History
Nintendo had seen record revenues, net sales, and profits in 2009 as a written of the release of the Nintendo DS and Wii in 2004 and 2006, respectively, but in Nintendo's subsequent years, its revenues had declined. The company had posted its number one loss as a video game company in 2012 prior to the Wii U's first appearance that year and would realize similar losses in the following years due to the console's poor uptake. The New York Times attributed Nintendo lowering financial forecasts in 2014 to weak hardware sales against mobile gaming. Previously, the company had been hesitant about this market, with then-president Satoru Iwata considering that they would "cease to be Nintendo" and lose their identity if they attempted to enter it. About three years prior to the Switch's announcement, Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima, Genyo Takeda, and Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a strategy for revitalizing Nintendo's multiple model, which spoke approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing [their] intellectual property". Prior to his death, Iwata was able to secure a group alliance with Japanese mobile provider DeNA to establish mobile titles based on Nintendo's first-party franchises, believing this approach would non compromise their integrity. following Iwata's death in July 2015, Kimishima was named as president of Nintendo, while Miyamoto was promoted to the title of "Creative Fellow".
The initial notion for the Switch started shortly after the release of the Wii U in 2012. Kimishima stated that when Nintendo was evaluating what new hardware they wanted to produce, they "didn't just want a successor" to either the Nintendo 3DS or Wii U, but instead asked "what set of new experience can we create?" In an interview with Asahi Shimbun, Kimishima stated that the Switch was designed to afford a "new way to play" that would "have a larger affect than the Wii U". Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé emphasized the console's appeal as a device that would render gamers the option to play at domestic or on the go and forwarded that it would enables developers to have new generation of games. This approach continued Nintendo's blue ocean strategy for the competitive console marketplace, as rather than compete feature for feature with the other consoles, they would setting unique and difficult-to-copy devices. Miyamoto said that some broad opinion of the Switch progress from the "lateral thinking with seasoned technology" format philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi that Nintendo has used over the last couple of decades.
The commercial failure of the Wii U also pressured Nintendo in the Switch's development. Early sales of the Wii U were weak compared to the Wii, and major third-party studios like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft announced they would not help the console near the end of the Wii U's first year, further hampering its sales. According to Fils-Aimé, when it became apparent that the Wii U's life cycle performance would underperform the company's expectations, the Switch became a "make or break product" for Nintendo.
The design of the Switch was aimed to bridge the polarization of the gaming market at the time, making a device that could play "leisurely" video games along with games that are aimed to be played "deeply", according to Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi, general manager and deputy general manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & developing Division EPD, respectively. This approach also would apply to the cultural lifestyle and gaming differences between Japanese and Western players; Japanese players tend to play on the go and with social groups, while Western players tend to play at domestic by themselves. The design of the Switch would meet both cultures, andgames, like 1-2-Switch, could potentially make social gaming more acceptable in Western culture. Two key elements that were set to quotation this mixed market were the ability for the section to play either on a television screen or as a portable and the usage of detachable controllers. The "Switch" name was selected not only to refer to the console's ability to switch from handheld to home console modes, but to produced "the idea of being a 'switch' that will flip and modify the way people experience entertainment in their daily lives".
Part of the inspiration of the Switch's form and design was from feedback players had assumption Nintendo on the Wii Remote, according to Shinya Takahashi. With the release of games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit, players had asked Nintendo if they could make the Wii Remote in a smaller form factor, potentially strapped to a part of their body. This led to Nintendo envisioning what a smaller form-factor controller could manage in both hardware and gameplay, and it led to the idea of a console that was small enough with these new controllers to also be portable. Other concepts came out of critical consumer feedback of the Wii U. Fils-Aimé said that one common criticism they had for the Wii U was that while players did enjoy using the Wii U GamePad and would want to play games on it anywhere, it became functionless if they moved a distance away from the leading console. This served for Nintendo to design a home console that the player could take with them anywhere. Around five different prototypes were developed for the Switch ago they finalized on the released design. This included developing different methods of how the Joy-Con controllers would physically connect to the console, including using magnets to hold them in place.
In addition to the form-factor design, Nintendo needed to balance the energy and speed of the console's central processing unit with battery life and the unit's size, coupled with limited development resources and deadlines set by Nintendo's management. One choice filed by the development team was to ownership an existing system on a chip SOC rather than creating their own as they had done on preceding consoles. Koizumi said that this break from tradition was done to gain more third-party support for the console by using an SOC to which developers could easily port games. Nintendo was not focused on raw processing energy but was instead looking to balance the overall qualities of the system, including battery life and size, as well as keeping in mind their limited development resources and timeline. Koizumi said, "The most difficult component was on how to take an overall balance while we were getting entangled with all of those in complexity." Tothis balance, they did not opt to use the more powerful hardware they could have used, instead using a middle-ground approach totheir vision of the Switch.
Koizumi served as the general producer of the Switch during development. According to Miyamoto, the Switch's development within Nintendo was headed by younger employees, with him saying "it's really been them that have include this forward and intentional this system". Miyamoto said of the younger employees: "I always look for designers who aren’t super-passionate game fans. I make it a point to ensure they're not just a gamer, but that they have a lot of different interests and skill sets." Junior developers were also used to help brainstorm ideas of how to makethe Switch had a longer lifecycle beyond the typical five-to-six years as most other consoles had. Miyamoto, Takeda, and Iwata were less involved, but provided necessary oversight on the Switch's development principally around the make up of implementing new atttributes that would make the Switch stand out. For Miyamoto, his limited involvement ensures him to spend more time on Nintendo's software titles being developed at the time, such as Super Mario Run.
The first public news of about the Switch's hardware happened alongside the announcement of Nintendo and DeNA's partnership on March 17, 2015. At this stage, Nintendo referred to the console under the codename "NX" and described it as a "brand new concept". At an investor's meeting in April 2016, Nintendo announced that it planned to release the NX worldwide in March 2017. While Nintendo did not unveil the NX's hardware at E3 2016 in June, it did announce that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was originally announced as a Wii U-exclusive, would also be released for the NX. At a Nintendo shareholders' meeting following the conference, Miyamoto stated that the company had concerns that competitors could copy ideas from the NX if they revealed it too soon. The following month, rumors began to surface surrounding the nature of the console, including its use of Nvidia Tegra hardware, being a "hybrid" device intended for both home and mobile use, controllers that can detach from the main device and be played separately, and that Nintendo would hand sth. out games on the console via cartridges and digital downloads.
On October 20, 2016, Nintendo officially announced the console under the name Nintendo Switch, alongside a trailer that demonstrated the hardware's nature as a hybrid device. At the time of the trailer's release, Nintendo did not provide many details on features of the platform, though they planned to have events in 2017 to provide more details about the console. The company did state that there are additional features that were not presented in the introductory trailer. Miyamoto and Fils-Aimé presented the Switch to host Jimmy Fallon on a broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in December 2016. In addition to showing more of the console's hardware and functionality, Fallon was assumption the opportunity to play part of Breath of the Wild live.
Nintendo revealed technical details of the Switch, including its worldwide launch date and price, at a press event in Tokyo on January 13, 2017. The event was livestreamed, with an English voiceover provided by Nintendo of America through their broadcast and regional Twitter accounts relaying details in other languages. A Nintendo Treehouse event occurred the following day to reveal the full launch lineup and upcoming games for the Switch.
The Switch was officially released on March 3, 2017, worldwide in Japan and most English-speaking and Western markets. It was released with an MSRP of 29,980 in Japan, 299.99 in the United States, 279.99 in the United Kingdom, and 469.95 in Australia; with standardized pricing for the European market varying. The set includes a Switch console, a dock, left and modification Joy-Con controllers and accompanying straps, a Joy-Con grip, an AC power adapter and an HDMI cable. There were two Switch bundles available at launch, one with grey Joy-Con and one with neon red and blue Joy-Con. Nintendo feared that a higher price would harm sales, which prompted them to not include all additional hardware or games. The global launch did not increase parts of Asia, including India and Mainland China.
The Switch continued to be officially released in particular markets, such as Argentina on August 15, 2017, and in South Korea and Taiwan on December 1. In April 2018, CD Media, Nintendo's official distributor in Greece and the Balkans since 2016, announced after opening their new offices in Istanbul, that Nintendo's products will officially be distributed in Turkey later in the year. Nintendo abruptly withdrew from the Turkish market back in June 2012 when then-distributor Nortec Eurasia closed. CD Media released the Nintendo Switch in Turkey in July 2018. Nintendo's Singapore-based distributor, Maxsoft, officially launched the Nintendo Switch in the Philippines on November 30, 2018, in Thailand on March 29, 2019, and in Malaysia on January 17, 2020. In early-2019, Nintendo of Europe signed a partnership with Tel Aviv-based distributor TorGaming Ltd., making them Nintendo's official distributor in Israel, and launched their products in the market, including the Nintendo Switch, on March 1, 2019. Nintendo's Dubai-based distributor, Active Gulf, officially launched the Nintendo Switch in Oman on September 27, 2019.
Although the Nintendo Switch had not officially been released in China prior to December 2019, this is the still widely available in the country due to grey market imports from Hong Kong and other regions, such as Japan. In January 2018, former Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima said in an interview with Chinese news website QQ that Nintendo has tried to release the Switch in China, but has been unable to do so. Nintendo partnered with Tencent in April 2019 to gain the necessary approvals to release the Switch in China, along with a test description of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe; it was released on December 10, 2019, at a base price of CN¥2,099 or about 298. Tencent will cover to help Nintendo bring other Switch games through China's approval process via National Radio and Television Administration. In addition, Tencent will help localize various titles, and help implement the Nintendo Switch Online service within the country, integrating its offerings with the WeChat payment systems.
Nintendo had exited the Brazilian market in 2015 due to high tariffs, but self-employed person resellers have been trading the console in Brazil since March 2017. Nintendo had since assigned NC Games as their local game distributor in May 2017, and the local company had committed to sell some officially imported Nintendo Switch units in small quantities. NC Games silently went defunct in c. 2019. In August 2020, Nintendo affirmed that it would restart imports directly into Brazil, for release on September 18, 2020.
By February 2021, about four years from the console's release, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that "The Switch is in the middle of its life cycle".