Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Peek-a-boo
???

I don't know what games are or aren't. I Just know that what few 3rd party games Switch will get, Nintendo will likely have at e3.

That's not some fanboy excuse "HER DERR DARKSUDERS IS COMING, JUST U WATCH IT'LL BE THERE, HER DERR, JUST YOU WATCH THEY'VE GOT ALL THESE GAMSS COMING, THEY'RE JUST HOLDING BACK... HER DERRR

That's now what I'm saying. Don't be a fool.

I'm saying Switch will get squat for 3rd party support. BUT IT WILL GET A FEW GAMES. And the few that it gets Nintendo will likely have at E3 or one of its own Directs, because if they don't it's going to look like straight-up first-party only garbage presentation because they don't have a single game from anybody else. It's not rocket science.

They had freaking MONOPOLY held back for their Direct. But you somehow think that major third party games won't be? Every single major 3rd party game thus far was either announced the night of Nintendo's Switch reveal or at their Direct.

I don't know what games will or won't come but I do know that a few will come, and whichever games they are they will likely be at E3, or some future direct.

Which is why it's a good idea to wait until e3 before writing anything off. Because Nintendo, unlike Sony and MS, doesn't get enough support to have announcements dropped year round and still have enough for e3. They've gotta strategically save what announcements they can use and make the most impact

@JaxonH I'm more than happy to wait until E3 to see whether this 'holding back' has been reined in until then however, if they don't show anything of particular worth, what then?

Do we have to play the waiting game for every Nintendo Direct or, God forbid, will we see a new 'wait until E3 next year' narrative playing out?

And I sincerely hope you were being sarcastic when you referred both Payday 2 and Monopoly as a 'major' third party game...

@Peek-a-boo
Payday may be old, but it is a major game. And the reason I used them as an example is because those are the games that have been announced most recently. The Switch isn't exactly crawling with examples to use, so I brought up the examples we have. Had Call of Duty been announced at the last Direct, I would use that as an example. But they didn't announce CoD. They announced Payday 2 and Monopoly and Fate Extella. So those are the games I'm using to reference.

But Monopoly not being a major game goes even more to my point. If even that game was held back to bolster a presentation, then what will Nintendo do with bigger games? If I'm going to save a penny in the bank, surely I'm going to save a $100 bill, no? What sense does it make to hold back games with impact 3/10 to bolster their presentation but not utilize games with impact 9/10

I think there'll be a couple big AAA ames announced at e3, and then I think we wont hear squat until the next Direct. Just how they do it.

@Peek-a-boo
I have to agree with @JaxonH here. Major third party releases don't necessarily have to be the big blockbuster games. It could just as easily be something like Bayonetta, Resident Evil or Braverly Default. Third party support doesn't have to all be top tier to have an impact.

@skywake I'd argue there's still a huge gap between games like Bayonetta & Resident Evil and Payday & Monopoly...

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Nintendo won't announce any third party games until E3, because without those announcements, they probably won't have enough third party games to feature at E3. It's a weird strategy, but we shall see. I'm keeping my expectations low though, very low.

You make too much common sense sometimes. Yes, this what I originally meant too, hence my 'I sincerely hope you were being sarcastic...' comment.

I believe Nintendo will provide a handful of reasons to keep us all happy, such as Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade Chronicles II and so on. Third party wise, however? My expectations are equally as low as yours.

I'd be the first to say that I was wrong if they all suddenly appear though!

Sure. But there's not that big a gap between those games and stuff like FIFA and Skyrim. I've never really expected all the big tier AAA games to come to Switch but I wouldn't be surprised if we see something. I reserve judgement until after E3.

@BiasedSonyFan
That's right. They care enough to get a booth, so I'd say they care quite a bit, regardless of what they may say.

But the bottom line is, it doesn't matter if it's e3 or their own Direct, they're gonna control the message. And despite not "caring" about e3 as much as some others, it's still the biggest announcements platform for them each year. That's a fact.

And that "indifference" is quickly evaporating. They communicated with 3rd parties for Switch, they increased their RAM at Capcom' s request, they approached devs like Bethesda and From Software who never release on Nintendo. They chose an architecture with easy porting.

I'd say that whole "they're indifferent to 3rd parties" argument is collapsing by the day. But by all means, believe whatever you want

@BiasedSonyFan
secretly stashing all these Western AAA

And I never said that. If they had a whole bunch of western AAA support they wouldn't have to use those games to bolster their presentations. My guess is there's a couple western AAA games, not "all these". A couple. 2 or 3. But you can bet your bottom socks Nintendo will incorporate them into e3 or a Direct.

@BiasedSonyFan
Who said I'm expecting these games on Switch? Quite the opposite. I'm NOT expecting these games on Switch.

But just because 95% of them don't come, doesn't mean none will. There'll be some, and with Switch being successful (assuming it stays on course) it'll get a fair amount down the line.

So no, I'm not expecting these games on Switch, but I do expect a couple. And those couple games will almost certainly be used to bolster their presentation, just like they've used all those other 3rd party games to bolster the Switch announcement and past Direct.

And btw, x86 architecture probably would have been their choice had the system not been a hybrid. They know a 3rd clone won't sell, but a hybrid can. But just because they didn't follow suit with Sony and MS doesn't mean they "Don't value western AAA". They most certainly do, it's just not all they care about about. And there are other things that take higher priority. But just because they value the hybrid concept most, that doesn't mean they don't care about 3rd party games at all. They care now more than ever. Getting Unreal Engine 4 compatibility, getting Switch embedded in Koei Tecmo' s multiplatform engine, getting Skyrim and Bethesda on board... these are not things you do if you don't care.

The difference between x86 and ARM for a game developer is basically nil. No one in their right mind would do that kind of low level programming in a game anymore. Game studios use a game engine, otherwise it takes to long before they hit the market. Most game engines should already be optimised against arm thanks to mobile development.

@Peek-a-boo I think there's still a lot of hand wringing about "what will be announced this E3" though. Look at the lineup into holiday 2017 and just beyond (including JP release dates that we don't know about the west yet.) A new 3D Mario, Skyrim, Fire Emblem, FE Warriors, Splatoon, Xenoblade, Megaten, DQ11, and that's just the big exclusives sans Skyrim. I mean I DO expect some 3rd party, but we're acting like we're talking about a WiiU style lineup that needs a bunch of E3 announcements to not be barren when it's a virtual glut of major titles in a short space of time.

I know you guys are talking third party but, honestly, we already know about a lot of major games.....it's really the minor ones we should be curious about more than major ones, or peeking in the "2018/2019" timeline, but going too far in the future is bad as E3 2014 into E3 2015 showed.

@NEStalgia I disagree about the last point, all E3 2014 into E3 2015 showed in hindsight was that Nintendo moved some Wii U projects to Switch either in the form of releasing for both platforms like BotW or becoming Switch exclusive like Pikmin 4 and Animal Crossing.

If Wii U was a huge success in holiday 2014, we'd have seen info for BotW, Pikmin 4 and a brand new Animal Crossing for Wii U at E3 2015 even if just the tease type like Star Fox at E3 2014. If you think about it, Federation Force was the only negative 3DS announcement and even then that's because if Metroid is not Prime 4 or a Super Metroid clone then Metroid fans don't care.

@Therad You would be surprised to see how many games run on proprietary engines, and they're often only optimised for x86. The majority of big games that release every year run on proprietary engines. The only one I can think of right now is the upcoming FF7 remake (running on UE4). Proprietary engines still need to be optimised for ARM in that case.

@Grumblevolcano E3 2014 to 15 didn't show that anything moved to Switch. It showed that they showcased 3 years worth of games all at once to look like a lot of games. 15 was disappointing because it was just covering the things they already told us about the year before and told us back then they were due over a year later. Sony pulled a similar stunt with E3 2015&16. Half the games showcased still don't exist, and they'll bring them out again this year or next year as featured titles. Sure 15/16 would have had more for Nintendo had they actually been making more, but it doesn't change that half of what they showed in 2014 wasn't really for release until after E3 2015....they borrowed the future to buy the present. They certainly did hold stuff back for Switch after that, but they were leaning much too hard on games they knew were 2-3 years out.

As for Pikmin 4 and AC, I never personally believed them. 2 Pikmins on one console didn't seem right. Yeah GCN did it, but they were trying to push Pikmin as the next big thing at the time. And Pikmin 3 was still so new, it didn't make sense to be doing a new one 2 years later. And AC I firmly believed was handheld only from New Leaf onward, and never saw a WiiU one in the cards ever even if it did take off. It saw much bigger success and viral social marketing on handheld, to me it was clear that was the new home for AC. My big fear was that it would just become a mobile franchise instead of console....and we still don't know it wont....but at least Switch makes it more likely to meet all needs since it's a handheld and a console.

@Octane The whole point of Tegra X as a platform is its x86 instruction bridge for ARM. While some optimization is required, and a game runs better in the native instruction set, Tegra is all about a low-penalty instruction bridge. It's not a "normal" ARM chip like a Snapdragon or Exynos.

Nintendo is removing more Sun/Moon stuff, this time it's the reveal trailer from YouTube. This combined with the other stuff suggests Stars reveal for sure seems very soon.

@Grumblevolcano I am curious to see if Pokémon Stars is going to be a higher quality port of Pokémon Sun and Moon, which I would be perfectly fine with in all honesty, or a from-ground-up 3D game of the very same game.

I didn't buy Sun or Moon on my new 3DS last year, mostly in anticipation of potentially seeing the game(s) on the Switch in some shape or form. It's been a fair old while since I played a Pokémon game so, I am looking forward to seeing how Stars will eventually turn out!

Why is everybody thinking Stars. I'm more thinking a Sinnoh remake because a remake of a previous Pokémon usually come out a year after a main series release.

@Grumblevolcano ...and in the end it's just Ninty trolling us. Who knows, another Pokemon game is a given, but the real question is what platform it will be on.

@Peek-a-boo Same here. Pokemon games aren't system sellers for me anymore (series has gone downhill imo), but I gladly purchase the game in the series if it's on a system I own. If it's coming to the Switch, it'll be interesting to see how they choose to present the game, as a port, or more along the lines of a remaster.

I don't know what to do, my disk replay has just dance 2017 for switch at 42.99 and I have 200 in credit should I get it