This might come off as horribly pessimistic (sorry!!) but as a long time fan of Nintendo, I must admit that I have lost all faith in Nintendo over the years
Please excuse me if I come off a little blunt but I just cannot see myself buying into the Nintendo ecosystem anymore. If Nintendo wants to win me back, they really need to release a
more powerful living-room console with real hardware (not tablet hardware) that is capable of accepting ports of titles from other game consoles (and playing them at ~1080p30). Also, if Nintendo wants to compete for the living room, it needs to be a far better media companion (streamer, etc etc).
Ever since the Wii, Nintendo seems entirely too focused on making budget friendly SFF-oriented consoles with vastly inferior hardware/OS that rely far too heavily on first party developer support in order to keep them afloat. Without enough developers/publishers that are willing to invest money to make original games for the lowest selling console, all we're seeing so far is a small handful of original titles and a bunch last-gen, indie, or 2D ports from yesteryear.
At their lower price point, unique features aside, perhaps they are targeting kids or maybe low income families instead of the generation that grew up playing Nintendo. If that is the case (not saying that it is), I feel like they have ultimately lost sight of their target audience knowing that the generation that they are trying to appeal to today, is a generation that grew up on their parent's iPads and $1 games. The generation that grew up playing Nintendo has since matured and moved on to the more mature platforms (PS4, XBox, PC) and it's really only the occasional Zelda or Mario title that causes the older-generations to entertain the idea of dropping $200-$300 to play a single game (or two).
Unfortunately for me (maybe you?), their
inferior hardware (this time being crippled by using tablet-based hardware) is not supported by most modern game engines so once again their platform is likely going to get ignored by developers that are unwilling to invest the extra effort into making a Nintendo port. If a developer
does decide to develop for it, they also have to eat the cost of investing additional money to support Nintendo's exclusive features. This means it costs their investors more money to develop for a console that they may not break even on.
I loved my NES, my SNES, my N64, and especially my Gamecube (hell ya!). I, like many of you, grew up on Nintendo and that gameplay history directly affects the genres that I enjoy playing to this very day. However, my Wii collected dust and as a result I decided to hold off on buying a WiiU. Now, here I sit watching the Switch perform a repeat last generation's follies with just 2-3 titles that actually look promising.
As an adult,
this is not my idea of fun. Am I alone in this?
