During their 80th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Nintendo hinted that its next console will likely stick with the Switch's hybrid design. The Switch has been a commercial hit for Nintendo since it launched four years ago, and it appears the momentum for the hybrid handheld-home console is trending upwards, in part due to its unique design. While Nintendo had tremendous success with both the Nintendo DS and the Wii, its next home console, the Wii U, failed to even match the Wii's success.
The prominence of mobile gaming is believed to be the reason why the Wii U failed to sell as much as its popular motion control-focused predecessor, which severely hurt Nintendo's profits on a quarterly basis. This prompted late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata cast aside his aversion of the mobile market, and Nintendo began planning for its next console to be able to play games on the go as a central idea during the design stage. The rest is history; since its initial launch in 2016, the Nintendo Switch has been a smash hit. In Japan, the Switch's early sales numbers were on par with and quickly surpassed Playstation 4 sales, and it sold more than 2.7 million units worldwide in just its first month.
Sales for the Switch have only increased since then, rewarding Nintendo for its commitment to home-handheld hybrid gaming. According to Nintendo Everything, a recent Nintendo shareholders meeting saw current president Shuntaro Furukawa and director Ko Shiota stating that they believed the versatility of the Switch is a large part of its sustained success. They indicated that the company plans to continue this winning design philosophy in the design of Nintendo's next console, with Shiota telling shareholders:
"From the perspective of playing with the image displayed on a TV we believe that because consumers can play Nintendo Switch on a TV or the game console screen itself, it has greatly increased the opportunities for gameplay in various scenes in their lives, compared to previous consoles. Through Nintendo Switch, we’ve made many discoveries about where a dedicated video game platform can fit into a consumer’s daily life... We will utilize these experiences in carefully considering the form our future game consoles will take."
The Switch's ability to function as both a handheld and traditional home console was something that Nintendo wanted from the very beginning and, outside of common but frustrating issues like Joy-Con drift, both the commercial and critical reception to the Switch show that Nintendo truly have something special on their hands. Of course, their first-party titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokemon: Sword and Shield have also played a role in the Switch's success, which is something Furukawa acknowledges. After speaking on the Switch's design as a key pillar of its success, Furukawa added:
"The second factor is that Nintendo’s development resources are concentrated on developing content for a single platform, Nintendo Switch. We want to extend the life cycle of Nintendo Switch while maximizing such advantages."
Nintendo is aware of what has made the Switch such a hit, which is reassuring. Far too often, when a company finds success in any field, it can misunderstand the causes behind that success, and pivot away from what worked. However it appears that not only does Nintendo know exactly what it did right, but it plans to continue with and improve the Switch's unique hybrid design, as well as making high quality first party titles.
Source: Nintendo Everything