The Nintendo Switch, Eight Years On: Aging Like Fine Wine

The gaming landscape has changed quite a bit over the last decade, and over the years we’ve seen a dramatic shift both within the industry and overarching culture of the business – the console wars have more or less ended, handheld PC gaming continues to gain more fans, and then there’s Microsoft’s rather quirky pivot towards cloud-based gaming.

READ: Nintendo Finally Confirms a Schedule for its Switch 2 Reveal

In the thick of it all however, Japanese gaming veteran Nintendo has remained a constant presence within an ever-changing market. In fact, the Nintendo Switch has just turned eight years old as of today, making it one of the longest-supported consoles in Nintendo’s history. It’s also been one of the best-selling systems from the company, and as of February has sold more than 150 million units in its lifetime, inching on the previous record held by the Nintendo DS.

The Switch’s arrival back in 2017 was a follow-up to the innovative but ultimately doomed Wii U, with Nintendo promising a unique gaming experience that combines console and portable gaming, the latter of which has been one of the company’s biggest strengths. It’s even proved popular enough to the point that it’s been adopted by devices from other manufacturers, such as the Lenovo Legion Go for example.

The Switch was generally well-received during its initial debut thanks to strong launch titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and other popular franchises such as Mario and Pokemon helped propel its popularity even further. It should be noted though that the console is far from perfect.

Problematic controls aside, perhaps one of the biggest complaints that the Switch received was its overall hardware and performance especially when compared to rival systems from Sony and Microsoft, both of which excelled in terms of raw power. The thing with Nintendo though is that this was never really in its playbook – as seen with the NES and the original Gameboy, Nintendo’s main objective has always been to offer customers entertaining gaming experiences despite falling a bit behind the competition, at least when it comes to high-end hardware.

Nintendo’s main objective has always been to offer customers entertaining gaming experiences despite falling a bit behind the competition, at least when it comes to high-end hardware.

Eight years later, and it’s probably safe to say that this strategy has worked nicely in the Switch’s favor. With three different models available for buyers, the system has now amassed an expansive library of titles from first-party originals to ports and even remasters of older classics, and even with the Switch 2 arriving soon, we’re bound to see a few more years of support for the console in the way of newer games and with system updates.

Having owned all three variations of the Switch myself, I can confidently say that Nintendo’s first-ever hybrid handheld console ranks among my most favourite gaming systems. It’s certainly got that “it factor” that we also saw with the 3DS, which likewise stayed in store shelves for almost a decade after its launch. Sure, it’s old now, but it still shines thanks to a solid library and uniqueness that even after all these years, manages to stay strong.

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