Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@DefHalan WiiU DID have good software support the first few years. The pacing of releases made it look bad (thus not front loading switch's launch.) 2015 was a banner year for WiiU. It had good software rollouts, and compared to early PS4, excellent software rollouts. Software wasn't it's problem. It was bad press, bad marketing, and specific bad press regarding certain third parties combined with the bad marketing that made it a commercial failure even if it was a well supported platform until the past 2 years. Remember the early WiiU years when WiiU unloaded tons and tons of E3 new games announcements while Microsoft had Kinektimals and some DLC? Nintendo looked like the big winner. The problem is WiiU launched when the industry was moving to PC-architecture-only, and they never got the memo. They thought they joined the fray only to find everyone was just waiting for PS4/XBone to land so they could ignore everything not PC (those two are just PCs. Bad ones, but PCs...) So WiiU suddenly became ignored. Switch isn't x86, but Tegra is almost 1:1 instruction compatible so you can more or less cross compile after some minor architecture changes. Not that every company wants to do much business with Nintendo, they don't, even if Nitnendo just released a big beige box Dell and slapped a Nintendo sticker on the lid. But it opens more doors than it closes which leads to a healthier ecosystem, maybe not from EA and Activision, but for a lot of other companies.

@Ryu_Niiyama Undecided on MK8 myself....I've never been a HUGE Mk fan to begin with, so buying it twice seems like it won't get much use. OTOH the Switch hardware presents some fun uses for he game. And I'm wondering if t would be best as one of the few retail digital games I'd ever consider buying.

@NEStalgia For a normal year for Nintendo, this is about par what I have come to expect. The issue is, this isn't a normal year. This is console launch year with last year being pretty empty by most people's standards. Because of those two factors I think lack of software is a valid point. I think it being 3 weeks into the system release and knowing we aren't getting anything else for over a month is kinda bad too. I expected releases to be spread out but not two months between console release and next big game release (and how big of a deal is Mario Kart 8 again, that can be debated but that is a different conversation for a different time) It might be a little pessimistic expecting delays but I would rather expect delays and them not happen, then to expect to be playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Christmas and then have it taken away. Delays happen all the time for games, Zelda was delayed like crazy. Star Fox Zero was even delayed. I am not too focused on 3rd Party stuff right now, since most of it doesn't seem too impressive. The exclusives you mentioned are even really exclusives are they? DQXI is coming to PS4 and 3DS and DQH is already out on other platforms. (according to Wikipedia)

Wii U had a lot of problems. A lot of problems. You can't boil it down to just one because I think it was kinda a perfect storm of failure. So many things messed up the Wii U that it couldn't recover. And because of that, I think Switch should be making Wii U numbers look like a joke. Nintendo needed to come out strong but instead they came out Zelda-ing. The only impressive thing with the Switch from now until... who knows, is Zelda. Splatoon 2 or Arms I am not sure will be the Switch's next big thing but I would be glad to be proved wrong. The Switch isn't selling because of the product release being strong, the Switch is selling because Zelda is that freaking strong. Will the Switch be able to stand on its own, especially if they don't have another Zelda type big release on it? I doubt it, but I am willing and would love to be proved wrong.

Splatoon 2 testfire was incredibly fun. I wasn't sure how I'd like the gyro, but it felt really natural after I got the hang of it.

I got about 3 complete matches in - all others were disconnects and such at various times, but hey, that's what this is for.

I still just can't bring myself to use the gyro controls. I tried them on Wii U for a bit, and I'm just better going twin sticks. I know it's technically slower, but it's the way I'm programmed I think lol

Anyway, wicked fun! I LOVE the dualies and all the mobility you get with rolling around. I like the jetpack ult, too. Was very fun!

@rallydefault about disconnections it was you. Did not have any

@FGPackers
That's good! Where are you playing from? I'm U.S. East Coast.

I got probably...gosh... 10-12 disconnects.

I'm in the uk and got 3 disconnects total. The rest was steady as you like. Cracking game but didn't feel much different from the original, not that that's a bad thing.

@rallydefault i'm from Italy. Did not have any disconnection or lag in any form

@FGPackers @BigBadJohn
Cool, cool. Yea - like I said, the disconnects don't surprise me, and I live in the most congested area of the U.S.

I know it's not my wireless - my Switch's connection is nice and smooth, same with my PC. It'll be interesting to see how the subsequent testfires play out.

That was a ton of fun. Only had a couple disconnects and ended the session with a winning record. I haven't played the first game in ages so I figured I'd be rusty and started with the Splattershot. Wasn't rusty at all! Used the Splat Dualies and they are SO MUCH FUN. Love the rolling feature, as it's gotten me a few kills (and avoided getting splatted myself), and it allows for some faster maneuvering around corners when trying to cover turf in the final seconds.

@rallydefault consider i played docked with wired connection. I don't like to play online wireless

@rallydefault I didn't do the testfire for the original game so I was expecting it to be proper laggy and lots of disconnects but like I say it held up really well. I'm not sure about playing in handheld using gyros though. At one point I was holding my Switch above my head trying to get some sod on a bridge. Look a proper fool doing that in public.

Splatoon test fire was good fun, gyro controls for aiming are for me going to take time to get use to. Discovered I pretty good with the roller absolutely awful with the sniper rifle. Roll on tomorrow morning session near lunch time.

I'm from Canada, and played with wired connection and only had 1 disconnect. Sounds like some people had really bad disconnection issues, which is a bummer.

@FGPackers
Yea, I usually connect my consoles instead of wireless. But honestly, I don't know how much I'll be playing my Switch online, so I'll probably just keep it wireless for now.

By the way if this are the servers paying for online will be fine to me. It went just perfect. Can't wait to try voice chat!!

Didnt go well for me. Only had two full none disconnecting matches. Bit concerning.

@DefHalan It's what you expect in a normal year from Nintendo based on what criteria? Based on the WiiU? We're already excelling over the WiiU. Based on 3DS and Wii? Dev times and costs are way way shorter for those platforms. That's the big HD roadblock that torpedoed WiiU. The yearly release schedule for WiiU is Nintendo's "normal" output for HD. WHich means a year with a number of good games then a year with next to nothing, then another two good games, then 8 months with nothing. If you're basing Nintendo normal output quantity on SD and sub-SD platforms that's a dead argument before it begins. Switch already does have a lot more content than the past.

It should be noted it's not just Nintendo. Years ago the director of Assassin's Creed, speaking for Ubisoft addressed a GDC question that he sees the future of AAA as focusing all resources and efforts on maybe 2-3 franchises for each major publisher and paring back on most other content. He was right. Ubi actually has a lot of content and followed that pattern the least (but their quality is questionable often enough), EA really has about 4 franchises and that's it. Activision has done the same. Quantity versus the past has been and will continue to be pared back across the entire industry versus the past because of the resources required for each product.

So 9 games in 10 months may be what you expect from Nintendo, but that certainly isn't from the HD era Nintedo that was lucky to have 5 games in 12 months on a good year. That's pushing it for most major devs. Sure PS4 is having a banner year, but it's their FIRST banner year since console launch in what will be 4 years ago by the time the banner year is done.

Maybe you wanted to see more year 1 first party AAA games on Switch, but I'm still not sure that was ever a reasonable expectation. Even Sony would struggle mightily to put out more content than that (and failed, majorly to put out even close to that content in their own launch year.) WiiU was a console that never had the games ready in the beinning. Everything they worked on 4 years ago was what released in the past 2. Switch starts from scratch a year or two ago. You keep talking about this backlog of games they should have ready to go, but by the time they got done finishing up the WiiU games they had already promised and started at WiiU launch, that left us at this point 1-2 years into development of Switch games. Getting back to a "normal" release schedule IS the big payoff. They haven't been there in 4 years. And with 3DS winding down that moves more resources into the pool moving forward to keep that pace going without the huge gaps we've experienced.

All that being said, I have to get some Zelda in and work on Blaster Master Zero before the Splatoon demo all before Has-Been Heroes, Snakepass, and my physical import of Setsuna all arrive next week for my Nintendo Switch that allegedly has no content, lest the backlog become too great

@NEStalgia I'd have to agree there. With Wii U and 3DS they were really thrown off. They didn't prepare properly for the 3DS launch and after it's disastrous start they went into emergency mode with their development resources to get the 3DS off the ground, negatively impacting the Wii U in the process. At that same time they had to go through the same struggles with learning HD development that the rest of the industry had already gone through. Nintendo got thrown into a pendulum swing between the two systems as a result.

Now they're finally out of that and can return to a normal dev cycle.

@NEStalgia based on competition. As established before, last year Microsoft put out 8 games and Sony put out about 20 for their home consoles (some people don't want to include PSVR even though they are PS4 games and PSVR is an accessory, so then it would be about 12) However keep in mind that Nintendo relies more on their 1st party content while the other two rely on 3rd party content.