Without the Wii U we wouldn’t have the Switch, but without the GameCube we wouldn’t have the Wii. Disruptive innovation is not always progress, and cycles of iterative improvement are essential for good engineering and real innovation.
I have plenty of dislike for Nintendo, but incremental improvement evey otherish iteration isn’t why. If innovation stops in a couple iterations, stick a fork in it, but things take time.
Nintendo have always worked in a tick-tock fashion. first they try something new, then they refine the formula.
- NES -> SNES
- N64 -> GC
- Wii -> Wii U
- Game Boy -> GBA
- DS -> DSi
- 3DS -> New 3DS
obviously these are not all equivalent, but they have the same feeling of “now that the tech has matured, what can we do with it?”
I‘d say Wii + NDS = Wii U -> Switch -> Switch2
Gameboy -> GBC
GBA -> GBA SPi was more highlighting “this is new hardware doing the same thing but better”. gb-gbc is the same CPU, just faster. gba-gbasp is the exact same hardware.
new 3ds also sort of fits that description but it’s a completely different system internally, just moulded into a DS form factor.
The article basically answers its own questions in the conclusion that we’ve pretty much reached the ‘final form’ for consoles.
Juat like with phones. In the early 2000’s phones were all manner of wild designs with weird shapes and crazy functionality, but now we’ve settled on the ubiquitous black rectangle of the smartphone.
So too now has the console settled on this, a single screen with buttons on the sides.
We saw the lead-up to this long ago with Nintendo’s own evolving line of handhelds, and Sony’s PSP and Vita, and now we’ve seen it on the PC side too with the Steam Deck.
Even Sony are trying to move into making their main console a handheld - the only reason Nintendo were able to get there first is they were willing to do their classic move and go with an low-power device without much grunt, and rely on the fun-factor of the games to make it good.
Imagine if next cycle Nintendo came out with a dual screen beast, a-la the DS. These days, more and more games on consoles are cross-platform that work on all systems, and that doesn’t work so well if your system is super unique and deviates from the single black rectangle. They’d be shooting themselves in the foot.
I think if Nintendo do something truly off-the-wall again, it will only be because there has been some new tech shift in the market and Nintendo jump in to get first mover advantage. Like a new type of VR that works super seamlessly, or something none of us have though of yet.
But for now here we are. The ubiquitous black rectangle has arrived.
Bit of an weird take to be honest. Just because the new Switch is a fairly straightforward iteration doesn’t mean Nintendo won’t innovate again in the future.
I think we haven’t seen anything other than the shape of the thing so it sounds pretty alarmist. Remember all the sensors packed into Joycons that nobody uses anymore? It enabled stuff like Nintendo Labo and other neat toys. We’ve only seen that the new Joycons have an optical sensor so far. Who knows what else is there and how is it going to get used.
I’m still waiting for Virtual Boy 2 to be announced
