Nintendo Switch 2 Madness
This isn't 2017. $400 is too much for a simple upgrade.
In 2017 the only competition Nintendo had was the Nvidia Shield and the Apple Ipad. The Nintendo Switch was the Shield, with a better library, so the 4k entertainment box quickly faded into history. The Ipad had the specs, but also an enormous price and 3rd party developers that were making phone games for a larger screen. It didn't have a built-in gaming community like Nintendo did.
The Switch is Nintendo's worst enemy because it opened the mobile gaming flood gates. 3rd party developers now have teams ready to port major games to mobile and hardware manufacturers are noticing. Forget the Rog Ally and the Steam Deck. Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi have already had the hardware and have been waiting for the developers to show. Now they have games ready to go.
Look at THQNordic. The powerhouse surviving the Embracer pogrom is leaning into the mobile future with titles like Wreckfest and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake making their way to mobile shortly after the Nintendo Switch port is made. Which means that the tiny 6% slice of the gaming industry that Nintendo has is being used to spring into the massive 55% slice that mobile controls.
Nintendo can't show up with a beefier Switch at $400 when 3rd party developers are porting Switch titles to last years Motorola Edge, with a 144Hz 6inch, no bezel OLED with HDR and Dolby Atmos support, an 8 core SoC with Mali-G77 that is performing 2x to 3x times better than the X1. With 8GB of ram and a bunch of stuff the Switch doesn't need, like a 32MP and 50MP CMOS with high-end lenses, and stuff it should like Wifi 6e support, all for less than $400.
So what would Nintendo have to do in order to make $400 make sense? Hardware Ray Tracing seems like a must, but as Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple support hardware Ray-Tracing, how they support it is not a standard. It will likely come down to a lowest-common standard for developers, which may not include Ray Tracing at all. For example, if Nintendo supports the high-end RT stuff like BVH, it will probably just be them and high-end Qualcomm, which doesn't really hit much of that 55% of the mobile slice.
8GB is obvious, but 12GB should be expected at $400. If a sub $400 phone is running 8 and a $900 is running 16, then 12 really should be the sweet spot for a Nintendo product that is missing the fancy cameras.
Backward Compatibility is a minimum for a $400 upgrade that is coming 7 years after a $300 console sporting a 9 year old chipset. And don't use some dumb CPI general inflation number to say "well $300 then is like $800 now". The Iphone X was $1200 at launch, the Iphone 15 Pro Max is $1200 at launch. Technology doesn't inflate like houses do. No one is buying cars with their Iphone equity.
No drift? Yeah, that should be a standard. Expect Hall-Effect to be the new buzz word. Don't be grateful about it though.
Industry first is really what you should be expecting at $400. Not a gimmick, but an actual "I can't get this anywhere else" first. Whether that is a handheld Super Scope that has M&K elitests asking for aim assist, or a cart system that allows patches and saves to stay on the cart (so we don't have to deal with Nintendo's crap system migration solutions), Nintendo has to give consumers a reason to go Nintendo that isn't just another Mario Kart.
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