Another name for this controller, as used by e.g. Play-Asia, would be Hori Mini Controller, but let’s go what Hori themselves wrote on the box. Out of all third party controller manufacturers, Hori has been around the block at least since the Famicom days and have been making their Mini like of controllers for each generation of consoles. One of earliest examples I’ve managed to scrounge up was their Mini Commander controller. Hori has maintained their above-average quality compared to their competition rather well, with few points contention here and there, like how sometimes their D-Pads don’t stack up. That’s a slight spoiler.
Also, despite this being advertisd as a Switch controller, it uses a standard USB-A jack and does function in Windows as X-Input device without any troubles. It should be noted that this controller has no wireless option.
The Mini Pad for Switch comes in variety of flavours, but I ended up picking up red as I have enough blue in my life as is. The rest of the bunch have Nintendo licensed characters on them, and I’m guessing some people would find them more appealing. Design-wise, the Super Mario is extremely lacklustre. The licensed controllers do have slightly higher price point.
The first thing with this controller is how it feels, as it stands apart from from other third party controllers on the market. The surface is not glossy plastic on the front, but has this slight, almost soft texturing. It’s a very slight satin-like feel that makes the controller almost soft to touch. A very nice feeling that does give the controller a nice first impression, though in time that will polish off. The layout is nothing special, though the yellow chosen for the face buttons does make the button legend hard to see. The issue does not matter with the other colour options, though. Hori opted to use the same kind of stick Sony’s Dual Shock 4 uses, and thus have more travel. Going from frequently using Joycons to the Mini Controller, there is some learning before you get used to how high the left stick can go. There’s very little to say about any of the face buttons, outside their height. They’re extremely accurate and satisfying to press down. They are more raised than either Joycon or Dual Shock 4 buttons, which some may prefer. The menu buttons in the middle are your usual rubber, but sadly the legend on them is barely visible. The Turbo function, however, has its own label and a LED, and it works as well as you’d expect it to. A similar labelling could’ve been used for the rest of the buttons.
In terms of general size, the controller is smaller than Switch’s screen
The weakest part on the controller is the D-Pad. It’s the standard Nintendo style Cross-shaped D-Pad and functions about as well as you’d expect from it. Sure, hits the directions just fine, but there’s a slight need to pay more attention on the direction pressed. Diagonals are as easy to hit as with any standard Cross D-Pad. It is superior to modern Nintendo D-Pads, harkening closer back to the NES D-Pad in feel and size. It’s far from a deal breaker, but thus far the weakest point in the controller. I can’t fault it for not being a Saturn-style D-Pad, but that’s why we have Retrobit’s Saturn controller. The intention of this controller is to be a modern generic controller rather than specifically designed for retro gaming.
One thing I really dislike with this controller, visually speaking, is that the printing doesn’t extend to the top of the front shell. It looks cheap
The shoulder buttons are as mushy as any modern controller. You don’t get any satisfaction out of them, there is not click or the like. Their travel is rather significant and plunge amount 5mm to the bottom, but the overall feel is apt. The choice of not using any kind of trigger shape serves the controller’s overall depth, as it tries to keep itself as flat as it can. Their shape and size do feel nice and you can lay most of your finger on them just fine. This is one of the few controller yours truly doesn’t have any issue having first and middle fingers on all four shoulder buttons due to their size and close proximity. Due to the dimension, they end up feeling outright pleasant. Somehow holding and handling them makes we want to eat a KitKat, there’s a similar kind of positive energy to them. Despite them being mushy, they end up working almost better than most other shoulder buttons because of their overall design.
Bumpy
Despite being rather flat controller, Mini Pad does have the usual bumps to fit your palm. They’re nicely round and sit in your hands nicely. At first the geometry does feel a bit strange, but finding a relaxed position where you just let the controller rest in your hands rather than trying to grasp it makes it feel natural. The sculpt here is satisfying and fitting. Now let’s crack this baby open.
I have to mention that everything in this controller fits perfectly together.
Hori used a similar two-layer design in their Famicom Mini Commander. The PCB that’s on top on the photo is only for the sticks. Everything else is on the PCB at the bottom. This layout is very clean looking, but there also few bits that pop out straight away. You can also see that the shoulder buttons are just slotted. Because they don’t use springs, the mushy feeling comes from the contact rubber, hence the mushy feel. Also take note of all those labelled contact points across the PCB.
Also not that dangly bit above the chip? That keeps the rubbers in place on the other side.
Everything on this controller is handled by this one chip. What’s more interesting are those PROG CON points, which probably someone could find some use fore. More importantly, this controller seems to be an excellent candidate as a project controller, as the PCB lists contact points for all the buttons as well providing a nice round base to solder to. Even changing that USB cable seems to be easier job than expected, and throwing something like a high-quality braided cable might be a worthwhile idea.
The top PCB also carries clear labelling and contact points. This should allow a customiser to replace any of the sticks with direction buttons without worrying about incompatibilities. The two halves are also connected with a sturdy flat cable, something Hori also used in their Famicom Commander Mini. The front of the bottom PCB has nothing special to it, but Hori has maintained easy access to the contacts as well as has printed their labels there. The same also applies to the shoulder buttons, making this controller oh so sweet if anyone wants to just go town and make a custom one.
While there is no issues with the injection moulding of the controller, everything fits just perfectly with nothing popping in or out in a weird manner, I must mention how the action buttons do have small sprues still stuck on them from the moulding process. They don’t interact with anything, so they have no effect on the buttons’ functionality. With some other third party controllers there has been a need to shave off the excess, as the tolerances have been too tight. You wouldn’t know they left those snubs in if the controller hadn’t been opened. That applies to a lot of thing. If you even open your car’s doors, you’ll find that a lot of the stuff inside has peculiar ways of being attached and probably glue blobs left and right. What you don’t see, you don’t mind.
This controller is one of the better controllers in the Mini-line. It does suffer from the D-Pad being a secondary input option, and the flat Cross shape doesn’t benefit from this. The D-Pad is not a deal breaker. For whatever reason, all modern D-Pads are in the Just fine category, with notable exceptions here and there. The second hurdle is that the controller does take few minute to get used to because of its size. People with larger hands probably will find this controller somewhat uncomfortable and somewhat fiddly, but people with normal and smaller hands should find this controller just fine. This being a Mini controller, this is as intended.
I find myself recommending Hori’s Mini Pad for Switch on the basis of it stacking up nicely even against the first party devices. It might not be as portable as the Joycons themselves, and necessitates some kind of dock or USB-A to USB-C converter, but even then its small size makes it very portable. It doesn’t feel cheap shit, even if it might look the part due to the overall visual design. Sturdy build, nicely responsive buttons and that ever so slight soft touch on the surface hit home just nicely. One of the better options out there, not necessarily the option to take depending on your own preferences.
Also thank you WordPress and your block editor for fucking up and deleting the contents of the initially published version of this post, I hate you too.
There really wasn’t any good title for this post, and I’m most likely going to make this an incoherent ramble. In my previous post, the review about three Switch stances, I mentioned that that making designs for a game console is damn difficult. Regarding a console itself, the reign’s free as long as the hardware sits in, everything else has to be build for purpose like the controllers, but at the same time they need to be unique pieces that stand out from the competition, adhere to the overall branding and still offer what now are considered as universal necessities from e.g. a controller. The stuff like four face buttons, two sticks, a D-Pad, and four shoulder buttons are industry standards generally regarded started by the SNES controller and set in stone by PlayStation’s controllers. Pretty much every controller afterwards have included some variation of these, with the Wii probably being the best example of breaking the mould with its standard Wiimote. Of course, there was the Pro Controller that still keeps itself around as a brand, meaning Nintendo continues to use some variation of it still. This is gonna end up as a companion to the review, isn’t it?
With the Switch docks reviewed, each and every one of them had lacked something while beating another in something. The stock official was an absolute waste of space but had HDMI. The DIY one, one of the many that share the exact same design, doesn’t offer the best support for the console on favour of smallness. Pretty much the exact opposite for the stock one, but at least it doesn’t scratch the screen. The HORI one excelled and beats the two other in every respect, except it lacks the HDMI connection. The faults of the designs are intentional, as the designs are driven by their primary idea, the rest be damned. If a design does one thing right and keeps doing it as intended without breaking down in use, its done its job. If it can’t do what it is not designed to do, that’s not exactly a problem.
If this is the case, wouldn’t it be wrong of me to detract points from each of the docks for what is essentially core of their design? The stock dock is intended to be that big in order to accompany the system overall and provide the best stability possible while keeping the glare from the Switch’s screen behind a layer. The DIY stand is meant to be as small as possible, so few sacrifices had to be made to minimise the form and usage. The HORI stand lacked HDMI because it is intended solely for table mode gaming, and had to find a sweet spot between the two sizes to do so in a sensible manner. Who am I to say that thing X in these designs are not wanted or is a terrible direction? As a customer I do have certain expectation and wants from the products. It is unreasonable to expect a car to fly in the sky, but it would not be unreasonable to expect one of these three docks to support the Switch standing in a vertical position. HORI’s table mode stand should have taken this into account, especially considering it is a dedicated for doing just that. It is understandable that the USB-C connector can make this a challenge, as it might have force directed at it from 90-degree angle that could lead to some damage, but that’s where the dock’s design must accommodate this. Such stand could utilise parts that extend or has to be unfolded, like HORI’s stand. This of course would raise the price of the product, as the design time would extend, more tooling would be required to produce the moulds and assembly time would increase. Additions that probably would add to a significant increase in price, at least towards the end-consumer. Hiking the price from thirty bucks to forty or more usually does make or break a purchase decision.
I omitted a fourth stand from the review altogether, mostly because it’s a generic two dollar Chinese stand for everything under the sun, from phones to handheld consoles. It’s flip-flop design is pretty excellent, able to collapse to a flat state and supports Switch every which way you throw it at it. It may not be powered, but its rubber pads keeps it extremely stable and keeps the Switch in place just fine. No wobbling here. It has no power or USB port support, but allows the USB-C power to be attached if wanted. As stupid as it sounds, this cheap hunk of plastic is indeed one of the better overall stands for the Switch and beats even Hori’s stand in overall usability. I’m sure you could just chuck some sort of USB-C hub at it for additional controllers. With some slight modding, you’d probably be able the Nintendo stock dock’s PCB with it after some generous additions to the bottom case, something I should probably look into.
What’s the deal with the vertical mode?, I was asked in the wake of the review. The Switch isn’t he first portable games console to naturally lend itself to a vertical mode. The first handheld specifically designed for it was the Wonder Swan. Namco Wonder Classic is an excellent example of this, as the game benefits everything by being vertical. Vertical shooting games benefit of this as well, like the ported Psikyo games Gunbird and Sengoku Ace. Screen space is better used and there is no need for separate bars at the sides to fill in the space with artwork or other useless junk. However, due to whatever reason, Nintendo opted not to consider system’s vertical nature at all, as the standard leg does not support Switch sideways, and none of their games thus far have even hinted any sort of vertical usage. This is strange, considering Nintendo usually wants to utilise their system’s peculiarities to some stupid extent. Yet, this self-evident mode has been just dismissed thus far. For all the talk of innovation and moving forwards, they’re missing a dimension of their console that would have opened new possibilities for game design. Holding the Switch vertical in your hands may be a bit awkward, but you can find at least three positions for you hands on the system; hold it from left side only, accessing the stick and C-buttons; hold it high with left and low with right, accessing the left Joy-Con’s action and shoulder buttons, and C-buttons; and holding having your left hand on the left Joy-Con while accessing right’s stick. Of course, the system has not been designed for these, but they’re less awkward that you’d imagine and more comfortable than e.g. clawing the PSP. Of course, the table top mode comes in play in this. Sadly, the Switch has no legs or rubber pads to keep it from sliding to its back, so a stand is more or less required, and only a two-dollar stand seems to be offering a solution for this. This is simply waste of potential.
Ultimately, the question I want to ask about Switch docks and stands in general is “What are they for?”. Naturally the answer is to provide a standing support for the Nintendo Switch itself in a stationary form and possibly offer support for docked mode. Just like when designing a chair, the end results from this starting point vary just as much as there are people tackling it, but as a simple eBay search shows, it’s just easy to take an existing design and toy with it a bit. Just like a chair example I wrote years back on just how stupidly varied and difficult a single simple design can be in the end, designing a stand for a console has its own harsh limitations. At least with a chair you can trust it being usable for the most part in the far future, excluding the obesity problem this modern world has been facing, but with something like this you’re going to get few years worth of existence before being phased out by the next product down the line. Who wants to put the effort to make the definitive product for anything that’s essentially a flashby, when you could try to immortalise yourself elsewhere?
Guess that’s the same effort that goes into this blog.
There are times when a company shows how out of touch they are with their global audience. It is understandable, keeping in touch what world-wide audience is like or wants can be a difficult task, but knowing some of the basics should be doable for every corporation working outside their own borders. Nintendo’s recent Investor Q&A summary shows that while they may be seen a worldwide brand, their concern is still in Japan first and foremost, just like with every other Japanese company.
There is a quote in this Q&A that really shows this;
I’m sure we surprised everyone with the use of cardboard, but it is not so far-fetched if you consider how familiar the material is at least to Japanese people who from a young age use it for play and as a material for creating things such as fancy crafts.
This is not something specific only to Japanese. Crafting your own toy out of anything is part of children’s play culture. What that crafted toy is made of and what it is depends on the culture. My parents played with conifer cone animals, as I did and as I have seen numerous other children do. Cardboard is just another material to be used in these plays, making good material for a knight armour, sword and shield. Saying that cardboard is important at least to Japanese people is extremely self-masturbatory and tells how global view is being ignored. Well, that comes with the name of the product too. Labo is short for laboratory, which in English would be Lab. Because how Japanese works, lab becomes labo, ラボ.
The tone underneath this really puts only one side of the global market on a high pedestal, business as usual. It’s no wonder why certain titles fail in the West, when even a simple thing like this is being ignored. The only people Nintendo can blame on their lack of success in European markets over the years is themselves, as clearly they’ve not gotten over how they simply can’t manage the markets properly. America’s a different deal, of course, with their solid footholding. Europe’s like a black hole to them, and they still can’t get over how NES didn’t succeed here, and it was Donkey Kong Country that finally made SNES a household name.
Miyamoto’s assurance that Labo is a product that seems like very Nintendo rings another bell. Nintendo, above all other game companies, especially form the Big Three console manufacturers, is all about toys and children. Nintendo may want to steer away from this image with the constant support of Bayonetta, but when you have your Walt Disney of the company telling investors that their company wants to make cardbaoard toys and hires people who want to make cardboard toys, something’s extremely off.
Nintendo Labo has its potential and we all get it. It’s like with LEGO, where it supposedly should encourage kids to try building stuff and see how things work mechanically. What makes the world tick, if you will. They get to build it and see its function first hand, all the while enjoying the game these crafts were made to function through.
However, Nintendo’s history of success has not been in toys or crafts items, love hotels or vacuums. Nintendo’s history has been success of games, from hanafuda cards to video games. With Nintendo Labo, the game part comes second to the toy. While trying something new is always a positive, putting this sort of emphasize on it as one of your main things probably will bite you back. Virtual Reality didn’t catch on like wild-fire, as it was expected to (as it is always expected to, mind you) and Nintendo Labo is just Nintendo’s version of VR. It’s all about how people interact with their games and through what means, not about games themselves. New Form of Play, as the slogan puts it, matters jack shit if the game played isn’t any good on itself.
Maybe this is just one of those 3D things Nintendo always goes on about.
On a more positive side, a PDF released around the same time properly presented Nintendo’s plans to continue the Nintendo Classic Editions. Which actually throws a monkey wrench to Miyamoto’s point in the Q&A about Switch going to have a longer life span. With these Classic editions, Nintendo has effectively extended both NES and SNES’ lifespan, the same way they did with Virtual Console. These consoles selling out and being put back into manufacturing puts an emphasize how stupid limited console cycle really is. A console has as long cycle as the parent company wants it to, whereas consumers really just want t good games. Fanboys of course disagree about on what platform, but that’s another topic. The main dish of this meal is how prowess and hardware barely matters when the games are just that damn good. The selection on these Classics editions of course could use some revamping, though I’ll grant this to Nintendo; they make one helluva first entry to video gaming.
Nintendo’s classics don’t sell because they’re some sort of revered holy objects, though to some that may be a reason. They sell because the consumers have a certain want these classic titles fulfill and what modern Nintendo does not have and have not beaten. In Nintendo’s Earning Releases, specifically their Supplementary Information about Earning Releases, you can see a trend appearing when you backwards; 2D Mario titles in the Million-Seller list. New Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in 2012 and it’s still making on the list and keeps appearing there since 2012, with New Super Mario Bros. still appearing there as well.
The New SMB line of games are not (or should I put that were not?) high-budget titles. They were games made on the cheap, and they sold like gold in most cases. If Nintendo would put the same level of care and intention on titles like New SMB games that they put on Super Mario Odyssey, they probably would see even further increase in sales. New SMB line was a nice throwback, but 2D Mario never got the glorious return it and the consumers have been demanding and wanting. Instead, it gets wah wah music with cheap 3D and we get cardboard.
A week ago Nintendo Soup put out an article on how the Switch is selling three times faster than the PlayStation 4 in Japan. It’s a pretty straightforward chart. However, Just looking at the data isn’t really all that useful outside bragging rights, as it’s just Japan. Going back some three months ago, Gamespot had a bit more robust write-up on Switch sales topping two million, outselling more than its two competitors.
Long story short, the Switch is seemingly selling a lot more than its competitors. However, that’s not exactly the measure I’d make the Switch stand against. What the Switch should be compared against is Nintendo’s past consoles, and I don’t mean just one single of them. The Switch is a hybrid console, meant to encompass both the home and hand held console markets. As such, the plural doesn’t mean whole slew of the consoles at a time, but e.g. the Wii U and the 3DS as a whole. Granted, that’s not the best hardest challenge to beat.
However, something like comparing the Switch’s sales to Wii’s and DS’s sales would be more apt. Not only because both Wii and DS were runaway successes, but also because they also hit the similar sweet spot as the Switch does in overall terms. It’s all a bit relative in this terms, but the Switch seems to meet the wants and demands the public has now, which more or less moves gaming away from the living room and the usual stuff. The library of course is the main attention grabber, with Nintendo’s own IP’s currently making the most sales.
That said, I can’t say it’s enough to outsell the Wii/DS combo. The macro-economics we have now are very different than what it was a decade ago, with prosperity in the spending countries being higher and people having more money to throw at trivialities. Like games and consoles. I can’t say everything sells, but the situation is much better now. The Wii was a low-cost console for the public that could use the occasional, almost arcade-like breather with a controller that didn’t require too much effort to put in and that was good. The Switch, while not exactly Shakespearean console, does have a level more finesse to its, from the classical console perspective, where a solid, classical controller is a must.
Another thing that raises the bar for console sales overall is the increase in population. A population usually grows some in a decade, and new generation enters into work and gains more income than what they had previously. Spending on games generally has increased from what I can tell, and this is mostly because gaming has managed to have a somewhat steady market expansion despite the developers and publishers wanting to cater to the Red Ocean market, overall.
This is something most of these people comparing console sales tend to forget, that thirty years ago we had a smaller population and consumer base for video and computer games overall. A direct comparison of sales and revenues generated from them need to be adjusted to changes in inflation and population growth. It’d be easy to proclaim sales of some console to a direction or another just based on its sales figures alone. For this reason, Wii U’s sales are overall worse than they might appear at first. With the increase in overall consumer population, rising trends in macro-economics and the possible transfer from Wii’s userbase, the Wii U bombed worse than any of Nintendo’s other consoles. The only true contender against it is the Virtual Boy, though I would almost say Wii U gets the edge in this comparison as it was Nintendo’s mainline console and had more development and production put into it.
There’s no doubt that the Switch has a lot of success under its belt already. The media shouldn’t half-ass their criticism on it, however, and remember its hybrid nature. Nintendo is not going to put out a full-fledged home or handheld console in the foreseeable future until. Whether or not Microsoft or Sony are going to release a full-fledged Ninth Generation console at some point is somewhat a moot point, as Nintendo reacts mostly on themselves, sometimes on what Sony does. After all, Microsoft holds jack shit in terms of gaming market in Japan, making second-hand Xboxes pretty damn cheap overall, with some of the rarer software titles stupidly expensive.
That’s another ingredient to throw into the mix; regions. One region can religiously support one console over another, while another region does the opposite. There was an interesting split in the past few generations, where it seemed that the US preferred the Xbox, Japan preferred Nintendo’s consoles and Europe was a whole lot of mixed, changing from nation to nation.
Maybe the concept of a console “winning” is moot to a large extent, as it would seem most of the Red Ocean consumers would like to disregard cold sales statistics and concentrate on more personal views, emotional values or whatever point of comparison they would have for quality. Of course, we could use an academic view for high quality games, but I’ve yet to see a peer reviewed research paper that would establish the guidelines for such thing. Naturally, a high quality game for one differs from another, we all have a different taste after all and none is really any better than the other.
So, what is the measure of the Switch’s success in the end? For normal everyday conversation its sales numbers compared to the 8th generation competitors is probably what you’ll see the most, whereas a more in-depth discussion should concern comparison to other more successful consoles all the while taking the whole population and consumer base expansion into notion with the positive macro-economic trend we have going on. That is probably what it should be contrasted against, though somehow I see discussion always moving towards the discussion of personal favourites and what sort of quality we value as individuals. Taste is the only thing we can properly contest over, after all, as you can’t really argue against cold data.
With the announcement of SNES Classic Edition, or the mini as I’ll be referring it to as, the collective retro gaming Internet lost its shit and the console sold out in matter of days, or hours in some store’s case. not only that, but some sites already have re-sellers putting up their units for grossly exaggerated prices. That is not to say stores would be upping their price anyway after seeing the success the NES mini was.
The suggested price of the SNES mini is at $79,99, or around 70€ to 80€. However, even now there are stores that have jacked up the price over hundred, because they knew it would sell out and that they can fetch higher price. The Greater fool theory has few variations to it, but for our purpose it can be stated as a person investing into a product in hopes of selling to a greater fool who is willing to pay more. The retro game market has become somewhat similar to a stock market, where certain people try to find fortune in finding games at a lower price, jack up the price somehow and then proceed to sell at a much higher profit margin.
There are few ways of doing this. One of course is the removal of products from the market and further making it a rarer piece. This can be done with relative ease, especially if one has the foresight to proceed to empty the market at the right time. If you were to buy certain games fifteen years ago at a low price, these games could now fetch up to two hundred their purchased worth.
Then of course you can change how the market perceives the products. Even now, some games are absolutely terrible, but due to their limited runs and relative obscurity, they can fetch stupidly high prices. The quality doesn’t really step into the equation here, it’s all about how rare something is.
This of course makes sense when looking at other collectables markets, where the exact same things happens over and over. However, the one thing that can’t be ignored with this theory is also the personal perceived value the greater fool might have towards a game. When you combine the believes and expectations a buyer has for a game with his personal affections towards it, they can be ready to pay extraordinary high sums of money.
As stated, a rational buyer may just buy the game and sell it forwards at a higher price, because there is a greater fool. This cycle has been going on in the retro game market for a solid decade and then some, and I’ve seen some argumentation for longer period of time. Whatever the case is, the current prices used retro games are going for now, and in the foreseeable future, will not stay. This is a bubble that is waiting to be burst, but I highly doubt it’ll be an overnight event. Rather, we’ll see something like a common Super Mario Bros. peaking at its highest point at some extraordinary price, and then things will dwindle down.
Or rather it should, but it won’t. The kind of retro collectors we have now are willing to spend high amounts of money for their collection. Of course, the sellers are willing to accommodate with equally over the top prices. I’m talking about people who are willing to pay over hundred dollars for a loose Mega Man 5. At that money, any sensible personal would just pick up one of the collections for whatever platform and spend the rest on ice cream.
The NES and SNES mini have made things interesting, to say the least. While Nintendo has claimed they’ll be producing the SNES mini in higher numbers than the NES mini, there won’t be enough. Nintendo has always underestimated their classic library to the point of neglect. Nintendo’s strategy with these re-release consoles is not to introduce new people to their older library, but rather just grab some cash before they can do something sensible with the Switch’s online. Nintendo never realises how much demand there is for their classics. The Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition they released for the Wii sold out faster than they could imagine. Twice! Nintendo is gearing up to something with the Switch and whatever plans they have for their classic library, but these mini consoles are just stopgags on the way there.
Nintendo seems to be aware of the retro market. While their profit margins are less with these mini consoles than with Virtual Console, this is catering to a certain demographic first and foremost. While you could argue that the demographic is the general audience, the fact that NES mini wasn’t released in same production amounts or even officially in places as the Switch says that the target demographic was rather limited. The SNES mini will always be sold out, and despite the supposedly higher production run, it will still see similar fate.
And there will be greater fools who are willing to pay three times the original price for their own reasons.
The Atari Box wants to hit the same core demographic. Someone at Atari saw the demand the NES mini experiencing and wanted some of that dough. Whether or not it is a full-fledged console as rumoured, the chances are that it’s more or less a flashback sort of device like that NES and SNES mini. It would be easy to do a modern Atari console with most classic games installed while offering the possibilities to expand the library in the future. Nothing says an older console couldn’t be re-released and have new titles released or produced for it. After all, Nintendo’s pushing Starfox 2 on the SNES mini as well, and they’d make tons more money if they would allow the user to purchase more games on some sort of game cards and have them run on the system.
Or just release things on the Virtual Console and be done with it. I’m still expecting Nintendo to announce Netflix style gaming for its online service, where the consumer has no ownership.
Some time ago I was asked what do I think will be the next big thing in gaming. Usually I tend to argue that digital will not replace physical release for some time now (digital distribution has been said to obsolete physical media for some fifteen years for now) but I do recognize that cross pollination between the media is common. The future of gaming can once more found in the past, and that probably will be streamed games.
Streaming games isn’t anything new and few companies have already tried it few times over. Nintendo’s Satellaview service is perhaps the most prominent example next to OnLive’s cloud gaming. These two functioned rather differently, with Satellaview requiring a specific cartridge that would download and save the game on the cartridge itself, whereas OnLive’s MicroConsole TV Adapter (that’s what their console was called) would access a title on OnLive’s servers and stream it directly to the console.
Netflix’s and other streaming services’ success is something modern game industry is probably highly envious of. Games and movies don’t only affect each other visually speaking, but also how the industries sort of work. Modern mainstream game industry is just as corrupt and full of itself as Hollywood is, and both are envious of each other of their successes and products they put out. The consumer really loses in this little battle with each other.
It could be argued that modern technology isn’t up to perfect game streaming yet. Satellaview was more or less a similar service to Steam in how the game required a specific setup in order to be played, and OnLive’s service stated that the user needed to live thousand miles of within their server in order to get quality service. The Internet speeds are the bottle cap of the system overall, and as games require more and more oomph from the machine, the machines need to reflect this in their hardware. However, hardware still doesn’t reflect the quality of the games, as that’s still up to the developers how their games are designed and optimised, two things that seem to be missing from current mainstream industry.
One of the main reasons why companies would want to aim for game streaming is that they can claim it to be fighting against piracy through that. Claim is the choice of word here, because game companies don’t like people trading their games with each other. It’s better for them if everyone bought their games new from the stores. A streaming service would keep their the control of the market in their hands. Purchasing of games wouldn’t be a thing as the consumer would subscribe to a service. Except for the DLC, that would always be a separate thing. Of course, the user wouldn’t need to use any of his HDD space for the games due to cloud based service. In regards of history archiving, stream-only games would be hard to archive for future generations. Satellaview games suffer from this, especially with the radio broadcasts that went with them. Even now, a game that has its license expiring will be removed from stores and online services whenever applicable, and the same will apply to any streaming service.
Of course, the ownership question always pops up. With a streaming service, you would only own the console you would use for streaming, and for computers you wouldn’t probably own the software. You’d need to subscribe to the service itself and would have no control over anything in the end. Without a doubt, regional variants would continue to exists, just like with Netflix and other streaming services that limit what can be streamed in which country. This sort of regional locking is something that isn’t an issue with modern consoles any more, but with stream-only services a user wouldn’t be able to access games from another region without a VPN.
Which if the Big Three would launch their own modern game streaming service first? Sony certainly should have the basics for it, as they bought out OnLive. They should have all the documentation and basic framework how to set up a similar cloud gaming service. Perhaps this could be their ace in the hole to compete against Nintendo’s hybrid console. Microsoft on the other probably won’t do anything of the sort for a while now before they see how Project Scorpio turns out, and probably will mimic whatever Nintendo and Sony put out while trying to trump them with something over the top (see; Kinect and WiiMote.) Nintendo on the other hand seems to be already testing some waters with Switch’s paid online, as the current word on the street is that Nintendo’s paid online service has been delayed until 2018 and rather than offering a game for the subscribers to play, they will be able to access a plethora of classic games. Of course Nintendo would only offer classic games and nothing newer, as they don’t give a damn about their classic lineup of games. On the surface it does seem nice, with the cheaper price and all, but this most likely also means Nintendo won’t give two shits about Virtual Console, which was one of the reasons people bought Wii. Perhaps in their eyes a streaming service of these classic games could increase console sales, especially if the service was cheap enough.
I admit that companies hoping to take control over the consumers’ consumption of goods into their hands does sound like conspiracy theory to an extent, but no company would pass such an opportunity, because ultimately it is all about the money. By having all the string in your fingertips, a company could log in all the preferences of a consumer, supplement them, hit the right spots and sell the information forwards while still selling their own product (i.e. subscription service and DLC in this case) to the consumer. The current consumer trend is to give control of products over the companies, and Steam probably exemplifies this the best alongside with Netflix. Certainly it is cheaper and you don’t amass large amounts of discs on your shelf. Perhaps there is too much trust put into these companies with all the information we give them.
Neither are their developers or any of the individuals we see on streams and in interviews. Nintendo’s value as a brand goes up and down according to what they do. While branding is often given to the visual design and flavour of a company or a product, everyone knows branding is a lot more. If not consciously, then through unconscious osmosis of simple consumption of products. Brand goes hand-in-hand with reputation and the perceived value of the product produced by the company. Naturally, the product’s perceived value colours the value of the company.
It is extremely easy to make your product to look bland, and once you’ve made that misstep, it’s hard to recovered. Mass Effect Andromeda is extremely bland bland game and thus its perceived value is low. Patches only help so much, and PR is what the publisher must do in order to recover from the failure. It’s even worse if the fans lose their perceived value on the game, and that takes some effort to do. Like making your characters hold guns in reverse and essentially making it inferior to the first title in the series. Much like other AAA video game titles, it’s a very bland, very grey product.
What brings colour into a product is disruption. Nintendo has a history of heating up the Blue Ocean and disrupt the market with coloured products, though they have a history doing very grey products that wallow in the Red Ocean as well. The Switch, as it is currently, is about disruption in the video game industry. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo went with what probably is the future of console gaming and created a hybrid system.
To use car industry as an example, Volvo’s brand is security and safety. Their cars are not the most exciting things in the world, but they are very trustworthy overall and suit the best for everyone. Until somewhat recently you couldn’t find a car that would move away from this branding from their main lineup. This is because Volvo has begun to change this somewhat bland yet trustworthy brand image of theirs with premium cars that offer more exciting cars. Their image is not safety, but the content with the car and the options you can have.
Nintendo’s brand has been perceived similarly as kid’s and family’s console to play. A Nintendo console usually has a good variety of games for everyone to play, whereas Xbox is a first-person shooting game wet dream in console form (though that has been severely diminished with the lacklustre recent Halo titles) while Sony is that black console cool kids who like hardcore games go for. The original PlayStation followed Nintendo’s branding as a whole family’s future generation console, but at the same time used Sega’s not-just-for-children approach. While the PlayStation had games that kids enjoyed, it also had titles like WipeOut that hit the cultural club scene if the latter 1990’s. The N64 on the other hand wasn’t everybody’s console due to the sheer shit tier library it had. Saturn was ever successful in Japan and was mostly staying within then-passed arcade port title. As much as it hurts Saturn and Dreamcast fans, arcade ports didn’t cut it any more at that point, and arcades themselves were starting to die out.
People don’t just buy what companies are selling. They buy the perceived product the company is selling. Shit in a can isn’t perceived valuable, but when an artist does it and sells it as art, the perceived value among certain crowd skyrockets.
Nintendo Switch currently has a highly regarded perceived value because of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. No other title is driving its sales as much. 1-2 Switch is a joke, though the new Bomberman seems to have gone through a rise in perceived value after the latest patch. The Switch is currently the prime example how game industry and the Red Ocean consumers don’t get the market worth jack shit. As I’ve mentioned before, the Switch was proclaim dead on arrival and that its weak hardware wouldn’t be able to do anything. Yet, BotW alone is driving Switch’s sales. This is what a Zelda game is capable of when it is allowed to be true to the series rather than just a puzzle-dungeon game. Less Aonuma there is with Zelda, the better it gets.
It doesn’t matter if you personally think that these people who bought Switch and are enjoying its games are normies or have shit taste. They are not the deviation of the form, but the rule. The AAA game industry might shove millions into a game production and barely make even with the Red Ocean consumer, who seems to be easier consumer to please and pull money from as the Red Ocean is filled with competition. Developing and releasing games and consoles is hard work, and while it can be understood why Red Ocean developers want to stick where they’re most comfortable at (of course, with no expanded life experiences outside games, how could you even imagine developing game for the Blue Ocean consumer? Shoving an agenda to the player’s view is the last thing they want) and this is why even 10% drop in sequel game’s sales will put alarms on. Despite millions being in play, even the slightest change will throw the finely tuned balance off.
While video game industry is creative, it is service industry. If you want to use this sort of comparison, video game developer is on the same level as a burger flipper. Developers’ job is to serve the consumer and their needs, it is the consumer who ultimately decides whether or not your product is good enough to be purchased. You can work your burger however well, but if the consumer doesn’t want it, the onus is on you. Not on the consumer.
Nintendo’s last three home consoles show how their disruption coloured their brand. The Wii , as much as the Red Ocean hates it, was a massive success because Nintendo didn’t stay with the comfortable Red Ocean market. The Wii U was made for the Red Ocean, and it succeeded worth jack shit. Hell, it was pulled from the stores to make room for the Switch, which again has disrupted the industry and hopefully will continue to do so with both low- and high-end software aimed for everybody.
Video games have more in common with hide-and-seek than with movies, literature or music. This is due to video games, and electronic gaming in general, being the latest iteration of play culture. As such games of the past, be it the NES or Atari era, still find home within the new generation of consumers just as easily as any well planned out children’s play, game or even sports would. Only in video game industry we hear something become obsolete because of its archaic technology or because we have that aforementioned new generation. Soccer, basketball and numerous other sports still are around because they are ageless because each of them has been passed down to a new generation, just as children’s plays are.
Children will invent stories as they play along, be a costume play, playing with figures or something else. While there is a rudimentary narrative running in these plays, playing is the main thing. Electronic games, both PC and console games especially, are largely a legacy of these plays. The problem with electronic games is that they are static and can’t dynamically change as the player wants. This is why more varied games are always needed and the more unique titles we have, the better. The Legend of Zelda and Skyrim may be based on a similar notion of a hero in a fantasy land, but their realisation is different and serve different purposes. On the surface the ideas and even core structure seems similar. The reader already knows, the two games are vastly different in how they are played. Just like how the narrative in children’s plays are to enforce the action of playing rather than being the main thing, so do games use narrative as a support for playing the game. Changing it otherwise undermines both playing and gaming.
An ageless game will sell to future generations despite its technological backwardness. This is why emulation will never cease to exist, as anyone who knows the basic use of a computer and reading comprehension probably has already fired up at least one sort of emulator. As an anecdote, I’ve seen people as young as seven doing this without any outside help, and they enjoyed playing Super Mario Bros. on JNes. Why Super Mario Bros.? Because Mario is still a cultural icon, and using a Nintendo system most likely the one thing that people go for first. Not because of the modern entries in the series, but due to how large of an impact the franchise left on the face of culture in the 1980’s and early 1990’s.
Much like the game industry at large, those companies with a long history with electronic gaming often simply ignore the possibilities of their library. Instead, we may see plug-n-play conversions of some titles like with Atari 2600, but sometimes we get a piece of products that hits the cultural nerve just the right way and outsells itself to the point of amazing even the producers themselves. The NES Mini surprised Nintendo and its execs without any shadow of a doubt, as mentioned by Reggie in a CNET interview regarding the Switch. To quote him;
The challenge for us is that with this particular system, we thought honestly that the key consumer would be between 30 and 40 years old, with kids, who had stepped away from gaming for some period of time. And certainly we sold a lot of systems to that consumer.
Reggie claims that Nintendo is aware of the popularity of their classic games, which he contradicts with this statement. Furthermore, if they were aware how popular their classic games were, Nintendo would aim to make them obsolete rather than push games that enjoy less popularity. The NES Mini, as Reggie mentions above, wasn’t just popular with the people who grew up with the console, but with basically every age tier. Furthermore it should be noted that even in Europe the legacy of the NES has become that they were the victorious console, but do go back few entries to read how well Nintendo royally fucked NES in PAL territories.
It’s not just the nostalgia that sold NES Mini. As Reggie said, NES Mini is popular among kids, and kids have no nostalgia for a thirty years old game console. The games cherry picked for the system simply are mostly well designed and can stand the test of time. Super Mario Bros. does not appeal just because it is a Mario game, but because it’s a fun adventure in a fantasy land. Zelda‘s open world Action-RPG is popular outside the fans of the franchise (and I hope to God BotW will have an open world in the spirit if the original.) Metroid‘s action-adventure appeals similarly to a larger crowd than just to the fans, thou game devs have been furiously masturbating to this genre for the last years harshly.
There is nothing that would keep Nintendo from realizing the spirit of their older games in their future titles. Nothing keeps an old game from appealing to modern consumers, just like there’s nothing from modern children playing games invented couple of hundreds of years ago. We still play cards like Go Fish! or Shitpants with our kids. Hell, one could even say that when we grow into adults (or rather, we realize we are adults) we still keep playing the same games, but stakes are just higher. Poker may replace Go Fish! but a new generation will still play that. A new card game for kids will appear in the future to supplement already large library of card games, but it’ll never be able replace anything if it doesn’t refine the formula somehow. Even then, it’s hard to beat a solid classic.
To use another Nintendo example is the Wii. Wii’s Virtual Console sold more titles than Nintendo’s big releases in the latter part of the console’s lifecycle, and saw a slow death on the 3DS. This seems to say that Nintendo doesn’t really take into heart the notion that classic games and their core are still viable. Instead, they concentrate on something surprising and that old games are only played due to nostalgia. A sentiment the game industry at large sadly seems to agree upon. With the success of NES Mini, will Nintendo begin to value their classic games more rather than just as the beginnings of an IP? Probably not, but Switch should tell us in due time.
The title may be click bait-y, but it’s really the best title for this topic. This will kick off a loose Monthly Three for the time being, as it seemed most people deemed themed posts worthless. But first I’d like to note that I am talking about the casual game industry, not about the casual gamer.
What the term casual gamer entices in the end is muddy at best. Its meaning has changed significantly at the core to the point of it being mostly a throwaway marketing term to push certain kinds of products over the other, and largely to condemn consumers with certain tastes and habits.
The first console in the 2000’s to be named as casual to any extent was the DS due to it having low-end games in mass quantity. Low-end game does not mean a game that is bad, technically or in design, but a game that is extremely easy to get into and play. A low-end game is not necessarily lacking in content or anything that most people would associate with so-called casual games, as New Super Mario Bros. on the system would show. To go further back in time, many modern industry workers who played the NES would not consider Super Mario Bros. 3 in the same league as Wii Sports, but both titles are high-quality low-end games. In comparison, the DS had high-end games like Solatorobo and Umihara Kawase Shun Second Edition Kanzenban, which in comparison weren’t massive hits. Mostly because the aforementioned Umihara Kawase title was Japanese only, but you get the picture.
The Wii is often regarded as the pinnacle of a console, where quantity was over quality, thou history would disagree. There are consoles out there that may have smaller library of games, but in reality only one or two games are even decent. Virtual Boy being an example of this. The other end would the Game Boy and the DS itself. Nevertheless, the Wii was regarded as the most desirable console out of the three of its generation and sold higher number of consoles than its competitors. Not because of wagglan, like most suggest, but because the Wii disrupted the game industry.
The industry had abandoned low-end games almost completely before the DS and the Wii, producing mostly high-end games. These games were not of highest quality either, so for every few good title you got loads of titles with pretty design and technical aspects. The PS2 library is like this in large extent. The consumer base was not being expanded and companies continued to cater to the niche, red ocean consumers. Most people who bought a PlayStation seemingly moved to the PlayStation 2, with those who didn’t have faith in the Dreamcast and whatever Nintendo would be pushing out after the N64 were doing the same. Much like how most American comics only sell to comics comic nerds without any regards, and even in that there has been changes to cater a more niche audience.
The Wii however started much like other Nintendo’s successful consoles; low-end, but high-quality titles. This disrupted the industry, as there was very little production of low-end games going on at the time in comparison to the 1980’s or even the early-to-mid 1990’s. This goes hand in hand with the rising costs of game development, where higher-end game requires higher bucks to be finalised, but it will also lose big if it’s a bomb. Wii Sports is a perfect example of a low-end game hitting what the general consumers were looking for. Without a doubt it’s a game with a very simple surface that anyone can access, but the underlying layer of complexity, the physics, offered a challenge. There were multiple modes too. It’s execution left people to yearn more of content in similar philosophy, but after a booming start, not even Nintendo kept up with this. It’s much easier to realise your own dream of a game than take consumers’ voice into account.
However, making a good low-end game is hard. Not anyone can replicate Super Mario Bros.‘s quality, and even the Big N themselves shot themselves in the leg by giving their later 2D Mario titles less attention and resources during development, thou Miyamoto himself has admitted that 2D Marios take more work to make right. No wonder they released Mario Maker to take off that load from themselves.
The game industry doesn’t like being disrupted, especially when disruption ends up making a company huge amounts of money. Looking at the coverage the Wii was getting from both industry insiders and gaming press, the news are pretty raw. Outside the usual Nintendo’s finished we see every time they release a new console, the consumers were pretty much called idiots and considered almost like subhumans who couldn’t appreciate the marvels that HD gaming and cutting edge hardware could produce. This attitude is very apparent in the third-party games on the Wii across its years, as there is no passion in the titles. These people who bought the Wii, they weren’t the people who bought the PS2, these weren’t the people who played games. They were casual gamers. Who has a passion to make games for people they consider as idiots, unworthy of appreciating true pieces of works?
The game industry created an industry just to cater the consumers they thought they were seeing with Wiimotes in their hands, but in reality no such area existed. This was apparent in the sales as well. When the third-party games turned out to be less than satisfactory, the Virtual Console titles became the main point of the console, outselling even Nintendo’s own new titles. Super Mario All-Starts 25th Anniversary Edition was a surprise to Nintendo, as people still wanted to play those games. Low-end and high-quality combination has always been highly desired combination when it comes to gaming, and largely is the silver bullet in plans to make a successful game. The rest comes with world and game design.
The death of the casual game industry essentially came to an end when the industry stopped making games for idiots. It wasn’t because of the hardware’s power, but the design and utility of it. It’s surprising how little people consider a console’s design anywhere else but in outer appearance and technical hardware, except when something negative had to be mentioned. The Wii could use traditional controllers, it had the Motion controls, which also served as a more traditional NES style controller, and it had the possibility for multiple other input methods (at least on the outer appearance.) However, all this largely fell apart, the potential of the Wii was kicked in the curb when Nintendo moved onwards to concentrate with their next console. If I were to say my view on the matter, the killing blow Nintendo dealt to the Wii was Wii Music, a title that nobody ever wanted and a title that showed that Nintendo too believed their consumers were idiots, unwilling to purchase their masterpieces… like Metroid Other M. Indeed, Metroid Other M is like anti-thesis to Wii Sports, filled with the intentions of making the best story-driven high-end Metroid that would wow the opposite audience of these idiots, ensuring that Nintendo and the Wii that they were the shit. What happened is common in cases like this, and the less said about it the better, except that it is a title that showcases how Nintendo once again left their larger audience, the audience that had made them a recognized name in the overall popular culture.
Nobody makes a bad game intentionally is something I hear people saying when it comes to terrible titles. However, not everybody aims to make the best title either, lacking either in passion or will to go all out on a game they themselves have little faith or value in. The casual game industry died when the industry largely stopped producing those games, to some extent. The Wii U is filled with middle-end games with no quality whatsoever, despite Nintendo making it the anti-Wii. The 3DS had such an awful start with ports and carry-over titles that it wasn’t desired until the library had grown and saw more low-end titles with less emphasize on the 3D. The less Nintendo listens to the industry, the more they find success. It just takes loads of work.
The argument that you need third-party products to succeed nowadays is partially correct. You need high-quality products on your system across the spectrum, not just from one end of the spectrum no matter who makes it. A game library is like a food circle, with high-end games being the meat and low-end games being the greens. Breads, rise, pasta etc being lower-mid end, milks, meat and fish being higher-mid end and high fat foods being the high-end foods. Roughly speaking, that is.
Ports of games people are already playing on a different systems does not allow it to rise above from the sea of grey, and seemingly ports are treated as the fries of a console library; they’re there to supplement the main burger. Third party burgers aren’t rare either, seeing both Microsoft and Sony have largely relied on third-party to make their systems big hits. Except for Halo in many ways.
Will Nintendo Switch have a casual game industry? Only if the developers start treating their consumers like retards again and unwilling to produce quality products for the system. They’ll feel that in their pockets then. Whatever the Switch ends up being is completely tied to its software library.
While there is no issues with the injection moulding of the controller, everything fits just perfectly with nothing popping in or out in a weird manner, I must mention how the action buttons do have small sprues still stuck on them from the moulding process. They don’t interact with anything, so they have no effect on the buttons’ functionality. With some other third party controllers there has been a need to shave off the excess, as the tolerances have been too tight. You wouldn’t know they left those snubs in if the controller hadn’t been opened. That applies to a lot of thing. If you even open your car’s doors, you’ll find that a lot of the stuff inside has peculiar ways of being attached and probably glue blobs left and right. What you don’t see, you don’t mind.
Aaltomies 
