4 ms·

they stumbled on the perfect form factor. why rock the boat?

• mcphage 3y ago
  Nintendo is like simulated annealing with high temperature—they'll drop successful designs in favor of something new, to prevent getting stuck at a local maximum. The Gameboy Advance SP was a fantastic design, and then dropped it in favor of the Nintendo DS. That was a good change.
• slothtrop 3y ago
  Newly increased competition with the Steam Deck and others, and more than one iteration of the Switch already. Maybe a novelty factor to draw in consumers. The Wii U bombed, a console that played it safe, and the story we're told is it was because the name confused consumers / was improperly marketed. I'm not sure that's the whole picture, but this is a risk yet again with the release of the OLED and Switch lite not that long ago. They still have the "Nintendo advantage" of their products being unique and family-oriented on the market, but that's not always enough. At any rate the timing seems to be right (notwithstanding supply issues), it's roughly a decade since the Switch was originally released. Sony and MSFT already made the jump. Another consideration: I'm not sure what the innovation/novelty options are at this point. Maybe they don't have much of a choice but to capitalize on a rock-solid 1st party line-up. Right now I think Nintendo does couch co-op better than anyone else, so they could drive that even further.