to warrant buying them. I added the latter point as an option in the poll.
These were the results:
So, let’s dig in.
I’ll start with the result that surprises me the least: the option with the most votes is “It’s basically 50/50,” sitting at 39.4% and 78 votes. I expected this to be the most popular option because this appears to be the general sentiment a lot of this site holds. Nintendo games are awesome, and so is being able to have them portably and on the big screen. I imagine, for most fans happy enough about the state of Nintendo to seek out a Nintendo-specific site that deals primarily with modern releases, this would be the case. Maybe some would prefer a stationary console with more power, but Nintendo’s cultivated a fanbase that seems to be less concerned with visual fidelity. In fact, I expected this sentiment to be so common, that I tried to bias the poll voters against this option a bit to obtain more meaningful results, emphasizing in the text of my topic that if you lean a specific way you should vote for that. Still, I’m not surprised, given this sentiment.
I think I’ll jump from the least surprising result, to the result that I think may be the most surprising to me: “Nintendo games, because I mostly just play Nintendo games,” sitting at second place with 21.7% of the vote, and a whopping 43 total votes. This is fascinating to me. I didn’t know how common this brand of player was. Speaking of my history with forums, during the 2000s, there seemed to be a much bigger overlap with Nintendo fans and non-Nintendo fans, and I don’t think I often met someone on a forum who just straight up only played Nintendo games. And the people who did were like, competitive Smash/Mario Kart/Goldeneye players or people who obsessively speedran a few games, communities which this site doesn’t seem to have much overlap with.
I did later realize this brand of Nintendo fan existed, though. I think the first time I noticed them was when I would consume GameXplain videos during the Wii U era, and occasionally they’d made videos about non-Nintendo subjects. These videos would get significantly lower view counts and even a bit of backlash. I know Arlo right now faces the same issues as well. I think I at least partially chopped this up to Nintendo fans just not being entirely unified in what kind of non-Nintendo content they wanted, more than anything.
It’s possible I could be drawing too strong of a conclusion from this result, though. Ultimately, it only got 21.7% of the vote. That’s not astronomical, or anything. Additionally, “most” could just mean “the majority of,” meaning over 50% of what you play. Given that Nintendo releases games on a near monthly basis and how most people have pretty limited time, that could just mean you play a handful of Nintendo releases a year, and then some indie games and the occasional interesting third-party game, and that alone is enough to sustain your gaming habits whilst remaining a major hobby.
I also added another option partway through the poll in response to poster choclate_supra, “I’m drawn in primarily by a combination of Nintendo games and third-party games and only own a Switch,” which only got 4 votes, 2% of the vote. This poll option was added late, though, so another possible explanation for the earlier high turnout for the previous option is that a handful of people voted for it instead of this. I didn’t think to include this because I imagined that anyone who cared enough about third-party games would either buy another console or care a lot about portability, but I suppose just wanting a Switch for Nintendo games and then sticking to its third-party titles to save money on buying another platform when it gets a lot of what you’d want anyways makes sense. But either way, it didn’t get many votes.
Another result I found pretty surprising was “Nintendo games, because I have other platforms for third-party games,” only getting 14.1% of the vote, with a grand total of 28 votes. It was only the fourth most popular option. For full transparency, I was one of the 28 people who voted for this option. The reason this surprises me is because, again, going back to the Wii days, the idea that you were “supposed” to have another console if you wanted to play all of the big notable third-party games was just common sense. One of the most common points of discussion I saw back then was whether to buy a 360 or a PS3 to supplement the Wii.
I can think of a few possibilities as to why this is different. First of all, the other options don’t preclude buying a non-Nintendo console; you can favor the hybrid style while also owning a PC, PS4/5, or an Xbox. Second, the Switch has by far the strongest third-party support for a Nintendo console since the SNES days. But lastly, I also have a theory that Nintendo spent the decade prior to the Switch cultivating a fanbase that doesn’t really want a lot to do with modern AAA gaming. Their design philosophies are the antithesis of the modern triple-A game. Favoring gameplay over everything and being designed without games-as-a-service-style engagement in mind. Remember those people I mentioned who talked about whether to buy a 360 or a PS3? A lot of them I recall ending up disappointed with the big marquee titles; the Elder Scrolls, the GTAs, the Call of Duties, the Uncharteds. I bet a good number of people here just don’t really mess with the kinds of games that motivate people to buy PlayStations and Xboxes anymore.
The option “The Hybrid Form Factor, because it’s a lot better for my lifestyle” earned 14.6% of the vote with a total of 29 votes. It was also the third most voted option. I expected it to be about the third most voted option. Being a hybrid console seems to be very important for a lot of people here; not the driving factor for everyone, but for at least some people. But strangely enough, the raw numbers for this one are lower than I expected. When I look at the poll overall, I feel like the reason is because the votes are actually fairly well spread out, with the numbers between the non-”It’s basically 50/50” options being somewhat close aside from a couple of the niche options. This tells me something a bit more interesting; Famiboards users have a diverse set of reasons for being drawn to the Switch as a platform. There’s not really a super strong consensus answer, because there are several factors working in the Switch’s favor. Some of them matter for some people, others matter for other people.
“Its Hybrid Form Factor, because prior to the Switch I mostly played on handheld platforms” got 7.6% of the vote with 15 votes. This option was mostly supposed to represent the niche of 3DS/Vita-only people (or people who mainly played on those platforms) who basically just went to the Switch directly as it was the closest thing to a successor to either of those platforms. Not sure if the way I phrased this communicated that perfectly, but either way I expected this group of people to be notable enough to matter but not notable enough to compete with most of the rest of the options, which is what basically ended up happening. Again, this is a somewhat niche group of people, but they do exist.
And lastly, “I’m not drawn to the Switch, and mostly post here for retro gaming content/other reasons” got .5% of the vote with just one vote. I didn’t expect this option to do well or really be anything other than the last place option but I expected more than one vote as I think I’ve seen multiple people on this forum say they don’t own Switches. I do think this is a bit interesting as it shows that there’s really basically no overlap with the retro-only community and the modern Nintendo community, when I always felt like there was a bit, plus the forum is literally named after an 80s Nintendo console. I guess Famiboards’ emphasis on modern releases kinda puts a damper on that.
I don’t really have anything else to say. I think the results of this poll are interesting and it’s cool to see what the general sentiment on something like this is. I’m also glad it got enough votes for me to be able to do this!
