Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@GrailUK I don't know which they'd pick but I could see either happening (Prime 2 Remastered or HD ports of Prime 2+3), in any case I think the key strategy Nintendo have in mind is making sure that the Prime trilogy is on the Switch before Prime 4 comes out.

As for the GCN rumours, I don't see F-Zero GX happening because MK8 Deluxe exists (Nintendo seems to treat MK8 Deluxe as the only racing game that needs to exist outside of adding games to NSO) and I don't see TTYD happening because of some of the Peach scenes.

I feel that the GC remaster rumors are far too convenient in terms of when the rumors started. A random YouTuber and some other non credible source I forget said both Thousand Year Door AND F-zero GX were happening. Oh really. After prime 1’s great success, some people probably wanted to jump on the rumour mill while people were playing a GameCube classic, capitalize on that by hyping people up and praying to the lord above they were right so they can be viewed as ‘credible’ sources. Pikmin 1 and 2 HD for switch made sense because Pikmin 4 was a month away and people who hadn’t heard of the series before or wanted to play the first three games before pikmin 4 to get a general idea of what to expect could do so on a more accessible console than the GameCube. Metroid prime remastered was both a great filler for a feburary title and to help ease the wait for Metroid prime 4. A poll was launched asking people if they were getting Prime to help with the wait for Prime 4 from Nintendo themselves, I think. Thousand Year Door and F-Zero make zero sense. There is no reason for them to be remastered of all things. They could still drop, but they lack reasoning as to why Nintendo would do that

@Bolt_Strike Sounds like you were wanting a remake, mate.

@Grumblevolcano That would be a shame. Both the N64 and the Gamecube had Mario Kart, Wave Race, 1080 and F-Zero all living in harmony.

@GrailUK The concept of remasters has always felt pointless and unexciting, but it's doubly so in an era where just about anything can be emulated through online services (in this case, NSO). Even a remaster that looks noticeably improved feels pointless if it plays largely identical to the original, so I don't get the excitement. You're going through the same motions as the original, making the same actions, exploring the same areas, etc., the graphics are probably the least impactful aspect of the game. I don't get the hype. Like yeah it's nice, but I don't get the "OMG this is amazing!" sentiment from ANY remaster, even one that actually looks noticeably better. A remake would've been FAR more hype.

What if they did a DKC trilogy remaster instead of a new game.

@WaffleBoat I'm all for remastering snes titles. But I think the dkc games are fine as is. Games like chrono trigger, or breath of fire would be much cooler imo. Any snes rpg for that matter. Heck, final fantasy mystic quest would be great.

@WaffleBoat It would be interesting to see a DKCR style remake of the original DKC Trilogy, but I don't think DKCR and TF's improvements, graphics or otherwise, would do much to improve those games. So that would probably be another remake that's little to nothing more than graphical improvements.

Also now is probably not the best time for such a remake when DK is in somewhat of a drought with no new game in almost 10 years. You'd probably anger a lot of DK fans if we got a DKC remake as the next game instead of something new.

Time for another graph. So yes, the Switch gets a lot of ports but we also get significantly more games than we have on any other platform Nintendo has ever made. With the possible exception of the DS although I think we can fairly safely say that the DS library is a bit.... thinner at the top....

Here's the graph showing the number of games from every Nintendo platform (excluding VB because VB). It includes downloadable titles so the Wii has WiiWare and DS has DSiWare but it doesn't include Virtual Console or NSO

My general point here is that these games don't magically appear out of nowhere. The Switch has pretty much the same number of games as every single home console Nintendo has made before it COMBINED. Just barely less, will probably overtake it at some point. Of course it being a popular platform has attracted third parties as well as shovelware, and that's a lot of the difference here. But it isn't all of it

A large chunk of the reason why the Switch has so many games is because it's a haven for ports and remasters. That's how a library of this scale is even remotely possible. Because ports and remasters take significantly less development time. This hasn't really been to the detriment of new titles when you actually look down the list, they're generally just in addition to the new titles

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Nintendo leant even further into the GC and Wii libraries with ports over the next year. Paper Mario TTYD makes a whole lot of sense, easiest of wins. And I know it has been beaten to death but I'd put Wind Waker/Twilight Princess HD in a similar boat. Prime 2/3 I'm less convinced on

......... personally I still just want another 2D Zelda to the level of fidelity of Link's Awakening HD

@skywake I am not sure the 4500 game number is at all accurate, although I do know the wiki page which quotes it. The official Nintendo page (US) has included the phrase "More than 5,000 games...and counting" for quite a long time now (a couple years maybe? I forget when it appeared). And there have consistently been 20-60 new eshop listings almost every week in the last year. So I assume total games would be 6,000+ minimum just based on that.

As another data point, if you search the US eShop for all items which are 'playable now', you get 16,409 entries. 6,259 of these are marked as DLC, which includes in-app purchases, real DLC such as MK8 booster pack, and a few hundred random free DLCs which for some reason got their own listing. Regardless, this seems to imply Nintendo considers the US eShop to have 16,409 - 6,259 = 10,150 entries for standalone games (a few are things like the YouTube app, but the vast majority are games). This number certainly contains repeats such as entries which are bundles of other eShop games or 'original game + DLC' special editions. I have no idea how to accurately take into account the repeats, but 4500 unique games still seems like it may be significantly too low, likely by several thousand. Which would make your graph sky-rocket (your point is still valid of course).

Note also that those are only the US entries and since Switch is region-free technically you could get even more games from other regions which weren't released in US but I was too lazy to look up data in any other regions.

Edit: I don't know why I didn't think of this first, but NintendoLife has listings for 8,652 NA Switch games 'out now' and 10,539 if I remove the region tag. I've noticed NintendoLife occasionally misses a game, but they rarely hallucinate one. If I removed all the filters, it lists 11,371 Switch games, a few of which aren't out yet.

@FishyS
Yeah, I just leant on the wiki page which does state on the top that it's a dynamic list that is likely to be incomplete. Obviously the Wiki pages for older platforms are more complete given they're not live platforms. Even so, the observation was mostly just that the Switch has more content than any other platform Nintendo has had before it. And not just by a bit, comfortably so

I didn't expect the Wiki page to be THAT far behind. But that it is only really furthers the point. There's a LOT of stuff on Switch, more than you can reasonably expect to be developed from scratch. The only way it has that much content is by some of that content being ports and remasters. I don't think this is a bad thing it's just purely a function of reality

Over half of the Switch's library could be ports and it'd still have more content that wasn't ports than any other home console Nintendo has ever released. If we take the numbers you've sleuthed and assume there's somewhere around 9000 titles? Half of the titles on Switch could be ports and it would still have more non-ports than all of Nintendo's other home consoles combined

It's truly insane and probably something people should keep in the back of their head before they complain about the idea of more ports and remasters

@Bolt_Strike It's not rocket science. A good game is a good game. You don't play chess once and think 'I've done that. Don't need to do it again.'

I'd also add to this discussion the same point I've been adding to discussions on ports on this forum since the New Play Control series on the Wii. Ports and remasters are not just for the people who have already played through these games. They're mostly for the people who haven't. And when we're talking about the Switch which has an install base of almost 130mill? That's a lot of people

e.g. Paper Mario: TTYD even if we ignore the fact that there is a large chunk of the Switch audience who weren't even born when the game first came out. Or the fact that it's been long enough since that game came out that a lot of people who played it back in the day have "aged out" of gaming. Ignoring those two things entirely and assuming everyone who had a GC now has a Switch.... there's still an install base gap of 110mill. For at least that number of Switch owners the game would be entirely new

I mean, Skyward Sword HD sold more copies than the Original. Link's Awakening HD sold more copies than the original, Sunshine sold more copies in the 3D All Stars bundle than the original. Metroid Prime as far as we know hasn't but did move 1mill copies in the first couple of months. I'm assuming that pretty much every Wii U port the sales on Switch are higher. Really, most of the people buying these games didn't play (or at least didn't buy) the original. So when people say "I don't want to re-tread the same game again" that's fair but for most people that's not what they're buying

I like ports/remasters/remakes because of the whole "everything in one place" concept. For example the fewest number of consoles needed to do a playthrough of the Zelda franchise is 3:

Wii (including GCN backwards compatibility)

• Four Swords Adventures (GCN)
• Wind Waker (GCN)
• Twilight Princess (GCN/Wii)

3DS (including DS backwards compatibility)

• Four Swords (3DS)
• Phantom Hourglass (DS)
• Spirit Tracks (DS)
• A Link Between Worlds (3DS)
• Tri Force Heroes (3DS)

Switch

• Everything else

My path would be including the Wii U with playing Wind Waker (HD), Twilight Princess (HD), Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks on Wii U instead of on Wii/3DS.

Meanwhile that could easily be reduced to fewer consoles by bringing more games to Switch. I'm not sure how Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks would work on the Switch but the others could easily work on the Switch.

• Bring over the Wii U HD remasters of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess
• Four Swords + Four Swords Adventure bundle or as NSO bonuses
• ALBW + Tri Force Heroes bundle or ALBW being a standalone release while Tri Force Heroes is a NSO bonus

@skywake The number of licensed NES games should be 716, right?
Edit: Also 1753 for SNES. Is this North America only? If so, the N64 number is too large... where did you get your numbers?

@Strumpan
Don't miss the forrest for the trees

@skywake Well, the forest is visible and I appreciate your showing it, but these trees are also interesting!

I'm always rooting for all the Mainline Mario games to be in one place. Switch is missing Galaxy 2, 3 of the New Super Mario games, Mario Land 1, and 3D land. I'm assuming Galaxy 2 will come out whenever they re-release 3D all stars, possibly on Switch 2 and/or next year for the 40th Mario anniversary. On the 35th anniversary they gave us both 3D world and 3D all-stars, so I'm hoping/expecting the Switch Mario collection to come closer to completion next year.

All of those games I've either never gotten the chance to play or want to re-play because it's been so long.

Zelda is a little farther from completion, but I'm sure they'll continue to trickle out ports/remasters/remakes.

Yeah I can easily see them lean heavily into the GameCube, Wii, and 3DS libraries for ports/remasters over the next year or two.

F-Zero GX, Paper Mario TTYD, Kid Icarus Uprising, etc are easy wins with the fanbase to fill in the release schedule with as they focus on Switch 2 development.

Honestly wouldn't be surprised if that Peach game is one of the only brand new 1st party titles for Switch 1 in 2024, with most of everything else being ports/remasters.

@GrailUK You don't need to buy multiple chessboards to play chess multiple times though, and you don't need to buy multiple copies of a game to play it multiple times. If you're trying to sell someone another chessboard or another copy of the same game, you need something to differentiate the experience. I'm not getting why graphical updates are that something.

@skywake @Grumblevolcano That's fine but again, you don't need a remaster for that. You can put the originals on NSO (now that might not work for some system at this point, I wouldn't expect to see 3DS or Wii U titles on NSO because emulation isn't quite there yet for those systems, but GC? Nah, we should have the GC games on NSO). This just feels like a cash grab that greatly benefits the developers but only just barely benefits the gamers. IDK why gamers continue to tolerate the practice of glorified upres remasters instead of wanting remakes that modernize MUCH more than just graphics.