Nintendo: Switch Reaffirms The Value of Portable Gaming In Backdrop of Smartphones

The home-portable hybrid console that Nintendo introduced with the Nintendo Switch is this years hot seller with some analyst even saying that it has sold 15 million units already. Its popularity, despite fierce competition from mobile gaming reinforced some beliefs Nintendo had with portable gaming.

In an interview with IGN, Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning and Development Division general manager, and Yoshiaki Koizumi, general producer of Nintendo Switch, the duo reaffirmed some trends and hopes for the Switch.

Takahashi himself observed that the portability is a huge feature of the Nintendo Switch, so much so that the Japanese gamers are all playing with a Switch while queuing in long lines.

“Certainly in Japan, especially when people are in a long line, and maybe a lot of these are game product-related lines, you definitely see a lot of people holding a Switch and playing there,” Takahashi told IGN.

In fact, Takahashi hoped that this behaviour can spread to the West as it will fulfill the Switch’s promise to allow gaming anywhere. Through this it reaffirmed the Switch’s value as a portable gaming console, and a hybrid.

“Before the release of the Nintendo Switch, in interviews I would often talk to people about what their impressions were, this idea of game hardware that you could either play as a console in front of a television or take with you on the go,” he continued. “What I most looked forward to was hearing people’s impressions after release, when they really tried it on their own, and started to realize the comfort and the charm of those experiences for themselves. What I think we were able to reaffirm at that time was the value of portable gaming in the Nintendo Switch. But because it is a hybrid that allows both, it allows us to very flexibly approach [console gaming] as well.”

Koizumi, on the other hand, explain the Nintendo Switch’s value in an environment where smartphones are leading portable gaming. He commented that the Switch’s Joy-con provides something that no smartphones can achieve by allowing local multiplayer while on the go in a a variety of environments.

“Just to add a little bit to this idea of how people viewing smartphones as an influence on the future of portable gaming, I certainly wanted to see all the possibilities of having controllers that could be separated from the hardware, so that you could be able to hand one to another person in a variety of different environments,” Koizumi added. “I think that really represents an amazing advantage over smartphones. That was something that we had focused on very clearly as something we could achieve to reach that distinction.”

The Switch has definitely achieved all the bullet points it set out to achieve, be it in the portable or home console category. If you want to know more about the duo’s views about the Switch, you can head on to IGN here.