Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@MegaTen Twice the price, though? Puyo Puyo Tetris was only $10 more for the physical release and that came with keychains.

Glad they released in digitally so that we got it for $20 on the eshop.

All I can say regarding EA's statement is...well...

It sold through the physical allotments that you, yourselves, EA, gave it. It sat high on the eShop charts for a good period of time.

I repeat. It sold through the physical shipments that you gave it. Which means it sold through what you initially expected in that regard. Add on digital sales.

And then take your comments regarding "Support depends on FIFA 18" and watch how that has changed to "A year on the market". Christ EA.

@MegaTen Games like Wonder Boy are tiny, though. And even if they weren't, you can just delete games when you're done with them if you need to space. A lack of digital hoarding behavior is why I've managed to get by on the default space provided for Wii U and PS4 all of these years.

I mean, it's a nice option, but that price is outrageous. Especially when games like Ittle Dew 2+ are launching on carts for $29.99 with manuals and everything.

Nintendo’s New World, From The Switch To Phone Games To Theme Parks
_{Nintendo U.S. president Reggie Fils-Aimé on why the Switch is a hit—and how all the moving parts of the company’s business fit together.}

https://www.fastcompany.com/40488804/nintendos-new-world-from...

Nintendo Is Still Oddly Tight-Lipped About The Switch’s Tribute To Satoru Iwata

https://kotaku.com/nintendo-is-still-oddly-tight-lipped-about...

Are you getting paid by all these sites to post links to their articles here?

Owlboy has a release date: February 13th!

@Octane I wish.

@IceClimbers Also getting a physical release, although the platforms aren't confirmed yet. I'd assume a Switch version is in the works as well.

I must confess, I am not elated about these 1/2 physical games at retail. I hope someone has asked Kimishima about it at their meeting. It certainly needs addressing.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo has a rule that physical games must at least be playable from cart.

So.

The question is, will L.A. Noire be playable in some way from cart? Even NBA 2K18 let you do quick sessions from cart without any download. It was only one time matches, but you could totally play the game from the cartridge. That needs to be the case here as well. I could accept this better knowing the game would at least be playable in some core fashion.

@JaxonH NBA is different though as you just play one game where L.A. you play a continuing story. Outside of say here's the first mission but the rest must be dl'ed feels more like I'm buying a demo version of the game with paid dlc. The paid part being part of the cost of a memory card.

@BLP_Software
I'm sorry, but EA sucks. Their modus operandi the last decade has been: acquire big-name franchises + acquire big-name devs and run them into the ground with microtransactions, illogical sales expectations, and ludicrously short development cycles (but the games BETTER be good lest the whippings continue).

Don't believe me? Fine. Take 10 minutes to look into some articles online; the Andromeda first-person accounts are especially telling. Nice podcast about EA's practices on Waypoint, as well.

That being said, Nintendo should want ALL of the third-party developers, no matter what. I hope they're working behind the scenes with EA to court them and encourage future games. Battlefield is still a solid franchise and obviously Battlefront II is going to be a massive success. It would've been great to have versions of those on the Switch.

@rallydefault I'm very very aware of EA's history.

I'm also very aware of how the Wii U went.

"Let's see games to a market with no interest in the games in question (Like releasing the end of a story based trilogy to an audience without the prior parts) and lets also sell them those games with missing features at an inflated price and hope they don't notice the cheaper brand new trilogy releases elsewhere that would make more sense for them to buy but we wont bring them because oh well. Oh, they did notice those versions existed? They didn't buy what we gave them? Bye then"

And now we have this. Bigging up a perfectly fine version of a game but refusing to acknowledge basic features are absent, charging above and beyond the price, saying you want to see it do well.

So what happens? It sells out physically, which implies they shipped the bare minimum and had no faith or intent of pushing the product, or that demand was really there. Given how it ranked on the eShop for a time, it must have had some demand. But then they moved the goalposts. Now its wait and see how the system itself sells.

Look, I'm not one for conspiracy, but this reeks of what they did with the Wii U. Not understanding their market, not providing the right games, and not even doing right by their own products. Then fobbing the blame and walking off.

I did say before this game came out that if it sold to every single available Switch owner, they'd still call it a failure, because it wouldn't even come close to the numbers on Xbox or PS4, and EA requires no context of these numbers, just the numbers themselves. 2 million out of 5 million is a good attach rate (Lets say hypothetically that's what it did, we know it didn't) but that number wouldn't matter compared to the 7 million of out 65 million on PS4 for instance, because while more Switch owners bought it for a higher attach rate, more money in general was made elsewhere.

And that's the thing. This is EA. They said Dead Space 3 had to hit 5 million to continue. They probably genuinely did say internally, either this sells as well as PS4 and Xbox or we wait and then walk off. They don't care about how big the potential market is, they care about how many it sells irrelevant of how many there is to sell too.

Minimum effort, maximum profit.

Now did I describe EA or Capcom?

Tbh, outside of the somewhat recent Titanfall and Garden Warfare sequels, there isn't a single EA game from the past 4 years that would interest me at all. And even then, I doubt I would ever spend my time on two separate online focused EA published shooters, just because I have so many other types of games to play.

You've got to wonder what the hierarchy at EA are thinking. I was pondering earlier that maybe they want Nintendo to fail. Why? So that they could maybe take Nintendo's place in the hardware race.

I don't like EA but they may also be cursing Nintendo for putting out weaker hardware than the competition for the 3rd generation in a row. That means they've to put in more effort to get a compromised game that goes out to die. I bet they're also not happy about other things like the online and limited, expensive cartridges.

@rallydefault
As much as I despise EA I thought FIFA 18 was fantastic and of course having them on the system would be an asset.

With that said, if there was one major AAA developer to not have on the system I think EA would be the one. Most of their support is sports games, and their core titles are more and more Online only, multiplayer focused titles that "keep the player engaged over time".

Which really isn't conducive to a portable console. I think there is definitely a place in the market for Switch, but I'm thinking the types of games it should offer- and the types of games people are willing to buy on the system- are not the types of games EA makes. Especially with their ever aggressive push into microtransactions, loot boxes, quadruple $40 expansions, virtual currency, $70 deluxe editions with nothing but one cosmetic costume DLC added, $250 collector editions and online-only DRM.

So I say screw em.

EA is the bad landlord of game companies.

@JaxonH Activision's pretty much the same outside of "mostly sports games", potentially even worse with that loot box patent.

@Grumblevolcano I wouldn't expect anything from Activision outside of maybe Crash or that Transformers game that Platinum developed. They're not gonna port anything else.

Edit: I should probably mention that I don't think Skylanders will come back.