 Yoshiaki Koizumi was the producer of Mario Odyssey and he did a long-winded interview with 4gamer.net, a Japanese publication, I don't speak or read Japanese, so I am relying on a rough translation by nintendoeverything.com, I have a link to this down in the description below, but we're not going to talk about the Mario Odyssey aspects of the interview which took up a majority of the interview, but we're actually going to talk about his final remarks in the interview, which dealt with Nintendo Switch on the whole. And that is because Koizumi was actually the producer, the general producer of the Nintendo Switch hardware, so he's got some unique insights into the hardware itself. So I'm just going to read this post, verbatim, as I said, highly suggest you go to Nintendo everything and check out their thoughts on it, but it says, as general producer of the Switch, Koizumi thought sales have progressed faster than thought, since he assumed it would take one or two years for the concept to permeate by having players bring the console outside to introduce it to others, but since it has spread so quickly, he believed they have conveyed it in the right way. Switch, as a game console, has a simple trait that can be explained in a few words, anytime, anywhere, with anyone. He'd be glad if he could see photos of people playing it during parties or wedding receptions. Four Gamer notes that the majority of people in Japan who purchased the Switch are in their teens to their 20s, Koizumi responded by saying that the generation of those aged between 15 and 25 had been a difficult spot for Nintendo, but Switch was able to ignite interest from that particular age range, however, they didn't particularly plan something special for that demographic. At the same time, he also thinks that this generation is the most optimal one to play outside with somebody else. In the current era though, this type of generation had grown accustomed to mobile games, so the Switch developers had to make the system as accessible as mobile phones, such as the sleep mode and the quick boot up. The concept of sharing joycons with someone else is another point Nintendo wants to focus on. As an example of a game that emphasizes it is Snipperclips. He liked it when the indie developer SFB Games pitched the idea of using two controllers to cooperate before Switch was even announced, so he promptly contacted them and had a teleconference. Snipperclips at first didn't receive a huge amount of attention, since it was a digital only title, but thanks to the recent popularity they were able to release a physical version. Nintendo has been actively contacting developers of indie games that fit well with Switch thanks to the more flexible dev environment. A lot of indie games have gathered, this is because Nintendo wants to have a very good variety of games. Koizumi has a pet theory that home consoles are actually competing with vacations. For example, one could spend money and time to travel to a place like Hawaii, but home consoles are like suggesting hey you can use that money and time to play Mario at home instead. This is where the handheld systems like DS and 3DS shine since you can ring them on vacations. With Switch, Koizumi wanted people to enjoy a variety of high-spec games during vacations. When asked about the current tendency of mobile games dominating everywhere, Koizumi said Nintendo has also entered the smart device business and he goes on to talk a little bit about that. So I think it's really interesting here, and the reason we're really talking about these quotes is not because they provide any new sales data, there's no new insights per se beyond this point. Obviously I wanted to present his perspective, that's why I read so much. I love the anytime, anywhere with any one advertising stick, I think that is a very key sticking point for Switch. But I also think that he's right. I think home consoles do compete with vacations. I remember growing up and I had my home console, multiple of them. I had my Game Boys, multiple of them. And anytime like there was a weekend off, say it was Labor Day weekend and my parents wanted to go camping or something, I didn't want to go. Because it was my first weekend off in a long time where I didn't have a sporting event or anything, I just wanted to stay home and play video games on my system. But if my parents said too bad, you have to come with, so I had to go camping. My Game Boy was always my sidekick companion and I would probably spend a majority of my vacation playing my Game Boy. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy some campfires and s'mores and bike rides and hiking and all that stuff. But those became kind of side dishes to play my Game Boy for a majority of the vacation. And I feel like he's right that home consoles, especially today, today in an environment with smart devices that we just take everywhere and we get little experiences here and there, that home consoles are competing with vacation time. For some of you folks, it doesn't matter, you take vacation time, like you take sick days or vacay days at work to play video games. I know many people that do that for the launch of a new game or if they just want to take a week and play some World of Warcraft or whatever the case may be. There's probably some people that are probably taking off of the Champions Ballad this week. Some people who probably took off for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when it launched, Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, blah blah blah blah. People do this. I might get a lie. I've done it in the past. I've taken off of work. When I worked a nine to five job, I've taken sick days or vacation days to game. But vacations are still important, especially as you have a family. Once you have a family, vacations I think become even more important. You know, because you start to realize what your parents probably realized when you were a kid is when you sit there and you just watch your kids gathering around the TV all day for eight hours a day. You just realize there's something not healthy about that when they're six years old, right? It just doesn't seem like that's a good productive way to use their time. Not that I don't encourage my six-year-old or almost seven-year-old daughter. She actually got a 2DS for her birthday just yesterday, which is awesome. She's playing Mario Kart 7 and she couldn't get her hands around the switch to understand Mario Kart 8, but she picked up 7 like this. I mean, she's playing 50CC, but she's getting, she's placing in the top three, which is probably what I did when I was a kid. So good for her. And as she's grasping this and now she wants to play more and more games, we still have to realize that we have to still limit her time, right? We can't just let her, from the time she wakes up until the time she goes to bed, just play the 2DS all day. So vacations are important. As an example, today, we are taking our daughter to, and our sons, we're taking all three of our kids, to the skate park. Yes, we have an indoor skate park here. They still exist and they're not really going to go skating. None of them know how to roller blade or roller skate or even if you took them to the ice arena, they don't know how to ice skate. But they have a giant indoor play area in there and they're going to go there and play because it's important to take your kids to do things like this that get them away from the screens. Get them away from their tablets. For some reason you bought your kid a phone, get him away from the phones. Get him away from their DSs, their switches, their TV shows and Netflix. Get them away from all the electronic stuff and just enjoy being a kid. Have some physicality, have some play, play pretend, use your imagination. And then obviously the family vacations, where you go on longer trips, like when I take my kids to the Dells or if we go spend a weekend over in Minnesota, go to Mall of America and go to, it's not Camp Snoopy anymore. I think it's Nickelodeon World or whatever. It's important to do things like that. Take your kids out in the world, take them to the Disney world if you can. Do those crazy things. But I don't think that means you have to separate them entirely from video games. And I feel like that is where Switch comes in handy is even as an adult. It's true that when I finally get some time off, I do want to sit down and play games and it feels weird because my jobs, the two jobs I have right now, revolve around video games. And so I get to play video games for work and that's great. It's amazing if I didn't have jobs that revolve around video games, I might not get to play video games. But what sucks about that is every time you're playing a game while you're working, you're thinking about how it applies to what you do at work instead of just being a gamer. And that's why I like being able to take the switch with me on the goal on vacations. Because you go on a vacation, even if I only get like an hour before I go to bed in a hotel room or something, that hour is not spent with me thinking about work. It's not spent with me worrying about anything else but just playing a game. And that's what I loved about being a gamer before I did this stuff for a living. So it's just really interesting thinking about Koizumi's viewpoint here that home consoles are competing directly with vacations. It's true of any entertainment medium. All entertainment mediums are competing for your time. And home consoles being tied to your TV are really competing hard with anything that takes place outside of the house. So yeah, it's an interesting perspective. And I actually want to hear your guys' thoughts on this. Do you agree that home consoles are competing with vacations? Do you agree that Switch is kind of like a perfect solution for that? And do you agree that obviously, even as adults, sometimes we should dial back some of our exposure to this stuff and enjoy some actual things going on out in the real world? As an example, I love swimming when I was a kid. So as an adult, should I just stop going to water parks and swimming to play video games all day instead? Is that really healthy? Should I be doing more physical activities and then still get my time in, even if I'm not at home? You guys, let me know what you think about all this in the comments below. Anyways, folks, I am Nathaniel Ruffa-Jance from Nintendo Prime. And if you like this video, you know what to do. And if you dislike the video, hit that dislike button. Subscribe for more content. And I'll catch you in the next one.