Even though the Wii U was unique in many ways, bringing the idea of turning a tablet into a gamepad, it didn’t pan out. However, after the failure of the Wii U, the company’s worst-selling console, Nintendo has become more conscious of its choices. It still found a way to reinvent the product category. If history tells us anything, Nintendo has always bucked market trends despite many predicting the company’s doom. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/ Indian Express) Kids try out the Switch console at a Target store in Los Angeles. But if Nintendo is indeed launching a more updated Switch console, it may find itself in a changed technological landscape that we are currently in, where reinventing new products is becoming harder due to market risks and fear of losing existing customers to competitors. That sounds a lot like how the iPhone now gets iterative updates each year. “We are likely going to see a shift like NES to SNES rather than a shift like Gamecube to Wii,” says Toto.
Whether it was Gameboy’s portable form factor, DS’ dual-screen, 3DS’ 3D display, Wii’s motion console, or Switch’s hybrid capability of playing both ways-being played docked with the TV or on the go.
In contrast, Nintendo has always surprised consumers with both hardware and software. Over the years, Nintendo has toyed with different ideas than its competitors- Microsoft and Sony-who mostly settled for a conventional approach to making the console.