Topic: How Would You Rate This Year For the Switch? (2023)

Hello again for the third time in a row I'm going to be summarizing all the majuor releases for the year and give my overall opinion on it. My apologies in advance if I miss any it may be because I don't consider them that "big" or just skip them out of laziness.

With that out of the way let's see what 2023 had in store for the Switch:

January:
Fire Emblem Engage
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

February:
Metroid Prime Remastered
Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society
Digimon World: Next Order
Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe
Octopath Traveler II

March:
Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

April:
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection
Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
Trinity Trigger

May:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Farming Simulator 23: Nintendo Switch Edition

June:
We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie
Sonic Origins Plus
Pikmin 1+2 (EU)
Everybody 1-2-Switch!

July:
Pikmin 4
Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons
Disney Illusion Island

August:
Moving Out 2
Red Dead Redemption
Samba de Amigo: Party Central

September:
Rune Factory 3 Special
NBA 2K24
Super Bomberman R 2
Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster
Mortal Kombat 1
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos
EA Sports FC 24
Pikmin 1+2 (US)

October:
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless
Detective Pikachu Returns
Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition
Sonic Superstars
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged
Super Mario Bros. Wonder

November:
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
WarioWare: Move It!
DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2
Hogwarts Legacy
Super Mario RPG
Persona 5 Tactica
The Walking Dead: Destinies

December:
Batman Arkham Trilogy
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

And with that, those were all the relevant/major release I could think of at the top of my head, overall I think this was easily one of the best years for the Switch and for gaming in general easily.
Droughts were few and far between and there was variety throughout the year so not much to complain about.

I would rate the years in terms of quality games released like:

2017 > 2021 > 2023 > 2022 > 2019 >2020 > 2018

What do you all think of this year? And how does it compares to the others in your opinion?

Even on this year 2023, I still don't have that much excitement with Switch games like used to be as my hype on PS4 games is still on fire and I started to get hyped with PS5 kids games.
I will give my judgement like this.

PS4 > PS5 > Switch

And next year 2024, it will be like this.

PS5 > PS4 > PS3 > Switch

@Anti-Matter Yeah thats cool and all but I didn't ask since this thread is Switch focused.
I also don't why you feel the need to always bring up the PS4/PS5 every chance you get on a nintendo dedicated site.

This year was decent for a six year old console. Outer Wilds comes out in a week.

I think your year ranking is probably 7/7 accurate. This has been a killer year, and its shocking because not since the Gameboy Color lead the Gameboy to more than a decade of relevance has Nintendo had a winning streak for this long. Even taking into account consoles stick around longer now, at this point I'd have expected Nintendo to have given up. Nintendo gave up on Gamecube after early 2005 and turned half of what they had into Wii games, and Nintendo was so determined to do nothing with Wii after 2010 beyond Skyward Sword (including even marketing games other than Skyward Sword) that people had to beg to get Japanese RPGs so Nintendo would have first party games at all in 2012, after an already barely anything 2011. (IIRC, Nintendo would've had a grand total of two 2012 Wii games in NA without imports fans were begging for, true story)

Like 2024 seems light but I don't trust any of that anymore. You'd assume Switch is done after TOTK and everyone is always proven wrong, so that original 2D Zelda is still possible!

But yeah, cool year. Slightly reliant on remakes and probably not as crazy as past years overall, but they still put out 8 original games compared to Sony's...1? Microsoft's 3? Maybe 4 because maybe a Forza happened again, who knows? And Mario feels somewhat consistently like a creative series more than merely an IP for what feels like the first time in more than a decade, so that's a huge win as far as I'm concerned.

@iLikeUrAttitude
Here is the thing I experienced with Switch games during year 2023.
I bought quite a lot of Switch games during year 2023 according to my purchase book, a little bit better than year 2021 and 2020 that I bought very few Switch games.
But, the Switch games I bought during year 2023 are mostly 3rd party exclusive for Switch + a few 1st party that weren't released in year 2023, most of them are late to buy games from last years.
And judging the input of 1st party for Switch during year 2023, there were a lot of 1st party games I considered to be bought very late because I still have bigger priority for 3rd party games on any consoles so I will buy those 1st party games very late because I didn't feel I really want to play them right now, still wait and see what will happen with them after several years later then I can purchase them on the right timing.

Also, I'm not really crazy and OMG with the 1st party Switch games during year 2023 as they are look good but 3rd party games are still convincing me more than 1st party games whenever I can found them with cheaper price.

Also remember, I'm still a PlayStation gamer, cute / kiddie PlayStation gamer so when my hype currently moved to PS4 / PS5, there was something wrong with 3rd party input on Switch that made me changed my mind to lean toward PlayStation side than Nintendo side.

Btw, if I give the score for 1st party input on this year 2023, I will give the score 5 from 10.

One more thing, looking at the 3rd party games from your list above during year 2023, almost all of them I will consider the PS4 / PS5 version instead so that list actually my skipping stone to get the PS4 / PS5 version 3rd party games as I knew the 3rd party games have tendency to look worse on Switch than on PS4 / PS5.

Rubbish,

only sonic superstars was good release

@Anti-Matter Once again you completely miss the point and proceed to type a whole essay of nothing.
Good for you that you found more enjoyment from your playstation consoles than the Switch this year, I myself was playing mostly on my PC this year, but you don't hear me talking about that because that isn't the point of this thread, it's a year review for Switch games.
You could've just said "I didn't find that many Switch games this year and found myself playing on my PS4/PS5 most of the time" and left it at that.

If you want to talk about your playstations so bad then go to pushsquare this is nintendolife, please stop being so dense and stay on topic.

@iLikeUrAttitude
I have addressed my Switch games review during year 2023 very short according to my reply above.

"I'm not really crazy and OMG with the 1st party Switch games during year 2023 as they are look good but 3rd party games are still convincing me more than 1st party games whenever I can found them with cheaper price."

@Anti-Matter Good keep it that way instead of shilling over your playstation on a nintendo site.

Agree with this part especially, we already have a handful of promising games already confirmed for 2024 alone, people expecting the switch to die so soon aren't looking at the actual facts and all the releases we still been consistently getting.

The fact you consider The Walking Dead: Destinies to be a major release is very scary...!

9/10 because of Mario Wonder, Mario RPG, and TOTK. Pikmin 4 is also good, with Metroid and Kirby getting excellent remasters.

Really the only thing keeping it from a 10/10 is the Arkham Trilogy. I expected Arkham Knight to be bad compared to other platforms, but I’m sure a consistent 30 fps can be achieved. Asylum has no excuse to not run at a consistent frame rate though.

I really only use my Switch for the first party or otherwise exclusive titles at this point, and I'd say they did a pretty great job this year.

Zelda: TotK & Super Mario Bros Wonder were fantastic, both up there with the best games released on any platform this year. I had a lot of fun playing Metroid Prime Remastered & Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe (neither of which I'd played before), and it was nice revisiting Super Mario RPG with some modern amenities.

As someone who only uses it for the exclusives (and only the ones that interest me, obvs.), that's about one game every other month for me (& Zelda lasted me about 2 with how long it was) which is pretty good output for a console clearly entering it's twilight years.

Kind of two different stories for me. In a vacuum, the Switch had a banger year, tentpole releases which are all likely to end up on many GOTY lists, broken up with a shocking number of third party releases / ports given this is an underpowered six year old console. If you are a Switch exclusive gamer, you are absolutely feasting.

For me personally, however - especially now I own a Steamdeck - if the game isn't exclusively on Switch, I am probably gonna play it on another platform. I also have no real interest in Mario / platformers, either, so I think I played like five games on my Switch (and a couple of demos) all year and it mostly spent months on end gathering dust (including a stretch where I guess it went so long, my Switch didn't want to turn back on and I was worried it had faulted from being off so long, but thankfully did come back to me after I left it charging over night).

@iLikeUrAttitude I’d swap 2023 and 2021 in that list for me. Other than that, this is a hell of a (potential) final year for the console. Even now as I start to really want a PS5, I’m not going anywhere when it comes to gaming on Nintendo consoles. TOTK is a Top 5 of all time for me. Mario Wonder was excellent. There isn’t much that could have been done better.

Also, as someone who’s blocked by Anti, this is a WILD thread.

I was thinking about this question when watching NintendoLife's recent 'best 31 Switch games' YouTube video. Their top 31 list included Mario RPG, Mario Wonder, Pikmin 4, TotK, and Metroid Prime Remastered. So.... 5/31 games or about 1/6th. Considering there has been 7 years of Switch, this year has been slightly better than average in terms of 'best games'.

Personally, my top 2 games of the year were Mario Wonder and Bayonetta Origins and Wonder by itself makes it a better than average year for me. Honestly, almost every year of Switch has had some amazing games, but this year was certainly another good one. I think I would agree it's been in the top 3 years of the Switch lifespan.

Every Switch year except 2018 has had several games I absolutely love, so I don't really know how to sort them precisely.

Pretty awesome year for me. I had to bow out of buying games in September and just jumped back in for sales this recently. Honestly I am so behind on releases that next year plus what has been announced is already sorted. I have way too much to play. Good problem to have and as usual the switch is getting most of my playtime(for a system in its twilight I can’t put the switch down). Even what I am playing on GP is mostly games I will buy on switch later. Just bought my last game for the next 3 months today. Perhaps I’ll have beaten TOTK by then lol.

I personally hope the Switch never dies. I just got the OLED this year. I haven’t really played that many games from this year but from what I gather it’s been a good year.

I think it was a solid year. The Switch is and always has been a great machine for titles that can live within its hardware limitations. Obviously the Nintendo first party stuff always does because they build within those limits. TotK is easily my GotY and consumed the bulk of my gaming time this year.

F-Zero 99 was another highlight for me, not sure where I'd rank it in terms of NSO freebies but it's certainly held my attention. I do wish we got a bit more of this kind of thing through NSO. Throw in more stuff like the kind of things they handed out in Club Nintendo back in the Wii/DS era. Or even stuff like NES Remix or 3D Classics. Because as nice as it is to have the originals just on NSO, people know full well how to acquire those ROMs. So do something different. And F-Zero 99 is precisely that. Huge tick from me here

But I think mostly for me I've found myself when looking at the Switch this year being drawn to what might be just over the horizon. Especially with manufacturers starting to take the portable gaming PC market a bit more seriously. I do like that Nintendo did a bit of an Apple with the Switch OLED, forcing everyone to constantly point out that other product X or Y doesn't look as good as the Switch OLED. Setting the market expectations. But on the performance side the reverse is increasingly true

2023 was good on the software side for sure, Switch is still a solid place to go for 2D titles or remasters of anything from the HD era or before. But when you port down to Switch? Things inevitably look a bit janky. And with other portable alternatives the novelty of being portable alone isn't quite enough anymore. I have no shame in being all about the hardware speculation, it's kinda my jam. But I hope in 2024 we can all go back to talking about the software

I mean, I know where you're going with this but I also know that your solution to this hope is to just live in 2016 in perpetuity. Frankly, I also hope the Switch doesn't die. But the Switch is not the Tegra X1, Switch can last longer than one particular hardware configuration

I want to see the Switch exist for decades. Plural. I want to still be seeing games come out that run fine on the original Switch hardware deep into the 2020s. But I also want this to be the last year where we wait 9 months for the Switch version of a major title and then all huddle around Digital Foundry's review to work out whether or not the end product is even playable.....