Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
That’s a figure of speech. I’m not actually going to stop, even though I promise you that you’ve heard this story many times before.
The enthusiast press for games hears some rumors from a handful of different sources about plans a game company wants to do. Without thinking or any real editorial oversight to connect the dots, they rush to publish these rumors because they just have to break this story first.
Then begins the mad rush with multiple outlets not wanting to get left behind, so they rush to publish, turning the loosely connected strings into a jumbled ball that can no longer be unwound.
Because now the gamers have a hold of it, and the hype train that the press started is now completely in their hands, and the gamers have aimed that train right at the damned wall.
Again.
Meanwhile, said company repeatedly states that they have no plans to do what is being reported. They shoot down every and all statements that they are about to make an announcement about what they have already said they aren’t planning. They tell their investors there are no such plans.
It doesn’t matter.
And when the inevitable happens, that the thing the company has been telling gamers for months wasn’t going to happen doesn’t happen… gamers get violently mad at the company that didn’t promise anything.
It would be funny, if it didn’t happen so often without anybody seeming to learn anything. Now it’s just annoying.
In this case, this is the story of Nintendo, and the oft hyped and speculated Switch “Pro,” which remains in the ether, and will probably remain in the ether no matter how many times Nintendo refreshes their Switch console.
This most recent rumor that turned the masses into a ravening mob was started by Bloomberg, then quickly backed up Eurogamer, and Kotaku, and CNet, etc. If any of them had actually stopped to think about what they were reporting, this might have stopped at a dull roar rather than the incendiary social media fire that burst up in the wake of the completely unremarkable hardware refresh Nintendo actually announced.
Now, in a partial defense of these outlets, I don’t think they were fed lies. I’m actually confident that their sources are accurate when they said that Nintendo has been sourcing higher power components. I’m sure Nintendo has talked to internal developers about 4K resolution and/or DLSS. I’m sure Nintendo has discussed potential ways to add performance boosts into the dock, because that’s a patent Nintendo has held since before the original Switch console was put on the market.
(Don’t believe me? That patent can still be found here.)
But where the enthusiast press failed was not pausing to think. Nintendo is a company that has about two hundred ideas bouncing about at any given moment. They start developing their “next generation” of hardware before the current gen is even being shipped. If any of them had taken the time to actually put the pieces together, I have no doubt that the picture would have shown exactly what Nintendo told their investors; that they are always looking at hardware, but no significant upgrades were coming any time soon.
Pro tip: whenever you want to know what a company’s plans are, listen to what they tell their shareholders. Companies that aren’t planning some sort of financial crime generally don’t lie to them.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Stop fighting for the right to be first; start fighting to be the first to be right.
As for the gamers… I’ve given up on those lemmings. They will tell themselves whatever they want, and will always blame those who never promised anything for breaking their promises. Because gamers seem to be utterly incapable of self-reflection.
As always, gamers are what’s wrong with gaming.
TKO Creations 