Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@ReaderRagfish
Fair point, but it’s important to keep that number in perspective. There’s over 350 million US citizens. So less than 0.3%

Of course, you’d have to account for the number of people who don’t have Internet at all because they don’t have access, and find out how many of those people are gamers (because people who live out in the boonies who don’t have access might skew older, or have a lower percentage of gamers than other demographics, we don’t really know)

@subpopz
Clearly there’s some barriers that streaming will have to overcome, but lag seems to be mostly a non issue. The Stadia has the equivalent lag of an Xbox, which for most gamers is going to be good enough.

I’m not sure what the average American connection is, but, I am willing to bet that the average connection for the gamer demographic is going to skew much higher than the average connection for people in general. Not to mention, if upgrading internet speed package one tier higher is the only obstacle between buying a $300-400 console at launch, and just playing games on demand, I think a good number of casuals would opt to simply upgrade their Internet to the next tier up.

That said I don’t expect it to eat a large chunk of the market out the gate, I expect it to be a gradual increase over the next decade. We saw how quickly Netflix took over when it released. Sometimes you don’t see it coming until it’s already there.

A lot of people have also been predicting the death of the home console for the last decade or more with pretty much constant regularity.

I'm sure streaming will become more prominent, but it's unlikely to become the dominant distribution model for gaming software in the United States with our information infrastructure being the way it is. "Very big companies" and tech writers will prattle on about it, of course, because they live in a bubble, but mass adoption will still be unlikely in the world's largest gaming market.

As file sizes increase, the concept of "physical media" will become increasingly dodgy. Home consoles discs are already nothing more than glorified install discs, and even then, huge chunks of data still have to be downloaded on top of that. That trend isn't going to reverse. Games will still have "physical" versions if only to maintain a retail presence and avoid the optics associated with abandoning discs completely, but you'll absolutely be downloading the majority of the actual data required to play the game sooner than later.

@JaxonH there is rumor of xbox "lockhart" not having a disc drive but that's off topic.

It'll be interesting in a few years to finally see the answer to the big question "Does a console need exclusives to sell well?".

@Grumblevolcano I think the answer will always be a yes, the question is how good quality do they need to be to shift hardware outside of the core deviated fan base? Nintendo relies almost entirely on first party to drum up interest in their consoles while Microsoft seems to be taking the quantity over quality approach for their Game Pass service. It will be interesting to see what the new studios they now own will come out with to see if quality improves.

lol guys physical is definitely going away, and soon.

Physical releases will be left to major releases only along with boutique, special runs for certain games and from niche companies.

The argument about the infrastructure thing has always been funny to me. Guess what: these massive companies genuinely do not care if you're one of a million Americans or whatever that still have dial-up. I'm an American, and I live in a relatively "middle of nowhere" small town in coal country - I've had access to broadband for the last decade, if not more. Those "million people" (however accurate that is) are probably spread across the country in the craziest places like need-a-plane-to-get-my-house Alaska, off-the-grid Wyoming, etc.

And the "people have been saying consoles are going away for years, but look!" argument is not analogous to this lol Software and hardware are a bit different. One literally runs the other.

MS is aiming to be the Netflix of gaming. The leading rumor is that they'll be entering the next generation of platforms with two SKUs. One that'll be the traditional set box while the other will be a download/streaming-only device. MS is introducing a discless Xbox One later this year as a testbed for that plan.

To corroborate that rumor, MS plans to mash together Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live together as one service. Ready to be made available on all devices possible, maybe even the Switch.

@Magician Most of that makes sense, except the streaming-only SKU never made sense at all. The whole point of streaming is to put their service on EVERYTHING. No special set top box is needed or useful for that. You just need ANY Windows (or presumably, Andriod, iOS, or MacOS device) and an XBox controller...maybe a special controller like Google's....but I'm not sure if I'd count that as a dedicated XBox Sku if it's just a controller to use with streaming profile saving and such built in. I'm thinking the two skus are just the disc/discless versions of Scarlett.

@NEStalgia lockhart is replacing one s and anaconda is replacing one x. I think there was rumor of a streaming only box but i think that turned into lockhart

On topic I expect a direct before E3. Gotta talk about Mario Maker at some point.

@WebHead That sounds a lot more right.

I think the “average American” hasn’t yet had need to go beyond 18mbps. As soon as the day comes they have need of it, they won’t hesitat to upgrade. Like... the average American didn’t have a blue ray player 20 years ago. But as soon as Blu-ray’s started hitting the market, the need shifted and people bought one. Now, the average American might not yet have the speeds necessary. But that’s because they haven’t needed those speeds yet. Once you present the need, they’ll upgrade the speed. Just like if someone needs a console to play games, they buy one. On top of which, the “average American” is dragged down by 100 million non-gamers who just want to browse the net on their iPad- avid gamers will almost certainly skew higher for average speed.

Final Fantasy X one week countdown has begun. My favorite RPG of all time. One of my favorite video games of all time. I hope it releases at midnight but it probably won’t. At least the download will be ready when I get home from work the next day.

What is there to talk about? SMM2 is slated for a late June release. It's fair to assume Nintendo will shadow-drop a demo during E3, two weeks before the game's launch. Leave everything else a secret.

Personally I only want to hear more info about links awakening. Is it a straight 1:1 port( with visual upgrade) of the dx version or are we getting more ?

With e3 coming in just 60 short days, I’m not expecting a Direct before then. But, stranger things have happened. I do recall a direct coming a year or two ago in April or May, add a time when I thought they’d just wait for E3, so...

And I suppose with the BestBuy leak, and Reggie leaving, and Persona 5S reveal later this month, I don’t think it’s beyond unreasonable to expect one (although even if we did get one, and P5 is coming, I still half expect to hear nothing of it until late April/e3).

Idk. I’m expecting nothing... if we do get something, great. If not, I’ll wipe my tears with Darksiders, Final Fantasy X, Dragons Dogma, LABO VR Blaster game and Zelda/Odyssey VR, Cuphead, SteamWorld Quest, Final Fantasy XII, Mortal Kombat XII, Team Sonic Racing, Assassins Creed 3 + Liberations, Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil HD, Resident Evil 4 and Saint’s Row.

That should be enough to keep me busy until the expo!

And regardless of what happens between now and this e3 (let’s assume no Persona 5 or Metroid Prime Trilogy or Ori and the Blind Forest) there’s still Mario Maker 2, Crash Team Racing, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Astral Chain, Daemon X Machina, Dragon Quest XI S, Wolfenstein Youngblood, DOOM Eternal, Pillars of Eternity 2, Animal Crossing, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Pokémon Sword/Shield, Zelda Link’s Awakening and I’m sure a slew of other titles yet to even be announced (Pikmin 3, I see you). I love thinking about all the games coming this year. Every time I feel down and out over a game I want that hasn’t been announced yet, I remind myself of all that’s coming in the next half year (especially Fire Emblem, oh how I need thee!)

@JaxonH I'm pretty packed with games to play myself. Darksiders, Celeste and enter the gungeon(both on sale), cuphead and I havent even touched yoshis crafted world yet. Not to mention I'll be grabbing some RE before Mario maker. Great year indeed

Other than June being kind of barren (Super Mario Maker 2 and Crash Team Racing, not much else) I think an April Direct would be nice for outlining the summer releases. It's fair to assume all the heavy hitters (Pokemon Sword/Shield, Animal Crossing, and Luigi's Manion) are going to be the October, November, December releases to bookend 2019 and be the cause for Switch's possibly best holiday sales to date.

Super Mario Maker 2 is the key that suggests a Direct before E3. First we don't know when in June it releases (there's some retailer rumours of 14th/21st but nothing confirmed), second we don't that much about the game itself and finally Nintendo's not one to say nothing for months and then reveal everything like a week before launch (they're more likely to spoil lots over a month before launch).

It's the game where you make Mario levels, right? And now it has slopes? 'Nuff said

Celeste, what an unbelievably good game it is. I played it back when it came out and got as far as the Oshiri chase and stopped playing. I liked it but I didn't love it. I started over again a couple of days ago and I'm now up to the 7th level. I don't know what's come over me the last 3 months, I've been getting properly stuck into my backlog and actually completing games. Something I've never really done in the past. I've beaten Golf Story, Cursed Castilla, Hollow Knight and just recently The Messenger. By tomorrow I should be adding Celeste to that list. Up next is Hyper Light Drifter.