Six years is a decent run for a console – even more so for a machine based on what was already out-dated technology – so is it time for Nintendo to replace Nintendo Switch with a next-gen successor? That’s the key topic covered in DF Direct Weekly today, as myself, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia take a look at the machine’s current titles and wonder what might happen next.
To begin with, it’s worth stressing just how much of a runaway success Switch has been, simply by virtue of being different, of offering a more flexible approach to gaming. By combining home console and handheld into one design, Nintendo didn’t have to compete against Xbox and PlayStation in terms of sheer horsepower and the new approach also allowed the firm to concentrate all of its resources into one singular product. This increased first-party game production, further bolstering the machine’s appeal. Bizarrely, the failure of Wii U also aided the Switch’s fortunes: Nintendo had an entire catalogue of brilliant first-party titles it could port to the new machine.
Also crucial to the machine’s appeal was the sheer breadth of third-party games – and therein lies another crucial aspect of Switch’s success. By ditching totally underpowered hardware lacking key features in favour of Nvidia’s Tegra X1, developers gained access to a modern GPU, backed by a flexible, performant graphics API. Targeting lower resolutions and cutting back features less likely to be missed on a handheld screen made the impossible possible: when I first went hands-on with Doom 2016 on Switch, I was astounded at what had been achieved on an underclocked mobile chipset.
