The headline is click bait. I would only judge the launch as “not gone well” when the system fails to sell.
Addressing a couple of the points they made in the article:
The announced price is more than people expected, but day 1 buyers are probably die hard fans and influencers, who would buy it anyway, at double the price. The real test is going to be the holidays and how the price looks side by side with rivals. Based on the news from Microsoft, the Nintendo prices will be in line with the competition. Also, if price does cause issues, Nintendo may get a “free” price drop in the US when Trump drops tariffs (consumers pay less but Nintendo maintains their margins).
Having retailer pre-order systems fail under the Switch 2 load is not Nintendo’s fault. If anything, it shows that the system will sell well initially. Also, they are not losing sales if consumers get a website crash instead of “sold out”.
A lot of the issues they flag exist only in online forums and thinkpieces. Most of the userbase will never notice the difference regarding the key cards, for instance (until it’s too late, I guess), and Mario Kart World’s bundle version is only 40 bucks, which is the one everybody will be getting for the foreseeable future.
The riskier things they did are the pricing of the console (rough but inevitable) and the cost of the storage. Well, and skipping the review cycle for the remnants of the press, which I presume is why this article exists at all.
The S2 won’t sell as well as the S1 and nobody expects it to do so, but in the meantime that reasonable assumption will be a Rorschach test for a bunch of breathless quick turnaround filler like this, I suppose.
The headline is click bait. I would only judge the launch as “not gone well” when the system fails to sell.
Addressing a couple of the points they made in the article:
The announced price is more than people expected, but day 1 buyers are probably die hard fans and influencers, who would buy it anyway, at double the price. The real test is going to be the holidays and how the price looks side by side with rivals. Based on the news from Microsoft, the Nintendo prices will be in line with the competition. Also, if price does cause issues, Nintendo may get a “free” price drop in the US when Trump drops tariffs (consumers pay less but Nintendo maintains their margins).
Having retailer pre-order systems fail under the Switch 2 load is not Nintendo’s fault. If anything, it shows that the system will sell well initially. Also, they are not losing sales if consumers get a website crash instead of “sold out”.
A lot of the issues they flag exist only in online forums and thinkpieces. Most of the userbase will never notice the difference regarding the key cards, for instance (until it’s too late, I guess), and Mario Kart World’s bundle version is only 40 bucks, which is the one everybody will be getting for the foreseeable future.
The riskier things they did are the pricing of the console (rough but inevitable) and the cost of the storage. Well, and skipping the review cycle for the remnants of the press, which I presume is why this article exists at all.
The S2 won’t sell as well as the S1 and nobody expects it to do so, but in the meantime that reasonable assumption will be a Rorschach test for a bunch of breathless quick turnaround filler like this, I suppose.