The Nintendo Switch is on its last legs, with a successor lurking in its shadow to such a degree that Nintendo has felt the need to repeatedly inform people that it won’t be present at events like today’s Nintendo Direct. But you wouldn’t have known it from watching, well, today’s Nintendo Direct: If the original Switch is going down, it’s going down swinging. A new Zelda where you (finally) play as Zelda and the long-awaited re-reveal of Metroid Prime 4 grabbed headlines, but the Switch’s dying gasp has breadth. In this regard, Nintendo continues to buck industry trends and go its own way. Good!
Last week I wrote about my lack of enthusiasm toward Microsoft’s bench of tired franchises, and there’s no denying that Nintendo loves a time-honored franchise. Zelda and Samus predate Marcus Fenix and Fable He/She/They by multiple decades. But Nintendo’s great strength is that it maintains a keen sense of when to Get (Economically) Weird With It. While The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is long overdue, it’s otherwise a great example of this: The game is built from the same foundation as the Link’s Awakening remake, but it’s got a new main character and central mechanic to match. I, for one, cannot wait to table Ganon to death.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership is similar. It’s not a mainline series entry – I’m sure Nintendo is saving that for the Switch 2 – but it continues a role-playing side saga that other companies would do well to learn from if they insist on going back to the same franchise wells time and time again. Let characters explore additional genres and worlds. Make games both large and small. Vary players’ diets. Man cannot live on triple-A tentpoles alone.
Then, of course, there’s Metroid Prime 4, which was honestly the least exciting part of the showcase to me. It looked fine! I guess I just expected more after years of waiting and a slightly worrisome development reboot in 2019. But it exists. And rather than saving it for the Switch 2, Nintendo is letting it serve as the original Switch’s swan song in 2025, with an impressively stacked 2024 lineup getting the crowd warmed up for it. I’ve yet to even mention Super Mario Party Jamboree, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, Pokemon Legends Z-A, and a whole host of third-party gems like Fantasian: Neo Dimension, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Romancing Saga 2, and the Dragon Quest III remake, most of which are coming out this year or early next.
I will readily admit my biases here: I’m grading on a curve since one would typically expect far less than this from a console near the end of its life, and I also like RPGs. Even so, this is a strong procession of games that are all coming soon. I’m not always certain if I was correct to buy a PlayStation 5, and I doubt I’ll ever pick up an Xbox Series X, but I know exactly what I’m going to be playing on my Nintendo Switch in the near future. That kind of consistency is an underrated quality, one that’s easy to take for granted. Not only that, but Nintendo has maintained it over the course of the Switch’s entire life cycle. Despite being seven years old, my Switch has never collected dust.
Nintendo knows what works for it, and over the years it has stayed that course, at times to its own detriment. But when it works, it really works. The Switch has been a smash success, which has allowed Nintendo to stick to its guns even as it navigates an industry that’s doubling down on fewer, bigger games. It is notable that Nintendo hasn’t laid off hundreds or thousands of workers in the past couple years, nor has it jumped aboard the forever game bandwagon (unless Mario Kart 8 counts). I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the former is a result of labor law as much as it is anything else, but there’s also a hopeful truth at the core of Nintendo’s approach: If you create something good and dependable, people will appreciate it. You don’t have to trick or trap them to build a successful business.
More importantly, they’ll keep coming back. Nintendo doesn’t need to sink a frankly horrifying amount of time and manpower into a microtransaction-powered live service game because it has continually reached beyond the audience that would even play such a thing and given kids, adults, and just about every other imaginable demographic a bunch of friendly, imaginative experiences. Could another company pull this off without literally owning Mario, the Mickey Mouse of video games? I don’t know. But I’m glad Nintendo’s doing it.
Now please stop sicking your lawyers on emulators and fan projects. Thanks.
