After playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild extensively on the Nintendo Switch, as well a variety of other games, it is clear that this console might be best hope for the future of console gaming.
One of the biggest issues facing modern consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One are massive development as well as marketing budgets for the games released on those systems. Specifically, the increase in development budgets is a direct result of the immense graphical power of these new consoles and the attempt to meet that technical threshold.
This focus on graphics has caused a big spike in game development costs, primarily when it comes to the creation of art assets.
The problem here is that while the console market is definitely growing with each new generation, the budgets for many big games now far outpace what the market can support in terms of sales.
This is why consoles like Microsoft’s Scorpio are positively suicidal when it comes to the back end cost to develop games for the system.
However, there is hope and the less powerful Nintendo Switch could be the saving grace for console gaming.
This is because the Switch enforces a limit on budgetary expenditure when it comes to graphics. Breath of the Wild is by no means ugly but it is a graphically simpler and more visually stylized game than the other similarly scoped open world games on the PS4 or Xbox One. In some parts of Breath of the Wild, it even looks quite basic and dated.
The important thing here is that photo realistic graphics don’t matter; it’s what you do in a game that counts. This is why visually simplistic games like Minecraft have succeeded where so many other big budget games have failed. Put simply, functionality supersedes graphics.
This is not to say that graphics are not important, of course they are. They impart what the game world is to the player and message how you can interact with it. However, the Switch enforces a graphical threshold here due to its less powerful hardware and this will likely bring the budgets of games down inline with what the market can support.
Now, Breath of the Wild was a hugely expensive game to develop but just imagine how much more expensive it would have been if it had to leverage the Scorpio’s graphical output. That would have necessitated an entirely new legion of artists to create content for the game, which would have in turn massively increased the game’s operating budget.
The more I play with my Switch the more I am relieved that a console like this exists. Games should not cost insane amounts of money to make and a system like this will hopefully keep the current budgetary problem in check.
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