I think people like me could be the audience if only Nintendo lets more variety into their titles. Although, it's still too early to make any judgments on it.

Fair point. But the fact that they have Skyrim running on a Nintendo machine at all (sadly) is mind-blowing in and of itself. So I'm cautiously confident that the Switch will have variety. It won't just be 20283rd iteration of 3822nd version of Mario.

Alpheus, I think you missed my point in my earlier post. My phone and laptop, that I'm already carrying with me for my software related day job, already play good games and let me quickly surf the web. I put up with lugging around extra camera gear for my hobby when I need it, because that gear does things that the stuff I'm already carrying can't actually achieve. Sure, my phone has a "decent camera", but it in no way compares to the look and feel that can be produced on medium format film. (And it isn't nearly as fun, interesting, or relaxing to use as an all manual TLR.)

This new device doesn't even have the option of the clamshell design of my old DSlite that fit so nicely in my jacket pocket, and was easy to pull out for quick games while waiting for a bus, then snap close and put back without thinking or worrying about. It looks bigger, bulkier, and far more prone to damage. For mobile gaming purposes this seems like a huge step back to me from the standpoint of a user.

Yeah, I'm on the side of the doubters.

To me, the form factor is just too big for the portable gaming market. And the graphics and power are probably too weak for console enthusiasts. It just doesn't seem to strongly belong anywhere. But Nintendo fans love Nintendo for their games more than their consoles I think, so we'll see how it does.

I'm not really sure how playing games on the decent laptop you're bringing along as part of your daily grind anyway is 'making do'. Making do would be pulling out the cellphone camera because you left the heavy and bulky SLR and 70-200 lens at home, and living with the results.

However if your goal is to take random quick selfies and post them online, then the phone is actually the better tool for the job than the SLR, and would not remotely be 'making do'.

But the point is: What exactly is this system, as a mobile device, really doing for me that couldn't have been done with the laptop already in my bag? Carrying a laptop around isn't exactly a unique thing in life these days after all. How is this a step up in mobile gaming from the very portable DS platform?

Depending on the type of games you want to play on your commute, its likely that the switch will offer a better experience than the average laptop -- Most people are issued a modest dual-core with mid-tier integrated graphics from their work, or have purchased similar for themselves. Its supposed to be a custom chip from nVidia, even 256 Pascal-generation shader cores would surpass those kinds of machines. If its maybe got 512 shaders running at a Ghz or more, we're talking north of a TFLop -- thats up in Xbox One/PS4 territory.

I can't say its ideal for me, and I doubt there's an outside-the-home appeal for most adults, but I can see the on-the-go appeal for the gradeschool-through-highschool demographic, and I think the move-around-the-house or play-while-my-guy-watches-the-game appeal is there for adults. If they sell the dock separately for a decent price it'd be nice to move from television-to-television, too.

The JoyCon controllers are a bit weird though -- I know they're meant to do in a pinch, but their oddly shaped, cramped, and asymmetric.