Nintendo Switch does exactly what it says on the tin... for better and worse

The reviews of Nintendo's Switch are rolling in, and the developing consensus seems to be pretty clear: at US$360 (including Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), it's really expensive price point for a portable Zelda machine.

Gizmodo's review is a pretty fair example of that consensus:

This is a system that still has no idea what it wants to be. It’s too underpowered for something expected to sit in your living room and it’s too big for something expected to be clutched in your hands for three hours at a time. In attempting to bridge the gap between home and mobile gaming, Nintendo’s built Frankenstein’s monster. While the transition between home and mobile gameplay is undoubtedly smooth, the PSP and Vita accomplished near similar feats with a much more hands-friendly device.

The only moments when the Switch seems to be more than a Zelda machine and the Joy-Con controllers seem to be more than a marketing gimmick is in the very rare occasions when the controllers and tablet combine and make gameplay more immersive.

I was using the camera function in Zelda (don’t ask) and needed to snap a quick picture of a room full of sketches of chickens. I could have used the Joy-Con’s extremely flimsy joystick to point the camera, but instead I just moved the entire Switch console and swung it around as though I were in the room with Link. It was a brief, but impossibly cool moment. As if Nintendo was saying it understood our mad desire for more immersion and was offering us a window into the world that didn’t require the goofy headset or high price point of VR.

Unfortunately it was just one moment, and until the Switch can have a lot of those moments—found in an array of games—it’s not worth it. If you already own one, enjoy your $300 Zelda machine. If you don’t currently own the Switch than bide your time and wait for more games.

Again, I ask: who is this for? It's a chunky tablet with terrible battery life, at a time when tablets don't sell anymore; it's a portable dedicated gaming system at a time when smartphones rule the scene for on-the-go gaming; it's an under-powered console that can't even play it's own marquee game as well as the WiiU can, which makes it even more under-powered than the failed WiiU was; and it's going head-to-head with the well-established PS4 in the living room with exactly 1 decent launch title, and some gimmicky controllers that aren't going to lend themselves to cross-platform game development.

Sure, Nintendo's managed to create some artificial scarcity (and line-ups) by not having enough units on sale at launch to meet initial demand, but I'm wondering now if they're not falling into the same trap that VR did. Google Cardboard and Gear VR moved millions of units because they had units available when the VR hype was at its peak, before the VR letdown set in; by the time Oculus Rift and HTC Vive hit the market, that easy money was all gone, and they've struggled to move units ever since.

Similarly, Nintendo may be missing the boat by not selling as many units as possible early, while the hype is still high, rather than waiting for a wave of reviews to hit the web that pretty much all say to wait until there are enough good games to make the Switch worth your while... something which might not happen, if the Switch's sales numbers aren't high enough, early enough, to convince 3rd-party developers to spend heavily developing for, or adapting existing games for, the Switch.

Gizmodo's review goes into a lot more detail about the Joy-Cons (and their limitations), and the rest of the available launch titles, and it's definitely worth a read, if you're still remotely interested in the Nintendo Switch. Let's face it, though: right now, this one is for rabid Nintendo fanbois and die-hard Zelda fans only. And even Zelda fans might want to pick that up on the WiiU instead. Even if you need to buy a second-hand WiiU to play it on, it'll still cost you a fraction of what the Switch will.