Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Yes! And by gosh it's one of the greatest things ever lol

Quick anecdote: Was in NYC yesterday for ComicCon - no Nintendo booth, per say, but some of the games there from companies like Capcom and Square Enix were running on the Switch. Lines were long for most of the stuff, though, but I did get to play Marvel vs. Capcom (on PS4) and got my butt kicked by someone who quite obviously knew what he was doing lol

Anyway, brought my Switch with me, and boy oh boy was that awesome. Played it a little around the venue and met some people, sure, but the bus ride back into PA (which usually takes an hour and a half) hit insane traffic and took nearly three hours. My friends were pretty ticked off: I was just playing my Switch lol (got to the very end of Mario vs. Rabbids - actually was kind of bummed when the bus got home haha)

@rallydefault Yeah, I would've had a similar experience at EGX this year if I ignored the bag size warning on the website. My bag was bigger than the limit suggested so I took my 3DS and no bag instead of Switch and my bag but when I got there, loads of people had bigger bags than the one I would've taken. It would've been fun making progress on BotW while waiting a long time to play Super Mario Odyssey but at least I made progress with FE Echoes (Act 5 was brutal).

David Soliani hosted a Reddit AMA yesterday. I saw it just as it was finishing.

In case anyone is interested in the questions and responses...

@Zuljaras
If anything my point was showing how its good Switch version is neat how they shrunk it down.
_{let's not talk like that here, please...-Joey}

QubicGames have relaunched their website - http://qubicgames.com - and have several games in the pipeline for the Switch, to go along with the already-released Robonauts and Astro Bears Party:

BRAWL - Q4 2017
Scrap 'em Up - Q4 2017
Mad Carnage - Q4 2017
Air Race Speed - Q1 2018
Total Tank Simulator - TBA
Geki Yaba Runner - TBA

Unfortunately not much is known about any of these games except for their titles.

NWC turned out to be predictable in terms of game representation outside of the underground. You had the main Switch games of this year (BotW, MK8D, ARMS, Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey), a recent 3DS game (Metroid Samus Returns) and the main Wii U games not yet on Switch (Smash, Super Mario Maker).

@Grumblevolcano Wondering if/when we'll hear about early next year for 1st party Switch games. As of right now the earliest known game is Kirby Star Allies in Spring, so March at the earliest, possibly not until April or early May.

I'd find it hard to believe they'd have that much of a gap.

Won't matter much for me as I'll be busy with Odyssey still lol.

Anyways Reggie totally trolled us. People decoded what he said... he literally said "game everyone's trying to find out by reading my lips".

Not at all surprising that they had the games they did. Though I was kinda surprised they picked so many games that aren't really playable on "current" systems. If you were to ask me before this what they would have I would've said Smash Bros on Wii U because they need Smash but then Switch games, newer 3DS games and games on the SNES Classic Mini. Purely because NWC is 90% advertising for Nintendo content.

Super Mario Odyssey was always going to be the last game.

The ARMS segment probably led to the "ARMS is dead" debate reappearing.

@IceClimbers Probably half of that is the loot crate database and microtransaction market.

Axiom Verge is so dang fun!

So apparently the reason we haven't seen DQXI on Switch yet is because the "development issues" are that PS4 uses Unreal Engine 4.13, and Switch uses the updated 4.15.

And 4.15 is when they changed how Blueprints (Visual node based programming for you guys who don't know) changed to incorporate more direct text based programming, IIRC. They basically expanded how you can program your games and such, giving a wider toolset, and this, whenever you scale up to a newer engine version, presents issues, as some features will be removed or deprecated, and new ones added.

So TL;DR, it's running on an ''old'' engine that doesn't support the Switch and porting will take some time.

Saw that.

It means Dragon Quest XI will be the full console version on Switch. And I can't remember the last time a mainline dragon quest game was on a Nintendo console (not handheld).

What, woulda been SNES, right? Switch truly is the new SNES. There are some differences obviously, Switch will never be a multi platform machine like SNES, but, the quality is there like SNES. People are loving it just like they loved SNES. And it's the first time a lot of these games are returning to Nintendo. I guess DOOM was on N64 but, close enough. Seeing DOOM, Wolfenstein, seeing Dragon Quest, seeing Shin Megami Tensei, seeing a fantastic Mario RPG developed in conjunction with a major AAA developer...

I said it before, and I'll say it again. It's a new golden era emerging right before our eyes...

@Octane No, actually.

TL:DR Its running on a NEWER engine that cant just be ported up because some features and tools changed from the older one on PS4 to the newer one used on Switch. As I said, PS4 uses UE4.13, Switch uses UE4.15.

This is actually common, as I know people who use older engine versions than I do, and we have compatability issues with shaders or how code is written using functions, because newer, more efficient functions and shaders were added and the ones in prior versions were deprecated or just flat out removed.

So in this case, it's a problem that Switch uses the newer version of the engine, because Epic changed how some of the tools work in 4.15. PS4 is stuck using 4.13.

@BLP_Software I meant the PS4 version is running on an ''old'' engine that takes some time to get running on the Switch, because the old version.. never mind, I meant what you just said!

@Octane That's not how it works, but close enough.

Hilariously though, this is the reverse from how it normally is. Now ports are hard because the tech is above everyone else XD Now its the other consoles stuck in the old times without Vulkan or the latest middleware. How weird.

No wonder games are coming over from PC with ease, the tools are as new as they come.

Glad we've finally heard something about this game! It'd be cool if we could get a simultaneous Western release of the PS4 and Switch versions of the game.

@DarthNocturnal I would think Samus Returns, or even Mario Odyssey (look how they compared it) are signs that just because Nintendo sometimes "experiments" more than it probably should at times, does not mean they forget what made older games good and beloved.

And honestly the gameplay of M&L has constantly been getting better and better, even if the plots of the most recent games (Dream Team and Paper Jam) aren't up to the standards of previous. But Bowser's Minions definitely shows that the writing talent is still there and cares about the series's history.

@DarthNocturnal Super Mario RPG 2: Sticker Star Returns