Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I suppose we're supposed to find this surprising coming from a company that recently funded Bayonetta 2 and featured her in their most acclaimed multiplayer game?

Bernie Stolar
(Former executive VP, Sony Computer Entertainment America, worked on the original PlayStation launch)
"You have to remember, Nintendo has nine billion dollars in the bank, so they can afford to do whatever they want."

Yet people think Nintendo is doomed as soon as they do something wrong. People don't have any clue how well Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are actually doing. From what I've heard, Sony is actually much closer to going bankrupt. I'm not an expert either but I just wanted to mention how I find these kind of talks so funny. It's so easy to just talk whatever and act like you know what your talking about in "the wonderful world of internet".

Sony's games division is doing great, the problem is the rest of the company.

@Octane
Man, I just want you to know, no matter what, I still respect you. Honestly. We're all here because we like games. Let's not lose sight of that.

Just saw my first Switch advert on ITV1 (UK); it focused on1-2 Switch.

This is biased bull (sorry if I sound aggressive). They focus on gameplay just as much as using a system to its limits. It's not like Nintendo doesn't do the same thing. BotW plays at 30fps with frequent drops. Lag also hurts gameplay y'know. Why so much "us versus them"? If anything, the trash studios in the West just stand out more. Activision and Ubisoft are the worst when it comes to stale gameplay, yet for some reason people still buy their games.

@zitpig Salutes appreciatively

Thank you. I've had a bit of a phobia about memory cards ever since I needed to buy one for my camera in Tokyo, and was confronted with this:

¥42,110 works out at around £300 or $375, which was almost as much as my two-way airfare to Japan, so I was a little unwilling to drop that sort of money just to take some more holiday snaps. I also thought that seeing as I'd gone to the Yodobashi Camera Akiba (the biggest technology store in Akibahara (the tech Mecca of Tokyo (the the most modern city Japan (the home of practically all major SD card companies)))), that they'd had a decent range of products and prices on SD Cards, but... that was it.

Anyway, I popped around the corner into a little side-street, and after skilfully avoiding an army of maids handing out café brochures, found my way into a much more humble memory card establishment, and managed to procure a 64GB card for under ¥2000. It was half the price of the Yodobashi offering, and had a speed of 90MB/s as opposed to 260MB/s, but it proved ample and was over 20 times cheaper. Which was nice.

But ever since then, I've been terrified of SD Cards and their mysterious Read/Write speeds. What contexts would having a super-high R/W speed actually be useful, if you don't mind me asking?

Also, @SLIGEACH_EIRE Could you just leave link rather than quoting the entire article in the future? It stretches the page out hugely on a smartphone and makes page navigation much more awkward (and involve a lot more frantic thumb-swiping). A picture or a video is fine, but entire articles quoted verbatim are basically unnecessary when a simple link would suffice. Page 583 on an iPhone has basically become an Alolan Exeggutor meme. Also, I prefer not to have The Sun thrust in my face if I have the choice. Not reading The Sun is one of life's little luxuries. I do it every Sunday morning over a cooked breakfast. It's a luxury I'd rather not give up on.

I know I'm not exactly blameless when it comes to leaving walls of texts, but at least I have to actually write the words rather than just plonking down some hefty chunk of prose copied from some other corner of the internet.

@Maxz It's better to quote it as people don't have to click on the link and give them hits and revenue from advertising.

Switch Zelda Breath of The Wild advert, been shown on Sky 1 tonight during Attack of The Clones

@SLIGEACH_EIRE If you don't want to draw attention to a website's content and risk it gaining extra ad revenue as a result, simply refrain from posting the article all. Better yet, don't visit the website yourself. Lord knows what you were doing on the Sun's website, but you must have clicked on it to copy and paste the article to begin with.

I might just be speaking for myself here, but I find it confusing when someone quotes some random article, just to say "look at this it's totally stupid and not worth taking seriously". The world is so full of stupid stuff that if you waste all your time getting people to read it and agree how stupid it is, you won't have any time to read or discuss anything sensible. It's precisely because it's stupid that I'd rather it didn't end up taking up a decent chunk of every other forum page.

If you think something is worthless, why draw so much attention to it? It's not as if people here agreeing that it's stupid is going to counteract that in any way.

I'd just rather this thread didn't become dumping ground for articles so dumb that the sites don't deserve the ad revenue. I quite like it here. People post interesting and (largely) sensible stuff. And if I think something's not sensible or correct, that can be discussed. Deliberately going in search of gutter-press trash is basically the opposite of that. It's unwaveringly stupid, and you can't even argue with it; only at it.

Obviously, it's not my forum, so if everyone else is cool with entire pieces of tabloid nonsense taking up half the screen, then too bad for me. But the standard etiquette - I believe - is to post links to articles worth reading, with particularly poignant sections in quotes if suitable. Dumping entire articles verbatim is a lot more in your face, and makes it a bit of a pain to use the forums on a smartphone.

@Tarvaax I completely agree. It's tiring reading things like that sometimes.

Also that sun article is pretty hilarious to read. I love that they take themselves seriously

Which is why depending on those kind of developers too much would hurt the video game industry, big time.

At some point, it's not going to matter how much money Nintendo has, and no, they can't "do whatever they want" and still be successful. Video Game companies, like publishing companies, finance firms, and pretty much every company, are companies built on trust. Nintendo relies on partners like game publishers and 3rd party developers, and relies on a sizable fanbase, as well as computer part manufacturers, shareholders and patrons, and companies like DeNA that help with their platforms. You think Nintendo suffers from lack of 3rd party support now? Companies are at least still watching Nintendo for the Switch's success. If the Switch fails like the Wii U, they will establish a reputation of failing consoles, and no one will jump aboard that ship. Nintendo will struggle even harder not only to sell future consoles, but find partners for their platform, whether it's 3rd party games, indie games, or even good deals on materials and parts.

I guess I'm no expert on exactly what goes on with partner companies in the vidya game business, but I'm sure a failing console reputation would make things 10 times harder for Nintendo. They could stay afloat for a few decades, sure, but then what? There would be no rescue party after that.

@TomJ

Lol.

Just... why.

It kills me inside to see a Switch dropped over and over like that, lol. Also, they wouldn't have nearly as many "fails" if they just set it down and didn't keep moving it around like that.

@KirbyTheVampire They flat...punch it. I mean...apparently the laws of physics shouldn't apply? What?

Its like the kickstand is flimsy comments....well yes. Its a good design decision so its re-attachable if it pops off. Its good design.

And now people are saying "You cant charge it fully with a standard USB-C charger!" well...yes because its using more power than what most USB-C enabled devices are designed for. Significantly.

Honestly, there are many complaints with the Switch, but a lot of them....really feel like mountains from mole hills.

Even the Joy-Con issue. Don't cover it with ya body you jackasses. It's a wireless signal, and water, which humans are made of, people seem to fail at this, blocks signals.

And the recent comments of 1-2 Switch being a "Sex-act simulator" I have to question humanity more than I already do (My hand is hovering over that big red button and each day it gets more tempting). If that's what they call a sex-act, I question both the standards of sex-ed, and what they do to each other, because apparently I've been doing it wrong.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is why I want to line most people up in a big long line and smack them with my passing hand/baseball bat depending on how thick they are.

Agreed. Most of the hardware issues might seem like a big deal at first glance, but if you just read into them a bit, they're either easily solved or blown way out of proportion. Even the controllers get torn apart constantly for being expensive, despite being more versatile than the competition's controllers and only costing a few dollars more than the competition's did when their systems launched. Honestly, when you spend 300 USD and who knows how much on games, I think adding like 10 more dollars to the mix isn't a big deal, especially considering the fact that those controllers are fully functional on the TV and on the go.

The 1-2 Switch thing is especially stupid. How many games get released on other platforms with legitimate sexual content? At least it's really only the Sun who brought it up.

@BiasedSonyFan Lol, basically you're calling me out for caring too much about Nintendo. On a nintendo fansite...
@KirbyTheVampire I liked the growling trombone

The thing is for a long time there has been two ways to "sell papers". There's the one you buy with your morning coffee on the street and the one you get delivered to your door. The one you impulse buy? They need to win you over with a headline. The most catchy headlines are the ones that are a little bit BS. With the subscription model on the other hand you don't make the decision about keeping your subscription while reading it. You do it at the end of the subscription period once or twice a year.

So what's happened with journalism is that suddenly people are getting their news online. And not just the younger generations but everyone. People buy into news one article at a time. Almost nobody subscribes. Crap like that CNet video? Well it's garbage. But if anything they're just playing the game. It may be bad journalism but it isn't bad business. Especially when people not only click on it but share it so more people can click on it. Who's the idiot? Them for posting it or us for clicking on it?

Nintendo did have around $9 billion in the bank during the height of the Wii-era, but that number has started to drop in recent years. They now have $5.87 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and $13.00 billion in total assets. It's still enough to do a lot of things, but Nintendo tends to be conservative in their approach to new revenue streams.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/170131e.pdf

Sony's Pictures division has been struggling in the past 9 months, but the company as a whole still managed to turn a profit. They now have $6.65 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and $152.54 billion in total assets. Their gaming division did take a while to become profitable again, but Sony was never in any serious trouble.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/fr/16q3_sony.pdf

Nintendo is not doomed yet, and Sony is far from bankruptcy. Both companies aren't going anywhere anytime soon.