What is the Nintendo Switch? Is it a home console? Is it a handheld? Is it neither? Is it both, the fabled Nintendo hybrid? On Nintendo’s part, it looks like the Switch is meant to be both. It is meant to be a hybrid of both form factors, and one that, Nintendo’s Switch Producer Yoshiaki Koizumi hopes, will bridge both forms of play.
“We’re hoping that Nintendo Switch will be a system that will be the constant in your gaming life,” Koizumi said in an interview with TIME. “Whereas previously, you would play certain things on your home system and certain things on your handheld. Our hope is that Nintendo Switch can be the system that bridges both of those and becomes the constant system that you’re always using.
“Certainly, I’m sure you’re very busy and I’m very busy and maybe we don’t have as much time to play games as we would like. But my hope is that with Nintendo Switch being a system that you can play at home and bring with you, we’re going to be able to find more of those moments where we’re able to play the games that we all enjoy and be able to enjoy them that much more.”
The greatest appeal the Switch has to me is indeed its versatility, and the prospect of being able to play it in whatever manner suits my life the most. Will this, however, extend to the mass market audience? That is the ultimate question about the Switch that remains to be answered.