 I want to remind you we are giving away a copy of Monster Hunter Rise and two $20 Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, or Xbox gift cards. That's right, three winners for this month to enter head down to the description or the pin to comment. Hey everyone, so this is a Nintendo Switch. Six four years old. Well, not this particular system. This one's about a year old. But the very first switch I picked up happened on March 3rd. I got it at midnight at launch at my local GameStop and technically at the time of recording this video, it's not midnight. So it's not four years old for me, but there are some territories Japan included where right now it's March 3rd, which means the system did launch in some territories, meaning that today slash tomorrow it's kind of a two day celebration. The Nintendo Switch is now four years old. This system has moved 80 million units. It has some of the best selling games ever created in several IPs, including Zelda. The game launched with Zelda. In fact, what got the hype going for Switch was when they said Breath of the Wild was going to be a launch game for this system at E3 2016. And this system wasn't even announced until October of that year, but Nintendo already put out there. Hey look, it's still going to come to Wii U, but Breath of the Wild is going to be a next-gen launch system for this. So and then Breath of the Wild blew people away and it drove hype for this platform even more. Then it was unveiled as a handheld that could dock with your TV, actually technically first unveiled with Breath of the Wild with a guy playing it on his TV, who then had to take his dog for a walk, picked up the switch and took it with him. To me, kind of an unrealistic situation unless you happen to have a dog and live in an area where you're allowed to take him for a walk without a leash, with a leash, having a dog maybe yank on your arm every now and then while you're playing games might not be the most ideal situation. But still, I've gone on to use this platform in a number of ways, from on the toilet to on a plane, even in tabletop mode, to taking off the joy-cons and using them sideways with friends, chiefly my kids more than anything, and then obviously using this on TV, recording gameplay for all you guys, and going on to have four years of just pure love and joy for the Nintendo Switch. In fact, it's all kind of special for this channel as well because around the time this system released in March 3rd of 2017, it's basically around the time I started really focusing on making YouTube videos. Now, if you go look at the history of this channel, it's been around I think since 2008, but back then it was Zelda Informer. When I transformed this to Nintendo Prime in 2017, I still was focused mostly on a news website, NintendoPrime.com, later NintendoPrime.net, and that's why my business email to this day is still Nathan at NintendoPrime.net, but there is no website anymore. What there is is a YouTube channel because throughout the Switch's life in the very beginning, we had a lot of fun memories at this channel. All of those Splatoon 2 live streams. You remember those live streams from 2017 into 2018? How crazy some of those got with some of our OG Nintendo Prime followers here on YouTube? I know I do. That's one of the fondest memories I have as a channel. And some of my fondest memories as a gamer are starting to happen right here on Switch, despite the fact that I'm approaching my mid 30s. I turned 35 this year. Like, holy crap, I'm practically as old as the Zelda series itself, which is my favorite franchise. So watch you with that. Smart move, Nintendo. You got me. You got me good. But that's the crazy thing about Switch. As we've all been on this journey together for four years, and Nintendo has basically come on such and sure for a call with their last financially, hey, we just hit the midway point. That means there's another four years ahead, at least according to Nintendo. They plan for this to be an eight, nine, maybe even a 10 year platform. And along the way, we've gotten revisions. We've gotten the Switch Lite. We got this particular Switch here, which is the red box back there, the red box V2 Nintendo Switch. And we've gotten a lot of other hopes and dreams for future hardware, as well with the Switch Pro. We've also gotten our fair share of issues. This is not a perfect system. Forget the giant bezels that have been there since day one. And while it was kind of okay to get away with it in 2017 and 2021, the giant bezels definitely feel like something of a blast from the past. Joy Con drift, we all know it's a thing. Lots of lawsuits over at Nintendo, flawed design, using a flawed manufacturing technique. It is what it is. Nintendo is like in at least North America, fixing them for free outside of warranty, but it's still kind of a pain in the butt. The system is not even running at the full capabilities of the chip that's included. There's a Tegra X1 in here, which is a chip from 2015 by NVIDIA. And speaking of that, this was a major jump for Nintendo. They've been using AMD, an old, old architecture from the 90s for pretty much the entire time that they've made systems until this, they got rid of the power PC architecture, tossed it in the trash, actually kind of tossed AMD in the trash at an arguably interesting time when AMD Ryzen and their GPUs were starting to pick up a little bit of steam and they went with NVIDIA and ARM. They went with a full on mobile chipset like iPhone uses and then also the best GPU makers on the market. And at the time, Tegra X1 was one of the most powerful gaming mobile chips in existence, which they had failed to get off the ground in their own NVIDIA Shield portable device that they attempted to throw out there. It didn't really take off. The NVIDIA Shield TV has taken off in certain Asian countries, a separate box that you can just connect to your TV, almost like a Roku TV sticking away, but a bit more powerful looking game and all that. But at the end, it doesn't really take off here in North America and other popular countries. In Japan, the NVIDIA Shield TV is not a big deal there, but the Nintendo Switch is. And it's because Nintendo successfully took all of their games and was able to focus it into a single platform. They created a system that for the first time in Nintendo history, combined home console and handheld together. And yes, I know it's more of a handheld system than a home console. It doesn't run with the power and the specs you expect of a home console. Everything's contained in a tablet for me. You take these things off, you're just holding this. If this doesn't say Nintendo Switch on the front, you would just think, heck, there's phones that are almost this big. You grab one of those Samsung Galaxy Note phones, like, dude, it's really not all that different from holding this thing. You could easily confuse this as like an oversized phone that's a thick boy, because it's pretty thick for a phone, or as like an early gen or small reader tablet. It's very easy to confuse it with the Joy-Con off for something like that. Very clearly, this thing is based on mobile technology. So it's very interesting to see them. Nintendo to this day still refers to the system as a home console, despite the fact that there is an entire version of it, the light that you can't even dock with a TV. But they still call this Switch family a home console. So I think this is just a stigma thing, of course. They want the reputation to be, hey, look, we're four years in, you're taking home console quality games on the go. And hard to argue, like Link's Awakening that we got in 2019 on the system, sure. That's like what you would expect the natural evolution of handheld games to be. But Breath of the Wild is on the go on this thing. Mario Odyssey is on the go on this thing. Splatoon 2, Splatoon 3 next year, Xenobit Chronicles 2, although we take it Xenobit Chronicles, back on the 3DS, the new 3DS, I mean, maybe that's not as surprising, but you know what I'm saying? Like Doom Eternal! Let's get the third party love up in here. Doom Eternal's on this bad boy. The original Doom's on this. Wolfenstein, the new Colossus is on this bad boy. Yeah, all from the same company. I know. What about the Witcher 3? Diablo 3! Diablo 2 coming to this. The reimagined version, the remastered version. Like, seriously, Nintendo hit a home run and they needed this home run that happened when it did, because guess what? Nintendo was not in a good spot heading into this generation. The 3DS, well yes, it ended up topping out at around 75, 76 million units sold. That is the worst selling handheld in Nintendo history. Every other generation outsold the 3DS. Wii U, setting aside Virtual Boy, it's their worst platform ever released. 13 million in sales, Nintendo discontinued it before the next system was even announced. Yeah, believe it or not, they discontinued the Wii U before they even announced the switch. Isn't that crazy? Like, this is an unprecedented era for Nintendo. They are the only company to fully commit to putting console quality games in a portable form factor, while also making them pretty playable on TV. No things aren't perfect. 30 frames a second, feels a little dated these days, especially when we have PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X pushing 4K, 60, and this thing can struggle to hit 1080p 30 in a lot of games. But you know what? Not everything's about resolution, not everything's about frame rate. A great game is great, sometimes in spite of the sacrifices made to run on a platform like this. And Nintendo's been proving this time and time again after they stopped chasing power. Now, obviously with Switch Pro, we have hopes that Nintendo is once again gonna reach into their bag of tricks and pull out a winner and give us a more powerful platform. You're gonna next gen Switch someday that is gonna reach for the best of the best mobile power, because after all, right now, this device that's smaller is technically more powerful than the Nintendo Switch. Mobile technology has come a long way, and it's also become much more affordable. And now we have ray tracing, we have Deep Learning Super Sampling 2.0, the future for Switch, and the possible technology advances that could happen, and the game lineup. Man, the game lineup. And that's really what it's about. This is one of my favorite lineups from Nintendo ever. Now look, I said the Switch isn't perfect, it's not. I own a PlayStation 5, I own an Xbox Series X, because guess what? This doesn't satisfy all of my gaming needs, all my gaming wants. I own a gaming PC, because again, this doesn't satisfy all of my gaming desires. But it's about what I want from Nintendo. I don't expect a PlayStation 5 from Nintendo, or a Series X, or gaming PC performance. I expect Nintendo quality games in a form factor that I can't get anywhere else, and that's what Switch provides for me. It allows me to game anywhere, whenever I want, without needing an internet connection. That's to be applauded. Again, flaws, to the Switch Online service, not that great. VoiceTrap, gotta use a phone app for it, can't do it locally, can't even send messages on the system. That thing is not perfect, people complain about themes and the lack of menu music and not feeling Nintendo enough, and yet this system is laughing its way to potentially becoming the best selling Nintendo system ever released. Because the concept, the game delivery, and the pure joy millions of us are having are just undeniable. So hey look, the Switch is four years old right now. This channel, running as Nintendo Prime, is also roughly four years old at this point. There's like a synergy between the success of this channel and the success of the Switch, and I'm loving it. So here's the four more years, and then whatever Nintendo has next on Slate. Happy birthday Switch, and happy birthday Nintendo Prime, the YouTube channel. Anyways folks, I am Nathaniel Ruffa Jantz from Nintendo Prime. I want to thank you so much for tuning in, man. If you enjoyed this video, like, subscribe. Let me know your favorite memories of Nintendo Switch, and games you've played, and maybe even your experience when you first got a Switch, be it as a gift, maybe you went to the store, maybe you got it at launch, maybe you're rocking a light. Let me know your favorite memories of Nintendo Switch the last four years, down in the comments below. Alright folks, I'll catch you in the next video.