Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.

I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much. The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom). So as long as it is actually a decent spec bump I am happy and have zero care to compare it to the other consoles (but I am sure people are going too and scream that it is "underpowered").

The biggest thing I am curious about, will it be OLED since that will be disappointing to go back to non OLED from the OLED Switch. And Price.

Was heavily rumoured/leaked and this teaser video literally shows them gliding along a surface.

How Nintendo will leverage that functionality, who could honestly say, but that’s the genius of keeping a toy company mindset in an industry full of sports car company mindsets.

Generally speaking, no, it doesn't actually affect things, and in several cases (e.g. the Game Boy, the Wii, and the Switch come to mind) the objectively 'worse' console (from a tech perspective) was more successful by a country mile.

Most people think the “console” battle is between PlayStation and Xbox, and that PlayStation is the winner.

This is probably a big win for PlayStation’s marketing team.

I don't have any current Gen console (nor have I played one) but as a long-time tech market "interested observer" my understanding is that XBox had a bit less raw power last Gen and tried correcting this Gen and succeeded in having a bit more raw power than PS5. However, it apparently didn't matter to the market. So it seems to be another example like Betamax vs VHS, where the product with somewhat better technology didn't win because consumers found other factors more important. In modern game consoles, I assume those factors would be some mix of exclusive titles, compatibility with existing previous gen game libraries, marketing+brand perception and, more recently, the console's subscription game service.

It's interesting that Microsoft apparently didn't internalize this lesson, since Nintendo has been remained competitive for ~20 years by combining significantly weaker hardware with high-quality franchise games plus a clever differentiating factor (novel interaction (Wii) or portability (Switch). Of course, it would be wrong to conclude "CPU/GPU power doesn't matter" because it's more complex than comparing mips, flops, rops, etc. It also depends on how much, and how well, developers and game engines optimize for a platform's hardware.

Microsoft definitely learned their lesson about high-quality franchise games with their recent (and very costly) acquisition spree including Call of Duty. Although, to get anti-trust approval it can't be platform exclusive for at least a decade. I'm wondering if MSFT's claims that they're happy to be a games software company selling on all platforms may actually be true. If so, it may not bode well for the future of the XBox hardware business - which would be sad because more competition is generally better for consumers.

PS is suffering from decreasing fan loyalty due to the not-that-good subscription service and not-that-exclusive game titles. Also, their pace of new hardware seems to be off considering the half-dead PS VR2 or that streaming handheld thing. The way I see it, the subscription service is supposed to be a counterpart to MS's game pass or XGP; the handheld thing is most likely to be a compromise from current gen (PS5) performance and NS's pressure. But don't forget their legacy from previous generations, they have *the most* experiences in developing and publishing 3A titles, which is why PS is still my most played consoles.

On the other hand MS had the issue of XSS dragging XSX down (as mentioned above by others), and their hardware sales seems to be losing momentum due to "If I can play it on Windows why would I need a XBOX". But from their past doings I think MS is always on the chasing of "Combining their all platforms together". While Windows Phone might turn out to be a failure, XGP actually did succeed, thanks to the huge user base they have on Windows.

Whereas NS has the exclusive advantage of their cartoonish/pixelated artstyle. This alone, in my opinion, saves them a ton of money. Not saying the artstyle is worse than realistic ones, but the development cost is indeed much much lower. Not to mention it requires much less computing power to render, resulting in cheaper hardware products. Their console can't run 3A, but that is actually a smaller downside than some may think. Because cartoonish/pixelated game and smaller indie game is a huge market.

So... Though the 3 manufacturers are competing in the same game console market, they each found a smaller but more suitable target market for themselves. If there has to be a "winner", profit-wise, it should be NS undoubtedly. Just look at their hardware upgrade cycle and console/game sales/profit.