Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

No matter what channel, no matter what time: I keep seeing Switch ads. 1-2-Switch, Zelda, both...all over every channel here in the UK.

As I said, you're wanting it both ways. You whine that there's not enough content so I created a graph that actually helped you with your point. 2017 as we know it at this stage is a bit under par. So I don't think you're crazy for expecting more games than we currently know about. I expect the same.

Though when I go further? When I say that E3 is around the corner and we'll probably find about new games there? For some reason you don't want to hear that. You try to come up with reasons why that couldn't possibly happen. Your latest argument being that there won't be more games at E3 because Q3/Q4 is packed. I point to the fact that it's less packed than Q3/Q4 usually is so you bring the argument back to whining about a lack of games.

What you're doing is creating a circular argument. You don't have a point except to whine about the schedule from whatever angle you can. It's both too thin to be decent AND too packed for anything to be added. If you were being fair minded here you'd realise that it can't be both. But you're not because you'd rather be right than reasonable

Here it's mostly Arms and Mario Kart 8. Honestly I think that the level that they're advertising Arms in particular makes me thing it's coming out earlier than we expect. I'm thinking May at this point.

Yeah, I think if we get something else it'll probably be two big retail releases and something smaller like Snipperclips. But those big releases will be ones that they had a reason for not telling us about at this stage. That's what history would say is likely for Q4 in addition to Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. If I was to take a random stab in the dark? I'd guess something along the lines of:

October: Skyward Sword HD
November: Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon Stars
December: Xenoblade Chronicles 2, SNES Remix

Surely Retro's new game will be ready for release by the end of the year,.By the time Xmas comes,it will be just shy of 4 years since Tropical Freeze released.They've never gone more than 4 years between releases so I think it's safe to assume we'll be seeing whatever they've been working on at E3.With that,Mario Odyssey,Xenoblade 2,Pokemon Stars and the Zelda DLC,that's a killer line up for the holidays.With a line up like that I don't think Nintendo need to be too concerned about the threat of Scorpio launching.

@DefHalan You can't compare Nintendo's output quantity to its competitors out of context to their histories. 20 games with PSVR, 12 games without is pretty big. Do you have a list of those games? Even the 12 for PS4 seems high to me. PS4's having a great year, but I'm not recalling what those are ATM. Are any of them digital-only type games or are those all large scale retail games?

Regardless, you can only compare Nintendo to Nintendo, especially in light of your basis being a comparison to the time not spent on WiiU development. You also can't compare PS1, PS2 had far more Sony published games than N64 and GCN, they approach their releases differently. Nintendo depends more on 1st party, but has not always had the most 1st party QUANTITY, but had exclusive games that were highly in demand and sell well for long durations of time. In the N64 era they actively believed that a fixed library of 25 games or so total for the platform was more than enough. It was Sony (and Sega) that pushed the whole quantity idea like it's movies being pumped out of a studio. That's always been their thing is to keep disposable games coming fast. They run on different sales models in regard to first party. A Sony game is considered one and done, a few months after release its discounted and considered done its run, mimicing their film busness (Sony/Columbia/Tristar Pictures), Ninteod plans on long tail continuous sales over years at full price. Different models, different outputs.

Comparing Nintendo to Nintendo, which was the original point of the exercise, we have to compare HD Nintendo to HD Nintendo. That can be debated against SD nintendo against the industry backdrop as a whole.

If we're just doing a Sony vs Nintendo argument, that's a whole different thing, possibly better sent to GameFaqs.

@NEStalgia do I have to point out how crazy this is or do you see it?

@DefHalan Don't tell me you really HAVE been wasting everyone's time with a whole PSXBoxPC vs. Nintendo thing and just masquerading it as a "Nintendo's output in the absence of WiiU" topic, have you? You didn't seem like one of those.

The WiiU era had Nintendo at a defect due to the variety of issues going on. Getting back on track involved closing the gap on that defect which involved double the effort. That's not news. They don't even hide that. If your issue was that you felt that the output on Switch didn't match the missing timeline during the gap, that's an issue to debate about here. If your issue is just comparing the Sony ecosystem to Nintendo and arriving at the age old "but Nintendo has less games", there's plenty of gaming sites that would embrace that conversation since 2004, but that's not what this crowd is generally about.

You've been cherry picking top years during mid-console cycle figures, comparing it to Nintendo launch year figures, then ignoring Nintendo's history, ignoring industry reality, and then ignoring the different market approaches between each company even though those approaches haven't changed in 15+ years. Are you genuinely interested in discussing the turnaround times of games and where the WiiU gap time went, or are you really just interested in following the "Nintendo vs. PSXboxPC as direct competitors" meme? So far, I and others have been engaging the conversation taking your word that it's the former.

@IceClimbers Exactly this. In truth even without the 3DS efforts the WiiU fate wouldn't have been much different. They were just too unprepared for HD. Catching up on 3DS was easy enough, it just required a committed push. But all that was required for the HD move was more than they bargained for. I also still believe that a lot of relationships with third parties were made with a wink, nod, and gentleman's agreement, and then they bailed before doing much of anything, after promising they'd use the nintendo-free launch period to stack it with third party games. Iwata, I fear, was too trusting and too oblivious of the industry outside the Nintendo bubble to realize what their actual position was. But when it comes to Switch we can't forget it's still his system and he built it in the shadow of all that as a response to it.

@NEStalgia I haven't been cherry picking anything. I have barely put any time in researching anything, mostly just Google searches and Wikipedia info. But saying that I shouldn't expect more from a company is false. Anyone can have expectations and when companies fail those expectations, negative feedback is created. If you think those expectations are set to higg then that is your opinion. I base my expectations off the fact that Nintendo has obviously had people working on development (not paying a bunch of people to stand around not doing anything) and they held off on releasing much of anything last year. I also see how other companies in the same market have been able to deliver lots of quality content (quality is in the eye of the beholder) when their main market appeal isn't their own content, at least not to the same degree as Nintendo. This isn't about Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo being the best. This is about what I expected from Nintendo based on their actions and the achievements of their competitors. This is about how Nintendo has failed to reach those expectations. This is about my disappointment in the Switch so far. And yet through all of this, I am still planning on getting a Switch while I don't own a PS4 or XB1. I still want the games Nintendo is making and look forward to certain releases. However, that isn't blinding me the fact that Nintendo's software line up is less than I expected. This all started with me asking a simple question. Where are all the games Nintendo was holding back from the Wii U all this time?

I used the Global Testfire also to try and share some pics on Twitter through the Switch and it is really smooth, easy, comfortable and fast. It's fantastic!!

Yeah, and when I answered you didn't like what I had to say. So you just put on this big whine about how Nintendo are apparently screwing us over. Or something. As I said when I posted that graph a few pages back. The drop in quantity of releases towards the end of the Wii U era? It amounts to about 5 retail releases. 5 games we would have gotten if it wasn't for the fact that development shifted over to the Switch.

As it stands currently? The Switch is about on-par with a usual yearly lineup of games Nintendo publishes for their home consoles. One more game and they're bang-on for an average year. Those five extra games they skipped on Wii U? I'd assume they can fit them in somewhere. A bit at the tail end of this year and a bit more into next year. It's not crazy to think that at E3 we may find out about 2-3 games that will come out in Q4.

That's where your lost games are.

@skywake and we will see if that happens. I am not counting on it.

@Whitewatermoose
I was wondering - how much can we judge graphics and fps from the global testfire? Is this thing running the final, finished version of the product? The download was almost a gig, if I remember correctly. That seems pretty low for assets in a game like this, even if it is only the multiplayer component.

Anyway, this could be exactly what we're going to see at launch in terms of the graphics. Any thoughts?

@Whitewatermoose if i remember right it's 30.

Did some other matches and afain all went perfect. Played some good fames (even a 15-0). Now can't wait for next session before waiting for the game itself!!

@rallydefault game looks really fantastic, even better than Splatoon. The hardware difference is evident to me

It didn't feel massively different which is by no means a bad thing. I have to say I'm not as hyped as I was for the first splatoon but I know I will still buy it as I loved the original. Here's hoping they still have some surprises up their sleeves.

I could see it going either way regarding a shooter for the holiday season. While it would be smart, I think Nintendo may just go all out on first party this fall/holiday instead. So something like this for the rest of the year.
April: MK8 Deluxe
June: ARMS
August: Splatoon 2
September: Fire Emblem Warriors, Pikmin 4 (don't think the Pikmin game Miyamoto teased is the 3DS one)
October: Smash 4 port (not confirmed but inevitable), new game to be announced at E3
November: Super Mario Odyssey, new game to be announced at E3 (Pokemon Stars if that rumour is real)
December: Xenoblade 2 (if not delayed)

Combine that with a bunch of both types of DLC like free content updates for Splatoon 2 and ARMS, the already confirmed DLC for BotW, some paid DLC for MK8 Deluxe and Nintendo may think a holiday 3rd party FPS is not necessary.

@Whitewatermoose The original Splatoon was 60 fps.If I remember correctly it was originally 30 fps in the Plaza but that was later patched.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/04/digital_foundry_puts...

@DefHalan Ok, well that's more in line with what I thought you were talking about originally, so that's ok. Still I think you're a little fixated on expectations based on hopefulness rather than expectations based on the actual problems and their goals. With the WiiU, Nintendo was very very behind and not operating at normal capacity. Catching up to normal capacity WAS the goal going forward. That involved closing the deficit. All those games being worked on at the end of the WiiU plus the regular development, combined is what was required to close that gap. And by your own statements you belive they accomplished that goal, it looks like a normal year, which is exactly where they needed to return to by doubling production to close the gap and get back to normal. So you do think they succeeded in that. But at the same time you were expecting them to have normal output, AND close the WiiU defecit, AND still have higher than typical output, meaning a 150%+ increase in development from where they were. That would have required mammoth debt spending years ago on a scale that would have sent investors running AND prematurely signaled the true end of the WiiU!

You said you're a level designer, even if just mobile content. Look at Twilight Princess, then look at Breath of the Wild. Run an estimate using your own scheduling how long it would take you to create something with the scale and LoD of Ordon Villiage, and then estimate how long it would take you to create Zora's Domain (BotW).....if staffing from scratch it takes time to get people up to speed on "the way things are done here", if not staffing from scratch you need to extend the timetables.

Comparisons to Sony THIS year still makes no sense, it's a mid-console-cycle release versus a new gen system. The output 4 years into a cycle isn't the same as year 1 output, it can't be. Dev kits were only finalized months ago for Switch. You said you don't have a PS4, so you missed the "fun" of that launch. Switch is a busy busy paradise next to the first year or two of PS4. Console launches have lower amounts of software. If Nintendo is having a "normal" year, then they're already outdoing themselves on a launch.

According to a leak, Nintendo is predicting 20 million units sold in the first year. Doesn't seem very likely to me, but I hope it happens. (Sorry if this was posted already) http://bgr.com/2017/03/25/nintendo-switch-sales-numbers-2017-...

@KirbyTheVampire That's from Digitimes. They aren't a reliable source.