AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
For eight years, gamers have waited for a new Nintendo Switch. Midnight Thursday, they got their wish. That's when the Switch 2 finally hit shelves. Will it be another eight years before the Switch 3, and what about other consoles and handhelds and online games? Jeff Gerstmann covers the video game industry and heads up "The Jeff Gerstmann Show" podcast, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
JEFF GERSTMANN: Thanks for having Ayesha.
RASCOE: So let's start with Nintendo Switch 2. How does the system stack up in your estimation?
GERSTMANN: Well, it's been an interesting run for the previous Nintendo Switch, where as the years wore on, the games just weren't running as well as you wanted them to. They'd, you know, drop some frames and get a little stuttery, and so I think people were ready for an upgrade because there's no other way to play Nintendo's games. And so once those games started running poorly, people were like, OK, we're onto the next one.
RASCOE: What else is on the horizon? Is there another Xbox or PlayStation in development? And I understand that PC gaming is also on the rise. Like, is that the thing that's going to be the focus for the kids these days? And adults, I should say.
GERSTMANN: So we're at that point in the cycle where the PlayStation and the next Xbox are still a few years off. But we're also - the current PlayStation and Xbox, it feels like we're hitting this spot of diminishing returns. It's like, yes, the games look better, but they're fundamentally the same games that we saw on the previous batch of consoles. And also these things are only getting more and more expensive. You know, a Switch is 449, the PlayStation 5 launched around $500, though, I think it's on sale right now for less than that. The other thing we're seeing is that these consoles used to get cheaper as time went on. As they made more of them and got better at making them, and can make them, you know, more efficiently, the prices would drop. But we've actually seen prices on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox go up.
RASCOE: Is that the result of the pandemic and supply chain issues? Is that something that lingers and could affect the future of pricing on the Switch 2?
GERSTMANN: It's a lot of different factors, but yeah, I think, you know, if not for the pandemic, you know, I - we may have seen the Switch 2 come out even earlier than this. And so, yeah, there is these kind of lingering knock-on effects across the board. You know, you talked about the PC. You know, if you want one of these, you know, big top-of-the-line Nvidia graphics cards for your PC, it's thousands of dollars, and those prices aren't going down. Over generations of those cards, those things have been crazy expensive.
RASCOE: And what about virtual reality? Like, that once seemed to be the future of gaming. There were some rumors that the Switch 2 would try to integrate virtual reality, but it turns out that Nintendo passed on that opportunity. What do you know about Nintendo's decision to stay away from VR with this new system, and is that not turning out to be what people thought it might be?
GERSTMANN: If you had told me 30 years ago that we would get virtual reality and it would be everything that we thought it was going to be, but that no one would want it, I would be very shocked. But that's where we're at. The demand just hasn't materialized, and then from there, you get to like, OK, well, if the demand isn't there for the headsets, then not enough people own headsets for big game companies to invest a lot of money in a VR game. It's just been kind of trapped in that. There's some really neat and very experimental things happening in VR, you know, even after all these years. There's still people out there doing it, but it is much, much smaller scale than a PlayStation or an Xbox or certainly a Switch.
RASCOE: Aside from hardware and consoles, what do you see as the future of video games and the kinds of games that will dominate the industry? Will it be, and I don't know the names of these types of games, but, like, the Fortnite-type games where they're like, free, and then you just buy a whole bunch of stuff, and there's a whole lot of people playing against each other? That seems to be quite popular, and it does seem to be making money 'cause they're taking money out of my pocket, I tell you, with my son. (Vocalizing).
GERSTMANN: I think, you know, these kind of cross-platform experiences, we're seeing - you know, something that used to be unheard of is, you know, oh, an Xbox player can play against a PlayStation player. But now that's pretty common. And not only that, but you can play with someone who's on their phone and someone that's on their switch and someone that's on their PC, all in the same game across all the same platforms. And so I think the games that can reach the most players stand to benefit the most, you know?
So, you know, Fortnites on phones and, you know, you can play some versions of Minecraft on a phone. But, you know, I think these kids that are looking for something that they don't have to go to their mom or their dad and ask for $70, $80, in some case. Like, if you want to buy Mario Kart World for the Switch separately outside of the bundle, it's $80, which is unheard of. And so playing Fortnite, which you could theoretically play for thousands of hours without spending any money, is a pretty attractive alternative.
RASCOE: Are those your kids in the background?
GERSTMANN: Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you could hear them, but yeah.
RASCOE: No, that's OK (laughter). That's video game journalist Jeff Gerstmann. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
GERSTMANN: Oh, thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
