I wish I knew why Nintendo just suddenly stopped making their consoles/interfaces cute. Was it because of the failure of the Wii U, and they just threw out the baby with the bath water?
yeah it's always felt a bit weird
my assumption is that yes, it was to try and capture some of the audience that had left the wii u for other platforms with more boring interfaces - and the wii u's focus on whimsy could sometimes get in the way1
but
maybe eshop aside, i don't think that was true of the 3DS
people complained about there being not enough themes or having to pay too much for them, not that there were themes beyond the basics (and guess what one of the most popular things to do with a hacked 3DS is!)
nintendo badge arcade might have stopped actually giving new badges when they hit the storage size limit, but they still kept it running until the network shutdown
people would still get surprised about using the mic to spin the icons on the home screen faster
we are at the point now where even apple realized they went a bit too far in simplifying things
and so you get things like the very overengineered iPhone 15 pro/max action button UI that makes sure you know exactly where the button is
and all the animations they put in the dynamic island
it's not much, but it's something
and the switch just... hasn't changed. the most you get is still the joycon click.
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commands for gamers: Please use the GamePad.
