@Ersatz You could write a thesis on how Nintendo came to be the punch bag of the wider gaming community, but my brief summary would be that it was a combination of Nintendo's (initially very successful) move to a wider gaming audience in the Wii/Wii U era, while the rest of the gaming landscape became ever grittier, greyer and grizzlier. The resulting cultural split, and the need for a certain type of gamer to feel that their version of 'sitting slack-jawed in a dimly lit room staring at TV while covered in Dorito dust' was in some way more 'mature' or 'legitimate' led people to use Nintendo as a short-hand for who they weren't; i.e. kids.
Nintendo's marketing, general aesthetic, and reluctance to hop on board with certain things that had become standard on the other two consoles furthered the narrative of the company being an outdated toy maker rather than a vessel for the new face of 'hard-core gaming' (which was no longer a niche activity for nerds, but a mainstream activity for cool bros [amongst others]).
Of course, the real environment is much more complex than that, and many complaints in Nintendo's direction have come from earnestly concerned fans. But I believe that behind every wild scream that "Nintendo is for kids!!!" lies a need for the screamer to distance themselves from the insecurity that playing games is... well, play.
That's my take on it anyway: Nintendo's divergence from the mainstream (and the mainstream's divergence from Nintendo), all thrown into a hot soup of wider culture wars and insecurity about 'what is means to be a gamer'. And everyone's angrier about everything these days, after all.
A quick thing I've noticed after reading the back of the boxes. I assumed this before based on pictures but wasn't able to confirm it. The Pro Controller and Charge Grip both are charged via USB Type C. We know this because the back of the box confirms that both can be powered via the Switch AC Adapter that comes with the Switch which is also USB Type C. But additionally you get a USB cable in the box of both the Pro Controller and the Charge Grip. So effectively it's the same cable for everything and they put one in every box where you might need it.
Compare that to the Wii U which had one AC Adapter for the console itself and a different one entirely for the GamePad. Then with Pro Controllers they gave you a USB Cable which was standard mini-USB but couldn't be used for the GamePad because it was different. Then with the 3DS it had its own AC Adapter which is different again. You can get USB cables for the 3DS and the GamePad but you have to get them separately.
We've gone from a mess of different connectors which you only get one of each out of the box. With the Switch we're getting USB Type C cables which will work for everything thrown at us every which way.
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this but there's a leak of a screenshot of a benchmark run on the Switch. Almost surely done on a dev-kit and not really verifiable at all. But in any case, here's the raw performance numbers:
Undocked: 375 GFLOPs
Docked: 876 GFLOPs
The first one is about in-line with what we knew we were getting based on how well BotW and Mario Kart 8 were running undocked. But frankly I'm surprised by that second number, it's a bit higher than what I would have expected. This thing is going to get pretty close to the XBOne.
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this but there's a leak of a screenshot of a benchmark run on the Switch. Almost surely done on a dev-kit and not really verifiable at all. But in any case, here's the raw performance numbers:
Undocked: 375 GFLOPs
Docked: 876 GFLOPs
The first one is about in-line with what we knew we were getting based on how well BotW and Mario Kart 8 were running undocked. But frankly I'm surprised by that second number, it's a bit higher than what I would have expected. This thing is going to get pretty close to the XBOne.
@rallydefault
Yeah, there's a lot of scepticism. But it is well within the ballpark of what it could be. It's still a bit on the higher side of what I was expecting. Which makes me sceptical because I had always assumed I was being a little bit optimistic about the spec....
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
An opinion is only respectable if it can be defended. Respect people, not opinions
@skywake I got to play the device in January. I can easily believe this thing to be the powerhouse rumours are claiming it to be. Never has Mario Kart 8 been so smooth and so pretty.
Fortunately all this tech talk is not for me. I prefer to enjoy a console for what it is than what it could have been. And I am already sold thanks to games like Arms
The good news: @the-madprofessor just mentioned seeing a trailer on UK's ITV yesterday. I also saw a trailer, probably the same one, on UK's Channel 4+1 last night.
The bad news: It was a 1-2-Switch trailer. Which seems to indicate Nintendo sees the UK market as the fluffy casuals, and it also means everyone previously unaware of the Switch now just thinks it's another 'wave your arms in the air' experience.
Still, on balance, hopefully any advertising is better than no advertising.
9
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
I'm pretty excited for the Switch (I'd probably be beyond insane with hype if I was a few years younger), but I constantly see negativity (not as much as the Wii U days tho). What's the source of all this negativity towards Nintendo? Did I miss some event since I was playing the NES?
Even in the NES days there was a widespread sentiment "in the wild" that Nintendo was holding things back, charging too much for old technology, and "for kids". Home computers were far more powerful and had some very deep (though not necessary fun and definitely not accessible) strategy and simulation games. Western arcades were full of over the top blood, guts and gore that would never have and this type of game was reflected in the game libraries on just about every gaming platform - but less so on the NES.
At the time however Nintendo had a few big leading edge "hands down best in class" games that were impossible for their detractors to deny. They also benefited from the less sophisticated mass market mentally lumping 3rd party games with more mature set dressing like Castlevania and Contra in as "Nintendo games". So there was a broader base of people who could identify with "Nintendo games".
But no, the sneering, dismissive attitude towards Nintendo really does back to the beginning and has carried on right through to the modern times. It may feel amplified today for a few reasons.
Specialist websites aren't representative - they're disproportionately populated by teenage boys and young men who are more inclined to like genres like competitive PVP FPSs and are also more likely to get involved in discussions about graphical fidelity (i.e. they're a demographic group that's pretty much always going to be less responsive to Nintendo - general gaming websites will always be somewhat "hostile terrain" for them)
Western publishers are far bigger and better resourced than they were in the past and they have the advantage of natively understanding what is likely to be well recieved and successful in Western markets than Nintendo and they understand the Western games media far better. They are collectively able to control the agenda and since Nintendo doesn't fit easily into the agenda they wish to set they stand out as "different".
Nintendo has been very poor at marketing their products for the past 15 years (with a few exceptions - the early days of the Wii and DS were marketing master classes). Their advertising has generally been even worse than the rest of their marketing and they've struggled to communicate exactly who their consoles and games are for and to understand exactly how to reach them.
Dissonance between Nintendo in Japan and Nintendo of America (and Nintendo of Europe). Japan has been supplying wonderful round pegs and America and Europe have been trying to fit them into square holes.
I think the reality of the negative tone surrounding Nintendo is really a reflection of the fact that Nintendo has lost control of how they are viewed and never developed a simple, strong and cohesive vision that their proponents can project and amplify. i.e. if we, the Nintendo fans don't know exactly what Nintendo wants to be or for whom then how can we tell others?
This is one of the reasons why the Wii is still a huge elephant in the room when it comes to Nintendo. It muddied the waters of "what" Nintendo stands for.
I definitely feel the marketing behind the Switch is much much stronger than we've seen from them in a long time. It won't dispel the negativity you see on typical gaming websites but over time it has the potential to give Nintendo a more cohesive and identity in the West and if it does the conversations surrounding it will be far more positive.
@Grandpa_Pixel
Well ultimately it is about the games but specs are still interesting. If those numbers are accurate then it's sitting very comfortably above the Wii U, PS3 and 360 spec while in portable mode. And while docked it's closer to the XBOne than the Wii U.
@gcunit Over on Reddit, someone said they saw a Zelda ad on Comedy Central (https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/5v5fbk/uk_12_switch_advert_states_27_games/ddzuxbh/). Hopefully that comes over to the main channels, but I'm just glad they're actually advertising anything. Part of Splatoon's success in the UK was due to its strong advertising campaign.
The success of the DS and the Wii was a bit of poisoned chalice. I think there were probably too many naive people, not experienced in the purchasing video games, who bought poor quality software at fairly high prices because they didn't know better, and felt burned by it all. Couple that with the waggle, touch controls and low-res graphics, and I think Nintendo's most successful period actually did a fair bit of damage in some respects. That's a big reason why the Wii U struggled, I think - hangover from the Wii shovelware.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
@gcunit
It's to be expected but, success in the gaming industry does tend to run in cycles. It's an industry built on having new and different experiences. After a period of low-specs, motion controls and Nintendo's IP? People were going to shift somewhere else. And now we're in a period of cookie-cutter HTPC boxes trying to win us over with 4K and VR. Nintendo being all about portability is refreshing.
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
An opinion is only respectable if it can be defended. Respect people, not opinions
The success of the DS and the Wii was a bit of poisoned chalice. I think there were probably too many naive people, not experienced in the purchasing video games, who bought poor quality software at fairly high prices because they didn't know better, and felt burned by it all. Couple that with the waggle, touch controls and low-res graphics, and I think Nintendo's most successful period actually did a fair bit of damage in some respects. That's a big reason why the Wii U struggled, I think - hangover from the Wii shovelware.
I think it was definitely a poisoned chalice. They effectively broke off any form of meaningful contact and dialogue with the "hardcore gamers" that set the tone online. It's one of the things that's made it hard for Nintendo to position themselves or even know which markets they actually want to target.
I do think, however, that many of the people who bought what we (on this forum) would consider poor shovelware may have had a lot of entertainment from those games regardless. Although there were certainly a lot who spent a lot of money on a Wii and didn't play it very much who might have regretted it afterwards the same is true of board games like Monopoly.
How many £50 copies of Monopoly get sold every year and how many people actually play it more than once a year? Do people regret spending that money in hindsight?
What's definitely true is that Nintendo failed to keep up with the expectations of the "casual gamers" they brought into the industry. That group places a different (and lower) value on games definitely invests less money and usually less time. Which is why they're now all in on free to play mobile games.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, Nintendo can win that audience back - but probably not with a device that's specced, priced and marketed to provide a platform for the big 1st party games to sell on. It's a big dilema for Nintendo as a business.
This stupid dialogue about "casual gamers" is getting really tiresome. For whatever reason, we "real gamers" have to keep crying about how "casual gamers" have ruined our precious Nintendo or how much Nintendo "needs" the approval of "real gamers".
It's really simple: Nintendo just wants to make video games that they think people of all ages can enjoy, and they want to make a profit from it. The "poisoned chalice" that you talk about allowed Nintendo to make those video games to the tune of billions (not millions, billions) of dollars in profits. Mission accomplished, and no amount of petulant whining from "real gamers" is going to change that. Nintendo then had a setback (losing some millions) during the Wii U era. So what? That's business. It's actually remarkable that there's so much noise about those losses given that it's the only era during which Nintendo had any losses in company history.
Nintendo has moved on and is soon going to release the Switch. While they've fine-tuned their marketing campaign and business strategy, their core mission hasn't changed. At all.
Casual games and casual gamers themselves aren't a problem. The problem (for us anyway) is that the more they cater to the casual crowd, the more we, the fans, have games that generally don't appeal to us. Given the choice, most of us wouldn't willingly have a Wii-esque library, filled only with first party games and shovelware. Most people on forums such as these love Nintendo for the masterpieces that they create, not the watered down games like 1-2 Switch, Wii Sports, or other simple games that draw in the casuals. So like I said, the more the focus is on the casual gamer, the less the focus is on making games that aren't about waggling a controller to accomplish a simple goal in a mini game.
Maybe it's just a selfish thing on our part, but I think it's safe to say that very few of us are casuals, and we simply don't want Nintendo to cater to people who don't like the games that we do. The GameCube/N64/SNES days are often looked back on fondly by Nintendo fans for a reason. I don't know about you guys, but I've all but forgotten about the Wii, save for some of the gems that are in it's library, and I don't hear much nostalgia for that system from others, either.
Forums
Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread
Posts 10,181 to 10,200 of 69,786
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic