Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano
No doubt they squandered e3's full potential, basically just a gag reel for Dragonball Fighter Z and countless announcements left on the table.

But I don't think that is actually what's going on here. This is something else. All I know is when games sell they keep coming and when games start flopping they stop coming. And I'm seeing evidence that a number of very high profile, highly demanded titles are going to fail spectacularly. And for the life of me I can't understand why.

I think a pretty decent factor is how September -December 2018 is quite a bit busier than the same time frame last year. Hence why some of the more niche games and ports of Switch games like DS and Dragon ball are low.

Although I think more "core gamers" and people online should be more hyped for VC4( good points made by Jaxon in comment section of the review). Overall, VC is niche.

@JaxonH Maybe the charm of the idea of playing console quality games whenever and where ever you want is no longer exciting to people and do they just don’t care about buying third party games on it. All I can say is that if poor sales leads to third party developers and publishers stopping the shop of the Switch, then Nintendo is going to have a massive problem.

@FragRed
They would indeed have a massive problem, and so would we, since we actually care about this unique system that's offering us something no other gaming system has been able to since the dawn of the retro era.

I honestly don't see how the charm and idea of playing console games could wear off though, given that it's actually the most practical step forward for the industry I've seen in my entire life. It's just dang useful. But, there are a ton of games being ignored and that definitely needs an explanation. It's like people are only paying attention to first party titles and indies. Which means people are paying attention to things that aren't being headlined. I don't know if it's a comfort zone thing where a lot of Nintendo fans just feel comfortable with indie games, yet for some reason don't feel comfortable with retail titles? Idk. But it's very odd seeing so many random indies doing so well and then these amazing retail releases being completely ignored

@subpopz
I believe Nintendo recently said on average 25% of sales were done over the eShop now. I don't know if that is skewed because of digital only releases, but it's definitely not the percentage seen on other consoles, at least not yet.

I do think there has been a massive shift to digital though. It might've only been 10% going into this generation and we more than doubled that to 25% in just a year and a half. Who knows.

For Valkyria Chronicles there's a possible answer at least: I, and probably many others, plan to pick up the cheaper VC1 first before investing in the full priced release. FighterZ and Diablo III both suffer from being late ports many people have on other systems, especially Diablo III. And then FighterZ is in a niche genre to begin with so...

Amazon preorder rankings aren't always indicative of a game's success (or lack thereof).

I definitely plan to purchase FighterZ at the very least, but probably not right away. Busy with Spider-Man and I have a backlog on Switch that I need to clear before buying anything else. That's on top of some non-gaming expenses coming up.

Not everyone pre-orders. In fact people have been burned by pre-ordering quite badly in the past (No Man's Sky comes to mind) so many have learned not to listen to the hype and to wait till reviews come out. And not everyone shops via Amazon either. If I'm buying games online for example, I either go through Walmart, Gamestop, or the company that makes the game to begin with if I know they have a store. This means that, for instance, I shop on the Square-Enix site for their games rather then Amazon, and am more likely to check the Nintendo Eshop then Amazon if I want a new Switch game.

@FaeKnight That's a good point too. I don't preorder anything other than first party titles I'm sure will be good (at the moment that's just Smash Ultimate, but Super Mario Odyssey and a few of the Wii U ports were on that level too) while for third party titles I usually buy them in store at launch. Especially with what happens with games needing patches at launch these days I usually don't buy until there is confirmation that a game is actually playable.

And to look back, people said that both Doom and Wolfenstein flopped based on their pre-order numbers and yet everything we've seen from Bethesda suggests otherwise. So I wouldn't be so certain that these games will flop.

I'm just not really interested in those games, but my pre-order, or lack thereof, wouldn't affect Amazon US

I think I can class myself as a bit of a hardcore Switch owner, for want of a better term. I own over 160 games and buy on average 3 games per week but when it comes to non-indie games, this year I've only bought 3. Two digitally and one at retail.

Mario Tennis
Street Fighter Collection
Octapath Traveller

For me, 2018 has been piss poor and if not for the numerous amazing indie and arcade releases I'd be a very disappointed Switch owner right now. I will buy Wolfenstein 2, looking forward to finally playing that and by the end of the year I will also have bought Dark Souls, FIFA 19, Smash, SNK 40th and possibly Diablo. FIFA is FIFA, Smash is Smash and Diablo I'm not sure if it's my kind of game. So other than Dark Souls and SNK 40th I'd be lying if I said I was excited for any of them.

Games like South Park, Dragon Ball Z, Starlink and Blazblue couldn't interest me less if they tried. YS VIII and Valkyria Chronicles aren't really for me either.

For me, Nintendo has totally dropped the ball on Switch in 2018. As a Wii U owner, their output has been pitiful and the vast majority of big 3rd party releases have not appealed to me. Fortunately next year looks to make up for it dramatically.

This year I skipped a large number of physical releases, only buying a couple - Bayonetta and Octopath Traveller. I found the rest of Nintendo's output pretty poor but then, it was mainly Wii U ports. However I do have Starlink on pre-order mainly due to it being the closest we are likely to get to a proper Star Fox game anytime soon, and it looks pretty decent too. Also have Diablo III on pre-order but I already know I will really like that game, and finally ordered the SNK 40th special edition box set. Come October I will be buying Valkyria Chronicles when it finally releases, then I will buy Valkyria Chronicles 4 later down the road.

I am hoping next year really excited me more in the first party line up for Nintendo and that the third party games continue to sell well enough (even if pre-orders right now look poor) that we continue to see new games.

@JaxonH these games just simply don't appeal to me. Last year though, with fewer games already out and on the horizon, I might have been tempted to pick one of these games up just to try. The reason I bought XC 2 was that I hardly had anything else to play (it turned out I couldn't get into it even so). If that game would arrive this winter, I wouldn't even consider it. I think that's why some games you mention (like Doom) did well last year, and I wonder if these games would perform just as well this year.

I still am considering Diablo though. It's probably either that or Civ 6 (yes, I know... Totally different games ). It al depends on possible other surprise announcements, how I may or may not like Rollercoaster Tycoon and whether I can get back into XC 2 when I try again.

@toiletduck
There's a lot of JRPG fans on Switch though.

I do recommend Xenoblade Chronicles 2 btw. Game is so good.

@link3710
Doom and Wolf 2 hit around #20-50 during their launch week. If a game struggles to break #100 its got problems. Well see, maybe preorders pick up after reviews drop

Or, and this is entirely possible, the people that were going to preorder already have. And everyone else that is going to be buying the game will wait till it releases, that way they aren't potentially suckered into a bad game by hype. I for one rarely preorder anymore. I got burned too many times doing that. And even when I didn't get burned, often I realized it hadn't been worth preordering.

I preordered Monster Hunter World, and I have a preorder for Super Mario Party. And once one becomes available I may put one in for Civ 6 on Switch. But those are the only preorders I've done in the last ten years.

Dark Souls, VC4 and Dragonball Fighter Z are all in the Amazon UK top 100 sales chart for Switch currently, fwiw.

It's going to be all or nothing in 30 minutes!

How do you figure?

@Michele Then I guess it's a whole lot of nothing!

Nintendo's not going to announce the new Direct date until the day before it airs, so announcing tomorrow if they delayed by a week.