The reason people are buying gaming consoles is because it fixes two problems at once and it costs the same, if not cheaper, than an AppleTV. You can stream all of your services and TV...and you can game. Closing the platform gap is the next big thing, not the Switch model. The Switch is cool, but as a standalone product, making that a phone is just nonsense. The phone is a gaming companion for more powerful devices, and it coexists in the gaming spectrum as a time passer.
Content is King. Nintendo made better hardware and people flocked to it but the content was always there.
I'd also argue the Switch isn't really a console It's a mobile that can dock (and Nintendo has dominated mobile gaming for 20+ years, so that's not new). It's really underpowered. Playing BotW on a TV at 920p 30 frames is ok, but it's still way below the other real consoles, which can push pusedo-4k. That's really impressive, and may account for some of their popularity. Both the Xbox and PS4 have been really solid systems without lots of the flaws of their predecessors.
You could have said the same thing for the WiiU (while not a fully portable console per se): It had a few excellent games, but nobody wanted it. It's not as simple as that.
Plenty of people skipped on the Wii U, but demand for Nintendo's content remained high. People wanted to play BotW and Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 despite not wanting to commit to a dead-end console, so Nintendo gave them BotW, Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, and dropped hints [1][2] that more are forthcoming.
The Switch refines and realizes the vision of the Wii U and allows gamers who love Nintendo's content to experience some of the best chunks of what they missed, with the promise that more exciting content is on the horizon. The Switch largely sold because people still want to believe in Nintendo, and they think they executed successfully this time around.
[1] http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/15/e3-2017-bringing-more... [2] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-more-s...
Kind of a weird attitude, since my phone is just as expensive if not more, but it feels unsafe to take the Switch out for my commute.
Anyway this kind of defeats the purpose of having a portable console format for the Switch if it is not used in this way.
They could easily outperform the switch if they wanted to go to that form factor. Otherwise, I still think they could put out a great console with the help of one of the graphic card companies.
The issue would be content. Since the other consoles are more like desktops, creators would need to make sure that the games worked on ARM as well.
Doubt this will ever happen but it would be pretty cool.
Seriously, they're even selling a proper game controller for it: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HL4P2/steelseries-nimbus-...
If it would make the phone 0.1mm thicker, Apple will not do it.
The Nintendo switch is a perfect conceptual example of what the smartphone could turn into, in terms of gaming. It all runs on mobile hardware, with Nvidia Tegra powering the graphics.
What's to stop Apple or other companies supporting slot in controllers on the side of the phones? I think it's inevitable that companies take influence from the switch.
Once we have 'switches' using the iPhone or Samsung galaxies, etc, I think there's no turning back. Then you can just cast that video feed to the TV a la Switch dock, just over wireless connection.
Of course it will take a while to build up the infrastructure for it, but this idea seems obvious.