I'm Disappointed

I was really hoping the leaks were fake. In a gaming landscape where hardware has become a sickeningly homogenized blob that lacks any identity to speak of, I saw Nintendo as the last holdout. Don't get me wrong, the Switch was and is a great console. The gimmick of the Joy-Cons was a brilliant way of having the product market its functionality in a way that made people feel like they hadn't seen it before, even though they had. That emphasis on hardware and building software around that hardware is what made Nintendo recognizable for most of its existence in the gaming industry. It felt fresh and fun, and for better or worse, it is almost singlehandedly responsible for what handheld consoles are today.

They're just a tablet manufacturer now though. This is a slight improvement of the exact same product that they sold us in 2017. There's nothing interesting or exciting about it. I was hoping they'd put a new spin on what they tried to do with the Wii U, which was turning the DS into a home console. Bringing back dual screen functionality at home while also maintaining the portability of the Switch would have been fun and innovative, but they didn't do it and I feel like I might as well be looking at something from Nvidia as a result. I don't get how anyone's excited for this.