Gameboy CT scan – design lessons learned
If anyone is wondering why they go from focusing on heaping praise on the design of the controllers to...uh...the side rails and heat pipe of the Switch(?), it's probably because joycon controllers fail shockingly fast, and Nintendo has done nothing to improve their design despite raking in truckloads of cash.<p>This, however, is tripe:<p>> For more than 30 years, Nintendo has stayed true to its holistic philosophy that making great experiences is about more than any given component or specification. This integrated approach to design, engineering, and manufacturing has helped them remain dominant in a space where rivals have come and gone time and again.<p>More like: Nintendo has stayed true to endless recycling of its IP which keeps game development cheap, while underspec'ing their hardware, figuring that game developers will slave away figuring out how to still make games run and users will grumble but put up with abysmal performance and graphics quality.<p>People might be shocked to know that the switch's giant screen is 720p, 30hz. Even in 2017, that was pretty terrible. They're desperately milking the Switch for whatever they can wring out of it, too - the recent OLED update shows the desperation. They went with a new display technology that adds little to nothing...because the SoC is so anemic, it can't possibly handle higher resolutions or framerates.<p>Describing them as "dominant" is a joke, too. Nintendo hasn't had market dominance since the NES; their console sales numbers are quite in line with Sony and Microsoft.