Topic: 2019 concerns

Yeah, the neverending Nintendoomed is kinda old. Well actually....

I don't have concerns.

Nintendo supported the Switch with sequels of their biggest franchises.

We got a brandnew 3D Mario platformer, a brandnew Super Smash Bros., a brandnew Mario Party, a brandnew Mario Tennis, and remakes of the newest 2D Mario platformer and newest Mario Kart, and even Captain Toad was resurrected.
We got a brandnew Zelda, and a brandnew Fire Emblem Warriors, and superb versions of the latest Hyrule Warriors, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Bayonetta 1 & 2 games.
We got two brandnew Xenoblade games and a brandnew Splatoon game.
We got a brandnew Kirby game and Pokémon fans already received Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu, Pokémon Let's Go Eevee, Pokémon Tekken DX, and Pokémon Quest.

Nintendo even published remakes of Go Vacation, Dragon Quest Builders, and The World Ends With You.
They collaborated with Ubisoft on Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and Starlink: Battle for Atlas.
They renewed the deal with Microsoft to keep Mario Land (skin) in the Switch version of Minecraft.

And like most of you may know, a new generation Pokémon game, a brandnew Animal Crossing game, a brandnew Yoshi game, a brandnew Luigi's Mansion game, a brandnew Fire Emblem game, a brandnew Metroid Prime game + Metroid Prime HD Trilogy, and a brandnew Shin Megami Tensei game + possible Persona remake are on Nintendo's schedule. I'm not concerned.

Even with all these projects Nintendo still had time to release new stuff like ARMS, Snipperclips, LABO, Octopath Traveler, Flip Wars, Sushi Striker, Fitness Boxing, 1-2-SWITCH, the Nintendo Switch Online NES library, and a Japanese game stream feature for demanding Capcom and Ubisoft games.

When all of the big hitters are out of the way it's time for the underdog gems to get revitalized with a sequel or remake! FINALLY!
Pikmin, F-ZERO, Excite Truck/Bike, Chibi-Robo, Endless Ocean, Sin & Punishment, Paper Mario, Mario Maker, WarioWare DIY, Another Code, Hotel Dusk, Star Fox, Wave Race, Tetrisphere, 1080°, Punch-Out!!, Rhythm Paradise, EarthBound, Nintendogs+cats, and many more have now a better chance to be considered.

I haven't even stepped into any of the amazing 3rd Party and indie support, but I don't need to since I'm already not concerned.

These numbers could tell you something, but they don't decide. The players decide. And I played most of these games and was surprised by the fixes, changes, and overall quality of the brandnew games/sequels.

Mario Tennis? Great single player mode and super balanced gameplay again! So, back to the top!
Smash? Everyone Is Here! Back to the top!
Mario Party? Back to the roots! Back to the top!
3D-Mario? It's an adventure like 64 and Sunshine? Back to the top!
Xenoblade? The world is going to get you sooner or later! Back to the top!
Zelda? Open World and so much freedom! Back to the top!
The list could go on, but I call it quits since I'm not concerned.

@Yorumi I’m sure they’d have takers but I’m also doubtful that the takers would be the A teams at (for instance) Bethesda or Ubisoft?

Sparing resources to make a relatively modest strategy game is one thing - tying up your best devs to make an open world Pikmin game instead of having them work on the next Assassins Creed or Elder Scrolls is another thing entirely.

Likewise buying in programming support is fine but you need a sufficiently experienced team overseeing it. That’s where I think Nintendo might be lacking.

Nintendo right now sits at the nexus between the super creative indie devs who push mechanics and the AAA studios who push scale and spectacle (but who are very conservative mechanically).

2019, as others have already said, looks great from a first-party perspective, with tons of big games like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, and more on the way. Hopefully we get a direct soon to detail some of those games.

However, this year is also already shaping up to be a fantastic year for third-party games, with huge titles like Mortal Kombat 11, DOOM Eternal, Crash Team Racing, Daemon x Machina, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, the last two of which are even Switch exclusives. This isn't even mentioning smaller third-party games coming this year as well, like Trials Rising, Digimon Survive, Town, etc.

Just because we haven't had a Direct yet doesn't mean Nintendo is doomed. They've got a plan, and I imagine the highly trained and experienced businesspersons at the head of Nintendo have a better plan for the year than fanboys on gaming forums could ever come up with!

Why are we talking about outsourcing big Nintendo IPs at all? Isn't this the same week that Takahashi had to announce in front of the white wall of shame that Bamco just FUBARed Metroid over a year and a half period?

@StuTwo Looking at how Fallout 76 went and where TESVI is going to go, dedicating some, or all of the TES team to an open world Pikmin game might be what's best for everyone.

@NEStalgia Didn't they say that TESVI won't enter full development until Starfield or whatever it's called is done?

Oh well, we'll still see it before Final Fantasy VII Remake is done

@IceClimbers They said that, yes. But they also said both it and Starfield are going to use the same broken POS engine they've been using fro all their broken games (while parent company Zenimax makes a perfectly serviceable TES MMO without all the bugs in their own engine................. )

So, yeah, full time open world Pikmin.....they really should just spend the bank on that......it'll be a lot less embarrassing than flushing their entire legacy down the porcelain accelerator one game at a time.

@Yorumi That's probably overly pessimistic as well. Yes, the industry as a whole has a problem, but even the "mainstream" stuff is often quite good. There's a lot to like about it. It's like really great sounding Chinese speakers that sell for $500, and sound comparable to overpriced $9,000 British speakers......but the cones fall out in a month, the jacks aren't attached correctly and may need some tweaking, the tweeter and woofer have a slight phase imbalance (but with a soldering iron and a multimeter you can fix it! yourself!), the fabric disintegrates in a few years, and the solder joints eventually smoke. That's pretty much many Western games now. They're actually good, fun, interesting games if you get over the bias....they're just made really poorly with bad QC and fall apart fast.

Except Bethesda. Those games aren't actually even quality, fun, or including a game anymore.

@Yorumi I agree in some aspects, but I think some of that stereotyping is a little dated, as well. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey of all things has an "I can't believe it's not BoTW" mode, that explicitly turns of much of the interface and makes you stumble around and find things. It's the recommended mode "as the develoer's intend it." Streamlining isn't always bad as well. I find I do appreciate many of the modern streamlining efforts in games. Not the 7th gen garbage, that was bad, but recently they've really been striking a balance. Though I'm not an "I want it tough as nails" gamer like some around here are either.

I can't comment on Skyrim though. 4 copies of the game (360, PSVR, X1X, Switch) and I still haven't played it. I find Oblivion was the high water mark of the series, but going back and playing again recently on 1X, I find it could actually use some streamlining....aspects are still more obtuse than they really should be and don't respect players time. I'm all about respecting my time in games. It will always be my favorite, but it was better 13 years ago.

I do agree on way too much cinematics though. too many games I spin up and have to wait an hour of cutscenes before I'm told "press B to do this thing." And that's just the beginning.

Immersion isn't dead, it's the main thing they're going for, with RDR2 being the height of that (yeah core gameplay is hot garbage, but immersion is there if nothing else.) Tactics, strategy, etc....yeah...I do agree....to a point....until I see new players struggle mightily. Then I remember, that flying a Huey is really really complicated, but for the guy that does it every day, it's not even a challenge unless the weather is particularly bad. We're long time gamers, we're used to all the quirks and got up to speed on them through it being routine for us. We don't realize the strategy and skills just come automatically to us so what seems easy to us is an impossibly daunting effort to someone who doesn't have our experience. It's really easy to forget just how much innate skill we've developed with this otherwise complicated tools. Retro games were their own thing. it wasn't really skill, it was bad design we compensated for through undue effort

I have mixed feelings, I don't want games to become the new television where it takes no effort. OTOH we do this for entertainment, not money. They incessant chorus of "git gud, put the time in, learn to get better" sounds ever more like we expect games to have a financial return for success or something. There's other things in life to do all that work for. Gaming needs to strike a balance of stimulation and relaxation. It might fail, but that's really it's ideal spot. Shooters, certainly, are rote however. Yet I can't disagree with fetch quests, identical sequels etc. But I also can't deny there's a big market that doesn't just "accept" that....that's what they enjoy. I know some of those people. They really have fun with it. Nothing wrong with it. I can enjoy some of those games, but they also get tiring for me. Then again I'm a Knack super-fan, so what to I know (I still insist Knack is crazy fun.....I played Knack II 3 times. Second time I 100%'ed the secrets, third time played highest difficulty with all the upgrades ) "GAMERZ" seem to hate the game though.

I do agree on 90's shooters as well. Q2 engine games, some Q3 engine games were the best era. Though...do they even make corridor shooters now other than Doom? I haven't played any. And I think I own almost every current gen AAA game that isn't horror.....

Bioware....sigh.....well, I mean Bioware is dead. Black Isle was the heart of BG. Black Isle is split between Obsidian and IneXile now. And now MS. What is called "Bioware" is just an EA Studios division....it hasn't been Bioware since Jade Empire (amazing, if short, game.) And I join you in missing Freespace.....top 10 games of all time, period.

Still, I do think your pessimism is a bit dated. You're describing the worst era of gaming from the 7th gen into the 8th. It really was that bleak then. I'd actually mostly stopped gaming for a brief while (3DS brought me back in.) But it's been fun seeing some of the good ideas that were poorly realized back then be melded with more solid decisions in the past 4 years or so. I think if you're looking for the problems, and expecting to see what you saw then, you'll find them, but you'll miss a lot of the effort to fix that and it's mixed, but usually good results.

Except EA and Bethesda. Screw them. They're not even trying, they're doubling down on the bad.

@SKTTR

I buy Nintendo systems for Nintendo games, the whole concept of "AAA" games has always seemed ridiculous game and pointless PR jargon the industry came-up with to hype certain games/projects over others.

Anywho 2019 is giving us SMASH DLC, a NEW Animal Crossing Game, Yoshi's Crafted World and that's only what we know about. We will probably get a fair amount of surprises as the year goes on and theirs still a chance no matter how small Bayonetta 3 could come out near the end of 2019.

So yea i'm not worried.

My only real complaint is the online service is still clunky and Smash & Mario Tennis freeze a bit too often at times, if they can get that problem fixed i'm good. Heck I still have games from 2017 & 2018 to catch-up on.

Per thread title: Yes, I am concerned about 2019. Just as I was concerned for 2018. Forum predicted it would be a terrible year what with no hard hitters like BotW or Odyssey or Mario Kart or Splatoon, and forum was 100% correct.

@Yorumi You might be happy with taking Crosscode a look then, the quest style is like what you are asking iirc. (Try out the online demo if you want?)

2019 is gonna be great for Nintendo. There's Yoshi's Crafted World, the new Pokemon game, Luigi's Mansion 3 and possbily more that I am missing.

I'm very concerned about 2019. My main concern is that I STILL don't have enough time or money to play all the games I want to play on the Switch. I just bought Smash, still didn't get Tales of Vesperia, and Wargroove is coming out in two days. What a horrible year this is turning out to be.

@JasmineDragon this is me. Too many games and not enough time to play and this is just counting the first party games.

There aren't too much games I'm looking forward to... but I don't have a lot of time to play video games either... I love Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing and Pokémon so I'm happy if 1 or 2 of these release in 2019. I could last a year with one of these games, if I really wanted to.

@JasmineDragon I know the feeling! Still have a fairly large backlog from the past year to work my way through and there's quite a few games I skipped that I'd like to pick up eventually too. That's on top if anything new this year.

Love the switch but it’s not looking great this year.

PS4, Xbox and pc have already had kingdom hearts and the amazing resident evil 2 this year.
Crackdown 3, far cry new dawn, metro exodus - these are a few of February releases.

Tin hat on but it just feels like a wave after wave of mobile-like quality crap on the switch at the moment.

@Punisher67 Definitely is a conspiracy theory. We already have Daemon, Yoshi, MUA 3, FE, Animal Crossing, and LM 3 confirmed for 2019. That’s not even mentioning multi-platform and unannounced games.