It’s safe to say that I’ve gotten more use out of my Switch recently than usual.  I just wrapped up my 12th game in a row with Qureate’s Prison Princess, an escape-the-room sort of puzzle adventure game with cute girls in revealing outfits, that might have been great if the designers hadn’t decided to stick timers on the puzzles.  That is the end of my comments on Prison Princess.

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Switch hardware, as it feels like a system that tries to be both a console and a portable and doesn’t manage either very well.  It’s either an underpowered console or an pocket-unfriendly-sized portable with $60 $70 games.

Also I am still salty that they ditched StreetPass because I loved carrying my 3DS everywhere and seeing the green light come on.

HOWEVER.

There are a ton of them out there, like over a hundred million of the things, and it has mostly-standard controllers, and it’s powerful enough to run Xbox 360-era games in handheld mode while only costing a couple hundred bucks if you buy the doesn’t-actually-“Switch” version.

That many potential customers, and a robust eShop that finally has a mostly-modern account system, means that it’s an easy place to publish the most niche of niche games and you (probably) won’t have to worry about the sorts of ham-fisted content moderation policies that Sony has become known for lately.

With all of that added up, it’s turned into a pretty impressive way to play lower-spec games, or stuff that would otherwise be locked on decaying legacy hardware, or things that just make more SENSE on a system that turns on in seconds and doesn’t need a TV.  It’s perfect for the visual novels and weird food stall management games and unexpected revivals of forgotten titles that I have been playing recently, or to boot up the Arcade Archives release of Moon Patrol for when I want a heady hit of pre-teen nostalgia.

Though, to go back to being a bit of a downer, it rather feels like Nintendo is kind of coasting on the success of the system and letting the hardware stagnant. Like, they COULD go through all the trouble of hardware R&D and then publish a new Mario Kart for a new system, or they could just sit back and count the money rolling in for the one they already have and where the development costs were spent years ago.

I was certain there would be a new Switch for 2022 when Splatoon 3 came out, then absolutely positive they wouldn’t launch a new Zelda game in 2023 without one, and now I have no idea whether they’ll bother before the system turns 10 in 2027.

They probably won’t wait until 2027.  That would be just nuts.  And it’s not like I NEED a more powerful system to emulate Moon Patrol on.  Right?