Ever since Nintendo declared that the Switch would be a hybrid tablet\/console that you can take on the go or play from home, there\u2019s been chatter about what the new console would mean for Nintendo\u2019s 3DS. Now that the Switch has formally been unveiled, general consensus has been that the tablet is an amazing improvement over the Nintendo 3DS or New 3DS, but only a modest step forward compared with the Wii U. Given how dramatically the 3DS has outsold the Wii U (61.6 million units vs. 13.6 million units), it made sense for Nintendo to focus on the Switch as a potent handheld follow-up \u2014 but that may not be the company\u2019s plan.
In a recent interview with Wired, Nintendo of America\u2019s president, Reggie Fils-Aime, answered questions about how the Switch and the 3DS would co-exist, post-launch:
3DS has a long life in front of it. We\u2019ve already announced games that will be launching in the first couple quarters of this year. There are a number of big games coming. And in our view, the Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo Switch are going to live side-by-side. You\u2019re going to be meeting different price points, you\u2019re going to be meeting different types of consumers, you\u2019re going to have the newest, freshest content available on Nintendo Switch, you\u2019ve got a thousand-game library available on Nintendo 3DS, plus some key new ones coming. They\u2019re going to coexist just fine. We\u2019ve done this before, managing two different systems. I think there\u2019s a sense that Nintendo Switch is a portable device. It is portable. But at its heart, it\u2019s a home console that you can take with you on the go.
I think Nintendo is caught between a bit of a rock and a hard place. First, it\u2019s not hard to see why Nintendo would prefer to have one console as a unified place for all its properties. Bring a Pok\u00e9mon game out for Switch, and you\u2019re going to move a lot of Switches. At the same time, however, there\u2019s no backwards compatibility between the Switch and the 3DS, at least not at launch. Unlike the Wii U, which has been moribund for at least a year, the 3DS continues to move both hardware and software at a brisk pace.
If Nintendo announces that the Switch is a 3DS replacement, it\u2019ll kill its own handheld sales. That could leave the company up the proverbial creek without a paddle if it later turns out that gamers don\u2019t like the Switch \u2014 and keep in mind, that\u2019s more-or-less what happened to the Wii U. Initial sales were brisk, but fell off sharply in a matter of weeks and never regained momentum. Unfortunately, sandboxing the 3DS as untouchable means that Nintendo is basically courting what\u2019s left of its living room market, and the Wii U\u2019s abysmal sales record implies there aren\u2019t a lot of those buyers left. Nintendo\u2019s Wii succeeded because it offered a right-place \/ right-time console for everyone who didn\u2019t have an HDTV or $300-$600 to spend on a new console from Sony or Microsoft. As a new handheld, Switch is vastly better than anything else on the market. Strictly as a living-room console, it\u2019s a modest step forward over and above the Wii U, not a dramatic leap ahead.
Our guess is that Nintendo plans to deal with this problem through some good old-fashioned corporate misinformation. Remember March 2016, when Nintendo promised that it absolutely, positively, would continue Wii U production into 2017, before completely reversing those plans (without admitting it had changed its story?) Yeah. Expect something similar here. If the Switch doesn\u2019t sell well, Nintendo will likely find a way to shove some games into the 3DS pipeline to keep that platform going. If, on the other hand, the Switch sells abnormally well and appears to be cannibalizing the 3DS market, it\u2019ll have a plan to draw 3DS production to a graceful close.
Frankly, I\u2019m not convinced the Switch is going to be able to straddle the combined world of handheld and living room gaming very gracefully, but it\u2019s got a much better chance of doing so if current 3DS owners buy into the platform. I have no doubt there will be faithful Nintendo owners who will buy the platform no matter what, but whether it can build a market for itself outside the core faithful is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n