Winner: Nintendo Switch
The Best New Gaming Hardware of 2017
If you’ve been paying attention to our coverage recently, the Nintendo Switch winning our best hardware of 2017 award shouldn’t come as a surprise. We love the Switch. The fact that it can play (most) AAA games on the go is absolutely magical. You can’t fully appreciate it until you have one yourself. I will admit, until I finally caved in and picked up a Switch, I kind of downplayed the idea. The first time I fired up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on a flight to LA I felt like I could jump from the plane and my Switch would parachute me down to safety. I felt that cool. It’s an absolute game changer and I would be shocked if Sony and Microsoft don’t try to emulate it in some way in their future consoles. All things being equal, in a situation where graphics didn’t matter that much to the experience, from now on I’d much prefer to get the Switch version of any game as a person who owns all three major home consoles.
Plus, let’s not also forget the incredible year the Switch had software-wise. I’m almost 30, and I can’t recall a stronger launch year in terms of first-party exclusives. It was an absolute bonanza of fantastic games. The only drawback is that it’s going to be incredibly hard for Nintendo to maintain this momentum next year, even with Pokemon, Yoshi and Metroid on the horizon.
Still, for 2017, there’s no doubt that the Nintendo Switch was the best new gaming hardware to release.
