We got all sorts of new information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch console yesterday including price ($300), launch date (March 3rd), region locking (none), and that you can pre-order RIGHT NOW!
And of course there will be Mario Kart
Every gaming news sight worth that title has some sort of story up about Nintendo’s new console today, with more to follow as demos commence. This is the moment we have been waiting for since the initial announcement back in October.
I have to admit I like the Switch on paper at least. I like the size, the light weight design, the mobility, and the built-in screen that makes it a portable. The latter is important in a one TV household.
Oddly, one feature that drew my attention is the ability to take a screen shot of game play. As a blogger who charts his gaming journey through his writing, the ability to set a scene with a screen shot rather than the MS Paint that are my words has direct appeal. Not sure that is a tipping point level feature, but it is interesting.
And then there is the price. $300 seems like a good compromise price. I think at $250 it would be a no-brainer purchase for people and that at the $350 mark that was rumored just before the announcement the Switch started to creep too close to XBox and PS4 territory so that you might have to start considering is games exclusive to the Switch would be worth the commitment. But at $300 it is just far enough away that it can fall into the impulse purchase zone for some.
On the flip side, I am not really a console gamer. We got a Wii back in 2007 and I picked up a PlayStation 3 in 2011 after the prices had gone way down. The Wii got a LOT of play at our house. My daughter and I used to play games on the Wii every weekend for hours and hours.
However, my daughter was 5 years old when we got the Wii and would wake me up early on Saturday morning so we could start playing. Now she is 15, I am not sure she has seen a Saturday morning before 10am lately, and if she wants me to do anything with her on the weekend it is to teach her to drive so she can get her license in a year.
Meanwhile the PlayStation 3 has been mostly a video playing device since we bought it. My daughter did enjoy Little Big Planet, but after that wore off it has been more about Netflix and Amazon Prime. We could replace it with a Roku box if it wasn’t for the fact that it is also our Blu-Ray player.
And the last console I owned before those two was a SEGA Genesis back in 1992. And the console before that was an Atari 2600 way back in 1977. I’ve been a PC gamer since 1983 and online since 1986. I never had a NES or a SNES or an N64, so lack any Mario nostalgia. My Nintendo franchise of choice is Pokemon, which probably explains why we have more DS series handhelds (2x DS Lite, 1x DSi, 1x DSi XL, 2x 3DS XL) sitting around the house than the count of living room consoles systems I have ever owned.
So for me, while I like the idea of the Switch, I haven’t seen anything compelling that makes me want to run out and pre-order today. $300 isn’t a bad price, but that same $300 would go a long ways towards replacing my 14 year old Dell 1600×1200 monitor with something bigger and better, which would have a much greater impact on my gaming… and would probably also require me to upgrade my video card.
That is where I stand. I like the Switch. At this point in time, if I was going to buy a living room console, the Switch would be a serious contender. But there isn’t enough there yet to make it an automatic purchase. It seems fresher than the Sony and Microsoft offerings, but it isn’t as magical as the Wii seemed back in 2006.
How about you and the Switch? Any interest? Time for a poll?
If the poll above doesn’t appear for you, there are always the comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment