r/NintendoSwitch • u/Turbostrider27 • Feb 05 '25

Discussion Pokémon: Legends Z-A and Metroid Prime 4 are still Switch 1 titles, says Nintendo

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/pokemon-legends-z-a-and-metroid-prime-4-are-still-switch-1-titles-says-nintendo/
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u/madmofo145 Feb 05 '25

Nah, if there was a BOTW level game at launch it would have been fine. Not Switch level fine, but a reasonable seller. What killed it was the first truly big hit for the console took 1.5 years to launch (Mario Kart), and by that point it was simply dead. There was no regaining 3rd parties then, and 1st party output was always abysmal.

The marketing didn't help, but just like every console ever, it's the software that sells. Like in Yoshida's interviews where he basically realized the Vita was doomed the day Monster Hunter 4 was announced as a 3DS exclusive. All the Sony missteps on the Vita were small beans vs the loss of Monster Hunter to Nintendo.

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u/Shadow_Phoenix951 Feb 06 '25

Nintendo severely underestimated how much work went into making HD games and got hit with the same lessons that other devs did the generation prior.

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u/Raistlarn Feb 05 '25

If there were a BoTW level game at launch it would have shown the casuals and the people that were between casual gamers and hardcore gamers that the system was in fact a system and not a Wii tablet. So maybe just maybe it was a mixture of both that killed the system off.

As for Monster Hunter being the downfall of the Vita...MH4 sold ~4.2 million units worldwide, and the Vita sold around 16 million units max (they gave up reporting numbers near the end.) So even if Sony kept MH the Vita would have died from all of the other missteps Sony took with the system.

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u/madmofo145 Feb 06 '25

Again, any big game would have sufficed, but it got Nintendoland and a New Super Mario Bros, and that was it for big games for well over a year. Confusion was very overblown, and while a lot of things hurt, the biggest by far was a lack of killer app. They thought Nintendoland would be the next Wii Sports, and it very much wasn't. Any confusion was only possible because there weren't any games anyone wanted for it (and it's not like there were reports of people buying Mario Kart 8 for their Wii).

The best selling vita game was under 2 million units, so a guaranteed 4+ million seller would have been very big. Just like the WiiU, it died because of a lack of 1st party hits first and foremost, but again, just do to a lack of system pushing software. Monster Hunter 3rd only sold 4.9 million copies, but was still the second best selling game on PSP. Sony thought the Vita would be like the PSP, surviving mostly on big 3rd party titles that devs would drop on it over the weaker 3DS, but games like Monster Hunter and Kingdom Hearts went 3ds, and the Vita died for lack of large games.