Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal felt like a lightning bolt delivered straight from Zeus himself for everyone except, well, most people. In fact, since the console – which fans have spent years clamoring for – looks so much like its predecessor, some analysts predict it’ll have trouble appealing to a general audience.
“I can imagine ‘normies’ being a bit confused,” gaming industry consultant Serkan Toto tells GamesRadar+. “The device is bigger than the original Switch, but not comically large. The form factor, button layout, and overall design are very similar to Switch 1, so I can imagine issues arising when potential mainstream buyers look at the new device.”
I find these articles pretty funny and out of touch with every human being I know. I saw the media shit on the Switch 2, but it was exactly what I expected so I asked all my friends with a switch how they felt. Every single one plans on buying the new one at or near release. Many will be buying two so they can play with spouses or their kids. The tally for purchases in my small middle-aged friend group alone is over 50. Nintendo releases too many amazing exclusive games for us to ignore. I know I can turn to emulation, but I prefer to do that for older games that already made their profit so I can support the devs that make me happy.
Idiots. This isn’t the Wii U, it’ll be fine
When you see articles with “analysts say…” these days, it’s often just a wordy rewrite of some guy’s twitter post. Gotta be careful
People will probrally say “bigger number better” and blindly buy it even though it probrally wont offer much over the Switch 1.
This bozo thinks it’s just gonna be a picture of the switch on the box instead of a huge mario kart graphic. Kids will ask for switch 2 and parents will buy switch 2. That’s the beginning and end of the decision making on getting it. It’s gonna be wildly sold out no matter how many Nintendo can get to retailers.
The Switch 2 is very likely to struggle, but this consultant’s reasoning is dumb as fuck, and belittlies average gamers as ‘normies’. His analysis of why it will struggle, and why the WiiU failed is off base. The average person doesn’t look at the PS5 and PS4 and go “but why, they look the same.”, they understand that its the updated version with imrpovements.
Nintendo is going to struggle due to:
- Handheld PC alternatives that outperform and have much larger game libraries for similar cost.
- Pissing off the emulation crowd
- Pissing off fans for fan project shutdowns
- Pissing off fans of Smash Bros Melee
- Joycon drift denial
- Stealing fan art.
- Failing to adapt to a rapidly changing gaming market.
- 500 other things.
Those concerns are so super niche, I doubt they’ll be a big problem for Nintendo. I know it may not seem that way, but handheld PCs are not a widespread product.
Yet. There is a ton of models coming out, some more shown army CES, and the SteamOS news shows the direction of what low end gaming laptops are going to become over the next 2-5 years.
As an indsutry insider, I there is lots of people discussing this and more studios and publishers starting to look into the cost/benefit analysis of getting Steamdeck Verified.
Nintendo has been staunchly anti-emulation since even before the N64 launched, and it hasn’t hurt them yet.
I’m a proud Steam Deck owner, and I’ll be the first to admit that I predominantly use it to emulate my old games collection (PS1-3 & PSP), plus SNES out of sheer spite at Nintendo.
However, my relatively tech-savvy relatives (even those in their 20s), baulk at something as complex as SteamOS.
I think Nintendo’s safe for at least one more console generation, before the normies get on the portable-PC wagon.
Bro like maybe 5 people care about anything you listed and 4 of them will still buy the switch 2
Yep. Hardly any of that registers as a blip on the mass market. People have been calling for Nintendo to give up on hardware and just make games for other platforms for decades. Then the DS line happened. And then the Wii. And then the Switch. Each one pushed the boundaries of what the gaming space could be, despite the spec nerds raging at the lack of horsepower.
Nintendo does a lot of shady shit, but once Sega exited the market they were the only true gaming company left in the console space. PlayStation? Xbox? Just a small part of larger corporate empires.
I’m fucking thrilled that Steam picked up on the hybrid format. Not everyone wants to screw around with maintaining a PC. I was in corporate IT for 25 years and want nothing to do with any of it anymore. Enormous PC game library, consolized experience, and a big push to Linux, all with the Deck? That’s awesome from every angle. It’s always good to have more options. And if they can sell a hundred million more units, Nintendo might start having a problem. Until then, I’m pretty sure they’re just going to continue to print money.
Your first point hit the mark, but boy did the rest drop off quick.
Nintendo might struggle with a percentage of the hard-core gaming community for those reasons, but the general public does not care about (or is aware of) any of those things. Little Timmy and his parents have no fucking clue what a Yuzu is.
Here are this guy’s other “predictions”
https://www.serkantoto.com/2025/01/10/global-game-business-2025/
Including stunning prognostications like this
Nintendo will not have enough consoles to sell Despite Nintendo’s pledge and best efforts, the new device will sell out very quickly and not be available for months in 2025. It will be even worse than 2017 when the Switch launched. Furthermore, the name will be Switch 2. I also expect deep price cuts for the original Switch in 2025.
Putting the “banal” in analyst.
🅱️analyst
Really?
“Normies?”
looks around for telltale signs that we’ve entered 4Chan. Like shit streaks on the walls.
If buyers can handle whatever X Box’s naming convention is then I’m sure they can handle previous gaming console name plus one.
That’s the neat part: they can’t :^)
Gamestops during the Xbox Series launch were a mess, parents weren’t sure which “Xbox” was the Xbox their kid wanted, and people ended up walking out of stores with Xbox One S boxes when they were asked for a Series S 🤣
To be fair, Microsoft’s actively self-sabotaging marketing didn’t help with their push to blend every model’s identity together as “The Xbox” (even before last year’s “This is an Xbox” campaign), so maybe it’s not the fairest example lol
Xbox “Series” is the stupidest name for a mainstream game console since the WiiU. And the Xbox One is pretty dumb, too.
How do I look up games for the original Xbox? People used to call it the Xbox 1 when the 360 came out.
What about Xbox-exclusive games? Well, can’t call them Xbox series anymore.
They cemented themselves as a permanent underdog after trying to keep up with Sony. It worked for the PS360 era, but it seems they’ve been getting lost ever since then.
If “normies” are able to buy a Playstation 5 after having bought a PS4, 3, 2 and 1, Then I think Nintendo is going to be just fine.
The reveal trailer has almost 20 million views BTW.
Yeah, people really have a big problem understanding “I’ll buy the latest, since it’s the best, number is bigger” . Concepts like “ok, all previous stuff works but new stuff only works here”. Such crazy concepts. The GBC was a flop because GB already existed.
I think Gen X parents and younger are familiar with how the newest edition of a computer is “better” than previous ones. I dont see this being an issue.
It also wasn’t an issue with the GB and DS lines, and the Switch notoriously follows the handheld pattern quite closely, so I don’t think this will be an issue.
I think the GB and DS Lineup was much more difficult.
I think with Nintendo’s attack on emulators and stuff, I’m going to finally crack my OG switch (the unpatchable one) and rip all of my games and buy a Steamdeck, honestly. I heard emulation there is great, and I’ve already backed up all of the emulators since before they were taken down.
If the Switch 2 is backwards compatible and can play the OG switch games; then we know exactly WHY they started the crackdown - because likely the same methods as before will work just fine against the Switch 2 as well.
I won’t pirate the games, but I don’t think I’m gonna worry about my old switch being banned from their online network any longer either. Especially after they shut down the old DS network.
