Enjoying The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2023, it is onerous to imagine that its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, got here out all the way in which again in 2017, simply because the Nintendo Change launched.
The brand new Zelda recreation is a masterpiece – as you can read in our full review – however, very like Breath of the Wild, it displays apparently on Nintendo’s plans the place {hardware} is worried, elevating questions on Nintendo’s future {hardware} plans.
Breath of the Wild was a launch recreation for the Change however was additionally accessible for the incumbent Wii U, a mirrored image of Nintendo’s fast and onerous pivot away from its largely failed console: a recreation that may have been the jewel within the Wii U’s crown as an alternative signalled its demise.
Now, seven years later, the Zelda sequel is the triumph that Nintendo would have hoped for, capping off half a decade of outrageously spectacular gross sales figures for the Change in all its iterations. That does not imply that Nintendo has all of it discovered, although.
Whereas Tears of the Kingdom hasn’t needed to bridge the hole to a brand new console, it nonetheless arrives at a time when Nintendo’s {hardware} plans are seemingly up within the air. How does Nintendo comply with the success of the Change, given how badly it fumbled the Wii’s stellar efficiency?
One set of observers thinks that Nintendo’s plans for a Switch Pro had been translated and decreased all the way down to the eventual launch of the Switch OLED – upgrading the console’s show however not its internals.
Nintendo Change OLED
It is the most effective Change for our cash, providing the most effective of all worlds.
If that’s the case, the transfer has gone effectively given the Change’s continued relevance, however this nonetheless leaves open the query of what the following console seems to be like. The Change is undeniably lengthy within the tooth technically, however Nintendo has spent the final couple of years exhibiting that decision and body charge do not make a console king – if it might probably match Tears of the Kingdom on the Change, it won’t desperately want higher-performance {hardware} with any true urgency.
Reassuringly for Nintendo, the true key to the Change’s reign has been a gentle stream of extremely good first-party video games that you may’t play elsewhere. Tears of the Kingdom is the newest however, whereas we’ll get Pikmin 4 later this summer season, that recreation is hardly a system vendor and there is a slight slow-down in what we know is coming further down the line.
The elephant within the room, after all, is Tremendous Mario, which hasn’t had a brand new recreation since 2017’s Odyssey and should certainly be a candidate to launch a brand new console if one is certainly within the works.
So, whereas we totally intend to bask additional within the glory of Hyperlink’s newest outing, we will not assist however marvel when Nintendo plans to take its subsequent main step. We would assume that the dockable transportable thought is right here to remain primarily based on its reputation however, given Nintendo’s historical past, all bets are realistically off.
Whereas this all sounds rosy, the actual fact is that we’re coming right into a interval of giant threat for Nintendo: it might probably’t afford one other Wii U.
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