We're now less than a month out from the release of Nintendo's next game system, the Switch, which will double as both the company's next home console and handheld system (it can distinctively go either way) and furthermore include the general features of a tablet. Indeed, Nintendo is marketing the Switch as a kind of tablet that specializes in video games. This and many other things about the Switch (including the return of standardized motion controls, for example) strongly indicate that hardcore gamers are not the main intended market for Nintendo's upcoming system. Rather, the big N seems to be aiming to revisit their philosophy from the Wii and DS days with this machine, which focused mainly on drawing in a combination of new, casual, and lapsed gamers.
One can argue that the company's move away from this philosophy with the Wii U has been the reason for their weak commercial performance throughout the current console generation. (The Wii U is Nintendo's worst-selling home console ever.) On the Switch, they'll appeal to their existing brand loyalists with sandbox-style Legend of Zelda and Mario games and to the casual gamer with tablet features, but perhaps the most important audience the machine is likely to appeal to is neither of these, but the lapsed gamer instead. The slated line-up of third-party published games is instructive about this: Japanese publishers will bring to Switch some of the more popular franchises of the 1990s, complete with retro stylized graphics, including Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Mania), Street Fighter (Ultra Street Fighter II), and Bomberman (Bomberman R), along with a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger called I Am Sensuta and many other old-school, sprite-based RPGs, while low-tech indie games like Cave Story, Shovel Knight, The Binding of Isaac, and Has-Been Heroes will also be ported to the Switch. Another instructive indicator: the Switch will be the first home console to use cartridges since the Nintendo 64 in what, it's safe to say, is a naked appeal to 1980s and '90s nostalgia, which is particularly obvious given that cartridges cannot even hold some of today's larger games.
So what is the lapsed gamer, you ask? In case the matter isn't clear, the lapsed gamer, also known as the "retro" or "old-school" gamer, is the sort of video game player who has perhaps sat out a couple two, three, or four console generations or perhaps hasn't felt truly satisfied with the medium since the general replacement of sprites with polygons in the mid'-90s. People like @The Xl and @Common, for example. People who value the accessibility and local multiplayer features that used to characterize mainstream video games, but don't so much anymore. You know...
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...conservative gamers, you might say.Though I consider myself a more progressive gamer who prefers indie games more for their frequently more holistic design and thematic boldness...you know...
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...nevertheless I know I can be a sucker for sprite-era nostalgia myself! You know...
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It was my childhood!
Well anyway, the real question here I think is that of whether the Switch can succeed in drawing in lapsed gamers. What do you think? Is the Switch's appeal to convenience and its line-up of sprite-based games sufficient for that, or will the $300 launch price tag, the somewhat anemic launch line-up, and the fact that the aforementioned indie games at least are also available on the rival PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as well as home computers and in some cases furthermore for smart phones as well, stop that from happening?
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