Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo Switch (Japanese: ニンテンドースイッチ Hepburn: Nintendō Suitchi?) is an upcoming video game console developed by Nintendo, and the company's seventh major home console. Originally known in development as the NX, it was officially unveiled on October 20, 2016 and is scheduled for release worldwide on March 3, 2017.
The Switch is considered by Nintendo as a "hybrid" console. It is designed primarily as a home console with the main Console unit inserted onto a docking station to connect to a television. Alternatively, the Console can be removed from the Dock and function similar to a personal tablet computer through its LCD touchscreen, or placed in a standalone tabletop mode to be playable by several people. The Switch's most distinguishable features are the Joy-Con wireless controllers that include standard buttons and a directional joystick for user input, motion sensing, and high-definition tactile feedback. The Joy-Con can attach to both sides of the Console to support handheld-style play, connected to a Grip accessory to provide a traditional home console gamepad form, or used individually in the hand like Nintendo's Wii Remote. The Switch supports both physical flash ROM cartridges and digital content for games and software, and will not use region locking.
From 2014, Nintendo had several quarters of financial losses mainly due to poor sales of its previous console, the Wii U, as well as market competition from the mobile gaming sector. Then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata set into motion steps that would lead the company to embrace mobile gaming and develop new hardware to create a novel experience from the Wii U. The Switch's design was aimed to appeal to a wider demographic of video game players through the multiple modes of use, while retaining Nintendo's hardware uniqueness and innovation. Nintendo has sought support of many third-party developers and publishers to help build out the Switch's game library alongside Nintendo's own first-party titles, with over 100 titles under development by 70 developers as of January 2017.
History
Development
Nintendo saw 2014 as one of its largest financial losses in its modern history, attributed to weak hardware sales against mobile gaming.[1] Previously, the company had been hesitant about this market, with then-president Satoru Iwata considering that they would "cease to be Nintendo" and lose their identity if they attempted to enter it.[2]About three years prior to the Switch's announcement, Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima, Genyo Takeda, and Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a strategy for revitalizing Nintendo's business model, which included approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing [their] intellectual property".[3]Prior to his death, Iwata was able to secure a business alliance with Japanese mobile provider DeNA to develop mobile titles based on Nintendo's first-party franchises, believing this approach would not compromise their integrity.[4][5] Following Iwata's death in July 2015, Kimishima was named as president of Nintendo, while Miyamoto was promoted to the title of "Creative Fellow".[3]
Kimishima stated that when Nintendo was evaluating what new hardware they wanted to produce, they "didn't just want a successor" to either the Nintendo 3DS or Wii U, but instead asked "what kind of new experience can we create?"[3] In an interview with Asahi Shimbun, Kimishima stated that the Switch was designed to provide a "new way to play" that would "have a larger impact than the Wii U".[6][7][8] Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé emphasized the console's appeal as a device that would provide gamers the option to play at home or on the go, and noted that it would enable developers to create new types of games.[9]Shinya Takahashi, the general manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development division, considered that the Switch's design addresses the cultural differences between Western and Japanese gamers, particularly students; while Japanese students generally spend more time together after school and where gaming is integral to that social time, Western students tend to have busier schedules that limit this, making the portability features of the Switch capable of meeting both lifestyles.[10] In some cases, games for the Switch are designed to encourage social interactions in groups, such as 1-2-Switch which requires player to look face-to-face rather than at the screen. Kimishima said that as Nintendo is an entertainment company, they see games on the Switch that encourage enjoyable social interactions such as these as supporting their ultimate goals.[11] The "Switch" name was selected not only to refer to the console's ability to switch from handheld to home console modes, but as to present "the idea of being a 'switch' that will flip and change the way people experience entertainment in their daily lives".[12]
The development of the Switch continued Nintendo's blue ocean approach for the competitive console marketplace. Rather than trying to compete feature-for-feature with Microsoft or Sony's offerings, Fils-Aimé said that Nintedo's goal for the Switch was in "creating products and experiences that are unique and really can't be copied by our competition".[13] Takahashi said that for Nintendo, "we feel like we're an entertainment company rather than necessarily a games or a graphics company", and described the Switch as "a system that really has the best balance of being able to create fun and new ways to play, but doing so with the graphic quality that's still good enough while also being one that's easy to develop for."[10] Miyamoto said that some broad concepts of the Switch extend from the "lateral thinking with seasoned technology" design philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi that Nintendo has used over the last couple of decades.[14]
Yoshiaki Koizumi served as the general producer of the Switch during development.[10] According to Miyamoto, the Switch's development within Nintendo was headed by younger employees, with him saying "...it's really been them that have put this forward and designed this system".[15]Miyamoto, Takeda, and Iwata were less involved, but provided necessary oversight on the Switch's development principally around the cost of implementing new features that would make the Switch stand out.[14] For Miyamoto, his limited involvement allowed him to spend more time on Nintendo's software titles being developed at the time, such as Super Mario Run.[15]
The first public news of the Switch hardware was alongside the announcement of Nintendo and DeNA's partnership on March 17, 2015. At this stage, Nintendo referred to the console under the codename "NX", and described it as a "brand new concept".[16] At an investor's meeting in April 2016, Nintendo announced that it planned to release the NX worldwide in March 2017.[17][18] While Nintendo did not unveil the NX's hardware at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 in June, it did announce that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was originally announced as Wii U-exclusive, would also be released for the NX. At a Nintendo shareholders' meeting following the conference, Miyamoto stated that the company had concerns that competitors could copy ideas from the NX if they revealed it too soon.[19][20] The following month, rumors began to surface surrounding the nature of the console, including its use of Nvidia Tegra hardware, and being a "hybrid" device intended for both home and mobile use.[21][22][23]
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