TLDR AT BOTTOM
This is more or less what I was thinking about and in a nut shell it's the concept of "aspirational marketing". That is the concept that we all as consumers buy shit based on our projected aspirations for an item, what we think we we will do with it and what it can do for us. The marketing plays up these use cases cause they know we buy shit we don't need or won't use in the way we aspire to all the time.
Most people will deny that they succumb to aspirational consumerism and mabey some do but the fact is we all buy shit that we thought was a great idea at the time and we justify it to ourselves by running through all the "useful" ways we could potentially use it. The amount of shit I've wasted money on over the years that seemed like a good idea at the time is ridiculous (shudder) and I wouldn't even say I'm the kind of person who splashes cash on a whim simply cause I don't have a lot of spare cash..... See denial.
Anyhow! The reason Nintendo hit lightning in a bottle with the wii is because it was high on the aspirational marketing scale. Move around while gaming? Sure, get fit while gaming? Sure, your grandma can use it? Sure, it's cheap and will be a great family/party console? Sure.
The switch while I don't think it has quite the same aspirational pull as the wii, it still rates high on the aspirational scale. There were no kids shown in the reveal but they didn't need to. Those two guys playing in the back of the van? Every parent (myself included) instantly thought "great use case to keep the kids quite on car journey" the fact that this thing will most likely have Netflix and YouTube and a beastly battery required for playing games but watching YouTube should see it last forever... Yep another aspiration point. That's why the reveal was full of seemingly very edge cases that seemed a bit ridiculous. It's because they are trying drive the aspirational aspects of this device home.
Now! Does it matter much if the device isn't used by the majority in the way they they projected when they were justifying it to themselves beforehand? No of course it doesn't Nintendo will allready have your fucking money. The wii u didn't have enough or let's face it, any of these advantages. He'll most people didn't even know it existed as a standalone product.
It doesn't guarantee that the switch will be successful but it does mean that a crucial market for Nintendo which is the casual market will be more amenable to this device. If the price point is meets that sweetspot of affordability then this thing will sell well. The longer tail on this thing will be 3ds upgrades over time should make the switch (sorry).
The argument over where this thing is powerfull enough to appeal to core gamers is almost a moot point. We know that the Nintendo fans of which there are at least 13 million who bought the wii u ( and you had to be a fan to buy that thing) and a fairly healthy stream of aspirational buyers and this thing will probably sell enough to make porting games worth it for developers. Assuming it is easy to develop for and all indications are that it is. This in turn should bring in more core gamers who would like to think they could play their games on the go, which they may not but again, it doesn't matter cause Nintendo allready has their money.
Unless Nintendo unnecessarily gimp this thing severely (let's face it its Nintendo that very well could) to the point of rendering it useless for the conceivable aspersions of buyers then I think it will sell bucket loads. He'll my partner who normally doesn't have an affinity for gadgets or technology and baulks at the idea of another gadget of some kind coming into the house saw the reveal and thought it would be a sensible and crucially, useful purchase. Trust me if it passes that test then this things on to something.
Now I could be completely wrong and quite often am but I get the sense that the switches way of running the same game but in portable mode is to reduce the resolution at which the game is output. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't a drop down in resolution from 1080p to 720p require one quarter the processing muscle to achieve. I know that 4k for instance is 4 times the resolution and therefor 4 times more pixels to push than full HD 1080p. That's why 1080p gaming is a synch for modern gaming cards but 4k is almost undo able even for the strongest of pc setups. The step up is huge. Also the step down to 720p is huge that's how I think Nintendo will achieve exactly the same game as was on the Xbox, were developers don't have to change the game i any meaningful way. It just gets run at a lower resolution which on a smaller screen doesn't look as bad as it would on a TV. From what I've seen the SOC from nividia assuming the newer pascal modules will be more than able to do that.
I don't think Pepe realise how much extra or in this case less graphical horsepower is required when you jump from one HD standard to the next. I have an old pc that my son plays some games on and no amount of tweaking game graphical settings can get it to make a game run at playable levels on a 1080p TV. However don't touch any of that stuff and just lower the resolution to 720p and boom the game is playable. 720p is a clever way to run demanding modern games with more modest hardware, and developers won't have to change their games in any way.
All this is of course assuming that Nintendo doesn't gimp the SOC in an attempt to per long battery life beyond a maximum of 3 to 4 hours. I don't think they should. I think they should sell it on the basis that you take call of duty on the go but at lower resolution. Yes you only have three hours battery, but who the fuck has more than three hours in which to play video games in a situation we're they wont be near a power socket.?
(edit) Another important point about the switch is that is much more slick looking than I was expecting from Nintendo. It looks like a product you might actually aspire to own. Instead of a cheap children's toy. Thus is far more important than most people credit. I think the Xbox recent reassurance in sales being the top selling console over the last three months when it had been selling much less than the ps4 practically every month since launch and despite being a good bit more underpowered than the ps4 it's suddenly the top dog. The reason? It was made smaller and got a new coat of paint, that's it. Yes it got hdr, but so did the on ps4 via firmware update and I doubt most buying either console even know what hdr even is. The point is looks matter to the casual buyer with some spare cash, and this thing looks infinitely more desirable than the wii u.
Also on the power of the system. I think Sony and Xbox may have made the acceptance of a console that mabey not be on par with the current generation of consoles more acceptable. What I mean is they have diluted the very notion of console generations by introducing more powerful versions of their own systems. This means they have inferior powered consoles to the top of the line ones. The very notion of what is the current state of the art in console graphics is now a situational concern rather that a black and white answer.
This is helpful to Nintendo cause it smudges that hard line that is used as a stick with which people can beat each other with in the console wars. Generations and the hard line between each one is now also smudged. This is helpful to Nintendo cause they have been coming out with new stuff around the mid point of the other console lives. Now the og ps4 is more powerful than the Xbox one, but the Scorpio is more powerfull than ps4 pro. All the while developers who only had to worry about the pc and various levels of graphical performance now have to integrate it into their work flow as a matter of course for all systems now means one more of varying graphical horsepower won't mean as much as it might have say 2 years ago. And I dare say it will be more acceptable to many that you can have inferior graphical hardware but still enjoy games at the level your buying at.
Tldr..... The switches timing on release its aspirational nature in relation to wii u, the reduction in resolution as a means to manage graphical horsepower requirements and the blurring of the console generations and power requirements means Nintendo has a real shot with the switch.
Please excuse the long rambling post. I had wanted to gather my thoughts on the switch in a more comprehensive manner. Somewhere having been here there and everywhere posting bits and pieces.
Submitted by punkgritty | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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