Etrian Odyssey Composer on Nintendo Switch: “Why does this thing even exist?”

The Nintendo Switch has been wildly successful since its launch, often having problems keeping enough units on shelves. During the recent E3 conference, Nintendo kept the momentum going with a list of games releasing for the console in the near future. There's even been praise among the game development community, but Yuzo Koshiro has a different take on it all.

Koshiro is the famous composer and programmer that worked on the Ys series, Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog and the first two Shenmue games on Dreamcast. He's also the composer for the Etrian Odyssey series. In a recent interview with Polygon, he spoke about Nintendo's new console, effectively downplaying the innovation of the Switch.

"Switch strikes me as a very Nintendo-like piece of hardware,” he says. “The games that Nintendo makes haven’t really changed over these past 20 years. They’ve had recent hits like Splatoon, but looking at the hardware, it seems made for games like Mario, Mario Kart, Splatoon … it seems like they simply wanted to make a system that would allow them to make those games more dynamic, so they could add more expression to their games. They only really want to have people enjoy their own games more. It doesn’t really seem like they are being that adventurous with the system.

If Nintendo is going to keep up with the Switch, I think they’ll need cheaper models, or maybe to make them lighter. If they were to do that, it could become a replacement for the 3DS … but, of course, Nintendo has said themselves that that is not what they’re planning to do. It kind of makes me think, ‘Why does this thing even exist, really?’ In other words, it’s a game system that will allow people to enjoy Nintendo games even more, but at the same time, I’m not really surprised by it and don’t really feel there’s anything novel about it"

Despite the vast amounts of sales while we're still in the early days of the Switch, Koshiro seems to think that Nintendo will have to make some changes to keep people's interest.

There has been some criticism on the Nintendo Switch's lack of multimedia capability, which was stated to not be available "at launch", which seems to be Nintendo-speak for the features being planned in the future. In the latest firmware update, friends lists were beefed up with more features, as well as a few other features. No mention of multimedia yet, but with this update bringing more than just "updated stability" like the last couple, it gives hope to the idea of having things like YouTube and Netflix on our hybrid console.