The talk of the townright now is the Switch 2. Or rather, the Switch Successor Which Currently Does Not Have A Name. We’re at a precipice inNintendo’slife cycle, and that prompts us to look both ways. To look forward to whatnew games may soon come our way, andhow exactly Nintendo goes about succeeding a consolethat took the world by storm. But also to look backwards at just how it took the world by storm, withone of the finest libraries a console has ever enjoyed.
As part of all this bated-breath waiting around we’re doing, my colleague Jade Kingtook a look back at the revealof the originalSwitch, and they said (or more accurately, wrote) something that stopped me in my tracks. They referred to the Switch as the “older brother” of the Switch 2, which is what I’m going to call it until we know its name, and probably for some time after. The nomenclature sent me into an existential crisis.
Word of the Day toilet paper is a great Christmas present.
Does Time Matter For Consoles?
Technically, I know Jade is correct. The Switch was born in 2017, and the Switch 2 will be born in 2025. That makes the original Switch older by eight years. If they were brothers, as they metaphorically are given the Switch 2 builds on established foundations rather than doing something new as the Switch did, the Switch would be older. And yet it just feels wrong.
It’s because we think of the older brother as being bigger, tougher, more confident. But with consoles, it’s the opposite. The larger, more robust, more capable machine is the younger one. Maybe it will get easier when the Switch 2 is here and it’s the fresh young thing, a speedy little whiz kid well aware of its own youth. But right now, it’s hard to think of it as anything other than a bigger upgrade on the Switch itself. As an eldest child, I inevitably think of the younger siblings as downgrades compared to the eldest - the genuine article.
What has confused me even more is trying to do this for thePlayStationfamily. Nintendo has changed things up every couple of generations, whileXboxhasnever strung two connected naming conventions together. But PlayStation is simplicity itself. We began with the PS1, and travelled up in a straight line to the PS5. We know the next one will be called the PS6, and so on until some egomaniac running the show decides it’s time for an ill-advised change around the turn of the PS8. And the ‘older brother’ of the PlayStation family is difficult to describe.
Who Is The Eldest PlayStation?
You’d think, by my logic, I would say the PS5. But the PS5isthe fresh young thing, speedy little whiz kid. More to the point, it just copies everything the PS4 did and seems to be praised for it - that’s a younger sibling through and through right there. But I wouldn’t switch the order around, either. The PS1, though far older chronologically, is so laughably insufficient compared to the power of modern machines that it feels like the baby of the family.
The PS2 is clearly the older brother of the PS1, in the same way I currently see the Switch 2 as being a de facto ‘older’ brother. Meanwhile, the PS4 is symbolically and chronologically the older brother of the PS5. In the middle is the PS3, which seems to deserve the crown. It’s the only one, besides arguably the little baby PS1, to have been born in less than ideal circumstances, and had to struggle through with no one to care for it. It also is the one to take a step back and let the PS2 shine while technically being more powerful than it, and is the inspiration for the PS4, just as the PS4 then inspired the PS5.
While the PS4 did do a lot more to eclipse its predecessor than the PS5 has managed thus far, it still feels like the PS3 is where this era of PlayStation started. Maybe that does make the Switch the older brother after all. It launched a brave new world for Nintendo, and leaves the Switch 2 with a conundrum: it either outshines what the Switch did and owns the title of older brother, or it copies what its big bro did before it and remains forever in its shadow.
Nintendo Switch
Launched in 2017, the Nintendo Switch allows you to switch between console and handheld gaming easily.
