A reader predicts that 2025 is going to be turning point for the games industry and that the Nintendo Switch 2 will be at the centre of it all.
It was inevitable that pics of the Switch 2 would leak out before the official annoucement, given someone always manages to take a photo they shouldn’t on the production line. That’s what we got at first, but I never expected to see so many accessory makers spoiling the secrets in such a blatant way. I still don’t understand why either? They gain nothing from it and now Nintendo hates their guts. Seems completely self-defeating.
That’s their problem though. What it means is that we already know exactly the Switch 2 looks like: the original Switch. That’s interesting but in terms of anything important we still know nothing. There’re no believable rumours about any of the games and we don’t know what any of the new buttons do or if it has any unexpected features – which Nintendo has implied it does.
We don’t know what the new buttons at the back do or what the ‘C’ button does. It must be important because it kind of spoils the look of the console and the right Joy-Con, so I think the guess about some kind of TV ‘casting’ feature are probably true, so you can use it like the Wii U GamePad. But that’s only a guess, and it’s Nintendo, so who really knows.
I’m not going to speculate anymore because the reason I call the Switch 2 ‘weird’ is nothing to do with what it does, but the position it will have in the games industry. Xbox and PlayStation are in a bad way at the moment. Xbox console sales are in the toilet and PlayStation 5 is falling quicker than expected, with still not much announced for the future and no word on whether they’ve given up live service games or not.
The games industry is in a mess right now and yet Nintendo is coming off the back of their best run ever. They’re in a position they haven’t been in since the NES, where their last console was a massive success and their next one looks like it’s going to be as well. That gives them a lot of power in the industry and publishers are going to be falling over themselves to work with Nintendo – which is not something many gamers have seen in their lifetime before.
It’s going to come across as just as weird to Nintendo as well, who won’t be anymore used to it than we are. What will they do with that level of influence? Will they immediately start to bully companies around and take advantage or will they become the safe pair of hands the industry needs right now?
I wouldn’t like to say really, but I don’t think we should underestimate what a strange and important fork in the road the games industry is at right now. We still don’t know whether companies have really given up on all the live service nonsense, it’s not clear what Xbox is planning for its next gen hardware, and we have no idea what Sony’s long term plans are.
That level of uncertainty is not good for anyone, whether you’re a company or just a fan. And to be honest, despite being a Nintendo fan I’m not sure I really trust them with this level of control. Nintendo might be more sensible than Sony and Microsoft, but they only care about themselves and have no interest in the rest of the games industry or any publisher that they don’t rely on.
Sony and Microsoft aren’t exactly charities but at least they both look at the industry in more or less the same way. With Nintendo… they have a very specific view of gaming, that’s very different to anyone else.
2025 is certainly going to be an interesting year, that’s all I can say. Will Nintendo become the dominant force in the games industry, in a way they never have before? Or will they fumble the ball and let it fall into even more turmoil? To be honest I have no idea, but it’s kind of worrying that either eventually is entirely possible.
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