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So in the last few days Nintendo have made yet another play into the gaming landscape, an offensive that has been a long time coming and almost perfectly executed. So the Nintendo Switch is now officially official. Their play-at-home and then take away console is due for release on March 3rd priced at £280 in the UK and it’s raised a few eyebrows.

As you probably know the Switch is the successor to the limited success that was the Wii U but this time you can be playing a game at home with your console docked to your TV and when the urge takes you it can be removed from its sheath, have a couple of controllers stuck on the side and you’re good to go for a bit of mobile gaming.

But as recent history has told us the Japanese game maker has always fallen behind the school bullies that are the Xbox and Playstation. But as the market has settled down the big boys are basically PCs in a box so Nintendo’s quirky edge might be just what the industry needs.

Now we can’t say that we didn’t see this coming. For years we have been asking Nintendo to cut the ties of their proprietary hardware and release their awesome library to other systems but with their early reluctance it seemed like they would rather shrivel and die before they ported to another OS much in the same way that saved Sega when everything went south.

But then 2016 happened. First up, Pokemon Go. This short-lived fad was enjoyable for what it was and its timing was perfect (Summer hols) and for what it’s worth it put them back on the map, plus made them a couple of quid.

Then they pulled an ace card with the NES Classic. If you’re of a certain age, of which I will not admit whether I am or not they did create something desirable. Retro form factor with retro games what isn’t there to love?

And then at the last Apple event Mario made his debut on iOS so it seems like they had it in the bag all along, or did they? Was this a genius build up to a product launch or just a fluke after they listened to what the world really wanted?

I watch with real interest to see how the Switch does.

Author

Paul Wright

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