Nintendo Is Losing Its Identity, Says Ex-PlayStation Boss 1
Image: Push Square

Shuhei Yoshida, the beloved ex-PlayStation boss who once led Sony’s first-party studios, isn’t overly impressed with what he’s seen of the Switch 2 so far.

Speaking candidly with Easy Allies, the industry veteran said he believes Nintendo is “losing its identity” as its new Switch lacks the imagination of previous platforms.

“For me, Nintendo is always about creating a new experience, like designing hardware and games together to create something amazing – a new experience,” he said.

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“But Switch 2, as we all anticipated, is a better Switch, right? It’s got a larger screen, it’s got a more powerful processor, it’s 4K [and] 120 frames-per-second. They even had the hardware person starting the stream, like other platform holders do!”

Yoshida continued that while he thinks the core premise of a “better Switch” is great for those who only play on Nintendo consoles, he pondered what the platform has to offer to those already entrenched in the PlayStation, Xbox, or PC ecosystems.

He explained: “Because it’s a better Switch, the core premise of the whole Switch 2 is, y’know, ‘We made things better.’ And that’s something other companies have been doing all the time.

“So, of course, it’s a more powerful Switch, so it’s great if your gaming was only on Nintendo hardware. It’s the first time for you to be able to play amazing games like Elden Ring.

“But, for us, the core gamers who own multiple platforms and play games on the PS5 and Xbox and PC, the games they showed off, especially from third-parties… Y’know, in theory it’s amazing to have all these all-stars of industry games on Nintendo hardware. However, what they showed, it was like ‘Ooh.’”

Yoshida tailed off and didn’t really complete his point, but it’s not hard to see what he’s getting at: where’s the incentive to purchase pricey ports of older games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Yakuza 0 when there’s no guarantee that they’ll perform any better than they did years ago on previous hardware?

With the rise of PC handhelds like the Steam Deck, even the portability aspect is not as novel as it once was, although the Switch 2 does look like a fantastic piece of kit.

Of course, the answer to all of this eventually will be exclusive Nintendo games, and we’ve no doubt the Mario maker will deliver eventually.

But we can sort of see where Yoshida is coming from when it comes purely to the recent Nintendo Direct – it’s hard to get excited for titles that have been around for years, even if they are coming to Switch for the first time.

[source youtube.com]