It's kind of crazy how Nintendo has basically thrown out their entire service for consoles multiple times and started from scratch now. Can you imagine if Xbox Live or the PSN were thrown out and replaced with an incompatible new service after a single generation of use, let alone multiple times? Even ignoring the user experience, it feels like a massive waste of engineering work, with the benefit being...not having to spend as much effort implementing the service, or recruiting the proper talent to make it good enough to last? It honestly seems like they just didn't seen a compelling reason for previous generations, which is an unfortunate lack of foresight, but I really hope they've figured it out for the Switch and won't do it again.
Lack of support for 3DS and (probably) switch means I am moving over to the Steam Deck for my next console, probably early next year. Losing my entire switch library, basically forever, when the Switch 2 (or whatever they call it) is released seems like throwing good money after bad.
Nintendo has been getting greedy in recent years with the paid rereleases and HD ports.
However they had a terrific track record on backcompat for years in the handheld space. GB -> GBC -> GBA -> DS -> 3DS, every one supporting at least one generation back's physical media. Nintendo understands the value of the Switch library and I think would be very cautious to release successor hardware that didn't play the existing titles.
> Nintendo understands the value of the Switch library and I think would be very cautious to release successor hardware that didn't play the existing titles.
I really hope so. The switch has such a great library, it would be an absolute shame if they abandoned it all. From the rumors I've heard they're sticking to a similar platform for the next console so hopefully backwards compatibility is reasonably likely.
After getting my steam deck, I stopped buying Switch games. I even re-bought a couple of favorites (Slay the Spire, Monster Train) since I find myself using the switch less and less.
The deck is similarly sized, of higher quality and power, more versatile, and just as easy to use. Plus the backbone of the deck is a long-lived downloadable game service that still has my games from over a decade ago. And of course, it's also an incredible emulation machine and a full Linux desktop.
The Wii was a bit of a special case for how incredibly janky it was to be trying to present a system shell without it being actually backed by a proper OS/hypervisor arrangement like the other platforms of its generation. That it was able to do paid digital games at all is kind of miraculous.
The Wii was designed with digital content delivery from the very start, from what I know.
The NAND was only 512 MB, but it was easily expanded with a memory card for downloads. The security model worked somewhat well, with jailbroken consumers having to keep an eye out for Nintendo's retaliation during the active part of the console's life. While it didn't have a hypervisor (well, it sort of did - if you squint just right, the ARM processor was a hardware bus access arbitrator that would lock you out if you were accessing things you weren't privileged enough to access), it definitely did have an OS - multiple concurrently installed copies, in fact.
IMO, there is nothing miraculous about Wii's ability to support paid digital games. We don't find it miraculous when a hypervisor-less PC can run games purchased off Steam that were downloaded to an external USB drive. Why should we think it's miraculous when a games console does something nearly identical?
Sure, it was reasonable for the time given that XBLA launched two years before the Wii.
The issue was that the Wii was basically just a GameCube++ in terms of architecture, and no one would have expected a digital storefront on a platform where all the software boots bare metal.
Sometimes, but their strategy for this sort of thing is pretty inconsistent. You have stuff like the bundle of Super Mario 64/Super Mario Sunshine/Super Mario Galaxy which got ported pretty much as-is, warts and all (except for maybe the infamously misheard line in Super Mario 64 after beating Bowser), without even minor quality of life or graphical improvements, "deluxe" versions of Wii U games like Mario Kart 8 that didn't really get the time to shine due to the lackluster sales of that console, and then a sizeable but by no means exhaustive catalog of older games available only via subscription to their online service (which to its credit is very affordable at only $20/year) and aren't playable if you've been offline for more than a week.
None of this is necessarily indefensible, but it paints a very unclear picture for what to expect going forward. The hard copies of the deluxe ports will presumably always be playable on Switch hardware, but will the next generation be able to use them? Similarly, one would hope that digital-only games that are fully offline after installing like the Mario bundle would be playable on consoles they already are installed on indefinitely, but will the store shut down and make it impossible to download again on a different device if your hardware dies? Will digital purchases made for the Switch ever be available without having to purchase again on the next generation console?
As for the subscription-only online games, I don't think there's much reason to believe that anything at all will transfer over. Even being able to transfer saved games from them to a new generation console would be more than I'd expect.
They did do some limited patches for 3D All-Stars to offer 16:9 resolution and patched the games to show Switch controls, but yeah... it all felt a bit lacking.
