Nintendo banks on luring casual gamers
With three kids and NEW YORK — constant travel for work, John Hussey jumped at the chance to play an open-world adventure game like “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” anywhere, anytime.
After he heard about the Nintendo Switch, a hybrid game machine that works as both a console at home and a tablet on the go, Hussey ordered one in January even though it wouldn’t arrive until Friday, when Nintendo’s latest game machine debuted.
Nintendo will need lots of traditional gamers like Hussey to redeem itself as a console maker, after being eclipsed by Microsoft and Sony in the game-console wars. But Nintendo will also need lots of casual gamers who are satisfied with playing on a smartphone and would never have dreamed of buying a $300 game machine.
And in trying to appeal to many audiences, Nintendo risks not being the best at serving any one.
The Switch is like three machines in one. Wireless controllers attach to a game tablet for hand-held gaming. Take the tablet to a gathering with friends, and you can rest it on a table with a kickstand and detach the controllers for use as stand-alone devices. Back home, slide the tablet into a docking station and snap the controllers into a grip accessory and you have a traditional game console attached to a TV. With each switch — get it? — you can pick up where you left off.
The new “Zelda” game is the biggest available at launch, though Nintendo is also pushing a collection of casual party games called “1-2-Switch.” Nintendo says more than 80 titles are in development, including “Super Mario Odyssey” and the action-puzzle game “Snipperclips: Cut it Out, Together.”
Nintendo’s Wii in 2006 introduced motion control to gaming and was a massive success, forcing Microsoft and Sony to respond with their own motion controls. But the Wii’s successor in 2012, the Wii U, proved disappointing. People thought it was too expensive at $300, especially when it had few must-have games.
The Switch represents a new hope. Nintendo is forecasting sales of 2 million units in the first month.
The U.S. Transportation Department has taken its first steps to undo actions by the administration of Barack Obama to improve consumer protections for airline travelers, putting on hold a proposal to require more disclosure of passenger fees.
The process of collecting public comments for the proposal has been suspended, President Donald Trump’s DOT said in a posting dated Thursday on the Regulations.gov website.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s move was praised by Airlines for America, the Washington trade group for large carriers. “We applaud Secretary Chao’s leadership today and look forward to an era of smarter regulation that protects consumers from unfair practices, but does not step in when action is not warranted,” A4A President and CEO Nicholas Calio said in a release.
The agency is also delaying the implementation of a separate regulation requiring airlines to disclose when they mishandle wheelchairs and motorized scooters for the disabled, according to another filing. The rule, which became final on Dec. 2, won’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2019, a one-year delay, according to the DOT’s notice.
The move had been sought by A4A and Delta Air Lines, according to the DOT notice.
Airlines generate about $4 billion a year in bag fees, and the Obama administration announced last fall it would seek to make them disclose those fees when people purchase their tickets. In a separate action required by Congress, the department is exploring whether to require a refund of those fees if luggage arrives late.
Consumer groups, frustrated by the Obama administration’s slow pace of adopting new rules, will continue to push for more disclosure of fees, said Charles Leocha, president of Travelers United Inc.
The transportation department hasn’t suspended all regulatory actions related to airline fees and could still resurrect them, Leocha said. “We’re basically back to where we were at the beginning of October,” he said.