Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano Thats exactly what I was thinking. It will prob be a direct if they are not going to reveal anything at TGS.

Yeah, I'm expecting a media-only event followed by a public reveal in a Direct in mid-September. This will allow for media opinions and articles to be posted almost immediately after the Direct is over.

As for the "Directs only reach Nintendo fans" claim, that's rather inaccurate. It may be the Nintendo fans watching them, but the news still reaches far and fast thanks to social media and articles on places like IGN. Besides, for a hardware reveal they'll make sure to give plenty of heads up, so there will be more people watching.

The 3DS? How is that comparable? According to Wikipedia, it was announced 11 months before its release. Its full features were only revealed in January press conferences, a month before its release. By contrast, people seem to expect an NX reveal this fall, just before the Christmas selling season.

"Hey Nintendo fans, we're going to release a brand new portable next March, too late for your Christmas shopping! In the meantime, please buy our aging 3DS consoles and help us keep our rosy sales projections!"

If not done right, this would be a spectacular act of business self-sabotage.They will need to tread carefully.

@cwong15 well they announced a march launch month. So your point is moot.

@WebHead As I said, it's a big difference between announcing 11 months before, and announcing right just before the big Christmas sales season.

@cwong15 It's not like the 3DS was going to sell super well over the holidays anyways. Nintendo's holiday season will depend on software sales (mostly Sun/Moon), DLC, amiibo, and IAPs from their Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem mobile titles.

They've already announced that it's launching in March 2017. The leak we're all getting worked up about says that they're going to announce it officially in September. Hell, in the leak the fact that it's launching in March next year is what has given fuel to the "it might run Tegra X2" theories. Plus if we believe all that then we should also believe the September announcement.

All of which adds up to a fairly reasonable schedule if you ask me. The NX isn't launching this holiday period because NVidia wasn't ready for mass production of X2 chips soon enough. The announcement for the NX wasn't made at E3 because the release date slipped back. So they push it forward a few months so that the post-announcement isn't spread too thin. But not too far forward so it's lost in the end of year madness. So September.

I don't see what the issue is here.

I don't see the issue if Nintendo announce this thing in a direct format. It's not like this is the dark ages where news can't spread quickly before or after to get people to watch it or tell people what the product is about.

They should however go above and beyond their normal level of pre-direct hype to get people to tune in. Announcing on a Monday, or the week before, that a direct will be on Thursday ain't gonna cut it. They should be announcing this almost a month in advance, making it clear that this is the NX launch announcement and back that up with some smart internet advertising such as teaser trailers etc. Just basically a solid 3-4 weeks of trying to get the message across to people to tune in and find out what this is.

And yes, it would also seem smart to make sure that the media is also given a pre-screening or something of this so that clear and accurate articles about the NX can be available immediately afterwards. The worst thing that could happen here is if articles contain a lot of "so the NX will function like this, but whether this will happen or how this will precisely work remains to be seen".

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/pok-mon-mario-and-zelda-headli...

@Octane so port of sun and Moon most likely.

If nx runs breath of the wild better than my wii U, it'll be officially acceptable as a home system replacement for me. Phone and casual and blue ocean stories be damned - as long as those deeper quality games keep coming I'm in.

@erv Didn't Nintendo say it'll run and look better on NX or was that one of those things that was misinterpreted?

I kinda hope that Breath of the Wild isn't the only "Wow, I did not expect that" from Nintendo during the reveal - as in known franchises getting a big makeover and trying something new.

@FragRed One of those things that were misinterpreted, could run exactly the same.

@FragRed I think they said identical. I imagine nx version will look and run same as Wii u version.

Though I'd be surprised if it doesn't look better if it's running that Tegra chip as rumoured, even if it's the X1. I think it's fair to expect the NX version to at the very least have the settings turned up a tad. Even if it's just slightly longer draw distances, slightly better AA.

Apparently xilinx, the company that help develop eye tracking on new 3ds, is working on nx.

@WebHead Where you hear that? I'm intrigued as to what that could mean.

@FragRed see HappyNintendoFan on twitter

The 'it won't appeal to PS4 fans' quote worries me for a variety of reasons.

I jumped ship from the Wii after Nintendo's very own (first party) support came to an abrupt halt in their fourth year; it got so bad, I bought my first PlayStation console, the PS3 slim.

The Wii U suffer from something similar - I was starved so badly for all the good third party games, that I eventually purchased a PlayStation 4 last April (with Bloodborne).

The 'a bit of a novelty' quote also has me worried too!

@Peek-a-boo
Yea, the word "novelty" just leaves a cheap, not-so-great feeling in my mouth.

But I don't know. Maybe the hardware itself will be viewed as a bit of a "gimmick" (I'm sorry - I shudder using that word, too), but as long as the games are top-notch, I'm good to go. And again, we know a couple third parties are already on board, and then we'll just have to wait and see what the install base shapes up to be. There's really no way of knowing until we get to that point.