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The Nintendo Switch console is designed to be played with a TV and on the go. Picture: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
IT’S BEEN labelled “the premium game hardware launch of this year” and it’s just as bonkers as you’d expect from Japanese gaming giant Nintendo.
The company’s Switch console launched in Australia on Friday amid pre-order sellouts and a frenzy of social media bragging.
But after a disappointing predecessor that lasted just four years on the market, and a gaming drain to smartphone apps such as its own Pokemon Go, can Nintendo re-energise its game console market?
There are many parts to Nintendo’s new console, Switch.Source:Supplied
Like the Wii before it, the Nintendo Switch is a unique piece of gaming equipment.
The $470 system arrives in five parts: the main console with a 6.2-inch touchscreen, a dock to connect it to a TV, two Joy-Con controllers, and a Joy-Con Grip to connect the pair.
The Switch is designed to be a hybrid games machine offering the best of both worlds: mobile when you want it to be, connected to a big-screen when you need to see more.
In TV Mode, it operates as a regular game console, with the two Joy-Con controllers attached to the Grip.
In Handheld Mode, the controllers connect to the sides of the main console, and the unit operates like an advanced Nintendo GameBoy.
In Tabletop Mode, the screen is propped up on its stand like a miniature TV, while the two motion-sensitive controllers are used to complete actions, like milking a virtual cow or playing quick-draw games.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima says the “brand new kind of home gaming system” will deliver “new experiences,” much like the Wii did when it arrived on the scene in 2006.
The Nintendo Switch can be used as a handheld games console. Picture: Nintendo via APSource:AP
But between then and now, Nintendo launched the Wii U, which failed to excite the gaming market.
The console, also featuring a hybrid controller, only accounted for 13 million sales worldwide, compared to its predecessor’s 101 million sales.
It lasted just four years on the Australian market.
Nintendo also has to face the challenge of an ever-moving gaming population, with many of its own fans turning to smartphones to play games including the recently updated Pokemon Go.
Interactive Games and Entertainment Association chief executive Ron Curry, who predicts the Nintendo console launch will be the biggest this year, says gaming is merely “expanding” to more devices, as the Nintendo console acknowledges.
“From our last research, people are doing two things: they’re either ‘snack gaming,’ and that tends to be gaming while they’re going somewhere, or they’re going somewhere to play a game,” Curry says.
“They might come home from work playing one sort of game but when they get home they play a bit of a different style of game, perhaps a more immersive style.”
Curry says adding familiar gaming characters to the new console will also help fuel the current trend towards retro gaming, as “it’s great to have a modern gaming machine with titles that hooked you into gaming to start with”.
As such, games coming for the Nintendo Switch include Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey, as well as the return of Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which will be available at launch.