Topic: Is The Switch 2 Worth It???

@Bolt_Strike Nintendo's already stated that while physical Switch 2 editions count as Switch 2 software sales, digital Switch 2 editions count as Switch 1 software sales. So talking about the top 10 all time sellers list is meaningless as the data will always be incomplete.

Figured I might put my thoughts down in a post that's in a slightly less argumentative format. Basically, people buy gaming hardware to play games. The value of that hardware only exists as a measure of how many games you're interested in it can run and how well it runs them for you. That's it

Now in the past with previous console generations things were different. SNES -> N64 there were entirely different kinds of games being made, entirely different processes, entirely different ways of everything going on. These systems where wholly incompatible. Even if you were to "port" a SNES game to the N64 it would come out as a different game. And to some degree it was a similar thing between N64 and PS or N64 and Saturn or Dreamcast. There were some overlap but, broadly, these were very different systems. So most of the value of the N64 was in the count of exclusives

But even so, this was just the same thing as above. The value of the N64 only existed as a measure of how many games you were interested in it could run and how well it ran them for you. It just so happened that that generally aligned with the count of exclusives

With the Switch -> Switch 2? It's obviously a different kind of transition, and presumably one that's also a bit foreign to the Nintendo fandom. Especially given it has been a decade since anything has happened at all. But it's still the same thing in the end. But maybe the question here should be flipped. Of course in some part the value of the Switch 2 will come from the games only it runs. But in my mind the value of the Switch 2 is less about what the Switch 2 adds, instead it's more a question of what the Switch was ceding

The Switch 2 has great exclusives and it'll continue to get great games. No doubt in my mind about that. But more importantly it's not asking me to boot into a 720p OS in 2026. It's not struggling to maintain a stable framerate in largely 2D games. It can run modern multiplatform titles and gives me the option to get them on it rather than somewhere else. And of course like the Switch before it it's still portable, which I personally value in terms of "how well a game runs for me". The point being, the Switch had a solid amount of value, the Switch was "worth it" to answer the thread title. But the amount that it was worth was eroding. The Switch 2 winds the clock back

Yes, of course, the big hitters matter. For marketing purposes especially they want that big, clear, in your face reason for someone to buy their hardware. No question. But at the end of the day...... the end user just wants to play games. They want access to those games. They want those games to run well. Those are the things that matter. And that can, and often is, a complex list of multi-platform games, ports, cross-gen, remasters, remakes and backwards compatibility in addition to the shiny new AAA exclusives

@skywake
It's all good, man.

It's an awesome system, and more people are going to realize it as time goes on and the internet's whole "we hate anything new, we hate anything popular" thing passes.

Just imagine how much hate PS6 is going to get. Or... literally anything xbox does 🤔

@FishyS
Oh yea - Xbox is toast regardless of what they do.

I do feel like the internet tends to give Sony more grace, but once they announce the PS6 starting at 600 bucks and no more disc drive… buckle up lol

Although that won’t be until next year for just the announcement, it sounds like.

@skywake You're hyperfocusing on one specific comment I made instead of the overall point. Even when I made that statement in the first place, I didn't just talk about the backwards compatibility, I talked about how the sales data shows that new games outsell old games. There's no weaseling out of this going on, you keep focusing on the technicalities of BC vs. ports as if that is some sort of gotcha and not addressing the larger point that there is ample data to show that people buy new games more than they do old games. And then when I ask for evidence you do not provide any and just continue to spout your unsubstantiated conclusion.

The alternative, far more substantiated explanation for why the Switch took off was because it had a lot of major tentpole games early. Some of them were Wii U ports yes, the Wii U ports had more of a benefit because less people had a Wii U, but not all of them were. Mario Odyssey is not a Wii U port. Splatoon 2 is not a Wii U port. The following years also had original, non-port tentpoles like Smash Ultimate, Luigi's Mansion 3, Pokemon SwSh, and ACNH. I get sick of people calling the Switch a Wii U port machine because they seem to completely forget that these games exist, and in fact not only did these games not exist on Wii U but for most of them there was no game remotely like them on Wii U (the only exceptions on this list are Smash and Splatoon, other than that all of these IPs either failed to get a main series entry on Wii U, or in Odyssey's case got an entry that is very unlike Odyssey). This is the far more likely explanation for what happened with the Switch. Having a first year lineup consisting of a new 3D Mario game, a new cross-gen Zelda, a new entry in their biggest new IP in recent memory, a port of a big Mario Kart game that most people didn't play on Wii U + DLC + even MORE new content was above and beyond. There's a reason why the 2017 lineup is highly regarded, it's because we usually do not get this many tentpole titles in one year.

Fast forward to the Switch 2, and it gets off to a strong start with MKW and Bananza. MKW is absolutely a tentpole title that will sell 10+ million copies and Bananza is ambitious enough and in a recognizable IP that it could potentially crack that threshold too. But after that, you really don't see those kinds of tentpole titles. And unlike the Switch, ports don't work as well for the Switch 2. They looked at the Wii U ports on Switch and think "Huh, I passed this game over because of the Wii U, but it looks interesting, I'll give it another chance". They look at the S2Es and think "Meh, I already played this on Switch, not interested in buying this again". There is FAR less of an untapped market for S2Es than Wii U ports. Pretty much the only people interested in these games that didn't play it weren't born yet. Do they like wide, varied lineups? Sure, who doesn't? But the notion that they don't care about new vs. old games is soundly disproven and you continue to ignore the proof and ramble about your viewpoint. Either address the sales or stop talking about them buying old games on new hardware. We get that you THINK that way since you've said it multiple times already, but without any kind of proof in favor of that viewpoint or counter-evidence against mine (which you continually fail to provide), it's completely detached from reality.

1) Pokemon is also a huge tent pole title regardless of what anyone feels about its quality.

2) Of course NS2 Editions won't have same appeal as Wii U ports, because NS2 Editions are of games already sold to an install base 10x larger than Wii U.

3) Despite Point 2, NS2 Editions will still have appeal, particularly for evergreen titles that continue to sell to this day even on the original Switch.

4) None of this really matters, imo. Switch 2 is estimated at 16m as of Dec 31st, in just under 7 months. Why? We can only speculate. But it's safe to assume it's based on a whole slew of various factors, some more than others, which will evolve over time as different demographics buy in.

I don’t understand the continual need to bring up sales in this topic?
1. The Switch 2 is selling fine.
2. As previously mentioned, as long as it sells enough to receive support, sales shouldn’t really factor too much into the someone’s value of a console.

I also feel there’s a habit here to extrapolate one’s own views of the console as if it’s what the whole market thinks.

It's selling fine.

It's been 7 months. Not every "tentpole" game for the system will be out yet. If it did, we'd have issues and a short lived system.

And if I hear tentpole one more time I'm sending y'all to Glastonbury. Have your tentpole games and your portaloo subscription services.

I think trying to avoid doing that is why sales are brought up; sales are basically the only concrete data point we have of how many people decided Switch 2 was 'worth it'. Sure, a few people may have buyer's remorse afterwards, but if they didn't think it was worth it when they bought it, they should re-examine their purchasing habits.

Is there a better word? There are lots of big games which aren't necessarily ever-green system sellers so it's convenient to have a word to separate the big sellers from the ginormous sellers.

It's quite sad how much anger there is in this thread. So many worse things happening in the world, and people are fighting over a completely subjective opinion.

Not sure if it's your intention, but in the English language, when you write "Sure, a few people may have buyer's remorse," and then write "but if they didn't think it was worth it when they bought it" you are contradicting the second sentence leading up to the second comma with the third, but continuing on as if it's a logical argument.

It is not. These are two groups of people, although the group that doesn't think it's worth it yet buys it anyway is infinitesimal and not represented in this thread.

I bought it. I regret it. It's not worth it yet. Why did I buy it? Because Nintendo used to have a good track record, and I wanted to play MKW. I'm not clairvoyant, I wanted to see for myself. I continued to do so with DKB as well.

It remains not worth it, as of writing. That's at least +1 sales with a negative opinion. Anecdotally I have friends that barely use theirs as well, so there's more. It's not that we don't want to enjoy the device we paid so much for more than we do. We didn't get our opinions from anywhere but our own experiences.

You can't avoid sales when discussing whether something is worth it. Being worth it is reflected in demand, which is reflected in sales. They're inextricably linked. We can speculate the reasons but that data is the one concrete metric we have by which to judge.

And be sure of this- it would be used to argue as evidence against it being worth it if the shoe was on the other foot (and, it would be a fair observation if that were the case).

If someone regrets it... Too bad, I guess. Sell it if it's not worth having. Sunk cost fallacy should never be invoked. Or, ya know, keep it and keep buying games for it and just keep complaining about it for the next 10 years. I'm sure that'll help.

Like, imagine buying a product that's supposed to bring you happiness, yet it only disturbs you emotionally to the point of repeatedly coming online, not to share in happiness or excitement, but to compulsively complain about it.

Your quality of life just got slashed in half. If I owned a device that brought me so much unhappiness and discontentment I felt the need to complain about it online for months on end, I wouldn't even care how much I paid for it. I'd throw that hunk of junk in a dumpster and wash my hands of it.

Anything short of that is a contradiction between words and reality. You couldn't pay me to keep a product that caused me that much discontentment.

That infinitesimal group who thought Switch 2 wasn't worth it but bought it anyways appears to be over-represented on this website (and similar sites) as far as I can tell.

I suspect the number of people who had buyer's remorse is also quite small percentage-wise, though also heavily over-represented on this thread.

And there is definitely a decent overlap in the two categories at least on the Internet. I suspect that is because long time Nintendo fans and game collectors feel some pressure to buy new things even when they don't feel it will be worth it. And, not shockingly, some of them regret it afterwards.

You might want to check out a current events website/forum/thread instead of one focused on video games?

Uh-huh.

Why this thread remains so active despite how trivial and foolish it is absolutely baffles me. Just about everyone here is arguing on completely different frameworks of what makes a console worth it to them and trying to impose their own framework on others. Different people in this thread value the worth of the Switch 2 on criteria such as: how much fun they've had with it overall, the amount of 'tentpole' exclusives, the sales of the console and its games in the long run, et cetera. Even when people are in agreement on certain frameworks, the success of the Switch 2 in said framework can vary wildly from person to person. I've had a great experience with the Switch 2, with both the hardware and games (new and old), so I classify it as worth it for me. Other people may find themselves unsatisfied with the hardware and games, and they would be equally justified deeming it not worth it to them. The problem with this thread comes with people using their own framework and subjective opinions of games and the system itself as the de facto value of the Switch 2. All arguments in this thread amount to most of the time is complaining about the previous poster using a different criterion to oneself.

That's not even considering the other circumstances surrounding each individual's experience with the console. For instance, the more disposable income someone has, the easier it is for the console to be worth it. Additionally, people who have many gaming devices may find themselves playing Switch 2 less often, only really playing when there is a tentpole release; those with fewer gaming platforms will get much more time and value out of the console. There are myriad outside factors which may determine the value of a system outside of what I mentioned previously.

All in all, the various debates held in this thread achieve nothing because people are arguing about the value of the Switch 2 in a manner that completely ignores the importance of the individuality of the person playing the Switch 2 in determining its worth. The real question is if the Switch 2 is worth it to you, not to anyone else.

@UpsideDownRowlet
It's actually been a fascinating psychological sort of thing.

It was started by a forum member (troll) who joined the same day they created the thread and has since contributed a grand total of 10 posts to this forum, the last of which was blocked and was made almost two months ago.

But you gotta hand it to them: they knew what they were doing when they used the phrase "worth it" in the title, along with no fewer than three tasteful question marks.

Anyway, it's one of those question setups where technically the language appears neutral and the OP can hide behind the good ol' "But I'm just asking a question" defense; but in practice it's a pretty biased springboard for disgruntled people to gather and whine as loudly as possible. I hate the phrase, but it's accurate in this case: it's a dog whistle for people just itching to stir up drama.