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> The PSP had a 480x272 screen, and you’re saying that this thing having 800p feels worse? I was accounting for the fact that the PSP launched 16 years ago. I

> The PSP had a 480x272 screen, and you’re saying that this thing having 800p feels worse? I was accounting for the fact that the PSP launched 16 years ago. It's a similar form factor - big screen, big power, short battery life. > The Switch does 720p in portable mode and it’s tons of fun and is selling like crazy 3+ years after release. Comparing this to the Switch is silly. They are nothing alike. Thinking you can compete with Nintendo in handheld gaming is like thinking you can compete with Google in search. History has shown this time and time and time again. Nintendo sells the Switch because it's the only way to play Nintendo games. That is 90% of their value. The other 10% comes from having an affordable handheld gaming device in a comfortable form factor and they've been trying to get more third party and indie support. > Then you talk about how tech specs don’t matter when you were just complaining about a spec? Specs don't matter, and this thing has nothing to sell itself but specs - and its specs aren't even that good. > There will be plenty of people that buy this. I'm not saying nobody will buy it. I'm saying I won't, and I doubt it will be considered a success by most. But hey, if you like it and want to buy it go for it! If you love it that's what counts.

Jetrel 6y ago
To piggyback on what you're saying - the thing that makes Nintendo do so damned well - even beating iOS for games, is that their market is carefully curated to produce a "middle class" of game developers. Specifically ones who don't go bankrupt and stop making games, which is basically what's happening on iOS, and even worse on Android. iOS gamedev is kind of a slaughterhouse, where a tiny crust of lottery-winners make it look viable, but the other 98% or so of devs don't break even. There are a lot of reasons for this, and all of them are things Nintendo's worked pretty hard to counter. Refusing to let stuff on the store if it doesn't meet certain QA criterion, forcibly preventing the race-to-the-bottom on the price wars, deliberately avoiding top-10 lists and any of the other reflexive techie moves that end up being anti-patterns (by being attention-funnels that drive further sales to the people who don't need it, and starve the ones who do). There's a LOT of stuff they do right, and some of this they're historically famous for (the QA angle was the thing that famously let them buck the videogame crash of the 80s, in contrast to the prior vendors who had no qualms about allowing outright broken/unplayable games on their devices). This stuff is important. Generally what makes markets like this work isn't a technological problem, but a social/political problem. Nintendo understands that game devs need to make a living, but apple and google treat them as cannon fodder, and it has consequences for the quality of work. If you don't get this right, people will make a bunch of shallow stuff that's a low upfront investment (Angry Birds, Monument Valley, etc), but you'll have shockingly few "deep" games like BotW, because nobody can stomach that risk, especially when they'd have to make an insane number of sales to break even at (presumed) lower prices.

Jetrel 6y ago

To piggyback on what you're saying - the thing that makes Nintendo do so damned well - even beating iOS for games, is that their market is carefully curated to produce a "middle class" of game developers. Specifically ones who don't go bankrupt and stop making games, which is basically what's happening on iOS, and even worse on Android. iOS gamedev is kind of a slaughterhouse, where a tiny crust of lottery-winners make it look viable, but the other 98% or so of devs don't break even. There are a lot of reasons for this, and all of them are things Nintendo's worked pretty hard to counter. Refusing to let stuff on the store if it doesn't meet certain QA criterion, forcibly preventing the race-to-the-bottom on the price wars, deliberately avoiding top-10 lists and any of the other reflexive techie moves that end up being anti-patterns (by being attention-funnels that drive further sales to the people who don't need it, and starve the ones who do). There's a LOT of stuff they do right, and some of this they're historically famous for (the QA angle was the thing that famously let them buck the videogame crash of the 80s, in contrast to the prior vendors who had no qualms about allowing outright broken/unplayable games on their devices). This stuff is important. Generally what makes markets like this work isn't a technological problem, but a social/political problem. Nintendo understands that game devs need to make a living, but apple and google treat them as cannon fodder, and it has consequences for the quality of work. If you don't get this right, people will make a bunch of shallow stuff that's a low upfront investment (Angry Birds, Monument Valley, etc), but you'll have shockingly few "deep" games like BotW, because nobody can stomach that risk, especially when they'd have to make an insane number of sales to break even at (presumed) lower prices.