![]() Deloitte, a consulting and financial advisory firm, projected Mobile gaming in 2016 would generate $35 billion in revenue, up 20% from last year. In fact, the 3DS has sold significantly below Sony’s PSP (~80 million). Even without the healthy competition once offered by Sony’s PSP, the 3DS pales in comparison to the DS - with a whopping 154 million units sold. However, there are real challenges to offset the tangible rewards of a unified Nintendo: Portable gaming devices are clearly being hurt by Mobile, games for Switch seem likely to be more expensive to make than 3DS, Switch’s form-factor seems rather large for a portable, the price is likely higher than a portable, and battery life would be challenging for such a device.įor proof that Mobile has eroded the Portable gaming space, you really only need to look back at that 60 million 3DS units sold. In Japan, Splatoon has a 50% attach rate, an unthinkable number for a competitive shooter.Įven still, it’s easy to assume that the move to replace 3DS with Switch is just being delayed out of market concerns. ![]() Splatoon being the only segment in their trailer explicitly featuring Japanese people wasn’t an accident. So-called “current-gen” systems are still struggling in Japan, and Nintendo likely feels they’ve hit on a formulation that will appeal to their home market. Indeed, announcing Switch now could be seen as signaling - to Japan at the very least - that there remain other options coming to the marketplace. Positioning Switch as a replacement for Wii U, a system unlikely to see major sales this holiday season anyway, is a smart tactical move. Undoubtedly, some of it stems from not wanting to further erode the success of 3DS - especially in the pre-holiday season. “Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform.we are hoping to change and correct the situation in which we develop games for different platforms individually and sometimes disappoint consumers with game shortages as we attempt to move from one platform to another. In the QA session, following the announcement of the DeNA partnership and the NX, he mused that a future Nintendo might increase the number of form factors they support. Iwata had not stated it was Nintendo’s mission to create a single piece of hardware, but rather to ensure architecture was consistent across their platforms to relieve the pressure of creating software across multiple devices. Iwata laid out a vision of the dedicated gaming space decidedly more rosy than that of many analysts. ![]() It’s been inferred that this was the case based on comments from the late former Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata. Sony’s Vita is largely forgotten by its corporate parent, and Nintendo's recent drive to unify resources seems to indicate that Switch is a replacement for more than just the unsuccessful Wii U. During Radio Free Nintendo's Switch reaction show (Episode 496: Mighty Switch Facts), we read a listener question asking if Switch was the end of Portable Gaming (for the purposes of this article, “Portable” will mean games for dedicated devices, “Mobile” will mean phones and tablets).
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