Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@GrailUK @Eric258
I don't think stuff external to the eShop like folders and pushes on the news page are the solution. What they need is a way to separate content out on the eShop itself. Like how when you open up the Google Play store it's split into categories. Apps, Movies, Music, Books etc.

The eShop on the Switch as it currently is has the same design but it's not really split into meaningful sections. Not in a way that's going to highlight different kinds of content. What they need to do is probably kill the new releases tab and split it into Classics, eShop only and Retail on eShop and then in each of those tabs display the new releases for those categories. That way Breath of the Wild and Shovel Knight won't disappear from the page when the next batch of Neo Geo games come out.

@skywake Yeah, eshop definitely needs some work. All-though it looks very sleek and modern, its very basic compared to the 3DS. Splitting up the games into genres would really help and as you said, having separate tabs for new releases would help new titles stand out more. The coming soon tab isn't really going to cut it. Having a separate section for demos would also help cause it's very easy to miss it when a title has a demo. I'm also hoping that people can rate games with stars and etc.

I wonder how SuperMetalDave64 feels about Switch currently?

@WebHead I recently checked out his channel. He stills seems salty over the fact that his predictions were wrong. I thought he would have moved on by this point. Don't really know why somebody would care too much whether it was Nivdia or AMD.

@Eric258 I mean its water under the bridge and all, its just funny how he thought this would fail.

@WebHead He should buy a Scorpio. It is everything he was wanting.

Failure to see AMD couldn't produce a chip to run in something so small at low power for high performance, decent cooling, price and considering the software needed to maximise performance, is on him.

But hey, Tegra X1 is outdated right? Right? What do you mean 2015? That's outdated according to the internet!

@BLP_Software What matters the most is that it's working for most of the people. It doesn't matter how "outdated" the tech is.

@JaxonH The cynic in me says the point of releasing all the multiplayer games now is to build the fan base for them during the free phase so that when they launch the paid service the financials will reflect a large subscription base from the get-go. I.E. they're shaping the Switch library to drive subscriptions, to stabilize the online base. It's cynical, and I can see why they'd do it, but IMO it's the early adopters it mostly works against.

I'm somewhat like you that Kart and Splatoon are the only games I've played online in the past decade, though Kart only barely, Splatoon as a full blown addict. But that's kind of my point about the release schedule though. Wouldn't it be better if the few games you play online released more staggered rather than all of them within weeks of each other? Before you get absorbed into one you're kind of pushed to the next one, as is the whole online community base of a new console. Kind of like how Splatoon's player base really thinned out when Overwatch came out. One big online game really devastates the community of the last big online game. And with a console of 2.4M in the wild for now....that's not a big player base. And the early Switch buyers not into the online games have very little driving their continued interest in the platform for the first half a year. After the holiday-early'18 games come out the library will start being nicely balanced, but I do think it's a misstep in the early Window. Kart and Splatoon are fine, but I feel like Arms maybe should have been placed either at launch or Holiday with a more traditional game in that window to keep a kind of alternating appeal to different gamers.

SF...I played it on 3DS when there was nothing else (it was a decent launch game on a launch that had zero) but I'm not really a fighter player...never really got into them back in their heyday for whatever reason. yes, I owned a Genesis and didn't play fighters. Not sure if I can really get into it this time. Sonic Mania was pushed back to "Summer", btw. Yes, it's a bummer. Not too big a delay but it's a delay. And yeah I forgot to mention Disgaea 5 before....that's a big one I'm looking forward (cautiously) to. But it's sooooo super niche it's hardly worth mentioning in a broader context. Personally I'm looking forward to giving it a try but I'm not sure how it will go. I played 4 on Vita, loved the intro, then they started throwing the geo-puzzles at me and opened this incomprehensible weapons/stats store set with big text tutorials and I totally lost the narrative and started getting insta-killed. Which was a shame because I loved it at first. But after a few hours ended up never touching it again...that difficulty spike was awful. So I'm very cautious as to if the only (super niche) traditional game until Christmas will actually be really appealing in motion or not for me.

Strangely I've been ruling out Puyo but tried the demo and while it's an utter waste of what Switch can do, was a very good puyo/tetris game with the weird modes and I"m curious what "adventure/story" mode on a Tetris game could be like....

@Nintenerdguy eh i was able to get one. So yes its hard to find but its not NES Classic bad.

@Azooooz I know its not outdated. I'm mirroring the internet and taking the mick out of them.

@NEStalgia I think Nintendo's basically giving Nindies a chance to flourish in this situation. Most of the fantastic Nindie games you hear about are single player experiences or at least the single player option is the best of the experience so that goes well with Nintendo's multiplayer focus. Then they can do the reverse in the fall (mostly single player experiences, few multiplayer experiences) to give the bigger 3rd parties a chance as those tend to focus more on multiplayer but won't be releasing until fall.

@Grumblevolcano Nintendo gave 3rd party AAAs a "chance to flourish" early in the WiiU era and that did not go so well.

I think you're giving it an overly generous view in terms of giving 3rd party a chance to flourish. Most likely the reality is these games are faster to put together and are ready, the big single player games are not (Kart is a port, Arms is new, but very clearly a "small" game in terms of content and assets (small from a dev time perspective), so could be put together quickly, and Splatoon is new, but reuses a lot of core design and assets as a pure sequel. Plus the holidays are the bigger buying time with a bigger install base (maximize sales numbers on the costlier to produce products), and the more cynical portion of building a pre-baked customer base for the paid subscription.

All valid business reasons, and maybe logistical reasons for delivering what they're delivering when they're delivering it. But it's hard to say a more balanced approach wouldn't have been better in the long run. The library will balance out by end of year one, but no question it's a little awkward toploading halves of the year. Also a little awkward for the summer travel season when people are more likely to play handheld and less likely to play docked thus the online games become lifeless. I for one almost never play docked (or home consoles, previously) from say May through September.) So Arms, Splatoon, and Kart are going to sit there gathering dust until Fall....when all the single player games start coming out

I think it's even simpler than that. They effectively have a list of games that they could build from R&D they put towards Wii U releases. If you exclude games that would clash with other releases they've got on the horizon (3D World vs Odyssey, Zelda remakes vs BotW) that shrinks the list. It shrinks even more if you limit it to games that that sold well on Wii U. At that point the list is just Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Splatoon and Mario Maker.

I can only assume that Smash Bros and Mario Maker are next......

@Whitewatermoose Post the source next time

Here it is; Bandai Namco filed a trademark for Mario PAC-MAN Maker:

I don't see the appeal of a Pac-Man Maker, but who knows! I wasn't really into Mario Maker either.

It'll come to all platforms except Switch

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, multiplayer features Super Mario Odyssey has. If it's essentially a single player title then I think there's a good chance we'll see SM3DW or SM3DW2 on Switch. SM3DW is such a great local multiplayer game that it just makes sense to come to Switch.

@gcunit there should be since we saw in the Switch reveal the lady getting the system to the party and starting playing with another person, one joy-con each. But still we din't know. Guess we'll find out at E3 since Nintendo (Reggie if i remember right) said Odissey will be central piece at the conference

Zelda Maker would be cool, especially as it seems BotW doesn't have any true dungeons (at least judging from the one I've done, it's more like an expanded shrine).