The headline is click bait. I would only judge the launch as “not gone well” when the system fails to sell.
Addressing a couple of the points they made in the article:
The announced price is more than people expected, but day 1 buyers are probably die hard fans and influencers, who would buy it anyway, at double the price. The real test is going to be the holidays and how the price looks side by side with rivals. Based on the news from Microsoft, the Nintendo prices will be in line with the competition. Also, if price does cause issues, Nintendo may get a “free” price drop in the US when Trump drops tariffs (consumers pay less but Nintendo maintains their margins).
Having retailer pre-order systems fail under the Switch 2 load is not Nintendo’s fault. If anything, it shows that the system will sell well initially. Also, they are not losing sales if consumers get a website crash instead of “sold out”.
A lot of the issues they flag exist only in online forums and thinkpieces. Most of the userbase will never notice the difference regarding the key cards, for instance (until it’s too late, I guess), and Mario Kart World’s bundle version is only 40 bucks, which is the one everybody will be getting for the foreseeable future.
The riskier things they did are the pricing of the console (rough but inevitable) and the cost of the storage. Well, and skipping the review cycle for the remnants of the press, which I presume is why this article exists at all.
The S2 won’t sell as well as the S1 and nobody expects it to do so, but in the meantime that reasonable assumption will be a Rorschach test for a bunch of breathless quick turnaround filler like this, I suppose.
It’s actually gone very well. Lots of preorders. I saw videos of people lining up outside gamestop locations this morning.
It’s almost guaranteed to be in the top 10 of best selling consoles.
It’ll do fine, but it’ll never live up to the impossibly high bar set by its predecessor. And that will result in endless Nintendooming for it. Even though it will do fine.
Lol I like that word, nintendooming
I wonder if it’ll end up like the Wii vs the Wii U.
Could also be a 3DS situation. It had a very disappointing launch, got an emergency price cut like 6 months in, and eventually got a pretty decent game library that carried it and made it a reasonable success. Nowhere near the DS craze, but it was a very different market at that point.
Also, you know, no matter what you think about it and how it’s managed, the Wii U didn’t have Pokémon.
I’d be surprised if this launch was anywhere as bad as the 3DS, although I suppose it’s possible.
To put it in perspective, the 3DS ended up outselling the Xbox One and the N64.
No, there’s too much interest in handheld consoles. This market is the new Xbox vs. Playstation, only it’s Nintendo vs. All.
Nintendo vs Steam.
Steam isn’t even part of this conversation. The Deck sold like 2% as much as the Switch (I don’t think it’s beaten the Wii U yet).
It’s Nintendo vs Nintendo.
I think they know that and fully intend to burn all good will the switch earned them, and ride that massive inertia wave. They’re being greedy little pigs because, honestly, they can. Even the stupid paid demo will probably be a success. Even the 90 euro pokemon games will break records. Because most people will not care.
I’m betting that it will be a success and keep Nintendo’s shareholders pleased but that it won’t reach the heights of its predecessor with the higher prices and the fact that the hybrid concept doesn’t exactly have the same wow factor it did 8 years ago.
I can’t really blame Nintendo on playing it safe on the system concept this time though. Coming off of their biggest hardware success of all time, they’d have to have a pretty amazing innovation to risk trying something completely new. It’s just not that easy to always have a big idea like that. I see the Switch 2 like the Super Nintendo was to the NES… and that could work just fine so long as they deliver on the games.
Nintendo consoles have always come in pairs of two. Revolutionary new concept and solidified iteration. So the really interesting console will be whatever comes next in 5-10 years.
Yes, like the Wii and the Wii U!
And the GameBoy and GameBoy Advance or the DS and 3DS. All the follow ups fail to live up to the heights of the predecessor, but not all failures.
tl;dr: The Switch 2 go to market strategy sucks, but it probably doesn’t matter.
it’ll sell for the same reason marvel and star wars sells
