1 week ago
8
The Switch was a transformative product for Nintendo. Following the dire days of the Wii U, the company came out swinging with a tablet-console hybrid with defining games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The Switch went on to sell more than 150 million units, and Nintendo built on that success with expansions into feature films, theme parks, and other areas outside of gaming.
Now, the company is trying to do it again with the Switch 2. Ahead of the new console’s launch on June 5th, The Verge is looking back at the various ways that Nintendo has changed over the last eight years and how those changes might continue into its next generation.
The Nintendo Switch was an indie game haven, until it was overrun with slop
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The first several months after Nintendo released the Switch in 2017 have been described as a “gold rush” for independent game developers. The Switch’s eShop wasn’t exactly barren, but early on there was a lot of room for new releases. To put it into perspective, Nintendo announced in 2018 that around 1,000 games were added to the platform in its first year or so. The number of games released each year just adds to the number of games available on the eShop; in 2024, GameDiscoverCo reported that 50 games were added per week, leading to more than 2,300 new games in 2024 by November.
What started as a gold rush for indie developers slowly spoiled, and eventually the eShop became overrun with slop. This pushed some developers to the margins, while platform degradation soured the experience as a whole.
With the Switch, technology finally caught up to Nintendo
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Nintendo
The Nintendo Switch is on the cusp of becoming Nintendo’s bestselling hardware ever. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why: it’s a device that seamlessly transitions from a home console to a handheld, erasing the distinction between the two. It’s been so successful that Nintendo isn’t changing all that much with the Switch 2. But both consoles are well-executed versions of ideas Nintendo has been working on since the failed Wii U — and maybe even earlier.
Purely by sales numbers, the Wii U was a flop. The Switch has sold more than 150 million units in its eight-year lifetime. The Wii U, by comparison, sold 13.56 million units — less than a 10th of what the Switch did — making it Nintendo’s worst-selling home console.
Nintendo’s bold new era is full of safe bets
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Nintendo
Nintendo is entering a new era. While most everyone associates the company with video games, for the last few years the brand behind Mario has been steadily expanding itself into something much larger.
“I think people view Nintendo as a gaming company, but we have always thought of ourselves as an entertainment company,” Nintendo’s senior managing executive officer, Shinya Takahashi, told me in 2023. Design legend Shigeru Miyamoto echoed the same idea at the opening of Nintendo’s first museum last year. “What I wanted to express with this museum is that we are first and foremost an entertainment company,” he said.
