Nintendo Switch Reviews Suggest Excitement About Model, Less About Actual Performance and Games Available (Mar 1, 2017)

The review embargo for the new Nintendo Switch console seems to have lifted overnight, and the reviews that have resulted are mostly pretty mixed. There’s quite a bit of excitement for the concept and some of the execution, but every review I’ve read so far highlights hardware bugs, performance lags, frustrations with Bluetooth and cramped controllers, and especially a lack of games at launch. It appears that Nintendo mostly allowed reviewers to demo one game – a pretty good new Zelda title – and a package of mini games called 1-2-Switch which seems mostly intended to show off various game modes rather than provide hours of entertainment. As such, this seems like an in-betweener for Nintendo – neither the big hit the Wii and DS were, nor the obvious flop the Wii U was. In time, it’s possible that software updates and more games will push it over into the hit category, but it certainly doesn’t look like it’s there yet. All this is, of course, interesting in the context of Nintendo’s simultaneous push into mobile gaming through smartphones, which has also been a mixed bag so far.

via Ars Technica (lots more on Techmeme)


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