Topic: Nintendo Switch Lite Announced

@BlueOcean yeah... For those that bought it and liked it, it was great.... Shame nobody actually bought it.... I don't think the second screen idea really jives with a public that sees games as a type of tv show (naughty dog=gaming).... And while the idea is very Japanese, Japan doesn't do home consoles. It was a cool toy without an audience. Or not a big one.

I see where switch created bitterness with big wiiu fans.... It was an undo. A replacement attempt at 8th gen... The first one discarded. Personally i like both. Switch is a dream. Not perfect but a dream. But i liked wiiu, too.

@NEStalgia Nintendo made it unnecessarily bitter for Wii u owners by not allowing digital cross-buy. No ambassador thing either. Nintendo basically said f**k you to all of you that have always supported us. That was the Nintendo that annoyed me and not the one that tried Wii U.

I think Nintendo held out long enough when it came to the Wii u. In the end it was 4.5 years old when it was replaced. Sure, it would have been nice if they had used up some money and actively seeked out and published more games.

But the biggest problem was that they didn't really know what to do with the gamepad. It got used mostly for smaller stuff, when they could have used it for more complex stuff like strategy games or things that are usually better with a mouse.

@Therad agreed on gamepad usage. But.... The 4.5 years wasnt really a full 4.5 years. The first 6 months were fine, then it was a ghost town for 1.5 then all the things they promised early arrived and the last 2 or so it was really just a lame duck. Switch has more games this September than wiiu got in 24 months. The kept it an active sku but it wasn't really a supported console more than half it's life. I've said before that i feel like iwata believed in it and pushed at against the will of the company and the moment he died they finally decided to not even pretend it's active, delete it, and halt all development in it. A lot of switch games were in development for wiiu. Treehouse this year amused me when the Luigi's Mansion 3 demo was on and the developer let slip a comparison to something they originally introduced in the "wiiu title"....hmmmm what wiiu title? Obviously Luigi's Mansion was in development for wiiu, got scraped and became this one. So i imagine wiiu was really killed within 2.5 years, and switch is the "required wiiu addon" like the rumble pack

As an early adopter i don't mind too badly, i still got a lot of use it out of it mostly thanks to Splatoon. But someone that bought it later for really screwed.

@BlueOcean cross buy would have been nice. But... That would also have sucked for physical buyers, badly.... X1x is all digital for me, Nintendo is mostly physical, and wiiu was entirely physical for me. It's be pretty bitter if you got to keep your ported games and I had to rebuy them just because i bought physical. It's a thin line. Screw over all customers equally, or screw over 70% of your customers and favor others... While also alienating retail partners.

Only way to do it would be have been xbox SAD style where your send them your physical games for a digital code. But i can't see Nintendo pulling off a program like that. Heck, Sony said they'd do it for psp to psp go back in the day and then never did. It's hard to do that
Since kind of coupon or games vouchers it something would have been a good customer satisfaction booster though. Monetarily it worked out ok for them, but that's even more reason it would have been good business long term to give wiiu owners some small "we appreciate you sticking with us" bonus... Not to actually offset Costs but to keep the good vibes with the loyal customers

@NEStalgia The NX announcement in March 2015 was probably when projects started to move to Switch. That said 2016 wasn't that far off your typical Wii U output year. Throw in Pikmin 4 in August, have Luigi's Mansion 3 in October, delay Color Splash to November, support Mario Maker with updates for longer, give Wii U Hyrule Warriors the full Legends DLC treatment and you've got a pretty standard Wii U year.

@Grumblevolcano I have a feeling the Iwata plan was to support both platforms with the games in the pipeline with dual releases for a while. Not new projects, but the stuff that was already in the pipeline. After he died I think they just decided to kill it completely. If nothing else, Japanese business culture being what it is, he was the champion of the WiiU from the beginning against some resistance (we heard Kimishima was against the name and there was plenty of implied other resistance in the company) - thus it could not be seen as an abandoned failure as a matter of him saving face, which isn't trivial there. The good and bad of Japanese...actually Asian business in general, just moreso in Japan....is that saving face of leaders comes first. I don't think the fate of the WiiU would have flown the way it went down if he was still there for that reason alone. Nobody would let a well loved leader take the image of failure and being overridden like that. But since he was gone - no harm - bottom line comes first and they could reset.

I don't think you can go by "typical WiiU output year" - it was sell below any other console, including 3DS in a "typical" year. The typical WiiU output year was the problem. 3DS was part of the problem of course (and thus the urgency of a unified platform), I used my WiiU more than my PS4...but....take away Splatoon? The thing would have been a paperweight most of the time. And half of what I played on it was Wii BC games I never played on Wii, and remasters of Wii/GC games. Take those AND Splatoon away, and the WiiU would have been an 8 week a year toy at most. It was "ok" through 2014, it was gaining momentum. I think after they put Kart 8 out and it more or less tanked, relatively, given its status as their #1 franchise, they pretty much pulled the plug at that point for new support. After that they just emptied the list of what was already promised and that was that. Smash tanking, relatively, too put the final fork in it. They just drained the hopper after that. Ironically Splatoon showed the first promising up-tick, but Iwata died right after release. His last public comments at his last AGM were about being thankful for Splatoon's surprise success. Nobody else had any desire to turn it around, they already knew the direction they wanted to Switch to.

There were tons of games in the WiiU pipeline.....and they're releasing in two months for Switch.

@PikPi There is a Pokémon Sword and Shield edition coming out this November.

Battery life comparison playing Breath of the Wild (official data):

Nintendo Switch: 3 hours

Nintendo Switch Lite, new chip and smaller battery: 4 hours

Nintendo Switch, new chip and same battery: 5.5 hours

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This is the most important question. Personally, I won't get my own Switch until that issue is fixed. It's a problem that too many people have after a year or even months of use. It is absolutely unacceptable that the expensive joy-cons still have this fault but it would be even worse if this occurred to Lite.

On top of that Nintendo ask users to pay for shipping the faulty joy-cons and release new colours to sell more faulty joy-cons to the same people. Extreme capitalism.

Have they said if it's possible to have an OG Switch in tabletop and tie a Lite to it as a second controller?

@Cotillion They haven't said so but I doubt it, the only thing that they said is that you can connect joy-cons and pro controllers to Lite so tabletop mode is a given. I don't know what they also say that it just supports handheld mode, it's a contradiction. Nintendo always does the most confusing marketing.

@BacklogBlues I live in Japan too and I can say with 100% certainty that the regular Switch is better for that price.

@BlueOcean All tabletop mode is, is setting the Switch on the table with the kickstand. The Lite doesn't have a kickstand. But you can set it on the table with a stand and connect a pro controller or joycons to it. I'm sure that's what they mean.

@Heavyarms55 Yes they mean that it doesn't support tabletop mode because it doesn't have a weak kickstand like the standard does. It's confusing anyway because it's not just for handheld mode like the website says.

@BlueOcean Saying that handheld and tabletop were different modes at all was sketchy to begin with. They really aren't different. Software wise, the only thing that changes is that you are using a controller detached from the unit.

Well, @BlueOcean, @Heavyarms55 .... Officially, tabletop mode is with kickstand & detached Joy-cons So, obviously, Lite Switch can't do that properly & you'd have to have Joy-cons to do it anyway Hori has said they're doing accessories, which should include a carry case with built-in stand like there are for existing Switches

Actually, I was answering this...

And then I commented that Nintendo said that the Lite only supports handheld mode and they also said that you can connect joy-cons to it which is obviously a contradiction. Tabletop mode is not just a stand but split-screen multiplayer regardless of stands or screen size. It's very confusing marketing.

However, doubts about Lite and local multiplayer with two consoles remain...

Yeah, it's a bit confusing, @BlueOcean .... Certainly, nothing said about using a Lite as just a controller on an original Switch but I wouldn't expect that
I'm sure further announcements will come about other details but if people really want to ask Nintendo themselves, that'd probably be better

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZgC8qEGRo9hwWL3Z6

Update on Citi's forecast of the Switch Lite's launch that caused Nintendo's stock to dip that NL reported on:

Turns out that the forecast was total bull**** from the start

The Switch Lite is the second best selling piece of "additional hardware" in Japan, only second to the 3DS XL. And that sold 187,480 units just about 10,000 units more than the Switch Lite (177,936). The Switch Lite was never going to sell anywhere close to 300k units in Japan at launch.

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