 It's probably no surprise to many people that NVIDIA is extremely happy with the Nintendo Switch and its sales numbers, but during an investor's meeting during a financial earnings call to be specific, the CEO of NVIDIA specifically wanted to talk about Switch, and he said one major component of it is the Nintendo Switch gaming console, and it's just doing incredibly well, and this came out of NVIDIA's founder and CEO, Jen Sun Hong, and I apologize if I really butchered that, Hong continued by praising Nintendo for its unconventional way of thinking and approach to the gaming market. He goes on to say, I'm so happy for Nintendo because they're risk takers, they're innovators, they're not influenced by what other people do, and they're original thinkers, and I just love the way they invented the Switch, and the way they've taken it to market. I'm so happy for them, and it's doing really well. And it's important to note that the TAGRA division for NVIDIA has basically more than doubled its sales on their bottom line compared to this point last year, which that's almost entirely because of the Nintendo Switch, which uses the TAGRA X1. Now this is really interesting because we talk often about Nintendo and their impact on the gaming industry, and how they affect the future of gaming, and how they kind of do their own thing. Nintendo has kind of always done their own thing, it's not just a recent thing with Nintendo Switch, or with the Wii, or with the Wii U, or the 3DS, or DS, or all that stuff. Really dating back to the days of the NES, Nintendo has kind of always, you know, beat to their own drum, that they march to the beat of their own drum, it's very methodical how Nintendo approaches the video game industry because a lot of companies chase trends. You know, 4K started becoming this thing people care about in the PC market, and now PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are releasing versions, or have released versions of their consoles that try to target 4K gaming. I mean, even Phil Spencer, who I actually really like and think he's done an excellent job with balancing back on the Xbox One's reputation, you know, said the silly remark about uncompromised 4K gaming, and it turns out, yeah, the Xbox One X isn't anywhere close to powerful enough to have uncompromised 4K gaming, but that's just what happens when you're chasing the trends of more power, more resolution. I'd say more frame rates, but that's not really what's happening in the console space. It's still mostly a 30 FPS target with 60 FPS for certain games. Now Nintendo, they have always had this unique approach where they look at the trends happening in the video game industry, and try to recognize holes that are not being filled currently, because Nintendo doesn't care if Sony is successful. They don't care if Microsoft is successful. Yes, back in the day they used to care heavily about trying to beat out Sega, but today, in today's market, Nintendo's always looking for how can they provide something that people don't currently have, and even when they're in competition with other systems and other companies, they still try to find their own little niche in that audience to capitalize on, and it's been a very smart and extremely profitable venture for Nintendo. Think about it with the NES. Back then, the Atari flooded the market, and the home console business had essentially crashed, and the only kind of video games you were really seeing in the mid-80s before the NES came out were at arcades, and even Nintendo themselves had arcade games like Jumpman, which later obviously became Donkey Kong featuring Mario. And they took these concepts and said, look, we can do home console gaming better, and we're going to release our own home console that not only is more restrictive for what games can be on it, which is going to increase the quality of the games on the system, and is going to make it easier for consumers to find games worth playing, and that doesn't mean there's not crap NES games. There are hundreds if not thousands of really crappy NES games, but compare that to how hard it was to find high quality games on the Atari, and you can kind of see a stark contrast with the NES, and that's one way they help provide the industry. The other is by changing the way we play. Joysticks were a really common thing. A massive joystick with a button on top was a really common method of controlling games back in the Atari days, and Nintendo was like, ah, that's a little too complicated and a little too restricting, because you have to use your whole hand and you only have one finger free to hit a button. What if we make the controls a D-pad with two buttons on the right, and they invented that D-pad and brought it to market, and it became a brilliant move, and has survived even to this day in common gaming. Like Xbox and PlayStation have D-pads. The Nintendo Switch, while it doesn't come with a, you know, an original D-pad, you know, a standard D-pad, I should say, their Pro Controller has a D-pad, and it's not going to be surprising in the future with future iterations of Switch or other systems if there's going to be a D-pad returning, because it became a gaming essential because of Nintendo. You look at the SNES, that was more of what you see with today's current systems, where it's a more powerful version of the prior system. Yes, it introduced shoulder buttons, which is revolutionary and all that such, but essentially it was just a souped up NES, and that makes sense. They called it the Super NES, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, so they weren't even trying to yank your chain. This was just a more powerful type of NES. Now, fast forward into the next generation. Yes, it was 3D gaming, but the Nintendo 64 was experimenting. They were trying to figure out how can we have a controller that fits every type of game out there. So they came up with the three-pronged octopus-style controller that was amazing, but it really emphasized the point that in how amazing that controller is designed. If you want to use that D-pad, it's amazing. If you want to use a control stick, it's amazing. It also highlighted an issue where there might be times you want to use that D-pad and that control stick, and you really couldn't do it comfortably. Plus, the only trigger button was directly underneath the joystick, which that trigger button to this day is amazing. To me, it's still one of the best trigger buttons on gaming controllers nowadays. We have all the trigger buttons up by the shoulders, and that's fine, but it felt more natural underneath the joystick. Like, Goldeneye was so good with that trigger button underneath there, and maybe it's just because it felt like you were holding a gun. I have no idea, but it was just an amazing thing, and it was vastly different from what the competition was doing. The competition was adding joysticks to a more traditional pad and going with CDs. And Nintendo was like, yeah, but we get faster load times with this. Yeah, it's more expensive and we can't store as much in it, but you don't have to sit through zillions of load screens. And we still have save files locally on the cartridges. You don't have to have external memory. If you don't want to, use external memory. And Nintendo, even way back then, way back then with the N64, started the whole expandability thing. There was the expansion slot, which was not used very, you know, there were some games that used the Majora's Mask required it, but it was still one of those things that other systems weren't really doing this. I mean, Sega was trying their own fail attempt at expansion things, and add-ons, and Sega CD, and just really stupid ideas, until the Dreamcast. I think the Dreamcast was actually brilliant. But Nintendo then transformed everything again when they got to the GameCube. They're like, look, we see what everyone else is doing, but we also see that, hey, Sony also has like these little mini disc players that people are using. Maybe that's the way we should go. And, you know, the controllers are nice and everything that, you know, the DS controller, DualShock controller is fine, but we think having bigger, easier to hit buttons is key. And having a more portable home console is key. And you can even see Nintendo emphasizing that home consoles should be portable back then. They put a handle on the GameCube. They wanted it, and I know that they started on the lunch pail things, but they wanted the GameCube to be the system you were not afraid to take over to your friend's house. So they wanted to make it convenient to carry it. And yes, I realized you still had to put all the cords in a backpack or whatever. And I admittedly put the system in the backpack as well, but I understand where Nintendo was looking here. They were trying to think of, how can we make this the most convenient for the most consumers out there? Now ultimately, it was lacking key features that I probably needed at the time. The mini-disc ended up being kind of a bad decision. If they had gone with traditional DVDs or even CDs, they could have allowed music playback or DVD playback, which is really what helped the PlayStation 2 completely blow up the market. And it even helped with the PlayStation 3 as Blu-rays caught on, because Blu-rays for the PlayStation 3, it turned out to be the future of disc-based media. And considering how expensive Blu-ray players were, you might as well have bought a PlayStation 3 at that time. And Nintendo was like, look, we went down this path of more power. We went down this path of trying to innovate on the traditional controller space. And for the most part, it kind of worked sales-wise. They didn't see the greatest of sales. It kept sawing a decline, but they still added innovative things to the spectrum. But Nintendo was like, look, there's other systems now doing what we do and potentially doing it better. By the time GameCube hit, yeah, they were trying to be this do-everything system, but PlayStation 2 really was doing everything better. And then Xbox came along and was doing online and obviously doing that way better than anyone else at that time, besides obviously PC. So fast forward and Nintendo was like, man, we need to innovate again. Well, who is being left behind by all this new stuff happening? Oh, hey, controllers are really, really complicated. There's not a lot of parents playing video games anymore. There's not a lot of grandmas playing video games. Not a lot of little kids playing video games anymore. Like back in the day, back in the NES days, there were kids playing a lot of games and a lot of NES games. And it didn't matter if those games were hard, but the controls were extremely simplistic. A D-pad, two buttons, and then A and B and then start select. Very basic, very easy to figure out. Now you have two twin joysticks and 17 buttons on a controller. I'm just exaggerating. Just a lot of inputs that are really hard to master when you are a child. And I know there's children today that have absolutely mastered it and they're faster than adults because their brains can think faster. And that's great. Like their reaction times are better. That's the reason I'm a 31 year old adult. And I pretty much have no shot in a competitive scene anywhere compared to a teenager because their reaction times are just way better than mine. But when you stop for a moment and you think Nintendo wanted to innovate again, they did. They did it with the Wii. They said, look, we're going to simplify controls again. And go back to basics. Go back to the drawing board. Introduce a control type that makes sense that you don't have to think about. Everyone knows how to throw a baseball. So it shouldn't be that hard to imagine making the throwing motion with a controller to throw a baseball or swing a bat or swing a tennis racket. Wii Sports really helped emphasize this. And Nintendo again innovated. Then you got to the Wii U. And the Wii U, I think, was probably Nintendo's least innovative attempt at a console besides the Super Nintendo. And the thing is, the Super Nintendo is one of, if not my favorite Nintendo console. The Switch needs a bigger library. The Switch, I think, is going to eventually surpass the Super Nintendo for my favorite Nintendo system of all time. But the SNES right now is at the top. But the SNES is at the top because it took everything I loved about the NES and did it better. And the Wii U didn't really do that. It didn't take everything that we did and did it better. It borrowed the Wii name, still allowed the use of Wii Modes, but introduced standard controls again, which is great. I love standard controls, but then threw a pad on and tried this dual screen gaming thing, like they were doing with the DS and TV form. And that just was not a smart idea. Nintendo's own development teams didn't seem too enamored by it, which is why we didn't see a lot of innovations with it. Even the obvious things, like a dungeon master kind of thing, and asynchronous gaming, and all this cool stuff you could have did with the gamepad, never really came to fruition. ZombieU did a fantastic job. A couple other games used the gamepad really well. And I understand it was convenient for inventory management and like the WinRaker HD or Twilight Purchase HD, and other games. You know, I think, I can't think of the game right now, but you know, there was another Zelda inspired game on there, the second game that had its inventory. And that's great. I think Darksiders too. Anyways, so you take a step back and I realized that was their least creative console. Their least, it was a, I'm not gonna say they didn't try to innovate, but it almost, it was the console that felt like chains for the sake of change. They knew that motion gaming had left them behind. So they're like, well, motion gaming left us behind. We can't just release a traditional box. We have to do something different. And that's something different. Ultimately drove people away. They could have kept the console at, you know, $300, $350 at launch, got rid of the gamepad, threw in the pro controller and had beefier hardware. And lo and behold, you're competing directly with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. And you're out before those consoles land, giving you an advantage and a lead and giving third parties no excuse not to release games on your platform. Nintendo didn't do that. But it's really interesting thinking about Nintendo's really first attempt at doing change for the sake of change rather than change to innovate and move gaming forward. Now, some people consider the Wii U a precursor to the Switch and I don't really see that as a precursor to the Switch. Yes, it did allow off TV play, but so did my DS and my 3DS and my Game Boy Advance and my Game Boy. Like, Nintendo has always been in that handheld gaming space where you weren't playing on your TV and it really wasn't that convenient to go off TV, back to TV mode. Yes, it was a little more convenient than you could say hooking up a Super Game Boy or something to your SNES, but it really wasn't something that I feel like was a precursor to the Switch because I think the concept of Switch, the big get with it, yes, it switches between TV mode and handheld mode seamlessly, is the idea of a hybrid system. And the Wii U wasn't that. It wasn't a precursor. Switch feels like the future of Nintendo. The taking the amazing stuff they can do in two completely different spaces, handheld and home console, throwing it together and doing it in a way that's super convenient, super understandable, while somehow, somehow they pulled it off and have almost every control type under the sun that Nintendo has had previously, like motion controls, man. You know, you want a traditional D-Pad? Yeah, you got to buy a pro controller. That's a little let down. But you can now turn the things sideways, have simplified controls with one control stick and four buttons with two shoulder buttons. I know it's not as good as the SNES controller. I'm not even going to get into that debate about it being as good as the SNES controller, even with the straps attached. But Nintendo took a step here with Switch and innovated and did something special. And I think this is what it's so great about Nvidia here, talking about Nintendo as innovators, is that Nintendo has always consistently done this outside of two generations of consoles, one that was literally just a more powerful version with more buttons and stuff of the prior generation, and then another that was almost a change for the sake of change. But I'm just so happy with the Switch right now and with Nintendo getting back to the roots with what they do with gaming, finding that audience that wasn't gaming and bringing them back in the fold is just Nintendo at their absolute best. And now we're getting new IPs. Nintendo is starting to get really strong with their games again. This is, it's amazing time to be a Nintendo fan right now. Anyways, folks, I'm Nathaniel Ruffaljens from Nintendo Prime. If you liked this video, you know what to do. If you disliked this video, hit that dislike button. Subscribe for more. And hey, I'll catch you in the next one.