
Nintendo to Double Production of Switch Console - Tiktaalik
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-to-double-production-of-switch-console-1489728545
======
baby
I love this console, haven't been able to sit down and play for long hours in
decades and here I am.

I love that it's handheld, I travel a lot and so far I've played that in the
plane and in various airbnbs, splitting the controller in two and playing
snipperclips or bomberman with my girlfriend.

It's probably the best console I bought since the N64. I see a lot of
skepticism here, but I assume it is mostly from non-buyers. I predict that
this is going to be the biggest christmas for Nintendo this December.

~~~
aaron-lebo
To the deleted comment asking about battery life:

 _As for general battery life, based on these figures you 'll get somewhere
between 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hours and 15 minutes playing Breath of the
Wild, depending on the settings you use._

[http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/nintendo-switch-
battery-l...](http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/nintendo-switch-battery-
life#jBDJLMgoSqAPsbWf.99)

To the GP, Nintendo products have this effect on people. They're different
enough that people don't know what to expect. You'll find similar sentiments
about the Wii U (especially from Nintendo fans - _the next Mario /Zelda/SSB is
gonna put it over the top!_).

I'm interested in wait and see. The hardware is mediocre even though the form
factor is great. They really have to get more games out before the holiday
season, though, and where they are at they're competing with both mobile
devices and consoles. Parents have to justify spending $300 on this + full
priced games against more games and better experiences on other consoles (MS
IS launching a 4k console, too) and cheaper (much cheaper) games on mobile
devices that aren't restricted to gaming. They're in a no man's land of
markets where they compete with everyone (for good and bad).

....though it'll probably sell like hotcakes.

~~~
quanticle
>... though it'll probably sell like hotcakes

For a while. Then the novelty/fad factor will wear off and people will realize
that it's mediocre hardware, the screen scratches if you put it in the dock
too forcefully, the battery life is abysmal compared to an iPad, and the game
selection is arguably worse. Then sales will fall off a cliff, just like they
did with the original Wii.

~~~
azhenley
As a gamer, why should I explicitly care about the hardware? If the experience
is good, I don't care what is inside it. The graphics appear to be "good
enough".

~~~
aaron-lebo
Do you care about framerate?

Not the same games but Uncharted 4 multiplayer is 1080p 60fps and silky
smooth. That's not even talking about PC games - it's dirt cheap to run CSGO
at 90 fps and 1440p these days.

Bad performance detracts from the experience and it also limits what Nintendo
can do with the console over the next three or four years.

~~~
cholantesh
I agree that performance is a pretty integral part of the experience. But I
think the way it's being brought up in this thread is a bit disingenuous. Most
people that are doing so seem to be glossing over the fact that the stutter is

1) rare

2) mostly resolved by the day 1 patch that Nintendo released

~~~
aaron-lebo
I own the game. Framerate drops are still very common

~~~
cholantesh
In prerelease reviews, there was talk of very occasional drops to below 30fps,
sometimes even 20fps. It's my understanding that, post-launch that a lot of
people (reviewers and people on Reddit, etc) are reporting that this happens a
lot less. Rose-tinted glasses?

------
learc83
Breath of the Wild is the best game I've ever played. I'd recommend getting a
switch just for Zelda alone.

~~~
suvelx
I'm not convinced I like it.

I feel (2 'divine beasts' in):

* It's very repetitive.

* The boss dungeons are unrewarding.

* The shrine dungeons are novel, but get tiresome quickly.

* As you can pretty much do everything off the bat, there's no "oh a boulder, can't move it, better come back later" element to the game. (This is my biggest gripe I think, a big part of the Zelda games was doing a dungeon and getting a gimmick to unlock new places).

* Weapon durability is an annoyance as there's no feedback of how much weapon there is left until the end.

* As my gear improves, I don't feel any stronger.

* Cooking could be 10x easier.

But I seem to be the odd one out thinking this, so maybe I just have bad
taste.

~~~
post_break
The weapon durability kills me. And the fact that it doesn't auto switch to
your next best weapon when it breaks. I have no clue how to cook anything
whatsoever. There was never a guide in the game so I'm getting farther in the
game without any special powers.

Bows that break after shooting too many arrows, ugh...

~~~
RobertDeNiro
The weapon durability one makes me feel like they took the worse parts of
Skyrim and left out all the good ones. I really wish we could repair weapons
and craft new ones. With the way it is you can easily end up in a situation
where you have no weapons and a bunch of ennemies in front of you. I recently
did the shrine dubbed "Major test of strength" and I literally when through 4
melee weapons and 3 shields, all because the damn guardian had 3000 hp. It's
just ridiculous.

~~~
noxToken
You can shield parry guardians. I mean, missing the parry is almost guaranteed
death, but it deals a lot of damage.

~~~
RobertDeNiro
It wasn't a true guardian. It was one of those things with a shield, sword and
spear. It only shoots a beam when it's low on hp.

------
dcw303
Good. I'm getting sick of walking into Bic Camera and asking the same question
when I already know what the (disappointing) answer is going to be.

I get that they're a typical conservative Japanese company, they don't want to
screw up inventory, blah blah blah, but it's getting annoying.

And slightly off topic, does anyone know what is up with the NES classic /
Famicom mini? As far as I can tell that thing never restocked after launch.

You can see how it looks like Nintendo is majorly shooting themselves in the
foot with these slow launches.

~~~
verytrivial
Counterargument: Would Nintendo still exist today if it had speculatively
doubled/trebled production of Wii U?

~~~
nsxwolf
The problem with the Wii U was Nintendo did a very poor job marketing it.
There were almost no ads for it and they failed to make the consumer
understand what exactly it was.

It was out for about a year before I finally figured out that it was an all
new console. I thought it was a wireless tablet add-on for the Wii.

~~~
jcadam
Yep, the Wii U is basically what the original Wii _should_ have been and it's
my favorite console right now. I've got 3 kids and also own a PS4 and an Xbox
one and the Wii U definitely gets the most play.

------
lobotryas
And here I am still waiting to buy a NES Classic. Maybe next year...

Looking forward to getting the Switch because I always liked Nintendo's
handhelds and this qualifies. Just hope they work out the design/quality
issues by the time stock catches up to demand.

~~~
nawtacawp
Same here. No way I am paying those ridiculous resale prices. This was
something I really wanted, it is baffling they released it -- then didn't
produce a ton more when they realized the demand.

A friend of mine built a pi based emulator, I played around with it the other
day -- it was actually very nice. The controllers he used in the setup were
bluetooth (8bit brand?).

[https://retropie.org.uk/](https://retropie.org.uk/)

~~~
shuntress
Based on what (admittedly little) I know about at-scale production of consumer
electronics, it isn't exactly easy to just "produce a ton more" when they
realize the demand.

It is also difficult to tell what the cap on demand is. If they think they
satisfied maybe 70% of the total demand for that product with the N-Number of
units they produced, they may consider that "good enough" and not worth
launching another production run.

------
naringas
I'm betting on the fact the nintendo switch will be able to browse the web and
reproduce music and video (youtube, netflix).

I understand that they didn't officially support this at launch probably
because of time constraints and priorities but it just doesn't make any sense
for the switch not to support this in the longer term. It's form factor is
perfect for it.

~~~
ianai
Why do you care about that from this?

~~~
hrrsn
The consumer value proposition is greater if people can watch media on the
same device.

~~~
bpicolo
I'm not convinced that's true at all. At this point most people have a
plethora of devices that will get the exact same Netflix content on their TV.
My TV has like 4 things connected to it right now that will (TV itself, ps4,
chromecast, fire stick).

~~~
kk_cz
Yeah, but one of the main appeals of Switch is how portable it is. And when I
carry around a device I expect it to not only provide games, but content
consumption as well. Otherwise I can carry an ordinary tablet - it might be
not ideal for games, but as a multipurpose device it would be superior.

~~~
bpicolo
Everybody is already carrying a much-more-multipurpose device with them
everywhere they go (smartphone). Carrying around the sort-of-portable bit of
the switch doesn't seem that much more convenient than having a laptop.
Doesn't fit in your pocket.

------
mpg33
I don't think launch sales are a good indicator to go by...

There is enough of a hardcore Nintendo fanbase to buy up initial launch
supply.

Let me know of the sales in July.

~~~
jerf
I decided to check that claim, and I'd say it holds up reasonably well:
[http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Biggest_game_system_launches](http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Biggest_game_system_launches)
I admit I'm eyeballing it there, but there isn't a _great_ correlation between
launch day/week sales and ultimate success.

Even the WiiU seems to have been at least a modest success upon launch:
[http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/11/how-successful-was-
th...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/11/how-successful-was-the-wii-u-
launch)

Still, I would definitely take a strong launch over a weak one if I had a
choice. :)

~~~
mpg33
Zelda at launch was a strong boost...and I suspect they will get another boost
at holiday season when Super Mario Odyssey comes out. But there are a lot of
months in between that are not filled in with much...

Since the console is not likely to get any 3rd party AAA games Nintendo is
going to have to court nearly every indie dev + churn out as many first party
titles as possible.

Also I'm hoping for a $50 price drop after Christmas...

~~~
mattnewton
If they fix up the browser and ship a YouTube and Netflix app I think they
will also be a killer low-cost tablet. An Amazon fire hd + mario and Zelda is
definitely worth $300 + cost of games.

People forget that the ps2 was many familie's DVD player. That kind of extra
utility goes a long way into driving purchases imo.

~~~
mpg33
yeah...it's just that a lot of people already have at least a 5" smartphone
and/or tablet (tablet sales have been shrinking due to this) so I don't know
how much of the tablet aspect is appealing nowadays...3 years ago it would
have been a bigger deal

------
pmorici
I wish they would double production of the Nintendo Classic. I can't find it
anywhere except places that are charging 3x the list price.

~~~
louhike
They won't do it, they stopped the production. But they are working on a SNES
version.

~~~
vlunkr
Source?

~~~
manarth
FUD in last month's rumour-mill.

\- [http://www.gamezone.com/news/rumor-nes-classic-mini-
reported...](http://www.gamezone.com/news/rumor-nes-classic-mini-reportedly-
ceasing-production-3450632)

\- [http://www.techradar.com/news/dont-panic-nintendo-nes-
mini-p...](http://www.techradar.com/news/dont-panic-nintendo-nes-mini-
production-will-continue)

\-
[http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/767007/Nintend...](http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/767007/Nintendo-
Classic-Mini-NES-production-ended)

~~~
louhike
Oh, thanks for correcting me.

------
DaveWalk
Was it true that Nintendo held back some of its production of earlier consoles
to spike demand? I remember it specifically with the Wii[0], but I seem to
recall that their production was always playing catch up. Do you think it's an
industry tactic?

[0][http://www.cio.com/article/2434123/supply-chain-
management/n...](http://www.cio.com/article/2434123/supply-chain-
management/nintendo-wii-shortage--shrewd-marketing-or-flawed-supply-
chain-.html)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure how 'spiking demand' when you have no product to sell, profits
Nintendo.

~~~
Kurtz79
What better advertising than having a narrative where your product is "sold
out" and in high demand, with media running stories about it ?

Especially when the "scarcity" problem can be addressed easily.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It can't be addressed quickly. Takes months to make more. Seems like having
enough when folks are buying makes more sense, than a little free press and
then maybe they'll still be interested in buying in a few months.

------
knodi123
Good, because I absolutely refuse to pay scalper prices. Now if someone could
figure out the left-joy radio issues, I'd buy one ASAP.

~~~
joeax
They are out there. I bought a Switch on Monday. The scalpers will be out of
business soon.

~~~
saghm
Where did you buy it?

------
oculusthrift
what about the nes classic which came out a long time ago and they're clearly
trying NOT to sell??

~~~
NTripleOne
I don't really see what the NES classic has going for it, personally - the
interface is basically the only thing it has over any pi-based solution, and
even that's debatable, depending on how much of a retroarch loyalist you are.

~~~
dagw
_I don 't really see what the NES classic has going for it_

Legality and the fact that anybody can have it up and running in less than 3
minutes from opening the box.

~~~
NTripleOne
Emulation is not inherently illegal, and even if it was I'd imagine that the
people who just want to play some NES games probably don't give half a shit.

~~~
dagw
_Emulation is not inherently illegal_

No, but downloading the game ROMs almost always is.

~~~
drdaeman
Not really. This heavily depends on jurisdiction. Downloading isn't
universally illegal (especially if you have the license for the material
you're downloading), sharing is.

~~~
rhino369
I'm not sure about other countries but in the USA it's indirect copyright
infringement.

It's an urban myth that owning a copy makes it okay. Morally sure, but not
legally.

------
Karunamon
Late again. Nintendo is comically bad at meeting demand.

Every time they have a highly anticipated product release, there are many
multiples fewer products on the shelves than there is demand, for months at a
time, and meanwhile, eBay prices spike to 200%+ retail. Meanwhile, consumers
are disappointed/annoyed, scalpers profit, and Nintendo leaves money on the
table.

I wonder how many Switches haven't been sold since people got tired of waiting
and just picked up Breath of the Wild for the Wii U, which is now going for
fire sale prices?

~~~
jayflux
Yeah I agree, I know some who stopped bothering to ring up stores and ask if
they had switches in stock and just bought something else. They've under-
stocked by a large margin and I wonder how much they've lost doing that.

------
Fej
I sure hope that they come out with a hardware revision, fast. I expect there
to be a class-action suit regarding the left Joy-Con issues and the screen
scratching issue, barring a recall.

~~~
aeturnum
I find your post difficult to take seriously. Nintendo was aware of the
hardness of their screen throughout the design and when they shipped. The joy-
con problems are unfortunate, but seem like the kind of glitches discovered on
wide release. I'm not sure how fixable they are either (no amount of technical
rejiggering will make bluetooth transmit through the human body better).

I don't know that I would have made the same trade-offs, but Nintendo was
clearly aware of the trade-offs they were making. A recall seems really
unlikely and a class action seems very difficult (how much can you get in
damages for an occasional technical glitch in some configurations?).

~~~
Fej
The Joy-Con issue affects all units and has nothing to do with the human body,
although that obviously makes the problem worse. After five or so feet away
from the console, the Joy-Cons begin to respond intermittently, making proper
gameplay impossible. (This is with nothing between the console and
controllers.) The issue lies partially in the design of the antenna. The right
Joy-Con has a better antenna, which alleviates the problem to a degree. I
don't know how this could _not_ be caught before release. A hardware mod can
fix the antenna issue; a courageous user can solder a bit of wire onto the
antenna to significantly extend the range.

The point is that the left Joy-Con is poorly designed.

They may be able to solve this issue by raising the gain on the antennae, at
the expense of a significant amount of battery life. I don't know if they'd
have to go through the FCC for this.

The screen issue isn't that the screen is plastic, it is that the dock itself
damages the console. It takes a day or two with heavy use.

------
mrmondo
I'm a sucker for getting lots of gadgets and then shelving them, the switch is
the first game console / handheld I actually genuinely appreciate both for its
quality and for its marvellous simplicity since the game boy advanced, it's
truly wonderfull. It's has its flaws in that there aren't many release titles
but Zelda is amazing and it's just a joy to use. Mad rep out to Nintendo for
pulling one out of the hat.

------
mrfusion
Does this production come at the expense of the nes classic though? For some
reason I'm really mad I can't buy that stupid thing.

------
Tiktaalik
The great news here for Switch owners is that it means that Nintendo sees the
platform size trending to point that will be large enough to start to attract
attention of 3rd parties. The Wii U never got to this point and really
suffered by essentially being a system of only Nintendo games.

------
phyushin
Login to see the rest of the story :-/

------
shmerl
That will help Vulkan adoption.

------
ghostDancer
This did work for me:
[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-
to-double-production-of-switch-console-1489728545)

~~~
namikaze
Thank you. Is there a browser extension that does it automatically for all WSJ
articles at HN?

~~~
themacguffinman
There is a Chrome extension that bypasses the paywalls of many major news
outlets: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bypass-
paywalls/gf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bypass-
paywalls/gfbabigadapckiaabchaolgjfbgickop)

~~~
namikaze
Thanks. Anything for Firefox? [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/paywall-pass/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/paywall-pass/) used to work but stopped working.

------
sillysaurus3
Off-topic:

I notice you've been banned for quite awhile. Some of your comments are pretty
good. Some are not-so-great, mostly the outrage/political comments.

It's none of my business, but have you considered emailing hn@ycombinator.com,
apologize for whatever got you banned, and promise not to do it again? The
mods are more than fair and in my experience that will earn you a second
chance.

More than that, though, your account is named HeavenBanned, so presumably you
created it after your previous account was banned. It's also an amusing name
since you may have been fully aware that new accounts which are created to
circumvent bans are quickly banned, so HeavenBanned would quickly become a
self-fulfilling name.

Therefore it seems like you're fully aware of your status, but you still
comment on HN knowing that almost nobody will see your writing, except the few
that have showdead turned on. While your comments are certainly welcome, I am
moved by curiosity to ask: What compels you to keep commenting even though you
know you're banned? Anything in particular?

The phenomenon is pretty common. There are a lot of banned accounts with
dozens of pages of dead comments. Sometimes the comments are meticulously
written or otherwise took a lot of effort to write. But the most curious
aspect is that the authors _know_ they're banned, yet they continue to write.

I've seen at least a dozen accounts like that over the years, and I've always
wondered why. Why waste time writing something no one will see? Is it
therapeutic, like writing in a private journal?

Again, it's not unwelcome -- the dead/vouch system works quite well, so it's
perfectly fine for someone to write as many autokilled comments as they want.
But I love a good mystery, and so I have to ask: what drives you to do it?
What drives dozens of people to do it?

(It would be ironic if you had no idea you were banned and this was how you
found out.)

~~~
Cthulhu_
> (It would be ironic if you had no idea you were banned and this was how you
> found out.)

It's called shadow banning or stealth banning [1] and it's probably the most
effective way to keep a community clean; explicit bans will anger the user and
make them try and circumvent them by using proxies and multiple accounts,
often to the point of just posting porn or other offensive stuff. Very hard to
get that fixed. Shadow banning on the other hand hides the offensive content
from the users, without the user doing it knowing - they can troll all they
want, but shadow banning takes away their audience and thus the fun of it.

But yeah, telling people "ur banned" defeats the purpose and I'd really like
people to stop doing that. The HN system isn't obvious though. Should have a
help link if you can see hidden comments at least.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning)

~~~
sillysaurus3
I asked dang last year whether it was ok to do this, and he said it wasn't a
big deal. I was careful to choose someone who knew they were banned -- my
entire question revolves around the fact that people who know they're banned
still post a lot of HN comments, even for months. They do it in spite of being
banned, which is curious enough that I'd like to ask them why.

~~~
arcticfox
> (It would be ironic if you had no idea you were banned and this was how you
> found out.)

> I was careful to choose someone who knew they were banned

These statements seem inconsistent to me

~~~
sillysaurus3
It was a joke. Their name is HeavenBanned, so they're obviously fully aware of
their situation.

This subthread ended up being boring and cluttered up the main topic. If the
mods have a problem with what I'm doing, they'll say so. In the meantime, you
have both a downvote button and a flag button to employ. I think there was
nothing wrong with what I did, right up until it spawned a useless subthread
about whether what I did was ok. At this point it's worth detaching, which is
frustrating: I really wanted to know the answer to the original mystery! Since
I have to vouch a banned user's comment in order to ask them the question,
there's no way to ask them without also spawning an offtopic subthread. I was
hoping that people would see that it's an interesting subthread and worth
giving some leeway to see where it leads.

In general, it's ok for subthreads to veer off topic as long as it's
intellectually interesting and substantive. Some of the most interesting
comments are generated by that kind of process. But it's easy to push it too
far, and it doesn't work if people get caught up in metaquestions.

------
unlikelymordant
Its paywalled

------
DaveSapien
WSJ? It's a wonder they're not linking Nintendo to the Nazi party...

