What's Next For Nintendo

What's Next For Nintendo

Monday October 23, 2023

    On March 3, 2017 Nintendo released the Switch. It has since gone on to sell nearly 130 million units as of the day I’m writing this. It's one of the best selling game consoles of all time now. During that time the console has seen different iterations such as the Switch Lite and the OLED Switch.  It's a console that can be played however you want to.  At home, on the go, and anywhere in between.  It's also a platform that has nearly 40 games exclusive to it that aren’t available anywhere else. 

    Something that can’t be said for Microsoft and Sony, who have struggled this console cycle to put out first party exclusive games that don’t get ported to some other platform.  Needless to say, Nintendo has had a great console generation. Which is great news for Nintendo given their previous attempt with the WiiU which is pretty universally accepted as a failure. Having said all that now there is one burning question gamers and Nintendo fans have been asking.  What’s next for Nintendo?  If history repeats itself then it will likely be a console with a completely different form factor and philosophy. Having said that though Nintendo is unpredictable and could literally do anything at this point.  One thing is for certain though Nintendo will likely not follow suit with what the rest of industry is doing. They’ve always marched to the beat of their own drum. It’s an approach that’s served them well for the most part. As with any other company though, there have been a few missteps along the way.  The WiiU is the most recent example of that. It was a completely different console than the Wii but mysteriously Nintendo essentially pitched it as something more of an add-on to the original Wii.  Which wasn't the case.  Then before we knew it the system was discontinued.  

    The GameCube is another recent example of Nintendo thinking too far outside the box when they chose to adopt mini-disc instead of DVD like the rest of the industry, making it the only system that consumers could not watch their DVD movies when they wanted to. The games were arguably great on the system but it's a console most people slept on when The PS2 and Xbox gave people more flexibility as we started to see more multipurpose devices hitting the market. I predict that Nintendo will likely release a refresh of the Lite console with an OLED screen and more storage then we’ll likely see their next generation home console mid to late next year.  But again, that begs the question, what’s it going to be?  I think we’re going to get something with a very similar form factor of the current Switch but with an upgraded processor. I also think they will run the system at 1080p in handheld mode and then at near 4k with the system docked to a tv.  

    The big change that I think will happen is that they are going to move to solely digital distribution.  Which is definitely controversial but its a move that has been happening gradually over the years.  I will go as far as saying that the entire next generation of game consoles will be solely digital. It’s an approach that I’ve largely fought against over the years but recently I’ve converted more and more to consuming my content digitally. The flexibility of having access to your stuff regardless of where you are is worth the trade off of owning something physical in my opinion.  We’re on the go as a society now more than ever and I am fully on board with this digital future and its a mindset I think Nintendo is going to embrace.  Needless to say it’ll be exciting to see and then it’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the industry does in response afterwards. If nothing else, hopefully it’ll help drive some innovation and competition, because its been something lacking with the current generation and we all know that innovation drives competition and users are the ones that benefit with great games. That about wraps it up for this time guys. Thanks for the support so far and stay tuned for more content coming soon. Next time I’ll be exploring more about digital distribution of media.