<story><title>Nintendo Switch</title><url>https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericzawo</author><text>That[1] was masterful marketing of an upcoming videogame console on all fronts. From the beginning it emphasises mobility with a (hopefully good!) smartphone app to manage online&amp;#x2F;local wifi matches, as well as multiple levels of play while on the go. It&amp;#x27;s reasonably priced (matches current generation in total at the register) and has an incredibly diverse range of titles to be excited about this calendar year. It managed to loop &amp;quot;The Americas&amp;quot; in with a Reggie appearance that worked well, and upsold Skyrim and Fifa, two gigantic American games with international appeal. They also talked up Dragon Quest X, which is an MMORPG, launching on Switch, as well as Dragon Quest XI, which until tonight was a PS4 exclusive.&lt;p&gt;Essentially, they placed value squarely in the face of everything your PC&amp;#x2F;enthusiast-level gaming rig won&amp;#x27;t ever replace. The ability to pick up and play elsewhere. Like the Wii, it&amp;#x27;s not even trying to compete with the current crop of consoles. It&amp;#x27;s value proposition will be placed somewhere a bit obtusely, between your mobile phone and everything else you leave at home. Yes, this obviously functions as a home console as well, but I can&amp;#x27;t help but suspect Nintendo absolutely meant to go for what makes handhelds great. If any company can do it, they can. So what if it  cannibalises their current 3DS offerings? Pokemon seems to be going strong with its fanbase.&lt;p&gt;The whole presentation, from the demonstration of the hardware to especially the  finishing trademark &amp;quot;One more thing!&amp;quot; with Zelda making a predictable but nonetheless amazing launch date. It&amp;#x27;s a strategy that worked wonders for the Wii, remember, so why not?&lt;p&gt;Nintendo absolutely killed it, and I&amp;#x27;ll be keeping a really close eye on this thing. But the marketing and presentation was honestly textbook.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;uuC4YLLkqME?t=33m20s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;uuC4YLLkqME?t=33m20s&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>agd</author><text>&amp;#x27;Nintendo absolutely killed it&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m afraid I have to disagree. Here&amp;#x27;s why:&lt;p&gt;- price: much more expensive than most people were expecting (£280 vs for example, £200 for a PS4 with a game)&lt;p&gt;- battery life: potentially only 2.5 hours? Really not good enough for a handheld.&lt;p&gt;- storage: only 32gb, will run out very quickly&lt;p&gt;- online offering weak vs ps4&amp;#x2F;xbox as only NES&amp;#x2F;SNES games and you only get them for a month&lt;p&gt;- very few titles on launch and key titles (e.g. Skyrim) delayed until much later in the year&lt;p&gt;Battery life and price are the real killers for me. I can see Nintendo slashing the price soon, just like they had to with the 3DS.&lt;p&gt;Edit: It seems like many others weren&amp;#x27;t impressed either. e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eurogamer.net&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2017-01-13-nintendos-precarious-reveal-runs-risk-of-switching-off-fans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eurogamer.net&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2017-01-13-nintendos-preca...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Nintendo Switch</title><url>https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericzawo</author><text>That[1] was masterful marketing of an upcoming videogame console on all fronts. From the beginning it emphasises mobility with a (hopefully good!) smartphone app to manage online&amp;#x2F;local wifi matches, as well as multiple levels of play while on the go. It&amp;#x27;s reasonably priced (matches current generation in total at the register) and has an incredibly diverse range of titles to be excited about this calendar year. It managed to loop &amp;quot;The Americas&amp;quot; in with a Reggie appearance that worked well, and upsold Skyrim and Fifa, two gigantic American games with international appeal. They also talked up Dragon Quest X, which is an MMORPG, launching on Switch, as well as Dragon Quest XI, which until tonight was a PS4 exclusive.&lt;p&gt;Essentially, they placed value squarely in the face of everything your PC&amp;#x2F;enthusiast-level gaming rig won&amp;#x27;t ever replace. The ability to pick up and play elsewhere. Like the Wii, it&amp;#x27;s not even trying to compete with the current crop of consoles. It&amp;#x27;s value proposition will be placed somewhere a bit obtusely, between your mobile phone and everything else you leave at home. Yes, this obviously functions as a home console as well, but I can&amp;#x27;t help but suspect Nintendo absolutely meant to go for what makes handhelds great. If any company can do it, they can. So what if it  cannibalises their current 3DS offerings? Pokemon seems to be going strong with its fanbase.&lt;p&gt;The whole presentation, from the demonstration of the hardware to especially the  finishing trademark &amp;quot;One more thing!&amp;quot; with Zelda making a predictable but nonetheless amazing launch date. It&amp;#x27;s a strategy that worked wonders for the Wii, remember, so why not?&lt;p&gt;Nintendo absolutely killed it, and I&amp;#x27;ll be keeping a really close eye on this thing. But the marketing and presentation was honestly textbook.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;uuC4YLLkqME?t=33m20s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;uuC4YLLkqME?t=33m20s&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chalupa-man</author><text>I do want to point out that it matches current consoles in the US, but is actually going to be significantly more expensive than anything on the market in many countries. Where I am, for example, if they release at exactly the US price -- which they won&amp;#x27;t, prices always get inflated -- a Switch will cost more than a PS4 that comes packed with Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Dishonored 2, three hit games.&lt;p&gt;On top of this, I think they&amp;#x27;ve made a fatal flaw when it comes to handheld pricing. If you remember, the 3DS launched at $250, tanked hard, and received a whopping 33% price cut only 4 months after it launched, followed by the announcement of the new 2DS which would be even cheaper. One of the things Nintendo produced the 2DS is because they found, to their great surprise, that almost 80% of 3DS customers outside Japan never took their 3DS outside the home. They weren&amp;#x27;t buying it for portability, like Japanese customers usually did; they were buying it because it was the cheapest way to play videogames, only a third the price of a console and with games that were half the price of console games (in many countries even less). Right now I can buy a 2DS for 105 and brand-new games for 40 where an Xbox One is 400 and games are 80 - 100. That&amp;#x27;s a big reason many of my friends have one.&lt;p&gt;Then note that they&amp;#x27;ve also priced the Switch above the iPad Mini. Most handhelds are bought by parents for kids. If parents see that they can get an iPad for less than the price of this new console, they&amp;#x27;re very likely to: iPads are seen as luxury products with a wider variety of uses and many cheap games, and the iPad Mini is even more portable. This is the first handheld Nintendo have announced since iPads hit the market and I worry they haven&amp;#x27;t taken this into account.&lt;p&gt;For those customers, who make up a majority of 3DS customers worldwide, the Switch is a non-starter; it&amp;#x27;s likely to be considerably more expensive than its rivals, and those rivals happen to have either larger libraries, greater popularity, free online, and better graphics (Xbox One&amp;#x2F;PS4) or a luxury image, greater portability, lower software costs, and a wider variety of uses including educational uses (iPad Mini). I&amp;#x27;m really hoping Nintendo succeeds, because I&amp;#x27;m a big fan of theirs, but I worry they have totally killed the big draws to handhelds.</text></comment>