Gaming is in its big tech era

Phil Bothun, 70 Percent Complete:

Which makes sense: after the less-than-stellar sales of the WiiU, Nintendo has had 8 years of massive success, enjoying the success that comes from smart, innovative design and long tail growth from lowering the barriers for indies and third parties. That’s only really possible because of that coalescing: porting and selling games becomes easier (and more profitable) when the platforms are more similar.

But the downside is where we are now: this massive storyline for the past two or three years of “when is the Switch Pro or Switch 2 coming out?” ends leaving me feeling kinda bored. Sure, price plays a part in that: $299 for a Switch felt good in 2017, but $450 now doesn’t feel quite as nice. And yeah, the games look good, but I already have too many games to play on my other incremental consoles. The realm of innovative game design seems to have fallen to indies, most of which don’t require the power of a PS5’s hard drive, a 5090, or yeah, a Nintendo Switch 2.