The Switch prints money because it’s portable but generic. Somehow, thirty years after the Game Boy, Nintendo managed to make “a console, but handheld” an incomparable advantage. The detachable joycons and assorted plastic widgets have only been relevant to first-party titles, which continue to innovate and iterate primarily through, y’know, gameplay.
So obviously the primary goal will remain being a compiler target for everything multiplatform, with enough oomph to remain relevant for about seven years. And god willing they’ll figure out they control the screen and will turn on freesync so middling framerates look and feel smooth.
Not sure what twist they can put on that without messing it up. Anything to improve battery life is a huge advantage… but I would not bet on them releasing a transflective screen that’s playable with the backlight off. A lightfield display would be absolutely incredible… but wouldn’t “just work” for existing games, and takes a lot of pixels otherwise wasted, when people already ignored the 3DS’s namesake feature. A clamshell Switch SP could have a smaller footprint… while getting thicker, heavier, and more breakable.
Honestly the simple boast would be to embrace the chonk and release a Game Gear sized brick of a machine. A console you could use to stun a horse, or play a game for an entire transatlantic flight. Bright enough that the row behind you can watch it projected on the overhead bins.
The Switch prints money because it’s portable but generic. Somehow, thirty years after the Game Boy, Nintendo managed to make “a console, but handheld” an incomparable advantage. The detachable joycons and assorted plastic widgets have only been relevant to first-party titles, which continue to innovate and iterate primarily through, y’know, gameplay.
So obviously the primary goal will remain being a compiler target for everything multiplatform, with enough oomph to remain relevant for about seven years. And god willing they’ll figure out they control the screen and will turn on freesync so middling framerates look and feel smooth.
Not sure what twist they can put on that without messing it up. Anything to improve battery life is a huge advantage… but I would not bet on them releasing a transflective screen that’s playable with the backlight off. A lightfield display would be absolutely incredible… but wouldn’t “just work” for existing games, and takes a lot of pixels otherwise wasted, when people already ignored the 3DS’s namesake feature. A clamshell Switch SP could have a smaller footprint… while getting thicker, heavier, and more breakable.
Honestly the simple boast would be to embrace the chonk and release a Game Gear sized brick of a machine. A console you could use to stun a horse, or play a game for an entire transatlantic flight. Bright enough that the row behind you can watch it projected on the overhead bins.