Is Nintendo Switch Truly Not a Successor to the Wii U and 3DS?

The Nintendo Switch is currently one of the most successful gaming consoles ever released. It’s even making a bunch of records now that it’s in its seventh year. Its predecessor, the Wii U, was not even half as successful. But if fans remember what Nintendo said about the Switch long ago, they might not even consider the Wii U its predecessor.

Before the console’s launch, they had suggested that the Nintendo Switch was not a successor to the Wii U or Nintendo 3Ds. This meant they were just going for a third category of console and planned to follow up those two devices with something else. One can’t help but wonder if that’s still the case and what Nintendo might have planned.

The Switch could be considered a Nintendo Wii U successor

Gaming consoles such as the Nintendo Wii are very hard to follow; they are such an unusual niche that it becomes hard for one to understand where to go from there. They shifted from GameCube’s fan-favorite hefty controller to Wiimotes, controllers that favored motion gaming. Some would suggest that maybe Nintendo could have done VR. Improved motion controllers with VR would have done wonders, but VR is not a thing that everyone loves.

So what could Nintendo do? Why not keep the motion controllers but give Wii some more power and a hefty gamepad with a display in it? Why not allow gamers to play games on that screen when the TV is off? Nintendo did that, which confused its fanbase. It simply sounds like a new accessory for the Wii. This confusion was enough to push this console towards failure.

Nintendo then eventually announced the Nintendo Switch. A console that had two small controllers was good for motion gaming. A way to play games without a TV. This console had everything that every person who purchased a Wii U wanted. Better displays in portable mode, better battery, better everything. It was even more powerful than the Wii U, despite being less than half its size. A complete repackaging of everything Wii U wanted to be. A better, more portable, and more user-friendly package.

So it sure seemed like a successor to the Wii U, even though Nintendo might not want to accept it.

What about the 3Ds, though?

Now 3Ds is a console in its own league. This console followed the Nintendo Ds as the Japanese video game giant’s primary handheld offering. As with every Nintendo portable, this one just blew its competition, the PS Vita, completely out of the water. Where the PS Vita recorded lifetime sale of 15 to 16 million units, the Nintendo 3DS had 75.94 million.

So it made sense for Sony to stop making a portable console, and it definitely made sense for Nintendo to bring out a successor. But since discontinuing the console in 2020, Nintendo has yet to release a successor or even talk about it. In these circumstances, should one consider the Nintendo Switch a successor to the 3Ds?

There are things that definitely justify saying so. The biggest thing is that the Nintendo Switch is the first home console in Nintendo’s history to get a mainline Pokemon game. Most of the time, Nintendo reserved these titles for their portable consoles. This pretty much suggests that the Nintendo Switch is exactly what fans think it is: a hybrid console, even for Nintendo.

They bring their big games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as portable exclusive games like Pokemon, to it. So, this console is no doubt Nintendo’s current primary portable console too. It might not be as portable as its predecessor, but this is Nintendo’s follow-up to the DS line of consoles until they prove otherwise by releasing a 4Ds or something like that.

Maybe that statement was Nintendo just being careful

Back in 2003, when Nintendo announced the DS, the GameBoy Advance was still going strong. Hence, Nintendo made it a point by saying that the DS would not succeed GameBoy Advance or GameCube. But DS launched with backward compatibility for GBA games. The DS went on to be a remarkable success for Nintendo. But there have been rumors that, during the Nintendo DS’s launch, they already had a GBA successor in the works. Maybe they were just waiting to see how DS performed.

It makes sense for a hardware seller to do such a thing, just to make sure gamers do not stop buying their previous consoles. If people had thought the DS was a successor to GBA or GameCube, they would have probably stopped buying these consoles and waited for the DS to launch.

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Maybe this is the reason for Nintendo making such a comment. Nintendo has fused its portable and home consoles into one. The technology is also advanced enough to have components that could fit such a small device. And the Nintendo Switch is now remarkably successful. Only two consoles are ahead of it in lifetime sales: the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2. Hence, it only makes sense for Nintendo to make this console their sole focus.

Let’s hope they announce a successor soon enough. As successful as it might be, the Nintendo Switch is nowhere prepared for what’s to come in the future when it comes to visuals in games.

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