I like what Bill had to say over at IGN:" I like sports. I don't like knitting, but that doesn't mean I don't think anyone should enjoy it..."
And then something along the lines that Nintendo is less of a "games" company and more of an "entertainment" company.
Anyway, I never really like casual vs. hardcore discussions. Some "hardcore" gamers here like Animal Crossing, and I'm a "casual" who really likes fighting games.
Identity tags to put ourselves in groups are meaningless.
'The shortest route was a detour. It was a detour that was our shortest path.'
Tell me your favorite plant.
~~youtu.be/r0HnIr6jYWU~~
@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....
We do know the specs of the tegra x1 chipset.
It has:
256 CUDA cores
1GHz frequency
512 Gflops
To be able to change the flops, you need to either add more cores or up the frequency. The extra horse power (750 Gflops) from Tegra P1 is because they have upped the frequency to 1.5GHz, which they were able to do because of the new 16nm process. It still has the same numbers of cuda-cores as the X1.
So to be able to do anything more, they have to either add cores or use an higher frequency. Both will draw more power and it will get hotter. And here is my skepticism, how much hotter can it be docked compared with undocked? If it would have higher gflops while docked, it could potentially be very hot and it is still packed in a tablet shell. Too hot and the small fan will sound like a jetplane in a couple of months. It doesn't seem feasible, unless they have used the newer 16nm process.
Unless of course it is the other way around, it is 512 Gflops docked, and decreased to something like 350 gflops undocked (aka Wii U power in handheld). I don't know why, but this makes perfect Nintendo sense to me. They seem to like cleverness like that.
For the Australians reading this. BigW is going to have a launch day deal on the Switch and some games. They also have a bundle going on. As it stands most stores are charging the recomended retail prices:
Switch - $469AU
Zelda - $89AU
1-2 Switch - $69AU
Here are the prices BigW are offering:
Switch - $469AU (no change)
Zelda - $75AU ($14 under RRP)
1-2 Switch - $55AU ($14 under RRP)
Switch + Zelda - $519AU ($40 under RRP)
Switch + 1-2 Switch - $499 ($40 under RRP)
It'll be interesting to see if other stores will price match. I doubt you'll be able to get any of this at BigW without a pre-order.
The Wii was however a poisoned chalice for Nintendo from a marketing perspective because they lost control of the marketing message surrounding them and lost contact and influence with particular groups that are important influencers.
Nintendo simply misread the casual market. Nothing more, nothing less. They also had to learn how to make HD video games for the first time and make video games for different platforms that actually had lots of similarities.
With the Switch, Nintendo is showing that they're learning from those setbacks. Regardless of those setbacks, their core mission hasn't changed.
Nintendo is definitely showing that they understand some marketing lessons from the Wii U and, I'd agree, their core mission is still very similar to what it was with the Wii U.
Where we perhaps differ in our opinions is whether Nintendo can satisfy very disparate audiences with the same piece of hardware.
To put it a different way and to come away from Nintendo for a moment: on a technical level there's basically no difference between a VW Polo and a Skoda Fabia apart from the price. The major differences are marketing - the person who buys a VW Polo wouldn't be seen dead driving a Skoda (the butt of many jokes 20+ years ago about how bad Eastern European cars were) even though it's pretty much exactly the same car. So they pay a premium.
Likewise many of the people who buy a Skoda Fabia over a VW Polo aren't doing so purely on the basis of price - they might buy the Skoda even if the VW was just as cheap. That's because the image marketed is different and they make a different - mutually exclusive - statements about the buyer. All of the major car manufacturers do similar things and maintain multiple "badges" for just this reason.
To bring it back to Nintendo - if the "core" Nintendo fanbase wants a VW and the casual audience wants a Skoda then they can't easily market to both groups at once without confusing or turning off one or (worst case scenario) both. That's their "poisoned chalice". The games that Nintendo are making has an influence on it but it's mostly just marketing.
It's why they can't pack-in 1-2 Switch. Even though it would superficially make sense to do so it'd send out a very strong message "this is the type of game that this console is for" that would turn off a big group of potential buyers (who happen to be the buyers who will happily pay £300 at launch). Counter-intuitively, if they were pricing Switch at £100 then it'd be stupid of them not to pack-in 1-2 Switch for free.
Have no doubts - Nintendo could have made the Switch a £100 machine powerful enough to run 1-2 Switch (it's not pushing the graphical capabilities of the machine) but that machine probably wouldn't be a platform that could run BoTW.
Fortunately I think Nintendo understands this now in a way they didn't with the Wii U and they've setup a durable long term platform that's flexible enough to be tailored to a very wide range of audiences. Whether they will do that is going to be determined by how good their manufacturing and marketing departments. At the very least it won't be technical limitations that stop them.
Where we perhaps differ in our opinions is whether Nintendo can satisfy very disparate audiences with the same piece of hardware.
And there was no problem with the Wii. It had its "casual" video games; and it also had its usual library of well-renowned, "core" Nintendo games that millions of "core" gamers enjoyed. It ran Just Dance and graphically inmpressive "core" Nintendo games. It was enjoyed by a wide range of gaming audiences.
Again, there was no problem. There was no "poisoned chalice". The only group of gamers bothered by this is the group of pretentious, selfish, arrogant, entitled gamers who didn't want to share their sandbox with people who didn't want to play Mario (or Western AAA) games just like they do. If Nintendo has their way, the Switch will appeal to many millions of casual gamers again; these "real gamers" will have to share the sandbox with "fake gamers" again; the complaining about "fake gamers" will continue.
I didn't say that there was a problem with the Wii. I have no sense of entitlement - I like that Nintendo lets geniuses like Sakamoto make digital toy "is it a game?" games like Tomodatchi Life and Nintendogs (and not just because it means he isn't making "Other M 2"). 1-2 Switch probably won't be the next Wii Sports or Minecraft or Super Mario Bros. but it has far more chance than a game like Horizon Zero Dawn that (however great it might be) plays within the established context of video games.
But marketing something for a very broad and very diverse range of audiences is very difficult - unfortunately being seen to target and attempting to satisfy one group can and often will alienate another. That's just reality and I think it is a poisoned chalice for Nintendo.
Nintendo sold tens of millions of copies of Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii and New Super Mario Bros Wii but great "core" games like Metroid Prime 3, Sin & Punishment 2, Xenoblade Chronicles and more had very disappointing sales on the Wii. The audience that would have bought those games either didn't buy a Wii or didn't want to buy games like the aforementioned on it in large numbers.
BoTW could very well sell more in the first month than Skyward Sword sold over its lifetime - despite Skyward Sword being on a format with a 100 million+ install base (and a good number of early adopters who bought the Wii to play Twilight Princess).
If Nintendo doesn't market to the audience that wants to buy and play games like BoTW then we won't see many of them going forwards.
What is a casual gamer? Does it come down to the amount you play or the amount you spend? Why do we find it necessary to label then pigeon hole vast groups of people? People are complex and there may be lots of different types of games an individual will actually enjoy. I for example occasionally like shooting nazis in the face (I'm talking fps here) but I also like Animal Crossing. I've owned over twenty different consoles but currently spend maybe 4 or 5 hours a week gaming. The only reason I check the forums regularly is to keep informed ( thanks Nintendo) and I got my preorder in November. So what category do I fit in to? And is the almost £600 I'm going to spend on launch day worth more or less to Nintendo. At the end of the day the more people Nintendo can entice with the switch the better.
I definitely think the casual tag gets thrown around with a bit too much vigour when its meaning isn't entirely clear cut.
A few months ago, I randomly got into a talk about video games with a Turkish programmer in a club. She asked me what sort of games I liked, and I said "Mario... and Nintendo games and stuff". A slight look of judgement flashed across her eyes, and she peplied, "Aah yes, you look like you play lots of smartphone games too, right?" (I don't). It turns out she was some l33t CS:Go player who had built her own computer and everything else (i.e. firmly in PC Master Race territory), which apparently made me something of a game noob in her eyes. It was odd being on the receiving end of a "filthy casual" stare of pity, despite considering myself something of a "core" - or at least dedicated - gamer, having owned every (Nintendo) console back to the 64.
So I imagine every "real" gamer has a slightly oversimplified view of what "the casuals" look like, just as the Left and the Right tend to have distorted views of the other side in political discourse.
I reckon Nintendo can have their cake and eat it though, if they play their cards right. Not every game has to follow CoD's gritty lead to achieve mainstream global success. MineCraft is obviously something that has done outstandingly in the West despite being about as "adult" as a box of Lego, and Mario Maker was one of the Wii U's few success stories, and became a staple of YouTubers and Switch players.
I don't think the Switch will ever outdo the competition as a CoD-Box, but if they can provide enough unique "core" experiences (like Zelda), as well as novelties like Mario Maker, they might be able to tempt people to own both.
Come Christmas, people are going to have the choice between beefing up their existing console (but having no new games accessible as a result), or getting a new console besides it, with a brand new 3D Mario and Zelda to play.
Zelda, and the piece of kit itself, have already got my PC Master Race little brother more hyped about anything than I've ever seen, and I think the temptation of 'full scale console games' on the go has obvious appeal for the "core" market. Nintendo just has to get those games there out there, from as many places as possible.
I suppose if I had to give my take on it, core and casual are just terms for how invested someone is.
Take me and most of us here, for example. We're on the prowl daily for news of consoles and games that take our fancy, even some that might not, just to see what's going around. The core, if you will. The casual are those that only take an interest in adverts, whether on the TV or in a store. They might occasionally look up a game, but they won't be looking up every single news article about it.
However, the terms of core and casual have come to mean different things - labels placed in a... I'm right [core] and you're wrong [casual] way. The example above testifies to that, I think.
I suppose if I had to give my take on it, core and casual are just terms for how invested someone is.
Take me and most of us here, for example. We're on the prowl daily for news of consoles and games that take our fancy, even some that might not, just to see what's going around. The core, if you will. The casual are those that only take an interest in adverts, whether on the TV or in a store. They might occasionally look up a game, but they won't be looking up every single news article about it.
However, the terms of core and casual have come to mean different things - labels placed in a... I'm right [core] and you're wrong [casual] way. The example above testifies to that, I think.
That's pretty much my take on it. I think there are varying degrees of casual and hardcore, though.
Switch game downloads can’t be shared across multiple systems Purchases can apparently only be on one system at a time.
Want to play your purchased Nintendo Switch downloads on multiple separate consoles? You'd better be prepared to buy more than one copy of each game.
We recently learned that the Nintendo Switch will finally link eShop purchases to a portable online account (unlike the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS, which locked purchases to a specific piece of hardware). But we're now discovering that this feature apparently does not extend to downloading games to multiple Switch systems at the same time.
The news comes via a recent preview event for 1-2-Switch at the Nintendo World NYC store, which included a question-and-answer session captured by YouTuber CrazyDopetastic. A questioner talks about the potential for getting a second Switch for his children and asks, "if I want to take my system with me... if I were to buy a digital game, could I buy it once, or would I have to buy it multiple times so they can use those games?"
The translated answer, from Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development General Manager Shinya Takahashi: "Currently we don't have a system like that in place for Nintendo Switch, but we haven't made any final decisions about how we would approach that going forward in the future, so unfortunately I can't provide any concrete answer for you right now."
In other words, for now, it sounds like a Nintendo account (and its linked eShop purchases) can only be linked to one Nintendo Switch system at a time (that's assuming nothing was lost in the translation, of course).
As described, this would be a pretty major difference between the Switch and competing systems from Sony and Microsoft. Both the PS4 and the Xbox One allow you to play your games across multiple consoles if you confirm your identity with an online login. As long as your Xbox Live or PSN account is logged in to two systems at the same precise moment, Sony and Microsoft don't care what specific piece of hardware you're playing on.
PC-based services like Steam let you log in from up to 10 computers and even allow you to share your entire library with another account remotely via Family Sharing.
The restrictions on Switch game sharing obviously doesn't apply to physical games, which work directly in any Switch console with no need to even install the game off of the tiny cartridge. And as far as we can tell, all of the up to eight console-centric user accounts on a single Switch should be able to share any and all games downloaded to that system.
The Switch's portable form factor also makes it a little bit easier to physically share downloaded games with people in the same household—you can just hand them the system or insert it into a second dock hooked to another TV (if you have $80 to spare, that is). Of course, that arrangement won't work if one of you wants to take the Switch on a trip and someone else wants to play on another system at home.
We're currently testing out our own Switch in Ars' Orbiting HQ and will have fuller thoughts and impressions soon, but we won't be able to confirm anything about the system's online functions until they're activated around the system's March 3 launch.
Forums
Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread
Posts 10,221 to 10,240 of 69,786
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic