Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

How Nintendo is “Switching” Things Up

How Nintendo is “Switching” Things Up

Ding-Dong! The Switch Is Alive! After months of wondering, we finally have an answer and confirmation. Nintendo has unveiled the Switch and, frankly, it looks like everything we wanted the Wii U to be. The new system is both anchored and portable and, thanks to an unexpectedly insightful trailer, offers an exciting and informative look into the future.

First, let’s start by how well it looks like the Switch works. The system comes with a Joy-Con controller and a dock. When you’re at home, you place the Switch in the dock, connect the Joy-Con controllers to a hub, and play the system through your TV. It charges while you play and all seems very practical. When you’re ready to go somewhere, you snap the Joy-Con controller parts off of their hub and attach them to the sides of the Nintendo Switch. You lift it out of the dock and can immediately play on the go. It’s streamlined and simple.

It also looks like the Switch could be the sort of system that travels well. It’s cartridge based, which means no chance of the game skipping or being jostled while you play. The Joy-Con controllers seem to offer a good grip when they’re at the sides of the system. There’s even a kickstand built in, so you can prop it up on a desk and take the Joy-Con controllers off to play either alone or with a friend. The whole with a friend part seems critical. Even though the Switch’s screen and Joy-Con controllers are rather small, it seems like local, portable co-op could work in the right circumstances.

The preliminary games appear promising too. The Switch debut trailer began with plenty of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild footage. From there, it transitioned into none other than Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim . This would mark the first appearance of an Elder Scrolls entry on a Nintendo platform, and the first time a major installment could be played on the go. We then caught glimpses of what seemed to be an entirely new Super Mario game, Mario Kart 8, and Splatoon . If all five of these are launch games, the system would be off to a strong start. Especially since the Wii U to Switch ports seem like they could be updated versions, as the Mario Kart 8 appearing in the trailer had characters holding two items and showed King Boo as a driver and the Splatoon footage showed Inklings with new hairdos.

How Nintendo is “Switching” Things Up

Even the competitive element appeared appealing. At the end of the first Switch video, we see an eSports team training. Each person has a Switch with Splatoon running on it. They then pick up their systems, head into an arena, and prepare for a battle against another team. Each one uses their own Switch, placed in docks on stage, for the match. It’s an interesting idea, as it’d easily guarantee people would have their team and set-up for every encounter.

The Switch is an opportunity for Nintendo. It did an amazing job with the Wii, but faltered when it came to the Wii U. It’s almost like it looked at what people liked on the Wii U, such as the opportunity for off-screen play and a few solid games like Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 , thought about how well the 3DS performed, and decided to go with a system that could keep us occupied at any time and in any location. It seems solid enough, has some amazing software, offers an unexpected premise, and could be a very promising experiment for Nintendo.

To top