After the Wii U flopped, Nintendo had a very difficult task in their hands: make consumers trust them again. That was one of the reasons why their next home console had to be a success since day 1, and Nintendo delivered with the Nintendo Switch—that not only is a home console, but also a handheld.
The main selling point of the new handheld-hybrid from Nintendo is that players can choose to play comfortably at home—and on their TV screen—or take their games on the go thank's the the Switch's portability. This is thanks to the Nintendo Switch being able to be connected to a TV via an HDMI cable connected to the console's dock—which also works as the console's charging dock. Keeping that in mind, have you ever wondered how much time gamers spend playing in docked, or undocked mode? Well, it turns out Nintendo has been keeping track of how gamers are playing on their Switch as a new details have shed some light on this.
Nintendo Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing Doug Bowser said that the play time split between docked and undocked play on the Nintendo Switch is "about even. About 50 percent in the dock and 50 percent away from the dock", in a recent interview with
Ars Technica. It is worth mentioning that playing away from the dock includes both tabletop mode and handheld play.
Bowser also mentions that docked and undocked play varies depending on the game the user is playing, given that some of the games on the Switch are more likely to be played on a TV screen rather than in handheld mode.
Super Mario Odyssey, for instance, offers players a slightly better experience when playing with the Joy-Con motion controls, as opposed to handheld mode.
Another good example is
Just Dance which, given the nature of the game, it's more likely to be played while docked. Other titles like
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are more equally balanced when it comes to playing in docked or undocked mode.
The way Nintendo tracks this is by reading telemetry data, thus being able to see how players are engaging with the content, according to Bowser.
"
We get that when they connect, if they have a Nintendo account we have the ability to understand how they're engaging with the device....From a positioning standpoint we can look at various titles and how they're being played. That allows us to think about various ways with digital marketing and some of our videos to know how to position them".
It really is nice to see that Nintendo has finally understood how to market the Nintendo Switch and what theirtarget audience is, even more now that they are even trackign how players actually play on their devices—giving them an even broader idea of what us, the consumers, want from their products.
And yes, the Nintendo Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing's last name actually is Bowser.