The debut trailer for the Nintendo Switch was packed with good-looking 20-somethings playing in fashionable apartments and rooftop parties. As a 40-something father, it didn’t feel like a product aimed my way. Nintendo’s Super Bowl ad fixes that feeling.
While many people remarked on the millennial festival that is the Nintendo Switch preview trailer, it’s something that’s been nagging me since the console’s October reveal. Though the company is often cast as the more family-friendly of the three major game console makers, the Switch preview trailer featured no children, no parents. After years of Wii and Wii U advertisements featuring a parade of gamers from toddlers to white-haired grandparents, the lack of age variety was quite noticeable.
I know the games Nintendo teases in the preview trailer are games I want to play. It’s not like the company was suddenly chopping away at both ends of its demographic, but in a way it felt like that. The Switch was not a console the company wanted an ageing gamer to imagine playing with his or her children.
And so Nintendo’s Super Bowl ad, a first for the company, has me feeling a whole lot better about my impending purchase.
Though opening with a young adult playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to the tune of Imagine Dragons’ “Believer”, the commercial then switches to a father and son playing a bout of competitive Arms.
That’s more like it! Granted my children are a bit younger, the older fellow has more hair than I do and for all I know he’s not a father but a guy entertaining a boy while he waits for the ransom money to come through, but this hits much closer to home for me.
Look! Even more kids! The child from the first shot has friends and siblings who are really glad to see him back at home safe and sound. His real parents even saved enough on ransom negotiations to buy their own Nintendo Switch.
Jokes aside, this is what I needed. Older players, kids, families. These are the people I’ll be playing the Nintendo Switch with when it comes out this March, when I am not sitting here at my computer desk looking sullen.
Mind you this is the “Extended Cut” of the Super Bowl commercial. The main spot only features the 20-something from the beginning of the longer video, playing Breath of the Wild for a very expensive 30 seconds.
Bah, who watches the Super Bowl for the commercials anyway?
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18 responses to “Nintendo Finally Showed The Switch The Way I Was Hoping To See It ”
I apologise to the office for spraying coffee across the room – Bravo Fahey
I’m definitely gonna play the Switch with my kids on the TV.
I currently have major reservations about letting them hold a $470AU piece of hardware when they frequently dropped the Wii U game pad.
But, has it broken yet?
how good is nintendo durability? i remember throwing and/or punching game cube controllers, multiple times and me or the room i was in coming off second best.
The wiimote was strong enough to use as a building material, and the wii u gamepad was as tanky as you could expect of a tablet (inset screen with a flexible outer layer/digitiser). The nintendium legend still lives!
The switch is covered in glass, so it’s definitely the most fragile thing they’ve made, but the other parts of it look as robust as ever (check the amount of metal in the joy-con grip!).
This wont be durable it has a plastic hindges for the memory card and table stand and while the Joycons have a sliding lock they have to hold the weight of the main unit and ve able to unlock/slide with easy. Plus the screen… Dont drop it.
yeah, im not holding my breath with the swtich. but i will confidently stand by everything pre switch.
The best thing of this ad for me was seeing Epona. (I have purposefully avoided the long BotW playthroughs cropping up in the Internet, so not sure if she had been shown before, but this was my first).
The whole millenial crowd seems to be a core if their “influencers” approach. It wasnt surprising how many youtube / social media darlings have had access to the Nintendo events.
What I find surprising though, given Nintendo Japans “out of touch” staunch DMCA policy and bots towards lets play, streaming and fan community… they havent been called out on this.
Like the Joycon has a Capture button tgat seems mute when Nintendo Japan has a bot that has a reaction time of mere minutes before its deleted.
Here is something no one has mentioned in anything I’ve read yet.
The dock.
Who has room in their entertainment cabinet for a tall dock like that? Some will for sure, but not everyone. I certainly don’t. I have everything tucked away in an expensive entertainment cabinet, with a 70 inch 4K TV on top taking up all the room on top. Am I supposed to put this dock on the floor? It wont fit in a standard shelf…..so what’s next?
I have decided to get one later in the year though, and I’m hazarding a guess it probably won’t ever get docked until Nintendo release the fabled unicorn aka SCD.
The dock will work horizontally.
It would be pretty tough to put the tablet into the dock if you had it on a shelf though, even if it was big enough. The way they show it to the side of the TV seems the most practical, but I would be curious to know if lying it on its side would work.
Like some recent consoles it’s not meant to neatly go on a shelf. Awkward design is sometime deliberate so you can’t hide it away. It then has to become part of a centre peice if your entertainment unit. Showing off to you all the time. Never forgotten because it’s always in your face.
If I invite someone over to my house for a party, and they turn up on my doorstep with a Nintendo Switch… I’m not letting them in the house.
“Count balls with me!”
OMG…..I haven’t been this excited for a console in a decade.
Glad to see someone else noticed that – when I first saw the ad I was like, ‘whoa, I’m a Nintendo fan and I never realised I was so white and beautiful’.
But no clack 🙁