The Nintendo Swap is on the cusp of changing into Nintendo’s bestselling {hardware} ever. Looking back, it’s straightforward to see why: it’s a tool that seamlessly transitions from a house console to a handheld, erasing the excellence between the 2. It’s been so profitable that Nintendo isn’t altering all that a lot with the Swap 2. However each consoles are well-executed variations of concepts Nintendo has been engaged on because the failed Wii U — and perhaps even earlier.
Purely by gross sales numbers, the Wii U was a flop. The Swap has bought greater than 150 million items in its eight-year lifetime. The Wii U, by comparability, bought 13.56 million items — lower than a tenth of what the Swap did — making it Nintendo’s worst-selling residence console.
Consequently, it had a a lot shorter lifespan, launching in late 2012 earlier than being outdated by the Swap about 4 and a half years later. However lots of its concepts and its video games weren’t solely glorious, they had been additionally nicely forward of their time, and, in some methods, predicted a number of fashionable tendencies in gaming.
Photograph by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
The Wii U, with its pill controller, additionally labored as a tool that would play video games on a TV or in handheld mode. The power to see a recreation on a giant display screen or curl up with it on the sofa is an everlasting one, because the existence of the PlayStation Portal and Steam Deck now present. The idea has turn out to be an entire class of online game {hardware}, and even Xbox needs to make a handheld now. Nintendo’s curiosity within the concept lengthy preceded the Wii U, because it toyed with handheld-to-TV connections with issues just like the Recreation Boy Advance’s capability to hook up with the GameCube or the Tremendous Recreation Boy add-on for the SNES.
The Wii U had the main limitation that you just couldn’t play the video games in the event you had been too far-off from the console, in order that they weren’t actually moveable. The pill’s battery life wasn’t nice, both, so you can solely play for therefore lengthy earlier than having to cost it.
The Swap improved on all of those concepts. As a substitute of a TV-connected console that would beam a recreation to the pill, the Swap was a pill that would simply show on a TV. The Swap’s dock made that connection seamless, because it was practically inconceivable to mess up simply dropping the Swap into the dock in order that it might present up in your TV. (And simply recharge the console’s battery.)
Lots of the Swap’s defining video games began out on the Wii U. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the Swap’s bestselling title by far, is a port of Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was initially going to be a Wii U unique earlier than Nintendo determined to launch it for the Swap as nicely. The primary Splatoon title launched on Wii U earlier than getting a pair of Swap sequels, and so did the unique Tremendous Mario Maker. Donkey Kong Nation: Tropical Freeze, Tremendous Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, and Xenoblade Chronicles X are all nice Wii U video games that acquired new life on the Swap.
Picture: The Verge
The Swap 2 seems to construct off that legacy by being backward suitable with the overwhelming majority of Swap video games, together with the Swap variations of these Wii U classics. Breath of the Wild will even be getting a 3rd model for the brand new console with technical enhancements. Options like GameShare and GameChat might additionally assist folks extra simply play video games with their buddies.
Earlier than the primary Swap got here out in March 2017, Nintendo was aggressively shifting on from the Wii U. Manufacturing of the console resulted in Japan in January of that year, and the corporate was additionally dipping its toes into cell as one other avenue to achieve gamers. Even on the time, the corporate appeared to comprehend that it was on to one thing with the idea. It was simply too early. That is one thing Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto appeared keenly conscious of in a 2016 interview with my colleague Andrew Webster across the launch of the cell recreation Tremendous Mario Run.
“I hope folks will proceed to acknowledge the areas the place Nintendo has taken that first step,” Miyamoto informed The Verge. “And hopefully sometime folks will look again on the Wii U and assume ‘Oh wow, I bear in mind when Nintendo did that, and now have a look at what’s come of that.’”