Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

It seems we now know what Good Feel has been up to. They seem to be the devs of Princess Peach: Showtime.

I guess we're not getting any Yoshi games for awhile. Unless Nintendo handed off Yoshi to some other developer to make an open world 3D Yoshi game where all the dinosaurs fight viciously for survival.

@FishyS Yeah, I was already skeptical of us getting one after Mameda no Bakeru was announced (English localization when Nintendo?). Now that they've been working on Princess Peach Showtime? Yeah, you can pretty much forget about a Yoshi game coming in the next 3 years. I'm wondering if they're sick of Yoshi now and want to do something else. It's sad, I thought they were onto something with Crafted World and felt like they were slowly evolving the formula, but let them cook, it sounds like they have some good ideas and shouldn't be limited by Yoshi.

@FishyS @Bolt_Strike I'd guess that Woolly World gets ported. It is about as well received as the SNES original but is trapped on Wii U/3DS, 2 systems that are pretty much shut down (eshop's shut down, online is shut down in a month, redownloading will probably be shut down within a year).

@Grumblevolcano As of a few months ago and probably still now you could redownload digital games on Wii. So they have kept the capability 5+ years after shutting down the eshop. So I doubt they will shutdown 3DS redownloading anytime soon.

The official Nintendo website says "for the foreseeable future, it is still possible to redownload games" regarding 3DS (and I assume Wii U).

Obviously that has nothing to do with the probability of a Wooly World port, I hope we get one.

@FishyS @Grumblevolcano
I'm not sure about 3DS, I haven't looked into it, but it is worth noting that the Wii U eShop is entirely broken. As in it has been cracked to the point where it is possible to straight up download Wii U games from Nintendo's servers without a Wii U or account

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Wii U and 3DS eShop closures were largely in response to this fact. And that the intent is to shut down purchases now so that they can setup a timeline for shutting it down entirely. It's entirely possible that they don't, if I was Nintendo I'd be far more worried about the possibility of accounts being compromised than people pirating Wii U/3DS games at this point. But I'm sure it's still something they'd want to close off.....

@Grumblevolcano Ehh, maybe. I mean it was already ported to 3DS, but the Switch 2 is probably enough of a gap to bring it back. Either way, it definitely doesn't sound like we're getting any NEW Yoshi games anytime soon unless they've found another studio to take the reins. And I'm not sure they have. Yoshi might be taking a generation off I'm afraid.

@Bolt_Strike I hope we at least get a Yoshi port or remake rather than skipping completely. I'm greedy, I want more Mario sub-franchise games not just new ones. Give me Peach game, Yoshi, Mario vs DK, Mario and Luigi, Wario, Captain Toad, Bowser... I want more games for them all. 😝 Maybe Rosalina will be in the next movie and she can get a game. 😆

🤔 What other characters need their own games? tbh, I have no idea what a Rosalina game would actually look like unless it was a crazy RPG or like a really pretty rhythm game in space. I would take a Goomba puzzle game too.

Ok, so I'm a total Wii U apologist and owned pretty much every 1st-party game on it EXCEPT for Paper Mario Color Splash.

Come on, Nintendo! Bring it over as a little appetizer for Thousand Year Door! Just a quick and dirty port, nothing added, slot it into April or whatever if Thousand Year Door is gonna come out in the summer.

@FishyS Ehh, in my eyes just getting a port/remake of an older game still feels like skipping. You're getting little to no new content to engage with, so it often feels similar to just booting up your old console and replaying the original game. That's kind of where I'm at with IPs like Mario Kart and DK on the Switch, we technically have games for them on the Switch, but because they're not NEW games and we have little to no new content for them I'm still feeling the drought with those IPs.

As far as a Rosalina game there's a very simple but possibly disappointing answer for what a Rosalina game would look like. It would probably largely be Mario Galaxy 3 but with Rosalina as the main character rather than Mario. I think they could experiment with giving her new abilities, but I suspect the game would look and play a lot like a 3rd Galaxy game. And honestly I would really like that, Mario Galaxy is too good not to be continued but it would be too limiting for Mario to stick with the Galaxy series, so continuing it as a Rosalina spinoff is really the only viable option.

I do think the Switch 2 should and will experiment with more new IPs/spinoffs for established characters. Nintendo needs to really build their IP portfolio if they want to reach the one game per month metric without needing to rely on ports/remakes/remasters or third party games. I do have a lot of ideas on potential spinoffs/subseries of IPs they could add, but more than just Mario:

-A 3D subseries of DK that's somewhat of a platformer/beat-em-up hybrid (really if this is successful they could probably fold elements of this into the 2D games, but it's too much of a gamble to try and make the next big 2D DK game like that so they should experiment with this in a 3D subseries first to see how well it's received).
-An open world subseries of Mario Kart that plays more like Forza Horizons or DKR. This could really help Mario Kart get back to having one game every 3 years without having to worry about having a second game on the console cannibalizing the first, they'd feel like very different entries.
-A Tom Nook spinoff of Animal Crossing that plays like a tycoon/business management sim.
-A single player Splatoon spinoff that focuses more on open world exploration and platforming.

And yes, I'd like to see a Bowser spinoff too, but I have no idea how it could play. Hard to think of a particular niche for a Bowser game to fill.

In terms of new Nintendo IP and Spin-Offs, I have a few ideas:

• A new tower defense IP/Spinoff. It’s a genre I love and would adore to see Nintendo take on again after the weird Slippy-Star Fox Wii U game. Maybe Splatoon would be a good fit for this?
• Tycoon/Simulator, Tom Nook and Animal Crossing as previously mentioned would be fitting for this.
• An online-open world game like Rust or Sea of Theives. This is a very broad idea that could be done in so many ways, but I’d love to see Nintendo really push for a great online with friends game, which they’ve never really made the focus of a game before. They’ve been messing around with sandboxes with Zelda the past few years as is.

It's funny you say this because I was scrolling through the list of Wii U games for "research" into "emulation" as someone who was also one of the Wii U cheer-squad. And when I was scrolling through that list I was suddenly struck with the realisation of how small that list is and how many of the titles on the list I own

Colour Splash is pretty much the only one on that list I would "sailing the high seas" for. It's one of only two I skipped that's not on Switch that's potentially worthwhile. It's also one of the many games that isn't "emulator friendly". So yeah, a re-release on Switch to get rid of the GamePad centric design would be nice

Color Splash was also the only Nintendo pub Wii U game I didn’t own. I’m actually still curious about it. Maybe I’ll try it out this weekend if I get around to setting that up

So this rumor has been making the rounds, someone received a Youtube survey asking if they would consider buying a "Switch Attach".

Has the Switch 2 name been leaked or is this some kind of weird typo or gaffe?

That would be an awful name.

It would definitely be questionable at the very least. Switch Attach sounds like a peripheral so on the surface it seems like they wouldn't have learned their lesson from the Wii U. However, if they can get the marketing and the game lineup right, clearly show that it looks like and is a different console from the base switch and that it has a useful gimmick implemented in its games well, they can probably live with it.

People rag on the Wii U name but really I don't think that's the biggest marketing gaffe with the system that made people think "this is a peripheral". Nintendo has frequently followed similar naming schemes with their successors in past generations and have done just fine. No one confused the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, or 3DS as peripherals for the Game Boy and DS, and the name "Wii U" itself doesn't really give any direct implication that it's a Wii peripheral. Mainly promoting the Wii U Gamepad and not showing the console itself prominently was likely the biggest factor in why people thought it was a peripheral. And even if they did think it was, the lack of games that showed a compelling use for the Gamepad could've helped sales, it wouldn't have mattered much if it actually WAS a peripheral if they had compelling enough games to make people want it. I think those factors were more significant to the Wii U's failures.

Now Switch Attach would be different in terms of the name implying it's a peripheral, that makes it sound like it's something that you can attach to your OG Switch to enhance it, so in that respect it's definitely not an ideal name for a new console and seems primed to breed similar confusion as to the Wii U. But good enough marketing could potentially make up for it. If they can clearly show that the console does NOT attach to an existing Switch in its design, if they can clearly market what you are "attaching", and if the games look interesting and exciting and use the attachment gimmick well, they're not going to care that the name is dumb. They're still going to buy it because it still looks like a product that does cool new gaming things that makes it worth owning. So I do err on the side of this name being a poor choice if that's really the name, but I would reserve final judgment until we get the full reveal and we see how they market it.

@Bolt_Strike Wii U doesn't obviously sound like a peripheral, but unlike advanced, 3D, color it also doesn't sound like an obvious upgrade or obviously anything really. But I agree it was marketing that was the real problem, the name just didn't help.

For Switch Attach, it actually does sound like a peripheral plus at least in American English I feel like it is kind of hard to say. A million times less catchy than Switch or even Wii U.

One possibility if this is a leak and not just nonsense is a mistranslation of a Japanese name idea. @GrailUK once suggested Switch Connect as a name which I could imagine having a similar translation to 'Switch attach' but sounds immeasurably better. And a word like connect implies a lot of things besides just 'attaching' even though they are synonyms.

What an absolutely awful name. Yet this is also a very Nintendo name.

Probably not the official name, but eh, I just wanted to make fun of Nintendo naming schemes.

I speak American English and I have no trouble saying it. Might just be your local dialect.

Yeah, Switch Connect would be a much better name. It does sound a bit similar to the Kinect, but since the Kinect crashed and burned that shouldn't be much of an issue.

EDIT: Also yes Connect would also have social implications as well, which would be very on brand for Nintendo. They do want people to play with their family and friends.

Regarding the Wii U name and Nintendo needing to "learn a lesson" from that. I think people look at the Wii U in retrospect and just try and reverse engineer reasons why it failed. The name being one of them. Personally I don't think the name was even slightly an issue

The problem with the Wii U was more that it was just simply the wrong hardware for the market at that point in time. It was more expensive than but not really that much more compelling than PS3/360 unless you were really into Nintendo's software. It wasn't the generational leap in performance that was being promised by PS4/XBOne. And even if you were really into Nintendo's IP it was very slow out of the gate

The name was the least of their problems