I Refuse to Make a Switch Pun (Part 1)

The Switch marks an important milestone for Nintendo.  While the original Wii met with massive market success by capturing the imaginations of the casual audience, it came at the price of losing much of the core gaming audience.  Nintendo attempted to recapture the core gaming market with the Wii U but largely failed in its endeavor and, furthermore, couldn’t even retain the casual audience it obtained in the previous generation.  The Switch now stands to recapitulate those losses and prove that Nintendo can still make a place for itself in the console gaming market through innovation rather than raw power.

From the very beginning the Switch has been somewhat of an anomaly in the video game industry.  First announced almost off-handedly as the codename NX back in March 2015 at a Nintendo investor’s meeting, virtually no official information about the console was given for over a year.  It wasn’t until Nintendo unceremoniously released a three-and-a-half-minute reveal trailer on October 20^th, 2016 that we finally got out first look at the console as well as its official name, the Nintendo Switch.

The trailer, short and sweet, forwent the standard approach of showcasing new games for a new console and instead placed the focus squarely on the Switch hardware itself.  This gave consumers a clear picture of exactly what the Switch console would be capable of and that it would be a distinct departure from Nintendo’s previous consoles, home and handheld alike.  This messaging was especially important considering the Wii U’s first stumble out of the gate was just that, with many people thinking that it was a simple extension to the original Wii rather than a brand new console.

The Switch then entered another period of radio silence.  

No new information was given from Nintendo besides the date, January 12^th, 2017, of a blowout presentation that would go over all the details of the console.  The Switch did make a brief appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, however, which showed the console “switching” between console and handheld mode in a live setting.  An unlikely place to find anything video game related, The Tonight Show cameo demonstrated that Nintendo was taking a different approach to advertising and exposure this time around as opposed to the Wii U’s almost nonexistent amount.

And then the January 12^th event rolled around.  There we learned about new features of the console, such as HD Rumble, and a multitude of games in development for it.  Most importantly, we got the release date and price.  Clocking in at $299, the Switch was priced just above the $249 price point that many in the industry expected but was still within the affordable windows of many.  Even more interesting, though, was the March 3^rd, 2017 release date which set one of the shortest, in not the shortest, timespan between home console announcement to release in video game history. 

Debuting a console without making an E3 appearance was also unfathomable in this day and age and but here Nintendo was doing just that.  Yet Nintendo is confident that it can sell its console without such an event and in such a short amount of time, and that says a lot. A confidence that was, again, absent in the days leading up to the Wii U’s launch.  And what better way to present a show of confidence than to have a Super Bowl commercial (Shameless “Go Pats!” goes here)?  Airing in a 30 second time slot during the 4^th quarter, the small bit of advertisement cost Nintendo a whopping $5 million and marked Nintendo’s first ever Super Bowl commercial. (Disclaimer: The Pokémon commercial at last year’s Super Bowl was actually by the Pokémon Company, not Nintendo.)  No company, of any sort, throws that kind of money at advertising a product they don’t believe has the potential to bring them great success and Nintendo is no different.  When a company has confidence in their product, it becomes easier for the consumers to have confidence as well and that will be pivotal to the Switch’s success going forward.