Polygon: Nintendo is already repeating the Wii U's mistakes with Switch

Roufianos said:
Instead they're more expensive than the competition and their accessory pricing is absurd.
Click to expand...

I've been bitching about pricey accessories, but what's the Switch Pro Controller going for? $70? It's got gyro sensors in it for aiming. So it's got something right? Sony's got a touchscreen on their controller.

What the hell does a blue or purple Xbox One controller have that justifies a $70-$75 price point?? It doesn't do anything that an Xbox 360 controller couldn't do. It's featureless, but because of a theme or color it's $70-$75?!!
 
Hoo-doo said:
Based on? The library certainly isn't pulling in many non-nintendo gamers I feel.
Click to expand...
I swear some of y'all are just anti -Nintendo. I'm tired of the bad launch line up comment. Please tell me the best launch line for a console that had a flag ship like Zelda. The hype for switch is way bigger than it was for Wii U. I've seen ppl at work hype for it and they haven't own a ninty console since the nes. Please don't base off sales of a system from gaf, we aren't the world
 
Gutss said:
And 1 and done, this is way way different from wii u, polygon is dillusional.
Click to expand...

It doesn't tell us much actually. I can show you a chart, which would indicate that the Wii U is more popular.

screenshot2017-02-18anprgs.png
Click to expand...

Google Trend comparisons are pointless the way they are used here as "evidence".


I swear some of y'all are just anti -Nintendo. I'm tired of the bad launch line up comment. Please tell me the best launch line for a console that had a flag ship like Zelda. The hype for switch is way bigger than it was for Wii U. I've seen ppl at work hype for it and they haven't own a ninty console since the nes. Please don't base off sales of a system from gaf, we aren't the world
Click to expand...

If we were, then sales of Switch would be exploding and sales of Wii U would've been much better.
 
TheOnlyOneHeEverFeared said:
It is riddiculous we had to get so much infomation from leaks and that guy who got it early. Nintendo haven't improved their communications at all.

But I always have and always will give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt frankly, so I don't care how much info we're waiting for, I'll be at a midnight launch with bells on.
Click to expand...
lolol. No. The Internet already have a clearly idia of what the Switch is... Did you were around when the Wii U was announced? Btw... For the masses the OS info is not important at all...
 
Blunoise said:
I swear some of y'all are just anti -Nintendo. I'm tired of the bad launch line up comment. Please tell me the best launch line for a console that had a flag ship like Zelda. The hype for switch is way bigger than it was for Wii U. I've seen ppl at work hype for it and they haven't own a ninty console since the nes. Please don't base off sales of a system from gaf, we aren't the world
Click to expand...

I'm explicitly not basing this on GAF. I think there's actually a bit of hype for Switch over here.

I'm thinking about the mass market, and what they are going to be doing come march third.
 
Kazuma Kiryu said:
This needs to become a thing. What feeling? Good preorders?
Click to expand...
If you are a gamer, and you have a lot of friends that are gamers and they are not Nintendo fans you are going to get the idea. All of my friends have interest or they already preorded a Switch. Only two with the Wii U. This time is totally different.
 
They are definitely repeating some of the mistakes, but the Wii U launch was so bad that this really is just a fraction of it. Let alone the fact that the Switch actually makes sense as a gaming device, whereas the Wii U never really got past the "well I really can't see the point of this" phase.
 
LordOcidax said:
lolol. No. The Internet already have a clearly idia of what the Switch is... Did you were around when the Wii U was announced? Btw... For the masses the OS info is not important at all...
Click to expand...

Really? How have they improved it? We've been getting drip feed infomation from various sources since October. Less than 2 weeks till launch and Nintendo have told us virtually nothing about the e-shop, virtual console, online services, the OS. Anything we know has come from other sources.

And yes I was around at Wii U launch.
 
You could say the Switch's mistakes are the mistakes you see in pretty much every Nintendo console. It doesn't however make the mistakes that actually killed the Wii U so that's a huge boon.
 
Blunoise said:
I swear some of y'all are just anti -Nintendo. I'm tired of the bad launch line up comment. Please tell me the best launch line for a console that had a flag ship like Zelda. The hype for switch is way bigger than it was for Wii U. I've seen ppl at work hype for it and they haven't own a ninty console since the nes. Please don't base off sales of a system from gaf, we aren't the world
Click to expand...

One game that isn't even exclusive to the console doesn't fill up the launch "lineup". Do you notice the amount of incredibly popular games in different genres? Everyone has different tastes, the chances of those tastes being satisfied is much lower on the Switch than most console launches. Wii U/PS4/XB1 had variety at launch, the switch doesn't. That's why people call the lineup bad.
 
I dunno what Polygon thinks its doing, but it needs to get its act together cause that's a nintendoomed article without a magical, busted Mario Kart graph.
 
They're betting the farm on Zelda ,but the launch line up is abysmal.

I mean PS4 Q1 2017 has Horizon,NieR,Nioh,For Honor, and Resident 7 off the top of my head. Far superior to what you can get on the Switch AND Cheaper.

For an average consumer,there really is no logical reason to run out to get a switch now.

But we'll see.Perhaps people will be inexplicably excited for it.
 
LordOcidax said:
If you are a gamer, and you have a lot of friends that are gamers and they are not Nintendo fans you are going to get the idea. All of my friends have interest or they already preorded a Switch. Only two with the Wii U. This time is totally different.
Click to expand...
No offence, but this means nothing. From the 20 people that I play almost daily on my PS4, either Destiny or OW, no one could give two shits about the Switch.

At this point it's really hard to make a prediction, launch will of course be a success but we should make a better analysis by the end of the year. This thing needs momentum.
 
airmangataosenai said:
Aimed at the hardcore... how? Outside of Zelda it is nothing but last gen ports this year other than Splatoon and Mario. The other titles like 1-2 and Arms... Are you seriously going to say those are aimed at the hardcore audience. This is a system which lacks any sort of consistent vision other than the one accepted by the remaining loyalists for the company who will accept whatever talking points Nintendo puts out even when they are contradictory such as with both Switch and WiiU.

Their roll-out for this product is embarassing even taking into account low expectations.
Click to expand...

There's a pretty good Wired article on Nintendo targeting hardcore fans of theirs with the Switch
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/nintendo-switch-analysis/

I think a lot of Nintendo fans who skipped the Wii U and were content with a 3DS could be tempted with a Switch. And Nintendo could always expand their focus later on.
 
LordOcidax said:
If you are a gamer, and you have a lot of friends that are gamers and they are not Nintendo fans you are going to get the idea. All of my friends have interest or they already preorded a Switch. Only two with the Wii U. This time is totally different.
Click to expand...

People I know that are gamers: Don't care.
People I know that are not gamers: Don't even know about it.
 
LordOcidax said:
If you are a gamer, and you have a lot of friends that are gamers and they are not Nintendo fans you are going to get the idea. All of my friends have interest or they already preorded a Switch. Only two with the Wii U. This time is totally different.
Click to expand...

Anecdotal tbh. As is this. I have a large social group of friends who are into gaming and I'm the only one that's even looking this console up. They wouldn't even know when it was launching if it wasn't for me. Wait, am I the Karen in this situation? Oh god.
 
Famassu said:
It won't be another Wii U 2.0. It's a handheld. It will be popular in Japan. That alone will propel it to a much bigger success than Wii U. That popularity will eventually transition all/most of the current 3DS support + Vita support from publishers pushing handheld content to Switch support. It might take a year or two but even if Switch starts off a bit weak, it can do a comeback much like 3DS did despite it having a very weak first 1-2 years.

And don't forget Switch is getting some form of Dragon Quest XI, possibly in 2017 already. That will drive sales in Japan and encourage increased support from at least Japanese developers.

Not to forget that Nintendo can start focusing on a single platform (they still support 3DS at the moment, but that support will start to fade in 2017-2018 as they start moving more & more of their teams to Switch and not to new 3DS projects anymore). I'd imagine that would lead to Nintendo's Switch support eventually being stronger than Wii U one since they don't have to divide their attention between two console-level platforms after some point.
Click to expand...

Is ther any reason the switch won't dominate in japan
 
I know current Polygon mostly sucks but seriously, it feels like Nintendo is hoping to just soft release this into the wild and have early adopters beta test for 6 months.

If we don't get a Direct soon on the online components, UI, Virtual Console, etc I'm thinking about flipping my preorder.
 
I have no idea if Switch will be a success or failure. I believe in it, it feels like the hype is real, and Nintendo seem confident.. At the same time I really liked Wii U as well, loved the potential of the two screens, but overestimated developers ability and desire to be creative. I honestly don't believe the online system was the problem. If the momentum from Mario Kart 8 had been kept, if NSMBU/SM3DW hadn't been perceived as Wii/3DS ports, if Super Mario Maker and Minecraft had been there sooner, if the HD Zeldas didn't come to market as apologies for delaying the main game, if they had SW partners with a wider appeal than "fan favourite" Platinum. It's not each "if…" individually, but the sum of them all.

At launch we can see that the 3rd party issue still is there. EA does not seem to believe. FIFA18 for Switch looks like even more of an insult than FIFA13 for Wii U was. I'd be surprised if Ultimate Team is part of it. They will fail at the FPS genre. Car racing has never had a place with Nintendo. Any online competitive game unless it's their own IP is doubtful at best.

Again, the hype might be real, but when the "if"s start adding up, then we're back to the same thing that's been the problem with every single Nintendo console since the N64 (including Wii, which was a phenomenon for other reasons), that you just don't know if or when a 3rd party multiplatform game will show up. Even with GameCube, where they had the hardware to be competitive, it was still a lottery if a game was PS2/XB/GCN or just PS2/XB.

As a console owner, and never knowing if you need another console to play a certain game, it's the biggest problem Nintendo have, and I don't see Switch as the solution. It might become wildly successful for other reasons (like Wii), but the 3rd party software problem remains as the cancer they cannot find the cure for.
 
I think comparisons with the Wii U are far fetched. Nobody thinks the Switch is an add on for the 3DS, for example.
 
TheOnlyOneHeEverFeared said:
Really? How have they improved it? We've been getting drip feed infomation from various sources since October. Less than 2 weeks till launch and Nintendo have told us virtually nothing about the e-shop, virtual console, online services, the OS. Anything we know has come from other sources.

And yes I was around at Wii U launch.
Click to expand...
Actually in almost everything... from the hardware appeal to the communication of what the Switch is... also the marketing... (Everybody knows this) BTW they can fix the OS information with a simple direct the day before of the release... and again that kind of information is not that important for the casuals.. and the hardcore gamer community already has that info.
 
This article is clickbait. Ill be the first to say that with the current device landscape there is no guarantee the Switch will succeed, but when an author thinks Wii U failed primarily because of its online infrastructure and not because of a myriad of other horrible business decisions including branding and value proposition,it is clear he / she really has no idea what they are talking about or just wants clicks. And most of that article is about online infrastructure. Im sorry folks but whether a system can clearly communicate how it downloads things or how it plays via the internet stopped being a major consideration for adding the device to a consumers home about 5-10 years ago. Everything else is far more important.
 
Spyder_Monkey said:
No one gave a shit about the Wii U back in 2012, people are giving a shit about the Switch.
Click to expand...

Do they? In Europe at least there's very little coverage of it in mainstream media and everywhere I've checked have at no point run out of pre-orders. Anyone I tell that I've pre-ordered a "Switch" has never heard of it so much so that I'm now just defaulting to calling it "the new Nintendo console".
The PS4 launch was huge here, it had a great build up and everybody knew it was happening. This feels like it's going to pass by without anyone but the hardcore noticing.
 
Nintendo doesn't surprise me anymore. They are just so out of touch. I'm helpimg them get in touch by voting with my wallet.....and that vote is to not buy.
 
The Switch is a country mile ahead of Wii U in every department. Let's not get carried away with the negativity now. ;) In regards to online, yes they should have provided more details but being that this whole launch seems like a soft launch, I'm not really that surprised. The fact that they are charging for it now means (at the very least) they are taking it more seriously and will undoubtedly offer something more substantial than the Wii U service.
 
bomblord1 said:
I though the wiiU outsold both the PS4 and Xone in Japan?
Click to expand...

After Nintendo stopped supporting Wii U thr PS4 was able to overtake it in hardware sales. Software wise Wii U still has a strong lead, and PS4 has virtually no chance of having as many million sellers as the Wii U.
 
Salex_ said:
One game that isn't even exclusive to the console doesn't fill up the launch "lineup". Do you notice the amount of incredibly popular games in different genres? Everyone has different tastes that can be satisfied on other platforms. Wii U/PS4/XB1 had variety at launch, the switch doesn't. That's why people call the lineup bad.

Those who can see the reality aren't anti-Nintendo.
Click to expand...
I think you should give a second look at the launch month lineup. It's diverse and local multiplayer oriented. You may not like local multiplayer. If you do, the lineup around Zelda is a good start. Snipperclips is praised left and right. Fast RMX is enhanced on all sides from Wii U's version, from content to gameplay, and it will be one of the first HD Rumble showcases. Not bad at all. It's disappointing Bomberman didn't get more efforts from a technical point of view, but the core game is intact and it leverages the multiplayer advantages of Switch perfectly. Not bad at all to have. 1,2 Switch is one of the few party games released this year. It's a niche game, for different tastes.
 
An improved Wii U is still an improvement. Baby steps...

They just need to prove it won't be another drought machine, though. And so far they haven't.
 
It's always nice to have one big thread for trolling. And seeing who's creating, i'm not surprised.
Switch what ? Isn't that a Wii with detachable controllers ?
Doomed.
 
Betty said:
tumblr_okfta5lVv01r59oz4o2_400.gif


That's a pretty major oversight.

So if something like Overwatch comes to the Switch then you'll still be confined to playing it in your home unless you live in Japan or a busy city area with really generous hotspots.

Still got my pre-order locked but yeesh.
Click to expand...

One of the perks in England is that a lot of pubs provide free, local Wi-Fi. Other than that, Three in UK provides proper unlimited data but I think everyone is on it for that reason so speed is congested af
 
LordOcidax said:
If you are a gamer, and you have a lot of friends that are gamers and they are not Nintendo fans you are going to get the idea. All of my friends have interest or they already preorded a Switch. Only two with the Wii U. This time is totally different.
Click to expand...

Anecdotal evidence and preorder numbers aren't a good indication of how something will perform. Wii U preorders were strong and people were hyping it up as nintendo's first HD console that was going to attract the console/pc crowd.
 
Concerning their secretcy around their online, i can agree (though there wasn't much to keep secret about the Wii U's online). Everything else, no. What the Switch is, how the games work, everything but the online has been explained, both good and bad. The Wii U didn't even have any of that. it wasn't even known by most if it was a damned console or controller for Wii.
 
Betty said:
tumblr_okfta5lVv01r59oz4o2_400.gif


That's a pretty major oversight.

So if something like Overwatch comes to the Switch then you'll still be confined to playing it in your home unless you live in Japan or a busy city area with really generous hotspots.

Still got my pre-order locked but yeesh.
Click to expand...

There are people who actually preordered who didn't know it doesn't have LTE?
 
Piers said:
One of the perks in England is that a lot of pubs provide free, local Wi-Fi. Other than that, Three in UK provides proper unlimited data but I think everyone is on it for that reason so speed is congested af
Click to expand...

Three also gives you 30GB of tether data if you're on an unlimited data package. So you could hotspot your phone to Switches WiFi.
 
The biggest thing about this launch is that for all intent and purposes, it's a japanese launch. if you look at history of systems that come out in japan first. They generally come with 3-10 launch titles, with most of them being really niche and easily forgotten (kind of subjective, but you can take a look for yourself).

We've never had a winter launch here, and i'm surprised Nintendo did it, at least in the states. one thing i will say, the launch line up, while small, is very varied in terms of style of games you have available, with 3 new titles, one expansion new to consoles (Afterbirth+ is only on PC right now), and your typical (or not so typical since they are 5-10 years old lol).

I have no idea why the secrecy behind online or the UI and it baffles me as well. I thought Friday we would have got a tour of the Switch's interface. My original thought was to build hype through secrecy, but Nintendo forgets that it's doesn't have the same 'street cred' as MS and Sony. People trust the other two lol. When you've let down so many people so many times, holding things in secret will lead them to believe you got not worth showing, whether than you're holding something awesome back. Personally I think this is the time Nintendo needs to be as transparent as possible to the consumer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Nintendo Switch 2 is already in end users' hands. | Switch Locked behind Day 1 Patch
News  2 3
128
3K
blacktout replied
Palland for the Nintendo Switch
21
482
Ar¢tos replied
Nintendo Switch 2 is 75% ahead of the unit sales pace set by Switch 1 in the U.S.
2 3 4
162
1K
Sanepar replied
Hollow Cocoon Nintendo switch
5
161
Kataploom replied
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Switch/Switch 2 Comparison (Nintendo Life)
23
614
thatJohann replied
Top Bottom