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Switch director and general manager Shinya Takahashi has defended Nintendo’s decision to keep Switch launch title 1-2-Switch as a separate piece of software rather than tie-in bundle title.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, he said the quality of the title was good enough for it to stand apart from Nintendo’s hardware bundle and that it was more akin to a traditional first-year line-up game rather than a smaller mini-game compilation.
So we felt that between this strong line-up, and the strength of the titles, as well as the strength of the 1-2 Switch software itself, that it didn’t feel to us that should be bundled with the hardware, but rather was something that we felt stands alone within that overall first-year line-up," Takahashi said.
As has been greatly discussed by the games industry, the main reason why so many are up in arms about the lack of a Switch pack-in title all comes down to the cost of the console. Priced at 279 in the UK, the Switch is already more expensive than either the PS4 or Xbox One, and that’s without the added benefit of a bundle title.
This makes it a tougher sell to consumers, but this isn’t the first time Nintendo’s had to make its case for 1-2-Switch. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also spoke to GameSpot about Nintendo’s decision to keep 1-2-Switch separate, saying that bundling in a game would have pushed up the price of the overall console.
Takahashi also said the 3DS will continue to stick around and that Nintendo would be positioning its existing handheld console as a kind of budget option for first-time gamers – a sentiment echoed by Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima last week during its investor Q&A meeting.
The Switch isn’t necessarily a successor [to the 3DS]," says Takahashi. We’re releasing software into next year: the fact that it’s a system with a low price and a larger library makes it appealing to kids, who might want to buy it as their first console.”
