Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and it's time to revisit
Speaker 1: an old favorite topic on tech Stuff. Two years ago,
Speaker 1: back in twos sixteen, I updated a series I've been
Speaker 1: doing about the company Nintendo. Now. In the first two parts,
Speaker 1: I covered Nintendo from its origins up until about two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, So two thousand eleven was when we
Speaker 1: recorded those first two episodes. Chris Pallette, my original co host,
Speaker 1: and I recorded those shows. Then in part three, I
Speaker 1: covered two thousand eleven to early two thousand sixteen, but
Speaker 1: at that stage, Nintendo had yet to come out with
Speaker 1: its most recent console, which we now know, of course,
Speaker 1: as the Nintendo Switch. Uh So today I thought it'd
Speaker 1: be a good time to revisit the company yet again
Speaker 1: and catch us up on what it's been doing over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. But first, I figure we
Speaker 1: can do a really quick summary of where the company
Speaker 1: came from in case you aren't eager to dig up
Speaker 1: those old episodes and listen to them all over again.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of the previously on tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Back in the late nineteenth century, in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and yes, that's how old Nintendo is, there was a
Speaker 1: man named Fusahiro Yamauchi who founded a hanafuda cards company
Speaker 1: and he called it Nintendo Copai. Hanafudo cards are used
Speaker 1: for lots of different games in Japan. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like Western playing cards, like poker cards in that way,
Speaker 1: so we use those cards to play all sorts of
Speaker 1: games like bridge or poker, or hearts or spades, and
Speaker 1: tons of other games. Well back in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: no one could possibly have foreseen the future of this
Speaker 1: playing card company and what it would become in the
Speaker 1: latter half of the twentieth century. For two generations, business
Speaker 1: grew steadily, and by generations, I mean Yamauchi's son would
Speaker 1: take over the business and then his grandson would take
Speaker 1: over the business. It actually followed the family line. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, Fusahiro's grandson and the third president of Nintendo,
Speaker 1: Hiroshi Yamauchi, was heading a company that was the dominant
Speaker 1: producer of plastic playing cards in Japan. But Hiroshi Yamachi
Speaker 1: recognized that there was a need to diversify the business,
Speaker 1: so he made a licensing deal with Disney to print
Speaker 1: the famous company's cartoon characters on these playing cards. This
Speaker 1: actually opened up a new market for Nintendo, because up
Speaker 1: to that point the cards were largely the realm of gamblers,
Speaker 1: but now with popular Disney characters on cards, there was
Speaker 1: suddenly this huge appeal to a younger audience. Nintendo also
Speaker 1: produced books that laid out rules for new card games
Speaker 1: that were suitable for kids, so that kids just didn't
Speaker 1: become hardened gamblers using classic Disney characters now. While this
Speaker 1: continued on, the company began to launch different businesses and
Speaker 1: lots of different industries in an attempt to diversify, because
Speaker 1: at that point, Yamachi saw that the playing card business
Speaker 1: was very niche oriented. He actually saw other playing card
Speaker 1: factories while he toured the world and realized they were
Speaker 1: all very small operations and that if he stuck with
Speaker 1: that one business, it would limit Nintendo too much. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: most of these other ventures Nintendo entered into failed miserably
Speaker 1: in the market, so the playing card business was drying up,
Speaker 1: and their various attempts to diversify even going into things
Speaker 1: like hotel els and uh and and vehicles. None of
Speaker 1: that was working out. That's when an engineer named gun
Speaker 1: Pay your KOI helped inject some life back into the business.
Speaker 1: He created an extending arm. He was working in Nintendo
Speaker 1: in a manufacturing plant, and he took various pieces and
Speaker 1: he created essentially kind of a robotic arm or an extender,
Speaker 1: like a grabber sort of thing. And people saw it
Speaker 1: and thought, well, that's kind of neat, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think kids would really like that. So the company
Speaker 1: decided to make a consumer version as a toy, and
Speaker 1: Nintendo entered into the toy making business in earnest and
Speaker 1: really the company still considers itself to be a toy company.
Speaker 1: By the late nineties seventies, Nintendo had returned to a
Speaker 1: more stable place in the industry, as was one of
Speaker 1: the few companies producing toys at that time in Japan.
Speaker 1: As computers and video games started to emerge, Nintendo got
Speaker 1: into those as well, and at first the company acted
Speaker 1: as a distributor for other ducts like the Magna Vox Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Then the company began to produce arcade games like the
Speaker 1: legendary Donkey Kong for actual video game arcades, not for
Speaker 1: home use. Following the arcade game success, they began to
Speaker 1: make video game cartridges for various home systems, like the
Speaker 1: Atari twenty six hundred, and then company executives decided it
Speaker 1: was time for Nintendo to make a console of its
Speaker 1: very own instead of making games for other platforms. But
Speaker 1: it was pretty bad timing all things considered, because Nintendo
Speaker 1: was just getting into developing a console as the market
Speaker 1: in the United States was headed toward a major collapse.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen eighties, the US market was oversaturated
Speaker 1: with various consoles like you Had the A twenty six hundred,
Speaker 1: the Atari fifty two hundred, the Intellivision, the Colliquo Vision,
Speaker 1: and tons more. Plus there were home computers that were
Speaker 1: coming out around this same time, like the t Lash
Speaker 1: four A, the Commodore sixty four, and the Apple two.
Speaker 1: Low quality controls and companies like Atari meant that there
Speaker 1: was also a flood of substandard games that were rushed
Speaker 1: to market in an effort to make a quick buck.
Speaker 1: The consumer market couldn't sustain this pace, and by three
Speaker 1: the whole thing was caving in on itself as consumers
Speaker 1: got tired of feeling like they were being fleeced. Stores
Speaker 1: were even beginning to refuse to carry games and systems
Speaker 1: because of this bad impression. So this was not the
Speaker 1: best time to debut a console, and yet Nintendo continued.
Speaker 1: They persevered, and they introduced the Fama com which is
Speaker 1: better known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Speaker 1: In the US, the company paired this video game console
Speaker 1: with a robot of questionable utility. This was actually a
Speaker 1: ploy to get toy stores to carry the Nintendo, since
Speaker 1: they were awfully shy about getting back into the home
Speaker 1: video game market after that crash in ninety eight three.
Speaker 1: But the plan worked and Nintendo earned itself a spot
Speaker 1: in video game history, creating some of the most beloved
Speaker 1: franchises in the video game world in the process. You
Speaker 1: can listen to the first two episodes of the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Story UH to hear the full account of what I
Speaker 1: just summarized, plus obviously I go into a lot more detail. However,
Speaker 1: we are going to skip ahead a bit. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna acknowledge that Nintendo produced several consoles. There was the
Speaker 1: Super Nintendo, the Nintendo sixty four, the GameCube, the Wei,
Speaker 1: and the Weiu, not to mention numerous handheld game systems
Speaker 1: since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. At the
Speaker 1: time of my last recording, the most recent system on
Speaker 1: the market was the Weiu, which, while innovative, had failed
Speaker 1: to make a real impact on gamers. In fact, we
Speaker 1: Use sales hit somewhere around thirteen and a half million
Speaker 1: towards the end of twenty seventeen. That actually puts it
Speaker 1: at the bottom of Nintendo's consoles in terms of sales.
Speaker 1: Contrasted with the Wei, the predecessor to the We You,
Speaker 1: and that was the best selling home console Nintendo ever produced.
Speaker 1: The we sold more than one hundred one million units.
Speaker 1: The only Nintendo device to out sell the we was
Speaker 1: the handheld Nintendo d S, which sold an astonishing one
Speaker 1: fifty four million units, putting it right behind the PlayStation
Speaker 1: two for best selling video game system of all time.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see that we You as anything other
Speaker 1: than a commercial failure. One other thing I should mention
Speaker 1: that I covered in the third episode of the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Story was the passing of sartorro I Watta. He had
Speaker 1: served as Nintendo's fourth president, the first one not of
Speaker 1: the Amachi line from two thousand twelve to two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: A Wata gets a lot of credit for Nintendo's focus
Speaker 1: on creating accessible and innovative methods of playing games rather
Speaker 1: than on raw computing power or graphics, so contrast that
Speaker 1: with like the Xbox or the PlayStation consoles. His death
Speaker 1: and from complications due to bile duct cancer shocked the
Speaker 1: video game industry. And what a successor and the fifth
Speaker 1: president of Nintendo is Tatsumi Kimishima. Kimishima worked at san
Speaker 1: Hua Bank of Japan for more than two decades before
Speaker 1: he transitioned his career in a big way because in
Speaker 1: two thousand he was elected the Chief financial Officer of
Speaker 1: the Pokemon Company. So he went from working in a
Speaker 1: financial institution for twenty seven years to becoming the CFO
Speaker 1: centered around cartoon characters that are forced to fight one
Speaker 1: another for our entertainment. It's quite the leap. In two
Speaker 1: thousand two, the first president of Nintendo of America, Minoru Arakawa,
Speaker 1: he retired, so Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that Kimishima was the
Speaker 1: ideal candidate to head that part of Nintendo's business, and
Speaker 1: Kimishima began the second president of Nintendo of America. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, he became the CEO of Nintendo
Speaker 1: of America. Then he changed over to become the managing
Speaker 1: director of Nintendo. When I Wada passed away suddenly in
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, he was selected to become the company's
Speaker 1: fifth president. It was Kimmishima who would introduced the next
Speaker 1: Nintendo console to the world. When I recorded part three
Speaker 1: of the series back in we knew there was a
Speaker 1: new Nintendo console on the way, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: have any details other than a code name. In March,
Speaker 1: Nintendo called the new console the n X, that being
Speaker 1: its code name, and earnings call in April sixteen revealed
Speaker 1: that the company planned to have a worldwide rollout of
Speaker 1: this new console by March of seventeen, but there was
Speaker 1: still no mention of a name. This would hold true
Speaker 1: all the way through E three. That's the big Video
Speaker 1: Game trade show that takes place in Los Angeles, California
Speaker 1: each year. Nintendo's booth included a section themed after the
Speaker 1: upcoming legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. Now,
Speaker 1: while Breath of the Wild would become a flagship title,
Speaker 1: a launch title for the Nintendo Switch, the new hardware
Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found on the show floor, at
Speaker 1: least not for the average attendee. Breath of the Wild
Speaker 1: would also get a release on the previous generation of hardware,
Speaker 1: that being the Wii You That was the version that
Speaker 1: attendees got to try out while they were on the
Speaker 1: show floor. This led some in the video game journalism
Speaker 1: world to question Nintendo's strategy. You have a new console
Speaker 1: on the way, so some analysts are saying, why are
Speaker 1: you releasing a game that would be a killer title
Speaker 1: for this new console on your older hardware, which presumably
Speaker 1: would strain the capabilities of this older hardware to the
Speaker 1: limit in order to create a comparable experience to the
Speaker 1: one gamers would have on a brand new system. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, Breath of the Wild started out as
Speaker 1: a we U title that was the beginning of the project.
Speaker 1: It was only when Nintendo was starting to develop the
Speaker 1: Switch that they said, let's also develop a version of
Speaker 1: this title for our next generation console. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: like Nintendo set out from the beginning to create a
Speaker 1: splintered experience, but there were a lot of theories that
Speaker 1: were going on around that time. Some people said, well,
Speaker 1: the we use sales numbers are so low that Nintendo's
Speaker 1: just not worried about cannibalizing its own sales because there
Speaker 1: aren't enough we U units out there for it to
Speaker 1: make a huge impact. Other people said, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: was an attempt to sell a few more we U
Speaker 1: consoles before Nintendo stopped producing them entirely. Uh. Either way,
Speaker 1: Breath of the Wild came out both for the we
Speaker 1: U and the Nintendo Switch at the same time, that
Speaker 1: being March of Seen. Effectively, it was the first Nintendo
Speaker 1: game for the Switch and the final Nintendo game for
Speaker 1: the we U. And by Nintendo game, I mean game
Speaker 1: actually developed by the company Nintendo, not through a third
Speaker 1: party that that then published on Nintendo. But I'll chat
Speaker 1: more about Breath of the Wild when we get to Seen.
Speaker 1: Back to E three now. Traditionally, companies take the opportunity
Speaker 1: at E three to host enormous press events and announced
Speaker 1: upcoming hardware and game titles. Nintendo has done this in
Speaker 1: the past, but more recently Nintendo has started to distance
Speaker 1: itself from the media circus that is Press day at
Speaker 1: E three, opting instead to broadcast some live streamed announcements
Speaker 1: over the Internet. This included a lengthy demo of Breath
Speaker 1: of the Wild, in which the company showed off the
Speaker 1: open world style of gameplay, as well as new elements
Speaker 1: never before seen in Zelda games, and the company also
Speaker 1: announced that a new mobile game was on the way
Speaker 1: to Android and iOS phones that summer. That game would
Speaker 1: be Pokemon Go. Now I've done a full episode about
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go, but for those who somehow missed out on
Speaker 1: this game, it encouraged players to venture out into the
Speaker 1: real world to hunt virtual Pokemon monsters. You'd use poke
Speaker 1: balls to attempt to capture these monsters and add them
Speaker 1: to your Poka decks. I'm told these words make sense.
Speaker 1: The game featured several other items and gameplay elements, many
Speaker 1: of which were designed to encourage players to purchase virtual
Speaker 1: tools that they could then use within the game, and
Speaker 1: it linked real world areas of interest, such as public
Speaker 1: art installations, with important in game sites like gyms, where
Speaker 1: the three factions within the game could battle it out
Speaker 1: over which team ran the facility. Pokemon Go would become
Speaker 1: a big hit for about a month, encouraging people to
Speaker 1: wander blindly around while flicking at their screens in an
Speaker 1: effort to capture rare Pokemon critters. I remember being somewhat
Speaker 1: irritated as I tried to walk to or from work
Speaker 1: and having the maneuver around groups of people standing in
Speaker 1: the middle of the sidewalk trying to catch yet another
Speaker 1: Piggy or Boba sor or whatever the heck they were called.
Speaker 1: But all right, this is where I have to admit
Speaker 1: I also played it. I had I had the game too.
Speaker 1: I was one of those jerks. The game still is
Speaker 1: going to this day, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who still play it. Later generations of Pokemon monsters
Speaker 1: have been added to the game over time. I think
Speaker 1: the overall popularity of the game has been in a
Speaker 1: slight decline, but it's left a hardcore group of enthusiasts
Speaker 1: who continue to try and catch them all. Still, this
Speaker 1: game brought a lot of attention to mobile gaming and
Speaker 1: also to augmented reality. I think you could argue that
Speaker 1: the augmented reality aspect of the game was pretty basic
Speaker 1: in its implementation, but it's still required people to merge
Speaker 1: real world experiences within game experiences, so I think it's
Speaker 1: still counts. Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Go were
Speaker 1: the two big announcements at E three, but the world
Speaker 1: was still waiting to find out what the next Nintendo
Speaker 1: console would be called, and Nintendo had another classic trick
Speaker 1: but sleeve to reveal a little later that same summer.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you more about that in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: In July, Nintendo announced it would offer up a limited
Speaker 1: run of a special console, the nes Mini. It looked
Speaker 1: like a manager version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: here in America. In other markets that more closely resembled
Speaker 1: the original colors and formed factor of the Famicom system.
Speaker 1: The emulator had thirty games coded onto it and could
Speaker 1: hold saves for those games, which already put it ahead
Speaker 1: of the original system it was copying. The cost of
Speaker 1: the nes Mini was sixty dollars here in America, making
Speaker 1: it about two dollars a game, and those games included
Speaker 1: a lot of classic bestsellers in Nintendo's history, such as
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, the fiendishly Difficult
Speaker 1: Ghost in Goblins, Donkey Kong, which was the game that
Speaker 1: really gave Nintendo its start in video games in the
Speaker 1: first place, and punch Out, my personal favorite of the
Speaker 1: games from that era. The console shipped with a single
Speaker 1: in NES Classic controller with a notoriously short chord. People
Speaker 1: really complained about how short that controller's chord was. It
Speaker 1: was designed to copy the old rectangular controllers of the
Speaker 1: original in E s. It's also compatible with the WE
Speaker 1: Classic Controller Pro, so if you have one of those,
Speaker 1: you could hook that up to the NES Classic Mini.
Speaker 1: The announcement revealed that the consoles would become available in November.
Speaker 1: A month before that, various retailers began to offer pre
Speaker 1: sale reservations for the system. They sold out practically as
Speaker 1: soon as they became available. The ne NES Classic Mini
Speaker 1: became a sought after item. Now. I was able to
Speaker 1: get one, but only because I happened to get a
Speaker 1: message from the Amazon Treasure truck, which stopped here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta with a few reserved systems at a regular retail price.
Speaker 1: But other people were not so lucky and either had
Speaker 1: to go without or cough up ridiculous amounts of money
Speaker 1: on sites like eBay. Nintendo had only produced about two
Speaker 1: point three million units. That sounds like a lot, but
Speaker 1: it didn't come close to meeting demand. The original nes
Speaker 1: sold more than sixty million units when it was still
Speaker 1: in production. To make matters worse, the company announced on
Speaker 1: well right around April seen that it had discontinued the
Speaker 1: ne NES Classic, which made fans go bonkers because there
Speaker 1: were so many who wanted to get one and didn't
Speaker 1: have the chance. It also drove up the price for
Speaker 1: the remaining units considerably on those resale sites like eBay. Later,
Speaker 1: Nintendo would say that by mid eighteen it would begin
Speaker 1: to produce more in NES Classic editions. This was likely
Speaker 1: in response not just to the fans who felt left
Speaker 1: out because they never had a chance to buy one
Speaker 1: of them, but also to combat the rising market of
Speaker 1: third party clones that were springing up. These cloned systems
Speaker 1: often used emulators that were not optimized to run Nintendo games,
Speaker 1: so they would create an unsatisfactory gaming experience for anyone
Speaker 1: who bought them. As of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: Nintendo has yet to make more of these available, but
Speaker 1: a visit to the product's website says they're coming in
Speaker 1: the summer of One other thing that happened with the
Speaker 1: NES Classic was that hackers learned how to access the
Speaker 1: system's memory and add in new games. There have been
Speaker 1: several hacks that allow a NES Classic Mini owners the
Speaker 1: chance to add their consoles library and increase it dramatically,
Speaker 1: including using titles that were not on the original in Nes.
Speaker 1: This is the point in the podcast where I mentioned
Speaker 1: that while you certainly can hack your in NES Classic
Speaker 1: to do these things, there's always a risk involved with
Speaker 1: such activities. If you break your system, you may find
Speaker 1: that you've got a sixty dollar paper weight and very
Speaker 1: little chance of turning it back into any sort of
Speaker 1: useful piece of hardware. So just be careful and know
Speaker 1: what you're getting into before you start messing about. In October,
Speaker 1: Nintendo finally announced that the n X console would officially
Speaker 1: bear the name Nintendo Switch. The Switch is a hybrid console,
Speaker 1: meaning it can be both a docked console that uses
Speaker 1: a television as the display, or you can undock it
Speaker 1: and use the device as a handheld gaming system. The
Speaker 1: handheld version of the console looks like a video screen
Speaker 1: flanked by two detachable game controllers called joy Con controllers.
Speaker 1: Each controller has a thumbstick and buttons. Nintendo announced that
Speaker 1: the system would also support a more traditional game controller
Speaker 1: similar to Xbox controllers, called a Nintendo Switch Pro controller.
Speaker 1: While Sintendo didn't initially announced the tech specs for the switch,
Speaker 1: those details did later become public. With the joy cons attached,
Speaker 1: the switch measures four inches or ten centimeters tall, nine
Speaker 1: point four inches wide, or about twenty four cimeters and
Speaker 1: half an inch thick or one point to seven centimeters.
Speaker 1: That doesn't take into consideration the height of the thumbstick, however,
Speaker 1: so if you take those into account, the thickness increases
Speaker 1: to one point one two inches or two point eight centimeters.
Speaker 1: It weighs about point eighty eight pounds, so not even
Speaker 1: a full pound. It's about point four kilograms with the
Speaker 1: joy cons attached. The Nintendo Switch has an in Video
Speaker 1: tegra X one s o C as the brains of
Speaker 1: the machine. S o C stands for system on a chip.
Speaker 1: This is an integration of several different pieces you would
Speaker 1: find in your typical computer device, such as a central
Speaker 1: processing unit more on that in a second, a graphics
Speaker 1: processing unit, a memory controller, and some other components, but
Speaker 1: they would all be put on a single chip. This
Speaker 1: saves space and it's great for things like portable devices.
Speaker 1: The CPU powering the Nintendo Switch is an arm cortex,
Speaker 1: a fifty seven with four processing cores, meaning it's a
Speaker 1: quad core processor. And just to remind you guys, that
Speaker 1: means the CPU can break up certain types of computational
Speaker 1: problems into smaller problems that each core can tackle individually.
Speaker 1: Not all computational problems work this way, but many that
Speaker 1: are related to video games fall into that category. One
Speaker 1: day I'll have to do a full episode on ARM
Speaker 1: processors and the company behind them, but as a quick
Speaker 1: and dirty explanation, I'll simplify it to say that ARM
Speaker 1: processors are typically less complex than the type you find
Speaker 1: in desktop computers, such as those that use Intel's X
Speaker 1: eight six architecture. They consume less power and they generate
Speaker 1: less heat than those more complicated CP use, which makes
Speaker 1: them ideal for mobile devices. The graphics processing unit has
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty six cores. It's also KUDA enabled or
Speaker 1: c U D A KUDA as an acronym that stands
Speaker 1: for a Compute Unified Device Architecture, and it's an Application
Speaker 1: Programming interface or a p I from Nvidia. The purpose
Speaker 1: of KUDA is to give developers access to a hardware's
Speaker 1: capabilities so that the software the developers design runs smoothly
Speaker 1: on that hardware. When docked, the switches GPU runs at
Speaker 1: a max clock speed of seven sixty eight mega hurts.
Speaker 1: In handheld mode, it down shifts to three hundred seven
Speaker 1: point to mega hurts. The switch is also home to
Speaker 1: several sensors, such as an accelerometer and a brightness sensor
Speaker 1: that allows not just for dynamic adjustments, but also the
Speaker 1: potential for gameplay mechanics further on, so you might have
Speaker 1: a game that relies on you turning the switch this
Speaker 1: way or that in handheld mode, or going outside into
Speaker 1: bright sunlight in some cases. The display on the handheld
Speaker 1: switch device is six point two inches on the diagonal
Speaker 1: and has a resolution of twelve eighty by seven twenty pixels.
Speaker 1: It also has multi touch support for up to ten
Speaker 1: points of contact. When you dock the switch, it sends
Speaker 1: video out at ten a DP resolution and sixty frames
Speaker 1: a second natively, though many games run at a frame
Speaker 1: rate much lower than sixty. The system has a pair
Speaker 1: of speakers and audio is in stereo. The battery for
Speaker 1: the switch is a lithium ion rechargeable battery that, according
Speaker 1: to Nintendo, will provide between two and a half and
Speaker 1: six and a half hours of battery life, but that
Speaker 1: depends upon the type of game you play, so some
Speaker 1: of them push the system a little harder than others,
Speaker 1: and so the battery life is shorter than others. The
Speaker 1: harder you push the system, the more juice you're burning through,
Speaker 1: So it takes about three hours to charge a switch
Speaker 1: all the way back up to fully charged from fully drained.
Speaker 1: The switch has thirty two gigabytes of storage space on
Speaker 1: or the device, which is important because all save games
Speaker 1: are stored on the hardware. That means if something happens
Speaker 1: to your switch, you lose all of your saves. There's
Speaker 1: no cloud saving feature to keep your progress in a game.
Speaker 1: If your switch is lost, stolen, or damaged, you pretty
Speaker 1: much lose everything. Now, some of that storage space is
Speaker 1: not available to the user because the system reserves it
Speaker 1: for system critical operations. You can purchase memory cards in
Speaker 1: the micro S d h C or micro S d
Speaker 1: x C formats, with each card holding up to two
Speaker 1: terabytes of additional storage if you've got the cash for
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. The Nintendo Switch can connect to
Speaker 1: the Internet via WiFi or a local area network or
Speaker 1: land adapter. It also has Bluetooth four point one and
Speaker 1: yet no support for Bluetooth headphones, much to the consternation
Speaker 1: of some gamers I follow online, such as Ashley Jenkins,
Speaker 1: who has spoken extensively about the switch. This is essentially
Speaker 1: a plug for miss jenkins work on her series The
Speaker 1: No and just in the interest of full disclosure, I
Speaker 1: don't think she has any idea who I am, so
Speaker 1: this is just me as a fan of her work.
Speaker 1: She does good coverage of stuff like this. The switch
Speaker 1: does have a three and a half millimeter headphone jack,
Speaker 1: but it's located in a spot that some gamers just
Speaker 1: feels awkward. Plus a lot of people just don't want
Speaker 1: to have chords and cables anymore. They prefer this bluetooth
Speaker 1: wireless approach. Switch owners can access multiplayer through online services
Speaker 1: that will eventually be locked behind a subscription service similar
Speaker 1: to Xbox Live, but that has not been launched yet.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of a free preview version of what
Speaker 1: is available, but the paid subscription approach hasn't gone into
Speaker 1: effect It's supposed to before the end of Gamers can
Speaker 1: also purchase games online and download them to the switch,
Speaker 1: though the limited storage space presents a bit of a
Speaker 1: challenge in that regard, because while thirty two gigabytes sounds
Speaker 1: like a lot, video games these days can easily dwarf
Speaker 1: that amount of storage space. Games for the Nintendo Switch
Speaker 1: are on game cards, which are essentially cartridges. These small
Speaker 1: cartridges have a special coding called dina tonium benzoit. This
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't help the performance of the cards in any way. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's meant to act as a deterrent for would be
Speaker 1: cartridge choppers. See, Nintendo was worried that some young enthusiasts
Speaker 1: might want to pop one of these cards into his
Speaker 1: or her hungry little mouth, so they use this coding
Speaker 1: to give the cartridges a bitter taste. In fact, this
Speaker 1: chemical has a reputation for being the most bitter chemical
Speaker 1: compound produced. It's an additive used in many toxic compounds
Speaker 1: in an effort to dissuade people from ingesting them. So
Speaker 1: you'll find this stuff and cleaners and automotive supplies and
Speaker 1: things like that. However, the chemical itself is non toxic.
Speaker 1: It just gets added to toxic stuff because it tastes
Speaker 1: really awful and it makes people rethink their decisions. Also,
Speaker 1: it was apparently discovered accidentally when a bunch of chemists
Speaker 1: were working on creating a dental and aesthetic. So you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder what it was like the day they found
Speaker 1: out how bitter that stuff was. Anyway, let's get back
Speaker 1: to the Switch. The announcement got folks excited, but the
Speaker 1: actual launch of the console was half a year away.
Speaker 1: We learned about the name and some of the specs
Speaker 1: by the end of twenty sixteen, but it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until the spring of when the Switch made its debut.
Speaker 1: And when it did, a few media outlets picked up
Speaker 1: on something unusual first. Like a lot of Nintendo launches,
Speaker 1: the Switch was in very high demand right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Demand in some markets greatly exceeded supply, which
Speaker 1: resulted in long waits for fans as they checked their
Speaker 1: local stores and online retailers for updated inventories. By April seventeen,
Speaker 1: a month after the system went on sale, and initial
Speaker 1: figure said that nine hundred six thousand Nintendo Switch units
Speaker 1: had been sold, so just under a million. But here's
Speaker 1: the weird part. Those figures also said that nine hundred
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand copies of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Speaker 1: had also been sold. In other words, twenty thousand more
Speaker 1: copies of the game were sold than actual Nintendo switches.
Speaker 1: But you say, wait a minute, Breath of the Wild
Speaker 1: was available not just for the Switch but also the
Speaker 1: Wei U, So surely that nine six thousand number includes both, right,
Speaker 1: that explains the discrepancy. But no, it doesn't, because the
Speaker 1: nine six thousand figure was just for copies of the
Speaker 1: Switch version of Breath of the Wild. The WU version
Speaker 1: sold about four hundred sixty thousand units in that same
Speaker 1: time frame. So what we're left with is a story
Speaker 1: about how a game for a system actually out sold
Speaker 1: the system itself. So what gives? Forbes ran a story
Speaker 1: on this in April when he's seventeen, and the writer
Speaker 1: offered up a few hypotheses to potentially explain this discrepancy.
Speaker 1: One possible explanation was double dippers. There could be some
Speaker 1: enthusiastic gamers who had bought two copies of the game,
Speaker 1: one basic version that they were just going to play,
Speaker 1: and one a collector's version that they wanted to keep.
Speaker 1: That's possible. Maybe some of them just never planned to
Speaker 1: play it at all. They just wanted to buy the
Speaker 1: Zelda game because they love Zelda so much. And it
Speaker 1: was more or less a collectible, though an expensive one.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people thought I'll buy this now and then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mark it up and sell it online for
Speaker 1: people who can't find a copy in their local stores.
Speaker 1: That's another possibility. Or it could be that they were
Speaker 1: buying the game because they wanted to have a game
Speaker 1: as soon as they got a switch, but the switch
Speaker 1: itself wasn't yet available in their market. Maybe it had
Speaker 1: already sold out and they were waiting for new shipments,
Speaker 1: but meanwhile Zelda was available, and they thought, well, I
Speaker 1: can go ahead and buy the game now, and that way,
Speaker 1: when the Soul gets here, I'll have something to play
Speaker 1: on it right away. That's also a possibility. Whatever the reason,
Speaker 1: it meant that Breath of the Wild enjoyed a attach
Speaker 1: rate that that means that there was a copy of
Speaker 1: the game sold for every single system sold in that time. Technically,
Speaker 1: you could actually say that it had a one percent
Speaker 1: attach rate, because, like I said, they sold more copies
Speaker 1: of the game than they sold of the console, as
Speaker 1: the comparison that we use. Most celebrated title was New
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers. You so New Super Mario Brothers, You
Speaker 1: biggest title on the WU and had a sixtent attach
Speaker 1: rate both the system and Breath of the Wild. We're
Speaker 1: doing well right out of the gate. Breath of the
Speaker 1: Wild continues to do well to this day. They passed
Speaker 1: the six point seven million mark in Januar on the Switch,
Speaker 1: and they had another million in sales on the WEIU,
Speaker 1: which put Breath of the Wild just behind Legend of
Speaker 1: Zelda Twilight Princess for the most popular Zelda title of
Speaker 1: all time. By that time, the Nintendo Switch had gained
Speaker 1: this distinction of becoming the fastest selling console in US history,
Speaker 1: at least according to Nintendo. One game that did surpass
Speaker 1: Breath of the Wild in attach rates by the end
Speaker 1: of seventeen, at least in the US, was Super Mario Odyssey,
Speaker 1: a three D platform starring Nintendo's beloved mascot Mario Mario
Speaker 1: because we learned his last name is Mario and the
Speaker 1: presumably his first name is Mario, so there you go.
Speaker 1: Super Mario Odyssey didn't come out until October two thousand, seventeen,
Speaker 1: but it has sold more than nine million copies, so
Speaker 1: it rocketed to first place for all Nintendo Switch titles.
Speaker 1: Other launch titles for the Nintendo Switch included a couple
Speaker 1: of Shovel Night Games. Those are a series of comedic,
Speaker 1: medieval themed side scrolling adventure games. Ubisoft's Just Dance seventeen
Speaker 1: was another launch title. Super ammerman Are from Activision was
Speaker 1: another one, also a game called One to Switch from Nintendo.
Speaker 1: That last one is a party game that pits players
Speaker 1: against each other in a series of mini games, some
Speaker 1: of which are truly bizarre. Now I've got more to
Speaker 1: say about Nintendo and what's been going on over the
Speaker 1: last few months, but before I get into this last section,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. One
Speaker 1: thing that happened not long after the switch announcement was
Speaker 1: the release of the mobile game Super Mario Run on iOS.
Speaker 1: A version for Android would launch in March. The game
Speaker 1: is a side scroller in which a little Mario runs
Speaker 1: across the screen. Players control when Mario jumps, and they
Speaker 1: collect coins and avoid obstacles and enemies along the way.
Speaker 1: The goal is to get through a level and as
Speaker 1: little time as possible. There are other elements to the game,
Speaker 1: but that's the basic idea. This was a big move
Speaker 1: for Nintendo, which for years had avoided making its ip
Speaker 1: available on any hardware that was not produced by the
Speaker 1: company itself. Ever since, it got into making its own consoles,
Speaker 1: and it kind of stuck to that philosophy. The game
Speaker 1: has received a mixed reaction from critics and fans. Some
Speaker 1: people were critical of the game's price tag, which was
Speaker 1: ten dollars that's considered to be pretty high for some
Speaker 1: mobile games, and there was a lot of criticism as
Speaker 1: well that the game requires a persistent Internet connection in
Speaker 1: order to work. The internet connection makes it tricky to
Speaker 1: play the game in places where many people feel it
Speaker 1: would actually work best, like on a plane. Still, the
Speaker 1: game's sales helped boost Nintendo's financials in a positive way
Speaker 1: last year. In that was a huge year for Nintendo.
Speaker 1: It was enjoying success with the launch of the Switch,
Speaker 1: it was having to dance around supply issues with the
Speaker 1: NES Classic Mini, which was way more popular than the
Speaker 1: company appeared to have anticipated, and then June seventeen, the
Speaker 1: company made another announcement it was making another classic system emulator.
Speaker 1: This time it was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Like
Speaker 1: the NES Classic Mini, this system looks like a manta
Speaker 1: version of the original console, and depending on what market
Speaker 1: you live in it would look like the original S
Speaker 1: and E S for that market. The Supernintendo first became
Speaker 1: available in nine here in the US, although it had
Speaker 1: already shown up a little bit earlier in Japan back
Speaker 1: in n While the NES was an eight bit video
Speaker 1: game system, the S and E S up the ANTI
Speaker 1: with a sixteen bit approach. The S and E S
Speaker 1: Classic attempts to cash in on the nostalgia players have
Speaker 1: for that beloved system. Like the NES Classic, it has
Speaker 1: a selection of games that are saved to the system itself.
Speaker 1: In the United States, those titles included things like Contra three,
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong Country, Final, Fantasy Three, The Legend of Zelda,
Speaker 1: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter to Herbo, Hyper Fighting,
Speaker 1: Super Metroid, and Super Mario World, among others. Other regions
Speaker 1: had a slightly different lineup of games. Nintendo made a
Speaker 1: promise that the company would do better with this S
Speaker 1: and E S Classic than it had with the NES Classic.
Speaker 1: It produced more units of the Manager console. Even so,
Speaker 1: the demand for the S and E S Classic was
Speaker 1: crazy high, and finding one became a big challenge for
Speaker 1: many people. Nintendo had originally intended to only offer up
Speaker 1: a limited run of this console, but after having seen
Speaker 1: what happened with the NES Classic, the company committed to
Speaker 1: producing more units throughout two thousand eighteen. This was around
Speaker 1: the same time the Nintendo also committed to producing more
Speaker 1: NE NES Classics. Reporters discovered that the two systems, the
Speaker 1: S and E S and the NES Classics were running
Speaker 1: on exactly the same hardware, which means you could, in theory,
Speaker 1: by one and hack it to run games meant for
Speaker 1: the other. But again I advise against doing that unless
Speaker 1: you are confident you know what you're doing and you're
Speaker 1: cool with accepting the risk that a mistake could turn
Speaker 1: your classic console emulator into a nostalgic piece of otherwise
Speaker 1: inert plastic. In early Nintendo announced a product called Labo.
Speaker 1: Labo is a line of kits that are meant to
Speaker 1: encourage STEM learning, that's science, technology, engineering, and math by
Speaker 1: giving kids a chance to build various devices out of
Speaker 1: pieces of cardboard pre cut pieces of cardboard, and it
Speaker 1: uses the Nintendo Switch as the brains and sensors and
Speaker 1: even the motors for some of these gadgets. Nintendo calls
Speaker 1: these gadgets toy cons. Some of them allow you to
Speaker 1: make a new controller system for the switch, such as
Speaker 1: a cardboard set of handlebars for like a motorcycle game.
Speaker 1: Others let you make music. There's a cardboard piano which
Speaker 1: relies on the infrared sensor on the right joy con
Speaker 1: that dete which key is being pressed at any given time.
Speaker 1: There's even a fully fledged robot suit kit, which lets
Speaker 1: you control a virtual robot character while you wear special
Speaker 1: cuffs on your wrists and ankles, and you use that
Speaker 1: to move this virtual robot around like a digital puppet.
Speaker 1: As of the recording of this podcast, the Labo products
Speaker 1: have not yet officially hit store shelves. That will happen
Speaker 1: on April eighteen. They're pretty expensive. The Variety kit will
Speaker 1: set you back about seventy dollars, while the Robot Kit
Speaker 1: costs a whopping eighty dollars. Now, keep in mind these
Speaker 1: kits are largely cardboard, so some people have criticized this,
Speaker 1: saying Nintendo is charging exorbitant amounts of money for what
Speaker 1: amounts to a cardboard kit. Other people are saying, well,
Speaker 1: you could argue that, but this is also a valuable
Speaker 1: teaching tool for people who want to learn more about
Speaker 1: engineering robotics. That kind of thing and it could lead
Speaker 1: to all sorts of really cool applications. So there are
Speaker 1: people on both sides of the fence on this. But
Speaker 1: that's about it for this update. I could add that
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Switch has featured games made famous on other platforms,
Speaker 1: such as Elder Scrolls five, Skyrim, or the upcoming release
Speaker 1: of Wolfenstein too for the Switch. These games have a
Speaker 1: much more mature tone than what you would typically find
Speaker 1: on Nintendo, but there have been other titles on other
Speaker 1: Nintendo consoles that dealt with dark subject matter in the past,
Speaker 1: so it's not like this is brand new. It's just
Speaker 1: a very, um, let's say, visceral example of that trend.
Speaker 1: And with E three coming up as the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, I'm sure there will likely be other announcements
Speaker 1: that will necessitate an update to the series again. You know,
Speaker 1: in a couple of years. Nintendo continues to be an
Speaker 1: important player in the video game industry, and they continue
Speaker 1: to cater to a different kind of audience than the
Speaker 1: audiences that Sony and Microsoft are going after with the
Speaker 1: A Station and Xbox platforms, respectively. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: a gamer can't enjoy one or more of those systems.
Speaker 1: They might have all of them, but what it does
Speaker 1: mean is Nintendo does not want to play by the
Speaker 1: rules that Microsoft and Sony are setting, where they're really
Speaker 1: focusing on the technical capabilities of their respective systems and
Speaker 1: how many pixels they can show, whether they can go
Speaker 1: into four K or eight K resolution, uh, how realistic
Speaker 1: the animations are. All of that is stuff that Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Sony have really been concentrating on, while Nintendo says,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna leave that to you because
Speaker 1: that game changes all the time. And if you bank
Speaker 1: on making your console the state of the art in
Speaker 1: graphics and sound of today, next year, you're already behind
Speaker 1: again because those continue to get better and better, but
Speaker 1: your console is going to remain the same. If instead
Speaker 1: of that, you try and come up with innovative ways
Speaker 1: to play games, whether it's creating more group based games
Speaker 1: so that you get lots of people over at your
Speaker 1: house to experience something together, or different control schemes so
Speaker 1: that you control your game in a completely different way,
Speaker 1: it means that you've differentiated your console from these other
Speaker 1: two powerhouses, and it's worked more or less for Nintendo
Speaker 1: over the past few generations. It worked great for the
Speaker 1: we did not work so great for the WEIU, and
Speaker 1: it seems to be working great for the Switch, which,
Speaker 1: if it stays on its current trajectory, stands to become
Speaker 1: one of the best selling game consoles of all time,
Speaker 1: assuming that can sustain that level of growth. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing what else Nintendo comes out
Speaker 1: with over the next few months. I do not currently
Speaker 1: own an Nintendo Switch. The last Nintendo console I purchased
Speaker 1: was the first Nintendo we But I've seen enough of
Speaker 1: the Switch to make me curious and perhaps I might
Speaker 1: even explore purchasing one. I definitely want to play with one.
Speaker 1: I haven't even really had the chance to do that,
Speaker 1: but then I don't get out much. I hope to
Speaker 1: get a chance to play with one and maybe purchase
Speaker 1: one for myself at some point if I really like it.
Speaker 1: What I really need to do is hook ond that
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System Classic many that I have. Because here's
Speaker 1: where I admit something that I'm not proud of. It's
Speaker 1: still in the shrink wrap because while I bought it
Speaker 1: two years ago, I have not had a chance to
Speaker 1: play it yet. That's my life, guys. I'm still playing
Speaker 1: through Skyrim on the PC. But I hope to be
Speaker 1: able to play more of these games, and I hope
Speaker 1: to do more episodes about big, big companies in tech,
Speaker 1: as well as the products they work on, the innovations
Speaker 1: they've created, the way that they've shaped our world. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for any sort of tech topic, whether
Speaker 1: it's a company, a specific technology, somewhat important in the
Speaker 1: technological world, anything along those lines, let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of
Speaker 1: those is text stuff h s W. Follow us on
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Speaker 1: yell at my producer for not having seen movies that
Speaker 1: I think are important but probably aren't important, but you know,
Speaker 1: I still maintain that they are important. You'll get to
Speaker 1: see all of this amazing content if you go to
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech stuff. Plus, you can join
Speaker 1: in on the chat room and you can tell me
Speaker 1: that I'm being a mini head, because sometimes I am.
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Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
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