Phil Harrison, former executive at Sony and Microsoft, who worked on the PlayStation 2 and 3, and on the Xbox systems, recently gave an interview where he had some great things to say about the Nintendo Switch.
According to Harrison, Sony and Microsoft aren’t broadening the audience of gamers and are focusing too much on core and hardcore gamers.
“They [Sony and Microsoft] are increasingly for the same kind of core, hardcore gamer. Whereas the Nintendo Switch has the opportunity to play to the wider audience” said Harrison.
He added that it’s going to be “interesting” to see where the games market goes in the next three of four years.
While he’s certainly right that Sony and Microsoft are sticking to their core audiences, it’s not like casual gamers don’t have a place to go: most of them already went to mobile games.
What Nintendo seems to be doing right is to attract some of those mobile casual gamers to its Switch platform, while also appealing to a core audience with games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
In another interview with VentureBeat, Harrison once again praised Nintendo, saying “Nintendo has surprised me in a good way. They’ve put some excitement back in, or at least added a dynamic to the console equation that wasn’t there previously.”
