Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano PS3 was selling poorly due to a combination of factors. Primarily that really terrible price for the system at launch. I know that's why I jumped ship to the 360.

I get that a loud bunch of gamers online are very upset about the cross-play thing, but I really doubt it's going to impact PS5 sales too much if Sony does everything else right.

@Ralizah If you've been on a certain other site lately, you'll realise Sony could kill your kids, break your legs, lose your credit card information, raise the price of PS+, drop half of their systems like a hot rock after 6 months and as long as they still had Naughty Dog people would be on their knees doing a special kind of worship.

What's sad is half of the things in that list actually happened yet here we are.

@Knuckles-Fajita What amazes me are the people who say something to the effect of "Oh, I wouldn't want to play with those dirty Xbox One/Switch owners anyway!"

And people say Nintendo fans are fanatical!

@Ralizah I see the crossplay and Fortnite situation potentially ending up more like the Nintendo situation with 3rd parties in the N64 era.

@Grumblevolcano Nah. Third parties don't care as long as it's cheap and easy to release games on the PS5 and they continue to sell well. If anything, the Switch would be having an N64-esque problem with third parties regarding the prices of their cartridges if they didn't have digital distribution to fall back on. It's why so many games are either digital-only or force you to download half of the game.

Besides, Sony could always relent on their cross-play policy if it ends up hurting them next gen. Market it as a pro-consumer, "for the players!" move to pander to the easily manipulated core gaming audience.

@Ralizah This is the company that lost peoples financial details, didn't mention it for a week, didn't fix it for god knows how long, and then people said yeah I'll pay MORE for this service.

This is the company that said work two jobs to buy our box and people were like "Okay daddy".

This is the company that has actually got people saying "Handheld gaming is dead because the Vita didn't work therefore it cant work".

To be clear, I dont like fanboys of any company. They are a business. You are a number. I am a number to every business. You may have friends who WORK for these companies, but the executives, when it comes to getting you involved, only see numbers.

But these guys? So long as they keep getting lip service and being told what they like, they'll keep on giving lip service right back and being dismissive of anything otherwise, just because the position Sony has built up ever since 2013 isn't, "For The Players", it's not what's best for the gamers.

It's "We Are Superior".

Hell just look at the language Jim Ryan uses. "Europe if Fortress PlayStation. We have 90% market share in some regions. We wont let anyone take that away".

Like hello, when are we going to get some intervention for monopolistic practices? 90%?

Hell across Europe and the UK they even, slyly, cut the price of the PS4 specifically when Switch launched.

Why would the retailers do this? Well take GAME in the UK, they are our only high street gaming retailer now, at least one that sells games first and foremost. Numerous times they have been on the edge of going under now, and with figures showing PlayStation has 50% hardware and software market share in the UK, when that company says "Cut the price or we go" (Because Sony can live digitally quite happily it seems), GAME will do it. They are barely functioning as is, so the threat of half of the business that is barely keeping them up vanishing is enough for Sony to force hands into actions.

The fact they were allowed to get this big is infuriating, because nothing good will come of it. We already see it across the industry, just the past week or so I and others cant find certain Switch games at retailers. But the PS4 versions are all there. We have to go online now.

When one company forms a monopoly, the fanboys love it, but they dont realise that it's very likely another PS3 is around the corner. Sony has shown they are nothing but smug, arrogant prats who will take the first chance to leap on someone and say "Look how much better we are" but have no response when someone does it back. And their fans act exactly the same. Look at any comment section, any site, its there, always, without fail.

The only time I can think that a company didn't drop the ball going from a successful system to its successor is the NES to SNES, and PS1 to PS2. Every other time, hubris has caught them. It will happen again.

Sure, every company has those diehards, but when the company is being left unchecked and running rampant ripping the industry apart and actively stifling its competition, I have a problem with the fanboys loving it up.

If what various sources are saying about PS5 using Navi exclusively from AMD, then this wont be the case.

Sony loves proprietary hardware and it keeps biting them in the ass. See the Emotion Engine and CELL for that, as well as memory cards.

The fact Sony seems likely to not only spend a fortune on making proprietary graphics technology for itself and no one else tells me not only will the PS5 be quite pricy to cover that R&D, but games will be harder to make.

Here's the thing. What makes the PS4/Xbox One so easy? Its basically PC tech just scaled down. PS5 wouldn't be. Sure it would be based on it, because AMD, but heavy customisation leads to more work being done.

And if Sony locks Xbox away from Navi, then they will need to go for a cheaper, off the shelf, already known, already in PCs equivalent.

Which would make the next Xbox not only cheaper by comparison due to not using proprietary tech, but easier and cheaper to develop at least in part due to the overlap with existing PC tech.

@Knuckles-Fajita If the PS5 is using proprietary architecture, then that spells bad news for backwards compatibility, something Microsoft has been building up to for quite some time now. Imagine if the Xbox Two (or as I'll call it the NextBox) has full backwards compatibility with Xbox One games, you can still play some NextBox games on your Xbox One X, and Game Pass is built up even more. Honestly, with all that in mind, the PS5 might be worse-off than the NextBox.

Microsoft is seemingly done with this generation, but next "generation" is going to be really interesting.

@EvilLucario The reports state proprietary GRAPHICS architectures. Not CPU, which is the bigger kick in the teeth.

Problem is, the GPU is what made the PS4, lets be real. That CPU isn't doing jack all but being a huge bottleneck. Plus, the next jump for systems isn't in graphics, unless they really want the tagline "4k more often than not now".

The next jump is in CPU, geometry, physics simulations, AI calculations. But that's not Sony's focus.

But it's also worth mentioning, that it is incredibly rare for the most powerful system to be the best seller. In fact, it is often the opposite. The system that sells best is the easiest to understand, buy, and make games for.

If the PS5 has GPU tech that isn't going to be on PCs or any other system, thats a huge barrier to making games for it. That requires more work than it does now.

@EvilLucario
IF Xbox Two really exist...
I really wish Xbox Two can play ALL Region XBOX 1, XBOX 360 & Old XBOX games.

I want to play DDR Ultramix 1 - 4 from Old XBOX, DDR Universe 1 - 3 + Dance Evolution + Kinect Games from XBOX 360, The Sims 4 + Portal Knights from XBOX 1 on New XBOX machine.

But once again. I said IF ....

@Anti-Matter At best the backwards compatibility on the next Xbox will be everything that's playable on XB1. I think it'll be everything that's playable on XB1 except the XB1 Kinect exclusives (Microsoft keeps distancing themselves from Kinect so I could see them have no way to play Kinect games on the next Xbox).

@Knuckles-Fajita Yeah, I'm still waiting to see how that plays out. I can't imagine Sony would be that dumb. Not after the issues the PS3 had. Not after how successful their design philosophy and marketing strategy for the PS4 was.

You know how the PS4 Pro works right?

It's an overclocked PS4 CPU, which uses more power and generates a lot more heat as a result. A much larger GPU, widening the gulf between the already bottleneck heavy CPU from the base PS4, and to compensate it's a faster, more power hungry fan, and a significantly larger heatsink.

Hardly the pinnacle of hardware design when the One X and Switch surpass their predecessors and actively shrink in size.

But this is the thing. Sony was on top of the world once before. And then the PS3 happened. The exact same signs are showing again.

But if they use Navi, and its exclusive for them, they just handed a price, and ease of development win to Xbox.

Obviously though, people will eat it up.

Well... considering that PS3 is still considered a "success" and even catch up to Xbox 360, and how developers constantly develop for it...

Yeah, no matter what Sony does, no matter how bad they stumble, they'll come back, and devs and consumers will still support them.

@Ralizah
Oh, I wouldn't want to play with those dirty Xbox One/Switch owners anyway

I've seen this sentiment on Reddit. And I don't think it's damage controlling either- A lot of these fans genuinely believe they are superior, genuinely believe they are smarter than all other gamers because they bought a PS4, and that only an idiot would buy any other console.

I've never been a fan of Sony as a company for a wide range of reasons- notably dropping the Vita so soon, and the games they did make for it were all B studio spinoffs, in stark contrast to Nintendo manning up and supporting Wii U despite it being a failure, and still giving gamers their very best from their top studios. But I don't really hold anything against them personally- they are just a company and as such I'm still going to buy their products if I like them. I'm sure the actual people who work at Sony are awesome, even if the company's policies arent.

So I can deal with Sony as a company even if their policies tick me off more times than not. It's the diehard fans I can't stand though.

I have found the most levelheaded gamers are ones who own multiple consoles. Even if they prefer one over the other they still recognize the merits of other platforms. Whereas people who only own a single brand of console or handheld, they get in this bubble where they think nothing else has merit and nothing else is worth buying or owning. There are the kinds of people who say "I'm not going to buy that system for one game", when people who actually own the system are actually drowning in great games. It's bias, where they convince themselves no other system is viable and none of the countless games on the other platforms have any merit. I don't care if you're the most diehard PS fan on earth. There are countless amazing Nintendo Switch games, and if only one game appeals to you then I simply question your judgment as a gamer, especially when those people were the one screaming and hollering about how awesome the Vita library was just a few years ago. And likewise for Nintendo fans who say they won't buy a PS4 for one game. I don't care who you are, there is more than one great game on PS4. Even if you refuse to see it.

@JaxonH It's been Sony's marketing tactic this past console cycle and since we are seeing the same sentiments for diehard Sony fans, it seems to have worked.

They believe, truly, that their experience is best and everything else is inferior, as are the players.

That's....honestly? That's a really unhealthy thing to see.

Even when I was a complete Nintendo fanboy, I never thought PS2 or even original Xbox were bad and were always happy to play their games. I just thought Nintendo was better.

That being said, while that attitude is unhealthy...for a lot of gamers, PS4 was the clear best choice until this became an issue. Like Wii U lacked 3rd party games, Xbox One was an expensive, less powerful Ps4 and a really good PC was still a bit expensive. So it was the cheapest way to get the best quality and quantity of new games for most gamers. But these things don't last forever. I remember the PS3 launch.

Gotta remember the next generation effectively removes the past.

The consumers are looking for a reason to give you money for a new box, and if Sony stays on this course, and Microsoft and Nintendo stick to theirs, people will be looking at the reverse of 2013. It doesn't matter to Sony now, but it will, because a new system is a giant reset button.

All that goodwill? Gone.

Like I was here, right on this very forum, where I proclaimed Sony the clear deserving winner of the generation the moment they presented themselves as the good guys who WOULDN'T try to destroy the used games market, and with a cheaper priced console than the Xbox One that understood that gamers liked to play video games. But that didn't mean I trusted Sony to be some flawless company that could do no wrong. Anyone who thinks so is an absolute fool.

@subpopz Because people would rather worship a hunk of plastic than shut up and play games. Crossplay is so helpful to third-party games that have online too, allowing much greater playerbases at once. It allows much more games to thrive together instead of being segmented away in everyone's own walled gardens.