It was fairly obvious it wasn't going to be, but bothering to point out basic economics got you ripped to shreds in some communities as a class traitor or whatever so the echo chamber continued....
It was fairly obvious it wasn't going to be, but bothering to point out basic economics got you ripped to shreds in some communities as a class traitor or whatever so the echo chamber continued.
Nintendo has a very good product in the swtich, just like the wii. Unlike the wii, they managed to clearly identify the new product, which is all most people who buy things want to be sure of. Is it actually a huge jump? No. But it's obvious that this i what someone with minimal knowledge will buy, and it helps that nintendo will clearly support it going forward.
I haven't taken gamer complaints seriously since the launch of the original CoD: MW2. Personally, I wouldn't even balk at the $80 price tag of games (SNES games were regularly ~$70, in the 80s) if...
I haven't taken gamer complaints seriously since the launch of the original CoD: MW2.
Personally, I wouldn't even balk at the $80 price tag of games (SNES games were regularly ~$70, in the 80s) if they did away with the Deluxe/Premium/Ultimate/whatever editions as well. Or if the expansions weren't obvious carve-outs.
I think there's plenty to be angry about in the gaming industry, but Nintendo deciding not to take a loss (or take a much smaller one) on hardware should be much lower on the list.
This is my biggest issue with $80 price tags. AAA games regularly ship as broken, buggy messes and end up with multiple expensive DLCs all while charging a premium for the experience.
Or if the expansions weren't obvious carve-outs.
This is my biggest issue with $80 price tags. AAA games regularly ship as broken, buggy messes and end up with multiple expensive DLCs all while charging a premium for the experience.
I was waking through Walmart doing my grocery shopping and saw that they had a pile of them sittting in the electronics section. I figured “why not” and got the Mario Kart bundle. I’ve been...
I was waking through Walmart doing my grocery shopping and saw that they had a pile of them sittting in the electronics section. I figured “why not” and got the Mario Kart bundle.
I’ve been enjoying World Tour but really there isn’t too much else that’s Switch 2 exclusive. So unless you really like Mario Kart, Mario Party or Donkey Kong, it’s not a great value. I feel like it’ll be a while before there’s enough software to make it worthwhile.
Compared to many other consoles the Switch 2 isn't expensive at $450. The NES was around $550 adjusted for inflation. The PS3 would be $800. I can completely appreciate that a more expensive...
Compared to many other consoles the Switch 2 isn't expensive at $450. The NES was around $550 adjusted for inflation. The PS3 would be $800. I can completely appreciate that a more expensive console means it's out of reach for some people. But $450 was never going to be too much for the market at large.
Upping game prices to $80 sucks much more because it may encourage an industry-wide shift to higher game prices.
But isn't the same true of game prices as console prices, in terms of inflation? Adjusted to today's dollar, both NES and SNES games would be around $120, while PS3 games would be around $90. It's...
Upping game prices to $80 sucks much more because it may encourage an industry-wide shift to higher game prices.
But isn't the same true of game prices as console prices, in terms of inflation? Adjusted to today's dollar, both NES and SNES games would be around $120, while PS3 games would be around $90. It's an apples to apple pie comparison of course, since games have changed, as have their sales methods, as has the industry as a whole.
Anyway. A nice guy in Monkey Island told me to never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game. That was back in 1990, which in today's money would be a bit less than $50. Just to be sure, I round it down to $40.
Distribution costs have effectively ceased and monetization efforts on top have made a $60 price tag perfectly viable. As we can clearly see from the YOY record profits for AAA. You don't have to...
Distribution costs have effectively ceased and monetization efforts on top have made a $60 price tag perfectly viable. As we can clearly see from the YOY record profits for AAA.
You don't have to adjust for inflation because that exercise is moot, the product changed. We're not buying cartridges anymore, we're licensing software.
That's definitely true. In addition to what you wrote, hit games are no longer made by 5-10 member teams over the course of a few months, producing 5-10 hours worth of "content" (for the lack of a...
the product changed
That's definitely true. In addition to what you wrote, hit games are no longer made by 5-10 member teams over the course of a few months, producing 5-10 hours worth of "content" (for the lack of a better word), but often hundreds if not thousands of people working for years to put together ten times that much content. It has indeed become a very different product in many ways.
And also a difficult space for new game makers to navigate. Perhaps one positive outcome of AAA title prices increasing could be that smaller teams can be profitable while also remaining price competitive against the bigger players.
What record profits for AAA? There are some individual games that buck the trend, but new AAA games in general have been losing money since the cost of making them is outstripping the growth of...
What record profits for AAA? There are some individual games that buck the trend, but new AAA games in general have been losing money since the cost of making them is outstripping the growth of people playing console/pc games - even when not factoring in that a greater share of people are playing either eSports titles or older AAA games than before.
Yes this year. But growth has been significant for a decade, spiking in 2020. The sticker price going up is a kneejerk reaction to that sudden drop in revenue.
Yes this year. But growth has been significant for a decade, spiking in 2020. The sticker price going up is a kneejerk reaction to that sudden drop in revenue.
AAA devs have been losing money on new titles since at least 2023, but yeah they've only been losing money post-COVID afaik. Prior to COVID they may have made money but I don't think the market...
AAA devs have been losing money on new titles since at least 2023, but yeah they've only been losing money post-COVID afaik. Prior to COVID they may have made money but I don't think the market was healthy overall. A lot of investor meetings had questions about the profitability of video game developers vs the DOW already which had resulted in a lot of questionable monetization practices being adopted. I think those practices have led to some staleness in the market as game devs have focused on revenue over delivering a good experience. Even if games aren't losing money they still have to deliver enough profit to appease shareholders or else gamers get squeezed. I don't think any developer has found a good answer to this - but it's relatively apparent that the current situation is untenable.
I was mostly thinking about the $80 games. However, even the console price doesn't hold as much water since they aren't giving price cuts to consoles any more. Those older consoles you mentioned...
I was mostly thinking about the $80 games. However, even the console price doesn't hold as much water since they aren't giving price cuts to consoles any more. Those older consoles you mentioned were introduced at a high price, but generally a year after launch they all had permanent price cuts.
Eh. I think the pricing (in the US at least) is fine. I’d rather they charge slightly more and give us something that won’t age as poorly as the Switch 1 has. It’s struggled to run even stripped...
Eh. I think the pricing (in the US at least) is fine. I’d rather they charge slightly more and give us something that won’t age as poorly as the Switch 1 has. It’s struggled to run even stripped down versions of PS5 and Xbox games.
Makes perfect sense to me. Nintendo already had a solid enough of a product in the original Switch that the masses were willing to overlook its various significant flaws… it’s only natural that a...
Makes perfect sense to me. Nintendo already had a solid enough of a product in the original Switch that the masses were willing to overlook its various significant flaws… it’s only natural that a revision that fixes most of those flaws and ramps up overall polish to Apple-like levels is going to be popular. It’s everything original Switch owners loved but much better.
There’s also been quite a few people who’ve been wanting to play Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom but couldn’t deal with the original Switch’s subpar performance (including spots where it dips to ~15FPS) in those games. The Switch 2 addresses this, and so a good number of sales probably come from this group.
I don't know if this is information anyone would have, but, at a demographic level, who's buying this? I haven't been in touch with the portable gaming scene since I had a gameboy color (which I...
I don't know if this is information anyone would have, but, at a demographic level, who's buying this?
I haven't been in touch with the portable gaming scene since I had a gameboy color (which I admittedly kept playing until ~2013). I could see this being handy for people who travel a lot but other than that I feel so out of the target market I don't have a good sense of who uses this and how.
I'm always caught off-guard remembering how atypical some of my interactions with games and technology are, that the average age of people playing videogames is ~30, most people use a laptop instead of a desktop computer, and the most popular youtube device is a TV.
Answered my own questions a bit finding this report from 2021 about the original switch. It breaks down the age, but I'm still left wondering about use cases.
The report you found dispells a common myth on the internet about Nintendo: no, it's not mainly played by kids. The main nintendo demographic is young adults in the 18-26 age range. A usecase that...
The report you found dispells a common myth on the internet about Nintendo: no, it's not mainly played by kids. The main nintendo demographic is young adults in the 18-26 age range.
A usecase that online gaming forums often misses is using the handheld as a portable device in the house. Why? There's a number of reasons. For the many people who live in shared housing, whether that be because you're living with your parents, or you have a spouse, or you have a roommate, the main TV can often be used, or about to be used.
With the Switch, you're not worried if your roommate is about to binge love island for 10 hours. Just pop it out of the dock, and you're still playing.
Maybe you just feel lazy and want to play in bed, or in the privacy of your room.
If you're a new parent, the switch's local portability can be a godsend. Can a new parent afford to sit on a couch for hours on end when they may be summoned by their child at any time? With a switch, you can take it with you.
A lot of people who frequent online forums assume that everyone has permanent access to a desk, monitor, or TV. But that just isn't true; like you said, few people have desktops or a need for a monitor at all!
A lot of people, especially young adults, don't even have TVs. Not out of financial burden necessarily, but space and need. If you've grown up watching netflix and youtube and whatnot, what use is a TV? Just use your phone or laptop.
Yeah, I was surprised when I found out my best friend didn't have a TV after she moved into her new apartment. She's been talking about getting one, but she's lived there for more than half a year...
A lot of people, especially young adults, don't even have TVs. Not out of financial burden necessarily, but space and need. If you've grown up watching netflix and youtube and whatnot, what use is a TV? Just use your phone or laptop.
Yeah, I was surprised when I found out my best friend didn't have a TV after she moved into her new apartment. She's been talking about getting one, but she's lived there for more than half a year now, and still hasn't gotten one. She has a Switch Lite, but as you say, she actually rarely plays the Switch Lite on the go as far as I can tell - she just plays it on her couch, in her bedroom, etc... With that and her laptop, she never felt the need for a television before. She's only considering one now because she wants to host people at her apartment now, and feels like a TV would be useful for that.
Even going back to handhelds such as the Game Boy and DS series, I would guess that most of my time spent playing them was indeed at home. They were definitely more conveniently portable than a Switch or Steam Deck, but there wasn't a strict delineation in my mind between "you play console in the house, and handheld when on the go".
Anecdotally, I know many young adults with young children enjoy having a Switch because it makes it very easy to entertain multiple people at once. Another important thing to remember is that the Switch and Switch 2 come with two controllers if you split the Joy-Cons, which is way more convenient than any prior Nintendo console, and is another point in its favor for this use-case.
My household has a Switch (1, not 2) and I’m constantly amazed that my kids prefer to play on the small screen instead of docked. They will be sitting on the couch, directly across from the TV,...
My household has a Switch (1, not 2) and I’m constantly amazed that my kids prefer to play on the small screen instead of docked. They will be sitting on the couch, directly across from the TV, which is off, engrossed in the game in their lap. I ask if they’d like to play it on the big screen and they always say no, they prefer it like this. I don’t get it, but it’s a real preference.
I'm 41, grew up gaming on TVs and later computer monitors. These days, I prefer a handheld experience to anything else; if I sit at my desktop computer, I might play something briefly, but...
I'm 41, grew up gaming on TVs and later computer monitors. These days, I prefer a handheld experience to anything else; if I sit at my desktop computer, I might play something briefly, but ultimately get distracted or bored. Instead, I'm quite happy with my Steam Deck.
Are they a little bit near-sighted? That's the case for me prefering watching YT on a laptop instead of the TV, things are in focus without the need for glasses.
Are they a little bit near-sighted? That's the case for me prefering watching YT on a laptop instead of the TV, things are in focus without the need for glasses.
No, at least not that we know of. They can see the TV just fine. I think they just prefer the handheld experience for whatever reason. They're used to using an iPad, so there may be some...
No, at least not that we know of. They can see the TV just fine. I think they just prefer the handheld experience for whatever reason. They're used to using an iPad, so there may be some familiarity preference there.
Related: there's some concern about nearsightedness becoming far more prevalent than it used to be. It went from 25% a few decades ago to over 40%. Staring at a phone for hours is probably driving...
Related: there's some concern about nearsightedness becoming far more prevalent than it used to be. It went from 25% a few decades ago to over 40%. Staring at a phone for hours is probably driving an increase in myopia...which I've realized is an advantage of playing games on a console. Gaming time becomes hours spent looking across the room, focusing into the distance.
Little addendum: the ability to switch between handheld and docked mode is really convenient. I can just pluck my Switch out of the dock whenever I want without disrupting gameplay, or pop it in...
Little addendum: the ability to switch between handheld and docked mode is really convenient. I can just pluck my Switch out of the dock whenever I want without disrupting gameplay, or pop it in for a big scene. Heck, sometimes I'll just pick up the dock and cables and carry them to another TV. The setup is really portable compared to the other consoles I've used.
The convenience factor of that really can't be overstated. I often see people point out that the Steam Deck can do that too, but you need to buy the dock, cable and controller separately, which is an extra expense on top of buying it. And even then, sometimes controllers can be finicky for certain games. The Switch comes with all that though, and everything works out of the box with no extra troubleshooting.
As someone who used to cart my game consoles to my friends houses and knew their Composite cable hookups better than them soon enough, the switch (and switch 2) is both really easy and really dang...
As someone who used to cart my game consoles to my friends houses and knew their Composite cable hookups better than them soon enough, the switch (and switch 2) is both really easy and really dang annoying.
My dock is hooked up to a power strip behind the TV and the TV is huge. Back in the day, even if you had a gigantic 32" CRT in the corner, the plugs were usually next to it and it was big enough that you could just easily lean around the damn things to get to the rear plugs. No flat display mounted on the wall with two inches to navigate getting the HDMI plugged in the right way, just left to right, yellow to red. If there's no video, switch yellow and red. I can do that with my eyes closed.
I don't think that's actually good for the long-term health of the company fwiw
The report you found dispells a common myth on the internet about Nintendo: no, it's not mainly played by kids. The main nintendo demographic is young adults in the 18-26 age range.
I don't think that's actually good for the long-term health of the company fwiw
I don't think that's a concern, since Nintendo is in a really good financial position. Basically they'll be fine until 2052 even if they were to lose $250 million a year. And that article is from...
I don't think that's a concern, since Nintendo is in a really good financial position. Basically they'll be fine until 2052 even if they were to lose $250 million a year. And that article is from 2012, during a lull in Nintendo's popularity and profits. The Switch and Switch 2 have been massive successes, so I'm sure they're in even better shape now.
There's a reason I actually laughed out loud when I saw those leaked Microsoft conversations talking about trying to take over Nintendo. The way those executives talked made it sound like Nintendo had no clue what they were doing and could go under at any second because of a single foolish mistake. Nintendo doesn't even really need to compete, they've secured a solid foothold in the game industry.
Families are probably the biggest demographic that I think gets forgotten. Nintendo is pretty much the family company, and there are still many older people who think of all video game consoles as...
Families are probably the biggest demographic that I think gets forgotten. Nintendo is pretty much the family company, and there are still many older people who think of all video game consoles as "Nintendo". So if someone has kids who want to get into gaming, Nintendo is probably the best option.
On that note, Nintendo also has a lot of exclusive IPs that are iconic and super popular with all ages. I'm personally getting a Switch 2 at some point because I like Pokémon and Animal Crossing. Not yet, but I will someday.
I'm actually surprised by the sales, but I know for a fact that I have no intention of buying one. The first switch was always of dubious value to me personally because of how underpowered it was...
I'm actually surprised by the sales, but I know for a fact that I have no intention of buying one. The first switch was always of dubious value to me personally because of how underpowered it was even at release. I was only interested in a few exclusive titles and I have been very disappointed in most of the first party games that have come out on the switch. The new switch raises the price, points towards most games not being actually available in physical form, and didn't fix the hardware issues with the controllers. I can only imagine that it will always have a solid market for the same people that prefer small screens/handhelds since there was never a true successor to the 3DS.
I guess the price wasn’t such a deal-breaker for people, after all.
It was fairly obvious it wasn't going to be, but bothering to point out basic economics got you ripped to shreds in some communities as a class traitor or whatever so the echo chamber continued.
Nintendo has a very good product in the swtich, just like the wii. Unlike the wii, they managed to clearly identify the new product, which is all most people who buy things want to be sure of. Is it actually a huge jump? No. But it's obvious that this i what someone with minimal knowledge will buy, and it helps that nintendo will clearly support it going forward.
I haven't taken gamer complaints seriously since the launch of the original CoD: MW2.
Personally, I wouldn't even balk at the $80 price tag of games (SNES games were regularly ~$70, in the 80s) if they did away with the Deluxe/Premium/Ultimate/whatever editions as well. Or if the expansions weren't obvious carve-outs.
I think there's plenty to be angry about in the gaming industry, but Nintendo deciding not to take a loss (or take a much smaller one) on hardware should be much lower on the list.
This is my biggest issue with $80 price tags. AAA games regularly ship as broken, buggy messes and end up with multiple expensive DLCs all while charging a premium for the experience.
I was waking through Walmart doing my grocery shopping and saw that they had a pile of them sittting in the electronics section. I figured “why not” and got the Mario Kart bundle.
I’ve been enjoying World Tour but really there isn’t too much else that’s Switch 2 exclusive. So unless you really like Mario Kart, Mario Party or Donkey Kong, it’s not a great value. I feel like it’ll be a while before there’s enough software to make it worthwhile.
So Nintendo is pressured against its price hike?
Compared to many other consoles the Switch 2 isn't expensive at $450. The NES was around $550 adjusted for inflation. The PS3 would be $800. I can completely appreciate that a more expensive console means it's out of reach for some people. But $450 was never going to be too much for the market at large.
Upping game prices to $80 sucks much more because it may encourage an industry-wide shift to higher game prices.
But isn't the same true of game prices as console prices, in terms of inflation? Adjusted to today's dollar, both NES and SNES games would be around $120, while PS3 games would be around $90. It's an apples to apple pie comparison of course, since games have changed, as have their sales methods, as has the industry as a whole.
Anyway. A nice guy in Monkey Island told me to never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game. That was back in 1990, which in today's money would be a bit less than $50. Just to be sure, I round it down to $40.
Distribution costs have effectively ceased and monetization efforts on top have made a $60 price tag perfectly viable. As we can clearly see from the YOY record profits for AAA.
You don't have to adjust for inflation because that exercise is moot, the product changed. We're not buying cartridges anymore, we're licensing software.
That's definitely true. In addition to what you wrote, hit games are no longer made by 5-10 member teams over the course of a few months, producing 5-10 hours worth of "content" (for the lack of a better word), but often hundreds if not thousands of people working for years to put together ten times that much content. It has indeed become a very different product in many ways.
And also a difficult space for new game makers to navigate. Perhaps one positive outcome of AAA title prices increasing could be that smaller teams can be profitable while also remaining price competitive against the bigger players.
What record profits for AAA? There are some individual games that buck the trend, but new AAA games in general have been losing money since the cost of making them is outstripping the growth of people playing console/pc games - even when not factoring in that a greater share of people are playing either eSports titles or older AAA games than before.
Yes this year. But growth has been significant for a decade, spiking in 2020. The sticker price going up is a kneejerk reaction to that sudden drop in revenue.
AAA devs have been losing money on new titles since at least 2023, but yeah they've only been losing money post-COVID afaik. Prior to COVID they may have made money but I don't think the market was healthy overall. A lot of investor meetings had questions about the profitability of video game developers vs the DOW already which had resulted in a lot of questionable monetization practices being adopted. I think those practices have led to some staleness in the market as game devs have focused on revenue over delivering a good experience. Even if games aren't losing money they still have to deliver enough profit to appease shareholders or else gamers get squeezed. I don't think any developer has found a good answer to this - but it's relatively apparent that the current situation is untenable.
Exactly. Game prices have effectively gone down because you can now capture whales' money who subsidize the rest of us.
I was mostly thinking about the $80 games. However, even the console price doesn't hold as much water since they aren't giving price cuts to consoles any more. Those older consoles you mentioned were introduced at a high price, but generally a year after launch they all had permanent price cuts.
Eh. I think the pricing (in the US at least) is fine. I’d rather they charge slightly more and give us something that won’t age as poorly as the Switch 1 has. It’s struggled to run even stripped down versions of PS5 and Xbox games.
I, at least, am very much enjoying my machine that lets me receive my regular auditory dose of OH BANANA.
Makes perfect sense to me. Nintendo already had a solid enough of a product in the original Switch that the masses were willing to overlook its various significant flaws… it’s only natural that a revision that fixes most of those flaws and ramps up overall polish to Apple-like levels is going to be popular. It’s everything original Switch owners loved but much better.
There’s also been quite a few people who’ve been wanting to play Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom but couldn’t deal with the original Switch’s subpar performance (including spots where it dips to ~15FPS) in those games. The Switch 2 addresses this, and so a good number of sales probably come from this group.
A month later, Switch 2 sales still going very strong.
I don't know if this is information anyone would have, but, at a demographic level, who's buying this?
I haven't been in touch with the portable gaming scene since I had a gameboy color (which I admittedly kept playing until ~2013). I could see this being handy for people who travel a lot but other than that I feel so out of the target market I don't have a good sense of who uses this and how.
I'm always caught off-guard remembering how atypical some of my interactions with games and technology are, that the average age of people playing videogames is ~30, most people use a laptop instead of a desktop computer, and the most popular youtube device is a TV.
Answered my own questions a bit finding this report from 2021 about the original switch. It breaks down the age, but I'm still left wondering about use cases.
The report you found dispells a common myth on the internet about Nintendo: no, it's not mainly played by kids. The main nintendo demographic is young adults in the 18-26 age range.
A usecase that online gaming forums often misses is using the handheld as a portable device in the house. Why? There's a number of reasons. For the many people who live in shared housing, whether that be because you're living with your parents, or you have a spouse, or you have a roommate, the main TV can often be used, or about to be used.
With the Switch, you're not worried if your roommate is about to binge love island for 10 hours. Just pop it out of the dock, and you're still playing.
Maybe you just feel lazy and want to play in bed, or in the privacy of your room.
If you're a new parent, the switch's local portability can be a godsend. Can a new parent afford to sit on a couch for hours on end when they may be summoned by their child at any time? With a switch, you can take it with you.
A lot of people who frequent online forums assume that everyone has permanent access to a desk, monitor, or TV. But that just isn't true; like you said, few people have desktops or a need for a monitor at all!
A lot of people, especially young adults, don't even have TVs. Not out of financial burden necessarily, but space and need. If you've grown up watching netflix and youtube and whatnot, what use is a TV? Just use your phone or laptop.
Yeah, I was surprised when I found out my best friend didn't have a TV after she moved into her new apartment. She's been talking about getting one, but she's lived there for more than half a year now, and still hasn't gotten one. She has a Switch Lite, but as you say, she actually rarely plays the Switch Lite on the go as far as I can tell - she just plays it on her couch, in her bedroom, etc... With that and her laptop, she never felt the need for a television before. She's only considering one now because she wants to host people at her apartment now, and feels like a TV would be useful for that.
Even going back to handhelds such as the Game Boy and DS series, I would guess that most of my time spent playing them was indeed at home. They were definitely more conveniently portable than a Switch or Steam Deck, but there wasn't a strict delineation in my mind between "you play console in the house, and handheld when on the go".
Anecdotally, I know many young adults with young children enjoy having a Switch because it makes it very easy to entertain multiple people at once. Another important thing to remember is that the Switch and Switch 2 come with two controllers if you split the Joy-Cons, which is way more convenient than any prior Nintendo console, and is another point in its favor for this use-case.
My household has a Switch (1, not 2) and I’m constantly amazed that my kids prefer to play on the small screen instead of docked. They will be sitting on the couch, directly across from the TV, which is off, engrossed in the game in their lap. I ask if they’d like to play it on the big screen and they always say no, they prefer it like this. I don’t get it, but it’s a real preference.
I'm 41, grew up gaming on TVs and later computer monitors. These days, I prefer a handheld experience to anything else; if I sit at my desktop computer, I might play something briefly, but ultimately get distracted or bored. Instead, I'm quite happy with my Steam Deck.
Are they a little bit near-sighted? That's the case for me prefering watching YT on a laptop instead of the TV, things are in focus without the need for glasses.
No, at least not that we know of. They can see the TV just fine. I think they just prefer the handheld experience for whatever reason. They're used to using an iPad, so there may be some familiarity preference there.
Related: there's some concern about nearsightedness becoming far more prevalent than it used to be. It went from 25% a few decades ago to over 40%. Staring at a phone for hours is probably driving an increase in myopia...which I've realized is an advantage of playing games on a console. Gaming time becomes hours spent looking across the room, focusing into the distance.
From what I've seen on the research, it seems like it's more directly related to a lack of sunlight exposure than just looking at screens.
Little addendum: the ability to switch between handheld and docked mode is really convenient. I can just pluck my Switch out of the dock whenever I want without disrupting gameplay, or pop it in for a big scene. Heck, sometimes I'll just pick up the dock and cables and carry them to another TV. The setup is really portable compared to the other consoles I've used.
The convenience factor of that really can't be overstated. I often see people point out that the Steam Deck can do that too, but you need to buy the dock, cable and controller separately, which is an extra expense on top of buying it. And even then, sometimes controllers can be finicky for certain games. The Switch comes with all that though, and everything works out of the box with no extra troubleshooting.
As someone who used to cart my game consoles to my friends houses and knew their Composite cable hookups better than them soon enough, the switch (and switch 2) is both really easy and really dang annoying.
My dock is hooked up to a power strip behind the TV and the TV is huge. Back in the day, even if you had a gigantic 32" CRT in the corner, the plugs were usually next to it and it was big enough that you could just easily lean around the damn things to get to the rear plugs. No flat display mounted on the wall with two inches to navigate getting the HDMI plugged in the right way, just left to right, yellow to red. If there's no video, switch yellow and red. I can do that with my eyes closed.
I don't think that's actually good for the long-term health of the company fwiw
I don't think that's a concern, since Nintendo is in a really good financial position. Basically they'll be fine until 2052 even if they were to lose $250 million a year. And that article is from 2012, during a lull in Nintendo's popularity and profits. The Switch and Switch 2 have been massive successes, so I'm sure they're in even better shape now.
There's a reason I actually laughed out loud when I saw those leaked Microsoft conversations talking about trying to take over Nintendo. The way those executives talked made it sound like Nintendo had no clue what they were doing and could go under at any second because of a single foolish mistake. Nintendo doesn't even really need to compete, they've secured a solid foothold in the game industry.
Families are probably the biggest demographic that I think gets forgotten. Nintendo is pretty much the family company, and there are still many older people who think of all video game consoles as "Nintendo". So if someone has kids who want to get into gaming, Nintendo is probably the best option.
On that note, Nintendo also has a lot of exclusive IPs that are iconic and super popular with all ages. I'm personally getting a Switch 2 at some point because I like Pokémon and Animal Crossing. Not yet, but I will someday.
I'm actually surprised by the sales, but I know for a fact that I have no intention of buying one. The first switch was always of dubious value to me personally because of how underpowered it was even at release. I was only interested in a few exclusive titles and I have been very disappointed in most of the first party games that have come out on the switch. The new switch raises the price, points towards most games not being actually available in physical form, and didn't fix the hardware issues with the controllers. I can only imagine that it will always have a solid market for the same people that prefer small screens/handhelds since there was never a true successor to the 3DS.