Nintendo Switch has had a huge December over in Japan, with nearly 900,000 systems sold by Dec. 24. Based on the most recent cumulative sales data from Famitsu, the country’s biggest gaming publication, Nintendo has now sold just under 3.3 million Switch consoles in its homeland — both edging out PlayStation 2’s first-year sales numbers and matching Wii U’s lifetime sales to date.
Astonishing.
Simon Parkin reporting for The New York Times:
Even people like Mr. Miyamoto, 65, a leading figure at Nintendo since the 1980s, is ceding control at the company’s Japanese headquarters.
“More and more I am trying to let the younger generation fully take the reins,” Mr. Miyamoto said.
This younger generation has been carefully chosen; Mr. Miyamoto says he wants people who are more likely to create new kinds of play, rather than merely aim to perfect current ones.
“I always look for designers who aren’t super-passionate game fans,” Mr. Miyamoto said. “I make it a point to ensure they’re not just a gamer, but that they have a lot of different interests and skill sets.” Some of the company’s current stars had no experience playing video games when they were hired.
Andrew Goldfarb reporting for IGN:
According to Koizumi, part of Switch’s appeal may be the hardware itself, which allows playing to be a different social experience than smartphones can offer.
“Just to add a little bit to this idea of how people viewing smartphones as an influence on the future of portable gaming, I certainly wanted to see all the possibilities of having controllers that could be separated from the hardware, so that you could be able to hand one to another person in a variety of different environments,” Koizumi added. “I think that really represents an amazing advantage over smartphones. That was something that we had focused on very clearly as something we could achieve to reach that distinction.”
It may not add much weight, but here’s an image after my younger cousins swarmed me at Christmas, asking if I owned the Switch:
Andrew Webster on Nintendo’s A+ “Verge 2017 tech report card”:
Hardware has rightfully been the focal point of Nintendo’s 2017, but nobody would be talking about the Switch if it wasn’t for the games. And Zelda isn’t enough to make a successful console. That was one of the Wii U’s biggest issues; while it had some excellent titles, there were often months that went between notable releases. Since the Switch debuted in March, Nintendo has released a steady stream of acclaimed games, several which were ports or sequels to Wii U games that not enough people played. Mario Kart 8 got a deluxe edition, for instance, while the colorful shooter Splatoon received a revamped sequel. And while most of the third-party games on Switch were ports, with older games like LA Noire and Skyrim, they felt new and exciting again on the hardware.
I still believe there is a valid debate for Nintendo’s greater achievement of 2017: The Switch or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
(Note: Nintendo received the first A+ Verge tech report card.)
These alternative histories are false — but thrilling. My playing through them isn’t exactly productive, but I can’t say that my year-long gaming retreat has felt any more wasteful than the supposedly more mature engagement with politics by way of media, including social media. Wolfenstein II is escapism; and so, for the most part, is the ongoing debate about whether classical liberals should punch Nazis: They both induce fantasies about power and choices that most of us are unlikely to prosecute in the real world. Ideally, we organize. We lobby elected officials, we activate our neighbors and whatever followers we have, and we vote. But American progress is a long haul. In the grand scheme of Trump’s presidency, a 100-hour role-playing game is still a much more sensible way for me to squander my downtime than reading viral strains of conspiracy theory, surrendering what little serenity I have left in these dire times. If I want to obsessively watch the world collapse at the hands of a corporatist egomaniac, I’ll replay Horizon: Zero Dawn.
