While video game consoles are primarily about interactive entertainment, in recent years we’ve seen them offer other services such as video streaming via apps such as Hulu, Amazon and Netflix. Given the “bridge” nature of the console, you’d think that having these services on the Switch would be a priority for Nintendo, but the company has confirmed that the system won’t have any – at launch, anyway.
In an interview, a Nintendo representative said:
All of our efforts have gone toward making the Nintendo Switch system an amazing dedicated video game platform, so it will not support any video-streaming services at launch. However, support for video-streaming services is being considered for a future update.
“Being considered” seems curiously non-committal, but given that Nintendo has made every effort to accommodate these services on past consoles, we’d imagine it’s a dead cert. Another thing under consideration is support for USB hard drives:
External USB hard drives are not supported at launch, but we are researching the possibility of supporting them in the future.
