The house that Mario built tends to divide fans with their consoles these days. Yet if there’s one thing you can say about the Switch, it’s that it’s innovative. The combination of portable and home console maybe enough to make it stand out from the crowd. While innovation is the Switch’s biggest strength, it may be lacking in more traditional areas. This is because the Switch will not have have streaming services on launch day. And possibly not at all.
According to shacknews.com, a Nintendo rep has said;
“All of our efforts have gone toward making the Nintendo Switch system an amazing dedicated video game platform, so it will not support any video-streaming services at launch. However, support for video-streaming services is being considered for a future update.”
First of all, this is Nintendo’s traditional approach to consoles. The big N has been in the console game the longest and, therefore, views consoles a bit differently. While Sony and Microsoft have been quick to make ‘all singing, all dancing’ machines, Nintendo hasn’t. Instead, Nintendo puts together their consoles from a purely gaming perspective. As a result, Nintendo has struggled with third party support for a few generations.
Yet plenty of third party games seems to be bringing that to an end. Most of all, the lack of streaming services may have an impact on launch day. Nintendo seems unconcerned, having said that the launch day isn’t the be-all and end-all. Many of the Switch’s most promising games won’t be launch titles. Is this poor planning on Nintendo’s part or are they focused on the long game?
To be honest, if you buy on launch day, you’re probably not doing so for a device to stream Netflix on.