I’ll reserve judgement until I have one, but here’s my $.02:
The Wii U was wildly innovative and a giant flop. In the end, it was a big clumsy prototype for the switch IMO. The switch was the perfect evolution of some of the ideas the U had, like bringing the stationary console into your hands rather than just a tiny pocket console.
The GameCube didn’t do anything really that wildly innovative after the n64, it just had discs and a more comfy controller.
The Wii was pretty fresh, but in the end, relied a bit too heavily on gimmicks, the key parts of which I think were successfully captured by future motion controllers like the joycons.
The DS was super cool, and I love mine, but most games ended up primarily using a single screen, and the other screen just kinda sat there or acted as a map. Switch has a larger touchscreen which makes up for loss of stylus in a lot of ways.
The 3DS was cool for a minute too, but the effect was eye strain inducing and had limited value IMO.
I think it’s great to come up with something totally new now and then, but changing for change’s sake probably isn’t good, and axing a form factor that has been so wildly successful sounds risky.
Nintendo has always operated on a tick-tock pattern (gameboy -> pocket -> color -> advance -> ds -> ds lite & 3ds). Plenty of evolutions between form changes.
Phones, computers, tablets, and now consoles are all reaching their inevitable optimized form- large screens with good I/O. While boring to look at, at the end of the day it’s about the experience of using the device, not how wacky the console looks/works.
I don’t doubt that Nintendo will have more wild ideas in future systems, but I personally dont want a dual screen switch with an attached printer and a VR headset- I want a bulletproof hand held that does what it does very well and provides value. The entire switch concept is so well executed and seamless- don’t take that away! Make it better- battery, heat, graphics power, ergonomics, charge speed, Bluetooth, build quality, etc. make all those things as good as they can be. The switch 2 looks like it improves on many of those things without taking anything away, so I’m pumped to get my hands on one!
I love that smell. Libraries too.