>The Wii U and Virtual Boy aside, how do they do it?
Nintendo's top-tier exclusives, and a constant focus on end-to-end user experience.
The PS4/Xbone (and even, to an extent, the 360/PS3) have so much jank when it comes to playing a game on them.
My experience with The Last of Us Part II basically consisted of inserting the game, waiting nearly 25 minutes for it to install, going through that entire process again, twice, because there was a smudge on the disc, then waiting another 20 mins to download a 10GB patch, only to load up the game and sit through hours upon hours of boring-as-fuck intro content before I saw a single zombie.
With Super Mario Odyssey, I put the game in, downloaded some optional 50MB patch in about 20 seconds, then started jumping around collecting coins and throwing my hat at everything.
They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era).
> They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era).
I fundamentally disagree. There are some great games for the switch out there but they are absolutely hampered by Nintendo's outright refusal to provide modern features. Animal crossing was a lovely game except for the fact that it didn't support more than one island meaning either me or my girlfriend had to skip it. the "visit your friends island" experience is reminiscent of the late 90s in online gaming. Their support for peripherals has lead to this [0] being considered a reasonable solution to voice chat.
That's before you get into the whole ninetendo switch online + expansion pack.
Nintendo don't "get" online gaming in the way that the other two seem to. The ROM hack of Melee made by one guy famously has better online than Smash Ultimate does.
They are the only company still serving up the classic experience, though.
>They are the only company still serving up the classic experience, though.
Heh, I actually disagree again here, but not quite as strongly. PlayStation have absolutely hit it out of the park on "classic experience" over the past few years. their remakes/remasters have been absolutely stellar (Tony hawk's Pro skater/spyro/crash bandicoot) and really hold up well in modern terms. Their single player games in the last few years (god of war, uncharted, sekiro) are nothing short of outstanding. They may not all be your cup of tea but I think it's fair you can say that about some of the Nintendo family of games too.
Xbox has a few home runs in the same category. The Ori games are absolutely incredible, and having recently come away from Metroid Dread _very_ disappointed (really poor story pacing, overly predictable plot, and horrific instadeath mechanics) I would choose ori and the blind forest/will of the wisps over the more recent Metroid games.
I'm not talking about the games themselves, I'm talking about the experience of using the console (I also thought Dread was a bit of a letdown, and don't get me started on the difference between 3D All Stars and the Crash/Spyro remaster).
It's just that on the Switch, in almost all cases you just put the cartridge in the console you're in-game within seconds.
For Xbone/PS4 (and I'm assuming this is worse on the new consoles), there's a whole arduous process to go through before you can play the game. As someone who no longer has the time/energy to pour into gaming like I used to, this hour long wait before playing a game just makes the whole experience not worth it.
It's hard to understate how much "time to play" makes the switch enjoyable. I can return to a game I was playing, exactly where I was, in about 3 seconds. Even if I've not touched the switch in days or weeks! The system level pause/resume makes it so I can quickly jump into a game whenever I have time, even if it's just 10 minutes.
Contrast that to my ps4 experience and it is a world away. Takes at least a minute to get to home screen, then there's usually gigabytes of updates to download. Sometimes it might be _hours_ before I can start the game I wanted to play.
I'm not sure if the latest generation of xbox/ps have solved this. Combimed with the supply issues of the new generation consoles, I've not been too keen on getting one because my switch has sufficed
The situation is better but not perfect (i would argue switch has some major issues on that front mostly related to slow in game load times). Ps5 games in my experience are turn on console to in game in under a minute. The OS standby is much better and quick resume features in games are excellent (Online games aside)
its actually better on newer consoles. (ps5 in particular is much better than xbox). The consoles themselves are quick to wake up, and if you're playing single player games there's no need to update.
> in almost all cases you just put the cartridge in the console you're in-game within seconds.
This is true for some games on switch, however my experience is that many games suffer from extremely long loading times even compared to PS4/Xbox one. The ps5s loading times for games are orders of magnitude quicker; power on to in game in Spiderman miles Morales is less than 30 seconds. I've spent more time than that staring at single loading screens in Smash Bros, Metroid Dread and breath of the wild.
> this hour long wait before playing a game just makes the whole experience not worth it.
The hour long wait does happen occasionally, but it's not like you actually need to do anything during that time. You can do that and come back that night, and a month later the game will still be playable without updating.
Nintendo's top-tier exclusives, and a constant focus on end-to-end user experience.
The PS4/Xbone (and even, to an extent, the 360/PS3) have so much jank when it comes to playing a game on them.
My experience with The Last of Us Part II basically consisted of inserting the game, waiting nearly 25 minutes for it to install, going through that entire process again, twice, because there was a smudge on the disc, then waiting another 20 mins to download a 10GB patch, only to load up the game and sit through hours upon hours of boring-as-fuck intro content before I saw a single zombie.
With Super Mario Odyssey, I put the game in, downloaded some optional 50MB patch in about 20 seconds, then started jumping around collecting coins and throwing my hat at everything.
They just "get it" in ways that Sony and Microsoft don't (or at least, haven't "got" since the original PS2/Xbox era).