Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

I’m glad to see Nintendo found a form factor that’s kind of gimmicky that actually worked. The Wii and Wii U were too gimmicky, but portability was a great choice. I’m also glad to see backwards compatibility.

I’m excited to see what kind of hardware improvements have been made. The switch came out in March 2017, just about 8 years ago. Just due to the way Nintendo games have their animated charm, they’re able to make their games look excellent on that hardware still. That said, I’d love to see how good a Zelda game looks on some new hardware.

The Wii was on the of the best selling consoles of all time? I believe only surpassed by the PS2.

Is the gimmicky a personal opinion or something you believe didn’t resonate with customers?

"Gimmicky" in the sense that they used movement controls and that's non-standard in the industry and went away mostly afterwards. I'm considering anything that isn't a traditional stationary control (keyboard + mouse or controller) as "gimmicky" or out of the ordinary.

In terms of sales, you're absolutely right - the Wii crushed it. I'd be curious to know about usage and software sales though. Maybe I'm wrong (very possible), but almost everyone I knew had a Wii at some point, but they didn't use it outside of a family toy with a few games when they first got it. I'd still consider that a win for Nintendo compared to less sales, but I'd imagine the average Xbox 360 or PS3 had a lot more software sales per console.

The Wiimotes were a clear influence on the Joy-Cons.

Nintendo still uses motion controls; they just made them portable and more resilient with gyros instead of IR.

Right, but it's not the main focus in the majority of games. In many games that do offer gyro support, it's usually able to be toggled off. It's not like the Wii where the core of the controllers was pointing them and swinging them around.

I don't remember motion controls being a majority of Wii games either.

A lot of them were played with a Nunchuk to emulate a classic controller (or attached to the actual Classic Controller or Rock Band instruments to play cross platform games).

The motion control that comes to mind beyond Wii Sports were circling the Wiimote to collect things in Mario.