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And well deserved, too! I was pretty much done with console gaming after the Wii. That was the most excited I ever was for a console (since I was 13), but after

• firecall 5y ago
  > Also, I was just thinking today how it's crazy that Nintendo has been the dominant portable console maker basically since the Gameboy in 1989 Imagine how many they would have sold if the iPhone didnt exist!
• celticninja 5y ago
  Atari lynx was possibly the best handheld game system, followed by the game gear, but their cost meant it most out to the more affordable Gameboy. I think though, what won it was not the hardware but the software. The switch is a great handheld console and a good console in dock mode. But Breath of the Wild was worth the cost of the console alone. I liken it to GTA IV or GTA V, but for my kids. It is a beautiful open world that really knocks out of the park every aspect, music, graphics, gameplay, puzzles. It is a beautiful game and I believe it is a major reason the switch is so successful, or at least it's launch period was. I also think that the portability is a huge factor, I know many households where they have a PS5 or and XBOX and a switch. Few people will buy all consoles but the switch being portable means it has the extra edge when deciding on a second system.
  • TehShrike 5y ago
    I had a Game Gear, and that battery life was pretty rough. The Switch definitely wins in that regard
    • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
      The Sonic game was rough. You could barely see what was going on and coming up next on the little screen.
      • laumars 5y ago
        Yeah, that screen refresh was harsh. Plays much better on TFT modded game gears though
    • satysin 5y ago
      The funny thing is the Game Gear and Switch battery life are actually very similar at 3-5 hours. It varies a little with the Switch as with lighter games and low screen brightness you can get 6 or so hours but playing something like Zelda BOTW you get around 3 hours max before needing to recharge. I find it interesting we’re still in that 3-4 hour battery life space thirties years later. I guess it makes sense as most people will want/need a small break after 3 hours with a handheld so gives you some time to charge it so I expect Nintendo aim for that 3 hour minimum.
      • fullstop 5y ago
        > The funny thing is the Game Gear and Switch battery life are actually very similar at 3-5 hours. The switch has much better battery life than that in the models released after the initial launch. You're spot on with the release model, though.
        • satysin 5y ago
          Indeed the newer Switch OLED model does have better battery life albeit still around the max 5 hour mark for most games apparently edging up to 7 hours for less demanding games (according to a brief search anyway).
          • mashc5 5y ago
            The switch got a refresh in 2019 (two years before the OLED model was released) that almost doubled battery life [0]. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-updated-nintendo-switch-battery-is-a-major-upgrade-from-the-original https://www.techradar.com/news/the-updated-nintendo-switch-b...
  • riffraff 5y ago
    I owned a Lynx and it was incredible to have something with colors when the competition was the original B/W Gameboy. But I was the only one I ever met to own that, which meant I could never trade games or share the excitement. The lower cost Gameboy had "network effects", and so ended up being a much better buy for a random kid.
    • laumars 5y ago
      It wasn’t just the cost. The difference in battery life was night and day. The reason I bought a GB back as a teen despite better consoles being around was precisely because I wanted something that would last for several hours on the long drive to Grandmas house. Neither the Lynx nor the Game Gear had that longevity. Tbh I think the full colour portable systems were just released a few years too early.
  • laumars 5y ago
    I much preferred the GB to the GG. The former took 3 batteries and lasted months. The latter took something like 6 batteries and only lasted 3 hours. While the GG was undoubtedly a better machine hardware wise, that counted for nothing when your batteries ran out mid road tip.
  • thebruce87m 5y ago
    If you want GTA for kids, get Lego City Undercover. It’s an absolute blast.
  • type_enthusiast 5y ago
    Absolutely agree on Breath of the Wild. I think every successful console has The Game that really differentiates it (speaking as someone who never had a console growing up, just Sierra games). Having got a Switch for my son - Breath of the Wild is that game for Switch, but is also possibly the best game made so far. If you haven't played it, don't argue - just play it.
    • rosege 5y ago
      I remember the glory days with a N64, GoldenEye and 3 mates. That was definitely a peak gaming fun time for me back in the day.
    • distantaidenn 5y ago
      My fiancé got me an OLED Switch and BOTW this past Christmas. When I first started BOTW, I was like...umm...what do I do in this game? Then I realized: ANYTHING I WANT. Already have over 150 hours in the game. You can literally just wander around and enjoy. Find new and clever ways to kill enemies -- or befriend them if that's your style. You can play the game the way you want and at your own pace. Yeah, the game has some flaws, but I'd say it's the most rewarding game experience I've had in my 30+ years of gaming. You know a game is good when you don't even want to finish it!
      • tokamak-teapot 5y ago
        Defeat Ganon. Load saved game. Keep exploring. It is amazing that I still keep coming back to it after ‘finishing’ so many times. Wanting to complete all the shrines not just so I have that satisfaction, but because they are fun and interesting and the journey is too. Then there is master mode, which is mainly just harder, but when you’re getting good at fighting it ensures you are challenged to get /really/ good and not rely on power / armour / buffs, especially in the challenges where you start with nothing.
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  • Izkata 5y ago
    > I think though, what won it was not the hardware but the software. Not even just new stuff: I had Grandia II on the Dreamcast as a kid, and thought I'd never play it again. Then I found out it was ported to the Switch, and that was the tipping point that got me to buy it a few years ago.
  • Foobar8568 5y ago
    The Atari lynx was burning through battery like nothing, was it 4 or 8AA for like 1 or 2 hours of gameplay?
  • gfxgirl 5y ago
    Not just it's portability. I've seen kids in coffeeshops. Their mom is reading a magazine and the kids have put the Switch on a table using its stand and then use the controllers to play 2+ player games. No other handheld I know of has ever done that.
    • telesilla 5y ago
      I've done the same waiting for the dryer to finish in the laundromat while traveling! Mariocart for two is a great travel companion.
    • dustymcp 5y ago
      This is why se bought it for family gatherings or the likes where kids gets bored, we just bring the switch and the kids can 4 player with the other kids in Mario kart
    • el_oni 5y ago
      Before i started work i would sit in the car while my partner was getting treatment and play switch. When she came back to the car between appointments we could play mario kart. Such a good system
  • saghm 5y ago
    Breath of the Wild released on the Wii U as well, as did the pre-deluxe version of Mario Kart 8 and what was at the time arguably the best Super Smash Bros game yet (some people prefer Melee, but Brawl was notoriously not great, and Ultimate obviously had not come out in the Wii U's heyday). I'm not sure good first-party games alone can completely carry a console; people need to be hooked in first before they start considering the platform, and the Switch had the most intriguing hook there's been so far.
    • mpyne 5y ago
      Honestly the Wii U had an amazing library of games. Nintendo squeezed a bunch of extra juice out of Switch using nothing more than straight ports of Wii U games onto the more popular Switch. But like you say, the Wii U hardware just didn't fly off the shelves like Nintendo had hoped. Though there is a big difference between Nintendoland as a launch title and Breath of the Wild.
    • astura 5y ago
      The Wii U had some really fantastic games. It really suffered, however, from having such wonky hardware and bad marketing. I own a Wii U, I own all the games you mentioned on it (other than BotW because I don't usually buy games at launch - I bought BotW on switch though) and I, personally, still found the hardware confusing. It's really great that almost all Nintendo published games have had switch releases, because more people can experience them. Nintendo has sold more than twice as many copies of the latest animal crossing game than they did Wii U consoles. Which is just crazy to think about.
  • Xenoamorphous 5y ago
    I think the most impressive hardware-wise was the Turbo Express. It was released in 1990, just a year after the Game Boy and Lynx and same year as the Game Gear. It had a 400x270 screen vs 160x144 in the Game Boy and Game Gear and 160x102 in the Lynx. It was basically a portable TurboGrafx and could run Street Fighter II (which was also released for the Game Boy but it was miles behind).
    • chronogram 5y ago
      It was released in Dec 1990 for $250, a few months later the price was raised to $300. The sound in it failed frequently, and the display had a high rate of pixel defects. It burned through 6 AA batteries in 3 hours. I don’t know what the original price for the AC adapter was but it was big so probably not cheap either. The TurboExpress is a classic example of the “any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands” saying.
      • Xenoamorphous 5y ago
        I don’t know about reliability but battery life seems about the same or little worse than a Game Gear or Lynx, which also used 6 AA batteries. And price is an entirely different matter, but surely a factor in its commercial failure.
      • deleted 5y ago
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  • fullstop 5y ago
    > Atari lynx was possibly the best handheld game system, followed by the game gear, but their cost meant it most out to the more affordable Gameboy. It doesn't matter how powerful a handheld system is if the batteries only last an hour or two. In the era when the lynx and game gear were released, NiMH batteries were not mainstream yet, and NiCd were not as suitable for the application. I knew a few kids who had the Lynx and they realistically could not use it unless it was plugged into the wall.
    • astura 5y ago
      I got a Game Gear when I was a kid. It was a thrift store find, otherwise my parents would never spend that kind of money on a toy. I played it for literally a half hour before the batteries ran out. It didn't come with a power cord and batteries were very strictly rationed in my house growing up, so I was never able to play it again. I was heartbroken. Again, I got only a half hour of play out of a video game console. Parents sold it several months later when they realized how useless it was. I don't know how a product like that could even be released on the market - it's basically false advertisement. It's been nearly three decades and I'm still heartbroken by it.
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    > I also think that the portability is a huge factor At least out here, I’ll often go to the park and see little clusters of 10 year olds, either all wrapped around one Switch, or all playing together on their respective Switch. I’ve never seen that before, even with Gameboys. I don’t know exactly why, but they did something right.
  • charleval 5y ago
    > Atari lynx was possibly the best handheld game system I'm sorry but I have to disagree. The best handled game system was undisputably the Nec PC-engine GT (was called Nec GT turbo in my country) -> https://www.google.com/search?q=nec+gt+turbo https://www.google.com/search?q=nec+gt+turbo
• bane 5y ago
  Same boat. After the Wii I was done. If I wanted to put money into gaming it was going to be on PC. The Switch isn't the most powerful, or has the best library (Nintendo first party games notwithstanding), or the most portable, but it's "good enough" at everything in the way VHS and MP3s were/are. It also helps that it's relatively inexpensive to get into, and has a huge indie game scene. So while you may not get the best version of "Soldiers on a Battlefield 2022" or whatever, there are hundreds of semi-exclusives. Getting a console and a portable in one unit was also brilliant and something that neither Sony or Microsoft can do with their "most powerful hardware first". Nintendo cares about things that affect the gameplay experience, and Microsoft and Sony care more about how cool the software is. Orthogonal purposes but it lets Nintendo, a relatively small company, compete globally and effectively against two 9 million pound mega giants.
  • noobermin 5y ago
    To help the thread, this is the Nintendo way of "lateral thinking with withered technology.[0]" They for example choice lack of color for the Gameboy for the sake of battery life, that is, using cheap technology that can be replicated and mass produced well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_with_Withered_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_... From the venerable Gunpei Yokoi, who helped develop the original Metroid and the Gameboy
  • lelandfe 5y ago
    Without detracting anything from your other statements (the comparison to MP3 is excellent), "notwithstanding" is doing a lot of work in the line, "Nintendo first party games notwithstanding." Nintendo's games are the reason folks buy a Switch.[1] It's pretty unbelievable the record they (and especially EPD) have: 1. Breath of the Wild was game of the year for most publications, is considered by some the greatest game of all time[2], and single-handedly sold the console for many people I know 2. Super Mario Odyssey is generally heralded as one of the best Mario games ever made and shipped 22 million copies 2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best selling fighting game of all time 3. Mario Kart 8 is the best selling racing game of all time, and the 7th highest selling video game of all time 4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the 13th highest selling video game of all time (2nd highest in Japan) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Switch_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_... (and apropos of nothing, compare to PS4's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_4_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... - Switch's top 6 best sellers all moved more than PS4's #1) [2] https://www.ign.com/articles/the-best-100-video-games-of-all-time https://www.ign.com/articles/the-best-100-video-games-of-all...
• Alex3917 5y ago
  I mostly lost interest in AAA games when I was 14 or so, but the Switch has been great for going back and playing some of the games that came out around then that I never got a chance to play. The idea of closing out of all my work stuff and rebooting into another operating system is just a complete non-starter, but the Switch is perfect just to grab whenever I'm backing up my hard drive, upgrading my OS, the Internet is down, etc.
  • bluedino 5y ago
    I was around the same age. A bunch of things all factor into that, that 14-16 age
    • Alex3917 5y ago
      Yeah for me it was just the beginning of high school. It was pretty obvious that if I kept playing Ultima Online or whatever for 10 hours a day then it was going to destroy my life, so I gave it up before freshman year started. Every couple years I'll get into a game and spend a few weeks playing it, e.g. with Breath of the Wild a couple year ago, but I purposely don't let myself play games that just go on indefinitely like WoW. Whereas that's not an issue with indie games that only last five or ten hours. And similarly, it's been fun going back and playing Baldur's Gate, which I never got to play when it came out.
• k__ 5y ago
  This. But the Wii failed pretty hard in terms of games. After the 5th mini games collection it became pretty boring...
• KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > the power to run pretty much any modern game (albeit with worse graphics) To be specific: 720p and severely degraded effects, textures, models, anti-aliasing, etc - and you'll be lucky to get 60fps. The Switch has about as much horsepower as a ~6 year old mid-tier Android phone.
  • styfle 5y ago
    The nice thing is that most games don’t _feel_ underpowered on Switch. Sure the graphics don’t look as good but it’s not laggy in the games I’ve tried. For example: Immortals Fenyx Rising is cross platform, but it feels smooth. I would rather play on Switch than other consoles so I can occasionally play while traveling. It’s really nice to have the same game, same save point, with same controller on the TV or on the go.
  • msh 5y ago
    Nah. It got the power of a really high end 6 year old Android phone. And with the fan it can provide more power than the same soc in a phone form factor.
  • hajile 5y ago
    Theoretical power and actual power in phones are quite different. Phones throttle their chips down to nothing very quickly.
  • Agentlien 5y ago
    My job these last few years has mainly been focused on trying to get games running smoothly across all platforms and finding workarounds or optimizations for switch has been the biggest part of it. It's so incredibly weak in comparison to any other modern console. It's literally a mobile SoC from 2015. As a user, however, the switch is by far my favorite console. It might not look as flashy but I can play almost any game I want anywhere I want.
• smoe 5y ago
  I bought the Switch in part because of portability, but almost never ended up using this way. I used to game a lot as a child and teenager but almost stopped entirely once my job involved sitting in front of a screen all day. But I still like playing some games I can pick up to kill half an hour here and there, completely casual. The game selection, is perfect for this. Or a couple rounds of couch co-op. I have zero interest to play hyper competitive games with random people over the internet. The Switch really brought back the fond memories I had when first being exposed to gaming, when I kept going to my neighbors home to play Super Nintendo games against each other
  • dorchadas 5y ago
    I do love the portability of my Switch, but eve more I do love how casual it is. And how a lot of their games, while they can be played multiplayer, are focused on single player stuff. They've great single player titles, and that keeps me coming back to Nintendo regularly (especially their mobile stuff, I'm pretty sure I've owned at least one iteration of everything since the Gameboy Pocket).
• 14 5y ago
  I really enjoyed the PSP or PlayStation portable. It was the first thing I ever hacked and played games for free. Set me on a path. But I do love my switch greatly. It appeals to me with the kid friendly games. Watching my 5 year old develop his hand eye coordination makes my heart melt.
• selfhifive 5y ago
  I'm always impressed with how much risk they take from generation to generation. N64, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, and Switch. GB, GBA, DS, 3DS, and Switch. All of them feel like a generational leap instead of the incremental improvement model of other companies.
  • laumars 5y ago
    Interestingly the Wii is more or less the same hardware as the GC but with upgraded specs. In fact the Wii even has GC ports on it (for GC controllers and memory cards) and plays GC discs. Additionally the Wiimote was originally designed to be an add on for the GC before Nintendo decided to release it as the primary controller for their next console.
• dartharva 5y ago
  > the power to run pretty much any modern game (albeit with worse graphics) Huh? Any modern game?? I'm pretty sure just a small fraction of modern AAA titles is available on the Switch.
  • jquery 5y ago
    That used to be the case, but modern game engines like Unity make it easy to plop out an switch-capable version. The hardware is similar enough to a normal PC that it’s a matter of just turning the graphics down (way, way down). It certainly wasn’t a majority at the start but now more than half of new AAA releases have a Switch version. That said, buying a switch to play AAA games is not ideal. I find the graphics compromises too great, myself. Indie games (only certain genres like platforming), visual novels and Nintendo-first-party games are what I find the switch excels at.
• theshrike79 5y ago
  I literally didn't even notice the WiiU release :) I heard the rumours and forgot about it. The next time I saw anything WiiU related it had already been in stores for a while. I don't know a single person who got one even near the release. _Everyone_ had a Wii though.
• andrepd 5y ago
  I must be about your age and damn, I played so much Wii. I must have >200h on several games: both Mario Galaxy's (one of my favourite games), Wii Sports Resort, Smash, etc. On the contrary my Switch is almost exclusively a BotW machine x) bar a few indie games here and there. I must be getting old