And the award for fastest-selling video game console in US history goes to...

It's the Nintendo Switch. Of course it's the Switch.

As reported by TechRadar:

Once upon a time there were pundits who thought the Nintendo Switch was going to be a dud, because – after all – what would be the appeal of a portable home console in this age of smartphones and iPads?

Turns out, they were very, very wrong. Today Nintendo announced that the Switch is the fastest-selling home video game console in US history, soundly thrashing the previous record held by Nintendo's own Wii console. Within 10 months, 4.8 million Switch units were sold compared to the 4 million moved by the Wii.

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It's an impressive start for a console that still doesn't have a dedicated online service or even a way to store game save files in the cloud. 

Yet the Switch, in many ways, has reminded audiences (and developers) that game players seek fun above all else, which is an important lesson at a time when competing consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro are focusing heavily on graphics.

The Switch is almost laughably far from the impressive specs of those devices, but that graphical power doesn't seem as necessary when you realize you're playing Skyrim on the Switch while in the back seat on a road trip.

The Switch's blockbuster year has some trying to suss out exactly why it's doing so well, as in this piece from Polygon (their first reason: it has no competition, being the only console/handhold hybrid system on the market), and others wondering if Nintendo can keep the momentum going (the lack of 64GB cartridges until 2019, combined with a lack of onboard storage space, having been flagged as potential problems for the coming year), but there's no doubt that the Switch is a success, and will be around for a long, long time.

Now, if only there were a handheld that let me access my Steam backlog collection while on the go. That is something that I'd pay good money for; sadly, the only thing currently in the pipeline that would quality is SMACH Z, which is looking more and more like vaporware.

Nintendo's 3rd party developer problems might run deeper than anybody knew.

From Destructoid:

Speaking to Kinda Funny, [Oddworld creator Lorne] Lanning states that he has "no faith," in the Switch, due to "experience," and having seen how the Wii and Wii U played out. To clarify the condemnation of the former he explains that both consoles weren't successful for third parties, and that Nintendo ended up making all the money at the end of their runs. He experienced this with what he claims is lackluster promotion for New 'n' Tasty on the Wii U.

While praises that it's mobile he doesn't think people are going to go through the effort to work on an "under-powered console" (a sentiment THQ Nordic shares), and that in conjunction with their alleged efforts to ignore third parties to better themselves, it'll end up hurting studios.

It's something a lot of developers are struggling with right now -- whether or not to call out Nintendo after the Wii U situation. The Switch is doing great so you don't want to burn that bridge, but some studios have claimed that even after they've tried to make games for it Nintendo hasn't reciprocated. If more developers aren't willing to speak out like this and share their opinions we'll continue to be in the dark.

Nintendo alone simply weren't able to release enough games to save the WiiU, so the general consensus is that Nintendo's Switch will either live or die depending on the amount of support it receives from third party developers. The fact that previously-burned developers are hesitant to invest heavily in developing for the new platform is basically the opposite of what Nintendo need to happen, in order for the Switch to succeed where the WiiU failed.

It doesn't help that the Switch is simply underpowered compared to competing consoles, either. In a world where the Nintendo's competition consists of Sony's PS4 Pro, Microsoft's XBO-X, and even more powerful gaming PCs, the Switch can't even keep pace with a vanilla PS4 or XBox One. Most of the Switch's 3rd-party games are ports of old PC titles, but even that well could run try quickly as developers continue to wrestle with the limitations of the Switch's underpowered hardware.

The Switch managed a decent launch, but Nintendo still have a lot of problems still to overcome in order for their new device into have the kind of legs that they desperately need it to.

XBox Scorpio is unlikely to shift the balance of the console market

Microsoft have been pretending for a while now that their soon-to-be-released new console, code-named Scorpio, will once again make XBox a player in this console generation, even as Phil Spencer talks openly about the entire concept of console generations being outdated. But the reality is that Microsoft's XBox division stumbled badly coming out of the gate for this leg of the console race, and it simply may be too late for them to recover.

From GamingBolt:

Yesterday, we reported on Michael Pachter’s assessment that Sony will not release a new bit of hardware to counter the more powerful Xbox Scorpio. At the time, we agreed with what he had to say- we noted that given Sony’s massive lead, as well as the momentum and inertia that they have on their side, they are guaranteed to stay ahead of Xbox no matter what, and their best course of action was to, well, stay the course.

This is something glaringly obvious to everyone and everybody- if the Scorpio is intended to compete against the PS4, it is going up against a system with a four year head start (or around 1 if you count the PS4 Pro), and an install base likely to be north of 65 million by the time the Scorpio does launch. People this generation associate PS4 as the default console- much like the Xbox 360 the generation before that. Even if the Scorpio ends up being more powerful, it is unlikely to unseat the PS4 from the throne that it occupies in the mainstream gamer’s consciousness- precedence for this phenomenon exists with the original Xbox and PS2.

Not only are the stark realities of the console market working against them, so are the technical realities of having multiple consoles on the market at the same time, with the same brand on them, but with different specs and capabilities. The PS4 Pro has experienced all sorts of technical headaches, with many games actually running worse on the more powerful PS4 console, and only Horizon: Zero Dawn, so far, really showing off the full capabilities of the new hardware.

These issues are old hat to PC developers who have long had to cope with, and program for, the wide range of hardware on which users might be trying to play their games, but for console developers, this is new, tricky, and expensive ground. This was one of the advantages of consoles as a platform, remember: the hardware was always a known, stable quantity, helping to keep development costs down. That advantage is now gone for PS4, and with Scorpio, XBox is about to follow suit.

Of course, XBoxes just flat-out run Windows 10 now, so developers have the option to just stop making games for the XBox per se, and instead make UWP games. That would seem to be part of Microsoft's strategy, here, but it would also, in and of itself, mean that the Scorpio has failed to regain XBox's influence in the console space. It also doesn't solve the problem of developers with nothing but console expertise suddenly needing to develop a significantly expanded skill set to cope with the added complexity of PC game development... and a way of coping with the extra costs involved.

Also, there's the problem of Scorpio not even being out yet, with the first games that will truly showcase its power being at least a year away, if not more. Again, nothing new for a new console... except that new consoles don't normally launch several years into a new console generation, with the market leader having already overcome these new-console growing pains. Nintendo's Switch, incidentally, will face this same problem.