My initial reaction was "huh, that's kinda neat" for this. No real strong feelings one way or the other. I even thought maybe if it's cheap enough, I'll pick one of these up and see how it works… then I saw the price tag and wow... $80? That's.... I mean huh?
To be fair first, I think the whole "They're charging $80 for Cardboard!" is misrepresenting this. There IS Software being offered here that is supposed to work with the cardboard peripherals.
In effect, that basically means they're releasing a full $50-$60 retail game with a $10-$20 peripheral where the gimmick is that you need to build the peripheral. Honestly, what they need to do now is demonstrate that the software that comes with these things is robust enough to warrant a full retail price.
It looks like the idea here is to get kids interested in building things through a thing they know a lot of kids like, IE Video Games. That's not a bad idea overall, but the whole draw here is the video game part. That's the only reason anybody looking at this should consider spending $70-80 on this instead of going to Michaels and buying $15-20 on craft materials and tools and just building original stuff with their kids.
This has a video game aspect to it. That's the big difference. You are not just buying cardboard, you're buying a video game.
If that Robot game is basically a full retail game experience you can play without the box armor if you want to and still be happy you spent $60 on it, then the $20 extra for the cardboard kit to build it doesn't seem so bad (especially because that's clearly the most intricate Labo construction by far)
If it basically IS just a glorified Tech Demo they're trying to charge full retail for?...
Yeah, no.
That's the same reason I didn't buy 1-2 Switch. The HD Rumble DOES look neat, and the things 1-2 Switch does with it gave me the same "Huh, that's kinda neat. I wanna try it out" reaction, but that reaction wasn't enough for me to justify a full $60 on that game.
From what it looks like so far, this is the same deal here but we're also being asked to spend $10-$20 more for the cardboard buildy bits.... so that's even worse.
So yeah. What this all hinges on here is Nintendo, a video game company, needs to demonstrate why the video game part of this whole experiment is robust enough to warrant the cost.
If they can't do that, then this is kinda really stupid.
As for whether or not this'll affect other aspects of Nintendo or how they focus their resources or attention?
I'm not too worried. Nintendo likes to experiment and this was obviously them trying to do that.
I am at least somewhat confident here that whether or not this ends up being a neat little experiment that ends up a footnote of the Switch or an actual successful thing they make an ongoing franchise out of will be based on whether the software that they offer with these actually entices people.
I mean, look at the sales of 1-2 Switch Vs. Other 1st Party Nintendo games on the Switch.
1-2 Switch: 1.17mil Units Sold
Breath of the Wild: 4.72mil Units Sold
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: 4.28mil Units Sold
Splatoon 2: 2.98 Million units sold
Super Mario Odyssey: 4.32mil Units Sold
(Since Odyssey is fairly new, that site might already be out of date)
I'm a bit surprised* it even broke 1 million units, but the point I am making here still stands.
Every other game there has some level of a handicap on sales compared to 1-2 Switch. Odyssey was not a launch title and is only working on 3 or so months of sales, Same with Splatoon 2 only with a few extra months added, Breath of the Wild was released Multi-platform so it has Wii U sales to eat at its numbers a tad, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has BOTH of those problems to some degree…. yet 1-2 Switch barely has 1/4 the sales of most of those games. Even Splatoon 2 which is a relatively new IP has sold almost 3x 1-2 Switch. I only suspect it has what it DOES have at all because it was a launch title with way fewer quality games to compete with.
Mario Kart 8 DX, Pokken Tournament DX, Splat2n, Arms, Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade 2, Mario + Rabbids, Sonic Mania, with more on the horizon?
Yeah, I'm even more confident now after researching this.
If Nintendo doesn't actually make an actual quality video game worthy of spending $60 on the centerpiece of this experiment, it won't break any sales records. At minimum it'll do respectably but unremarkably. Not enough to justify abandoning the quality game making that's actually working.
EDIT:
*Thinking about it, I remember places like Gamestop were sectioning off some of their Switch stock into bundles where you HAD to buy 1-2 Switch if you wanted the system. That could have artificially inflated the sales of that game.
Also, the more I think about this the more kinda angry I am that we got this thing announced before Nintendo would officially announce their plans for the freaking Virtual Console...
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