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What you call 'culture' was invented by people like me to sell Pokémon™* -Don Draper
It's been many years, and the Nintendo Switch is no longer just underpowered compared to its rivals, it's an actual active retro console. We all know they have something coming up. As usual, rumours are all over the internet, but leaks all but confirm: it's a more powerful and improved Switch.
Nintendo has had two approaches: the old standard:
Improve and keep up with competitors. This stopped working when the PlayStation was sexier than the Nintendo 64.
And then the two-pillar approach:
- [1] Lateral thinking with withered technology
- [2] A product that fits in your life
This worked successfully for the Gameboy, the Wii, the DS, and the Switch.
Concurrently with this, there's also the two-pillar approach of home console and handheld, which they insisted was somehow supposed to become three pillars with the DS, but has instead become a single one with the Switch. A handheld was such a smart device: it was affordable for children, used the withered technology, and most-overlooked: repeated previous console generations with improved sensibilities. Gameboy was an NES, Gameboy Advance a SNES, the DS was a Nintendo 64, 3DS was almost a Gamecube, and Switch was a Wii U. Furthermore, the Wii was a Gamecube as well.
What I mean by repeating previous generations, is that they weren't just handheld versions of the old tech, they were refined, more elegant. Link's Awakening for Gameboy isn't actually a shrunken A Link to the Past, but the Zelda 3 for NES that never happened. The Super Mario Bros. 3 of Zeldas! The DS showed us the Nintendo PlayStation we never got: an elegant 2D powerhouse with some 3D capabilities. It even had the JRPGs the Nintendo 64 never got. 4 Heroes of Light is definitely a refined Nintendo 64 game instead of a handheld PS1 game.
This is the key to "lateral thinking with withered technology". In 2017, we got Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, a console that was only technologically on par with the 2005 Xbox 360, yet no game on the Xbox 360 is as comprehensively designed, masterfully implemented, and tangible.
The next important point is that this approach is not a guaranteed success, or at least requires both parts. The Wii U was unarguably a failure, and the GameCube only modestly successful compared to the astounding success of the PlayStation 2. Yet if I pull the 3DS into this perspective, a new notion appears: the 3DS was a massive success, and absolutely destroyed its direct competitor: the PlayStation Vita. Yet it's probably mostly remembered as having lost to smartphones. This points to the second pillar: products need a place in our lives. This is such an important idea, but only becomes really clear once a game console loses a console generation to a non-game machine. PlayStation and PlayStation 2 made sense in our homes: they looked good and played music and movies. The Gameboy was cheap and didn't intrude. The DS was a smartphone in Japan before smartphones (The DS/PSP is actually an inverse 3DS/iPhone situation: The PSP wasn't a failure at all, just a lot less successful than the DS). It seemed like the 3DS simply wasn't needed when you had a smartphone. On the other hand, the Switch found a new way to fit into our lives: it was a gaming tablet. A dedicated device for playing on your terms: at home, in your bed, on the couch, with friends, alone, and so on. It boots quickly, requires little power, and (like the PlayStation 1 of yore) looks harmless (like a tablet (unless you buy a gaudy Splatoon controller like me)).
I'm not done! Since the iPhone appeared, video game culture has collapsed. There are practically no more magazines or blogs, fandoms exist in ephemeral discords, and cling to popular streamers. The enthusiast press of the 90s and 00s turned into a lot of bitter, extremely talented people that rarely seem to care about the games, as much as they do the people who play them or make them (they'd say that's a good thing. My point kinda relies on it not being a good thing, so you decide). Games are rarely physical, and often obliterated from existence once a publisher shuts down servers. Players and press and developers are driven to hate-engage with each other on social media, and on top of that, social media has just killed all blogging, writing, cataloguing, searchability and critical thinking. This is the short, ranty version of saying: There is no longer a video game culture. There isn't an indie game movement. There aren't even forums.
I guess we still have 4chan. I'm not sure that's a good thing, though I have had my best, most thoughtful game design discussions on /v/.
Alright, so I end up at my original thought: what's the Switch 2? I don't care. It's a more powerful Switch. Whatever. What concerns me is: Does it fit into our lives? I'm not so sure. I'm not certain what place games and dedicated consoles have in our lives anymore. Part of the problem is aforementioned the lack of a video game culture. For all the stupid discourse, the tribalism of console wars did unite kids (into hate-filled groups, hellbent on the destruction of those outside their group). What the Switch 2 needs to be, is a return to a video game culture. I could do without the fanaticism, but some sort of belonging helps. Preferably tied to an idea, not a person. This is kinda what the Playdate console is: somebody trying to sell a subculture instead of a machine. This is the hole in our lives that a product can fit into.
If we hope to have video games and a culture surrounding them in ten years, somebody need to create something that is tangible, not too expensive, but not too cheap either, good, built sturdily, doesn't take advantage of users, can't be destroyed by servers shutting down, and can somehow coexist with, and not be dependent on, streaming and the easy accessibility of streaming services. You know what? It's the year 2024 and we are all tired of being addicted to our phones. A device I don't want to use all the time, but that also discourages me from consuming all the time too. It's sort of the mantra of old Animal Crossing, but extended to an entire platform.
This could sound like I'm saying the Switch 2 is an automatic not-quite-a-success. This is of course neither guaranteed nor completely out of the question. PlayStation consoles are always just technological improvements with a modern media feature. They are still successful. There's no reason the Switch 2 can't just do that. It's not like any of the other tablet gaming machines do what the Switch does as well as it does. Yet if a machine was to help create or recreate a culture around it, it would need to do something very different. Something that looks stupid at first glance, and doesn't even allow for normal games. Like a 3d printer so that you print your games, or some sort of book club experience, or an e-ink screened console connected to a bonsai tree.
*: A product by Nintendo™, Creatures Inc., and GameFreak™