With Xbox One X, Microsoft hopes to ape Nintendo Switch’s success and show console gaming has a future

Nintendo was hemmed in on both sides and in deep trouble.

The company’s Wii U console, an effort to add a small, semi-portable screen to the hit motion-sensing Wii, was a flop. And Nintendo’s handheld consoles, descendants of the legendary Game Boy, were suffering as people opted to play games on smartphones instead.

This was in 2014, the year the Japanese gaming giant recorded its third consecutive annual loss, a setback that followed decades of profitability. Critics called for the company to reboot its hardware, or perhaps reduce the emphasis on its own devices by bringing beloved characters like Super Mario or Zelda to smartphones.

“You have got to either go back and do something that’s more [traditional] console-like, or go forward and do something that’s all motion, like the Wii,” says Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming business, describing the prevailing industry opinion at the time.

“And they didn’t.”

Instead, Nintendo doubled down on its effort to build a console that combines mobile and living-room gaming, developing the Nintendo Switch.

So far, it has been a wild success. Nintendo has struggled to make enough devices to satisfy demand since the launch in March, and at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles in June, Nintendo had a bit of its swagger back. Last week it was reported by Gematsu that total sales of Switch in Japan have surpassed one million.