Topic: Time clock on Nintendo Switch is pathetic

For a console released in 2017, the supposed time clock on the Switch where it tells you an approximate time that you've been playing a game for all up, it's just pathetic.

'About 40 hours' ... yeah cheers thanks for that. Or .... 'First played 4 days ago' while giving no insight whatsoever. Totally unacceptable for a console of the current generation. Couldn't have been that hard to put a proper one in, could it?

From memory the Wii had it right.

Thoughts?

...yeah...

That really disappointed me, since I like knowing that sort of info sometimes. The 3DS one where they give a list of top/most played games should've just stayed as the standard tbh.

Yeah I hate it too. A lot of times it’ll be incredibly off as well.

@Tendo64 Recently, I wondered if they don't show playtime for the first 10 days because, it could hurt game sales if everyone only played for 15 minutes, and never touched it again (hated the game).

And maybe the 5 hour interval playtime might be to prevent some parents from overly obsessing over their kid's playtime?

Since switch launch I've wondered what their logic was. Sadly, I think it's working as Nintendo designed, or they would have fixed it a long time ago. But, yeah, the 3ds showed playtime by the minute. Piece of cake. Imagine that.

Yeah, it's now 2020, Nintendo should have fixed this a while ago

It is rubbish. I hate it. It has reached a point where I will deliberately boot up a game with no intention of playing it, just so that when I eventually do get to it, I won’t have to put up with that whole “Started x days ago” for the first couple of weeks. If you beat a new game within a week, you have pretty much no idea how much time you’ve spent on it.

Sure, maybe that doesn’t matter. But it’s annoying.

@Tendo64 I think the 3ds one is better then the one on the switch I don't remember the wii to well so I cant tell you if it had it or not.

I'm pretty sure the Wii just tells you how long you played each game for on a given day - there's no way of actually seeing how long you've played a game for in total (unless you go through every single day and add it up). I agree that the Switch should have a better activity log though.

I'm not sure what they were thinking either. My only guess it that it's tied to the fact that other people can see your play time as well which wasn't the case with previous Nintendo consoles. But why wouldn't they show the exact time to the user? That I don't know. It's just Nintendo being weird.

3DS has much better system but even that one has its problems. There's a limit for the amount of titles that can be tracked at once. 200 I believe. Now that's not a problem for most but I find it sad that I'll lose some data each time I start up a game on my 3DS that I haven't played before. And I don't even know how it decides which data it should overwrite. It's not in the order from oldest to newest.

@Dogorilla There is a way to see your total hours on Wii. I think it was through Nintendo Channel. I remember having over 300 hours of playtime in Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

@Late Oh I didn't know that, does it still work or did the Nintendo Channel die along with Wii Wifi?

@Dogorilla I haven't tried accessing it for years but my guess would be it was among the channels that died along with the online capabilities. I'd try it but I'm not able to right now.

Nintendo Channel was great. You could also download DS demos from your Wii to your DS. That's how I first experienced games like Picross and Ghost Trick.

@Late Oh yeah I remember those demos. That was the first time I played Picross too. I don't think I used the channel for much else though - I'll check if it still works next time I use my Wii.

When I upgraded from the V1 to the V2 my playtime log was wiped. So the playtime inaccuracy doesn't bother me. For me the lack of folders is more offensive. Although the bulk of my Switch games are physical, I also have several digital games. And it's easy for those digital games to get lost in the shuffle.

Adding a folder system like the 3DS had doesn't seem like a big thing to ask for.

Doesn't the parental control app offer best time keeping? If someone really wanted to be a stickler about it... Then again, I'm not concerned enough with the minutae of my game time to be bothered not seeing 47 hrs 23 minutes on a title

The Activity Log app on 3DS was mostly great (though it could only store the date for a limited number of games). It's a pity that Nintendo hadn't bothered to implement something similar for the Switch.

Similarly, I miss the Everybody Votes and News/Weather Channels from the Wii. Of course, Nintendo would like expect a NSO subscription for such functionality should they deign to provide it.

Update to the slightly off-topic discussion above: the Wii's Nintendo Channel is indeed completely defunct now. It's kind of sad using the Wii these days. Obviously the games still work which is the main thing, but most of the fun little extra channels are dead and you can't buy any digital games or play online. I already knew that, of course, but actually using the console and not being able to access that stuff is a bit depressing.

It's not at all accurate. It rounds off to five-minute intervals, which adds up pretty quickly, and it doesn't stop running if you put a game in suspend mode. They nailed it on the Wii U and then decided to change it for some reason for the Switch.

What, so it still counts as playing when your Switch is in sleep mode??

I don't like how it includes demos on the list. And least it doesn't count SYSTEM SETTINGS as a game like on the 3DS!

It’s clearly a deliberate decision on Nintendo’s part. The console keeps accurate to the minute records - there’s just no way for you to see it as the user.

I suspect it’s a philosophical decision about wanting to make the console less ‘hardcore’ and not wanting you to worry about exactly how long you’ve played for. Nintendo wants you to play for fun - not like it’s a job where you have to clock 40 hours in a week.