Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

Rumor: Nintendo might have some unannounced changes to Paper Mario: TTYD

In an article (on the Nintendo Switch's news page) about TTYD's new features, there was something on the bottom that said something really interesting and could hint at some other change in TTYD.

"OK, that's all for now. It's possible that there are a couple more surprises to find, but we'll leave that in your capable hands!"

(Context: the article was talking about 7 new features, so when it says "OK, that's all for now.", it is referring to the fact that the article is done listing new features.)

So, the "couple more surprises" seem to be implying new features. This is very likely just slight changes to something late-game, so they want to avoid spoiling it. Less likely, but it could also be hinting at something new post-game (whether something bigger or smaller) that they also didn't want to spoil before the game releases. This could also just be nothing, however I think that's less likely because why would they hint at something that doesn't exist?

Usually a cancellation of staggering Preorders there's something changed and delays will happen because stock carts will have to be stopped and new productions will have to reset to change those currents.

@SwitchForce
Yeah, nah. You're trying to tie in the US physical pre-order cancellation thing to this rumour of more content in the game that @PikminMarioKirby is talking about. They're not recalling TTYD and doing a new run for that. Even if, somehow, they've decided last minute to throw in some new content which in itself is an absurd suggestion digital distribution is a thing. They'd just throw that content in a day 1 patch

I reckon what's happened here is that the pre-order demand for TTYD is higher than they expected. As I understand it they over-estimated the demand for physical copies of Super Mario RPG. So in response they've probably undershot and been conservative with TTYD

@skywake @SwitchForce
It will most likely not delay because:
1. When pre-orders were cancelled for Walmart, Walmart specifically said that they hoped to see the people in stores when it releases on May 23rd
2. Nintendo recently posted a 1-week notice
3. The game has already downloaded on some people's devices (it already has on mine!) so there's not really much they can do at this point
4. Nintendo would've already made an official statement
5. We'd see a lot of other stores taking down pre-orders at this point

Gamexplain had a great editorial piece here that pretty much sums up my concerns with a Playstation/Xbox-esque graphics bump Switch 2 and how that kind of hardware direction really hasn't worked out all that well for Microsoft and Sony. However, Joey is a bit more optimistic here that following in this direction but not quite going as far as PS5/XBSX is fine, but I think at the very least they still need that hardware twist they've done for the last few generations or else they're just as guilty of falling into the graphics trap and susceptible to similar issues. A graphics bump just feels so un-Nintendoey and set up for failure, if they've really done a complete 180 and disregarded what they learned during the Wii/DS, Wii U/3DS, and Switch generations, I fear that the Switch 2 will suffer from what they called out their competition on in the past.

Sony and Microsoft appeal to snobs (the people that haven't twigged yet that it's not specs that limit creativity, it's imagination.). If you still have a sense of imagination, then specs don't matter half as much as folk who need realism. If you have a good idea, your imagination will always make it timeless. If you don't, then what is realistic today will always look laughable in another 10 years time. Animation is probably the sticking point here. Some games look great as screen grabs...not so much when faces start talking etc.

Saying that makes us Nintendo fans sound like the snobs. 😆

tbh, I am a total Nintendo snob

@FishyS Lol, quite the opposite I reckon! I'm not much of a snob...but man, I have always thought Nintendo make the best games!

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by 'Western AAA'? I don't always pay much attention to what country a game is made in, but I was just glancing at the list of PS5 exclusives and (not surprisingly) more than half of them appear to be made by Japanese developers. And Stellar Blade is Korean. I guess Spider Man is 'Western'. And Baldur's Gate 3. But I don't really know of any particular trend.

I'm not asking to make a point, I'm actually curious. I don't own a PS4 or PS5 myself, but there have always been a trickle of games I wish I could play. If by western you just mean xbox, I don't think any xbox exclusives appeal to me at all so I guess there is that. 😆

@NeonPizza Nice post! I had enough of AAA half way through owning an XBox 360 lol. Before that, gaming went through a boring patch (outside of Nintendo) and occassionally stuff like Burnout reignited my interest (I mean, remember when no one wanted cars to crash in video games hahaha!) It's very stale and samey samey at the mo and alarm bells ring for me when folk talk more about narrative and setting instead of gameplay lol.

@NeonPizza I've never played any of those series but I've always been curious about Ratchet and Clank simply because I like platformers and it was made by the same developer as Spyro which I love. If I had a PS5 I would probably play Ratchet and Clank, Baldur's Gate 3, the recent final fantasy games, possibly stellar Blade. 🤔 Not too many. Which is why I don't have a PS5.

One of my favorite music streamers has been covering a zillion Stellar Blade songs. Your description of ' PS2-era hack & slash with a modern coat of next gen paint' actually makes it sound really good to me 😆I would tbh love more retro hack n slashes with new types of art style. I've never played Bayonetta either (except Origins). I want to but there is no demo and the combat looks a little convoluted for my tastes.

That Sony and Microsoft are struggling to release 1-2 first party games on every year now, or zero like with PS5 during this year. This really shows how incredibly unnecessary the obsession of graphics are.

Nintendo will release more first-party games just during this year than what Sony has managed on 4 years with their PS5. More and more gaming companies apparently can't keeping up the insane demand from their customers, that everything had to be ultra-realistic with ray-tracing even if it's night in the game, 8K with 400fps etc...

I don't even dare to think how few games PS6 will get... While Nintendo will continue to release +10 or a bit below 10 games every year on their next console. I'm still certain of that "Switch 2" won't be more powerful than Xbox One., just at same level as the best. Yet It will still be so much more than enough. It's just snobs on internet who loves to bickering about specs, but the actual Nintendo customers out there outside internet will LOVE "Switch 2" with Xbox One specs which is a HUGE upgrade from Switch.

Despite of that Switch doesn't have folders, themes, VC, virtual reality, AR, mii verse, mii's, Netflix, ray-tracing, 4K, tera-flops, Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival, background music on eshop, weather channel, Twilight Princess HD + Wind Waker HD, off TV play, gamepad, Zombi U + Devil's Third, it still managed to sell +140m in just 7 years, and that without single price-cut!

I don't think that Nintendo will change that much with "Switch 2", since just during the Switch-era Nintendo made more cash than all of their previous consoles combined together... Just a "Switch Pro" upgrade, 2.5x to 3x more power, perhaps 3.2x...

I hope you're right! That recent Nintendo quote saying games will take longer and be more expensive is a little scary, but I'm hoping that only effects a few of their 'fancier' games. Even though I personally have only bought one of them, I really like that Nintendo is still giving us 7 games in the first 7 months of this year.

PlayStation and XBox: What are exclusives?

Nintendo: releases 12* exclusives last year, with 7 exclusives this year (so far, we don't know anything past July)

*Pikmin 1+2 is considered as 1 release

@FishyS Possibly 8 if we get a shadow dropped game at the June Direct (Luigi's Mansion 1 please)

@PikminMarioKirby Given that Nintendo went so far as to stick the nes world championship game in July ( I bet that had been on their shelves just waiting until they needed to fill in an empty release gap), I think it's pretty much guaranteed we have at least 4 more games this year post-direct. At worst they might keep it at 11 games instead of 12 so they can spend some time hyping up Switch 2.

@FishyS June/July I think will be a normal time for Nintendo. June already has LM2HD, however a game could potentially be shadow dropped at the June Direct. In July we probably won't see much else besides the NWC:NES Edition. I think during this time DLC has a chance of releasing as well.

August/September are usually smaller for Nintendo in terms of games. August would be a good fit for DLC, a Legends Z-A trailer/Pokémon Presents, a game specific Direct, or perhaps more word on Switch's Successor. We get Directs most of the time in September, so maybe we could get a port/remaster shadowdrop then. (For the DLC option, SMB Wonder would be a great choice, could also be available for NSO Expansion Pack since they haven't added DLC to it for a long time)

October/November, if I had to guess, might have around 3 games this year (2023 had 4 games within those 2 months). All of these games should be revealed at the June Direct.

December will likely be pretty empty for Nintendo, besides possibly DLC or something, however I'm leaning on that not happening at all.

So if this all somehow was correct, then possibly 5 games on top of the 7 we already know about could release. That ends up being 12 games, which is pretty much what we got last year. But even if 1-2 of those didn't happen, it's still a very good amount!

I'm not sure any GameExplain video is really worth anyone's attention...... anyways.... I think my views on this topic are fairly clear so I'm not going to dive into it too much. I will throw a reply down to this but:

I would argue that while this is somewhat true it's more a function of developer culture rather than the specs of the hardware. And it kinda goes without saying that this being somewhat true doesn't mean that you can't create innovative game ideas by just having "more specs"

Also I would note as much as we may scream from the rooftops that specs are less important than a good art direction and vision. That they're less important than good gameplay. And again, I'll scream along with you when you do that. But I don't think "imagination" really helps you at all when faced with 10 second load times before every level in DK:TF. It doesn't help either when you drop into a pre-rendered cutscene in TotK and are presented with video compression artifacts. And having a crisp 4K image for a game like Super Mario Wonder isn't suddenly going to make the gameplay worse. These are, indisputably, things that could be improved with better hardware

Commentators and fans expend so much energy talking about how much more expensive games have become and they notice the correlation between that and the power of these consoles. And yes, to a degree that's somewhat true. More powerful hardware allows for higher fidelity games and higher fidelity games require higher asset detail and larger worlds. And more stuff is, almost by definition, more expensive. But the word is allow, not require. And it allows more than just higher fidelity games

It also allows shorter load times and the removal of loading zones and hidden walls. It allows developers to expend less energy on optimisation because the bar for "running well" becomes lower. It potentially allows for more simulation and less scripting of things like physics. It allows for more stuff like lighting to be based on the actual context of the environment rather than being baked into the scene

And sure, it also allows games to push for a "more realistic" style that's "less creative". And there are some devs which seem to use this to make games that are basically just b-grade action movies movies where you occasionally press buttons or hold a stick in a direction. But I'm not sure we're at much of a risk of these guys making a game where you're generic action dude #209 in a soul-less game pressing F to pay respects as the only interaction between lengthy cutscenes. Except possibly as a punchline to mock said games

edit: Also, it's all good and well to have a theoretical discussion about the priorities of console hardware in some kind of cost-benefit analysis. But in regards to the Switch right now vs what the Switch 2 will be i.e. in the context of this specific thread at this specific point in time? The costs of making that kind of spec jump have become so low and the benefits so blindingly obvious that the "specs aren't everything" bit in this current context has become, frankly, absurd

We don't need a portable 4090 or PS5, it would be impossible to make or justify the cost of that. And I would agree it would've also been impossible to justify, let alone make, a portable PS4 or 1080Ti when the Switch launched. But it is not 2017 and this isn't the Switch launch, the "spec window" has shifted. We will benefit greatly from moving on from the limitations of the Switch and the cost of that upgrade will be small compared to the size of the benefit. In the same way that the benefits of moving beyond the limitations of the 3DS were greater than the costs of upgrading to the Switch

Going to drop a bit of an analogy up in here. Lets ignore gaming for a second and think about physical media for the distribution of movies. Now, does the pure fact that a movie is on a UHD BluRay make it automatically better than a movie on BluRay, or DVD, or even VHS? No. Of course not. Infact you could fairly comfortably make the argument that modern movies are, generally, a bit crap and a bit too focused on spectacle. Especially blockbusters. And maybe part of that is down to the fact that movies are generally disposable content that we just use as wallpaper to show off our increasingly higher end displays rather than content. So statistically a movie old enough to be on VHS is probably better and there's possibly a correlation there

But correlation or not, the better media doesn't hurt. Frankly, it doesn't matter at all how much better movies might or might not have been 30+ years ago. There is no universe where, if given the choice, I'm watching Lord of the Rings on VHS over the properly HDR colour-graded and very decently mastered UHD BluRay release on a nice OLED set with decent surround. Obviously what makes that movie great isn't the media or the hardware I'm playing it on. The movie itself is what makes it great. I'd gladly watch the Star Wars original trilogy on VHS over the IMAX enhanced 4K HDR Disney trilogy. But for the same content, the superior tech is superior. Give me 4K HDR Balrog every time

Sorry for triple post but I saw a DF Clip that indirectly did a good job explaining these discussion points

Clip is more about "do we need ever increasing amounts of VRAM" but they do touch on the cost of asset creation being a development bottleneck. Something that these higher specs have allowed but we're now well and truly reaching a point where that spec is no-longer the bottleneck for the fidelity chasers. But then also make the pretty fantastic point about where we're going next. That we are probably eventually going to get to the point where we start procedurally generating some of these assets. We've moved beyond the memory bound era into this new asset creation bound era and after that, eventually, we'll move into a compute bound era

And the natural conclusion to make would be that.... eventually the spec will reach a point where the constantly improving spec will start to reduce the requirement for super expensive asset creation. And games will become cheaper again. Or at least, stop getting more expensive