Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

It's rather sad that graphics is above games library in that survey but not exactly surprising.

We've known about AeternoBlade for the past few days, though a lot of places haven't reported it. Could be why CORECELL have sent out the following Tweet.

The cross-play in Rocket League works amazingly well and it's only going to get better in the coming months with the addition of cross party play and trading.It might not have been the first game to feature cross console play, that was Minecraft, but with its competitive multiplayer focus and variety of modes, it's certainly the most significant. It's one thing having cross play between console and PC but between rival consoles, it's a massive step forward for gaming.. Who would have thought Nintendo and Microsoft would be the ones showing the way forward while Sony look on from the outside. Both RL and Minecraft are in the top 5 highest selling games of all time and will be hugely popular for years to come so it's a risky move by Sony that could come back and bite them.

Atooi are bringing Soccer Slammers to the Nintendo Switch.

We have a new previously unannounced game that will be coming out in time for the World Cup! WHAT!? I know, right!! It is a fun side project that we've been kicking around for a while now (pun intended). It's an arcade soccer game, called Soccer Slammers. Taking inspiration from NBA Jam, Soccer Slammers is a 2-on-2 arcade soccer experience focused on fast, fun gameplay for Nintendo Switch.

We'll be bringing Soccer Slammers to GDC to show it off to anyone who's interested.

https://joolswatsham.blogspot.ie/2018/01/whine-dine-with-wats...

Hey everyone, I finally got a Switch today and I’m sooooooooo happy! 😄
Holding it in my hands after months of sacrifices is an amazing feeling 😄
I think it was a bit of a bargain too, as I bought it used (it has less than 2 months, as it was originally bought at a GameStop on 02/12) along with a carrying case, screen protector, Zelda, Mario, MK8D and Skyrim for 450€! Not the cheapest you’ll ever find, but also a nice ~200€ off compared to buying everything new.
Not sure I’ll be sleeping tonight lol

Apparently there is speculation that Microsoft is about to make an acquisition of a company and some are saying, of all things, EA.

I don't think that'll ever happen.

@YummyHappyPills That made my day.

@Octane The other ones being thrown around are PUBG Corp, and Valve.

Yeah. One of these three is likely.

It's not the companies with more than one game.

No, I'm not sure you will...I haven't slept in months! Welcome to the Switch club!

@YummyHappyPills Oooo! If it's PUBG, they might 'do a Minecraft' with it and put it on every imaginable platform (and several unimaginable ones just for good measure! ..PUBG 3DS, anyone? )

I think with Minecraft it was an easier choice, considering it had been released on pretty much everything by the time MS bought it. I imagine if they bought PUBG, they'd keep it PC/Xbox.

Why not? It’s less shocking than Disney buying Fox (for instance) and would have a huge upside for Microsoft.

When you see what they’ve announced this past week with how Gamepass will work going forwards - it’s the Netflix model as near as it can be applied to gaming. To sustain that you need two things - a regular supply of quality new games (not necessarily all AAA) and an archive of well remembered old games. As Netflix already knows - licensing old films and TV is expensive and you can be locked out completely if a supplier like Disney decides to set up on their own (or buys one of your biggest suppliers of archival content).

Buying EA would give Microsoft a locked in archival library that’s vast and varied and it would give them some franchises that continue to be relevant.

I don’t necessarily see it happening but I could see the logic. Microsoft is finally making some big and uncharacteristically clever plays for the future. I’m not sure buying EA would be incredibly clever but it would be a big play.

EA are currently worth about $36 billion, so Microsoft would have to shell out a lot more than that if they were to make a reasonable offer. And of course as soon as one company makes an offer, in comes the rest also looking to make a bid. In fact, hasn't this been rumoured before - about 10 years ago? I know there was a rumour about Disney buying EA once but Microsoft I am sure also had a rumour going around about such a purchase many years back during th 360 era.

@StuTwo My thing is MS certainly COULD buy EA. That just comes with baggage.

But if they did make EA games exclusive to them, that would be a big blow to Sony, especially in the EU, as Sony + EA Sports has been a huge reason PS systems exploded here. People buy a PS4 for one or two games yearly, one of those will be an EA game. That's just a downside of being the dominant system in the region with THE dominant game.

If Sony lost access to EA stuff...well I can see a lot of people not buying PS4s but rather Xbox systems instead out of necessity. I imagine that's many millions of systems taken away.

Of course it depends if Microsoft would want to deal that blow. They could pull a Minecraft.

@FragRed who else could realistically afford EA though and would they be worth as much to them as they would to Microsoft? There aren’t many possible suitors and even fewer who would be a good fit.

For sure it would be an expensive, expensive acquisition though. It’s EA - even their micro transactions are massively overpriced so god knows how much they’d overcharge on the whole company!

That back catalogue might be worth it long term though if they’re serious about Gamepass. The opportunity to mess with Sony would just be a nice big bonus for them.

@YummyHappyPills I’m not sure they’d be wise to completely cut EA off from PS4/5. Games like FIFA need to be big to remain viable and prevent rivals from gathering enough sunlight to grow large enough to become serious competition.

@YummyHappyPills That would be interesting......the VERY close tie in vision and approach to gaming has been a revolving door of MS and EA for a long time, and both have pressed into a negative direction for gaming. Though I always pictured EA buying the ailing XBox division rather than MS devouring EA itself.....that doesn't seem very cost effective when gaming isn't all that profitable for MS to begin with. That would be a MASSIVE expense on the order of the original X-BOX, and I'm not sure it would make a real return.

It makes a lot of sense.....and directionally feels right. And there's a certain amount of karma to EA ultimately getting devoured and having the little soul they have left sucked out of them. On the other hand that would be the end of the few good EA studios remaining. MS is better at sucking developer souls than even EA. All of Game Studios used to be decent until they crushed it. RIP Ensemble.

@subpopz Cross play isn't a big deal to Nintendo....they don't have much 3rd party interaction to begin with. Especially for online. For MS, they're in dire straights with XBox brand...they had to do SOMETHING...so they gave Nintendo 2 games so far. PC is really their own platform so PC crossplay is nothing for them. "console cross play" for 2 whole games between Nintendo and XBox is barely a molehill to make a mountain of. Sony doesn't have much to worry about yet, and as long as they block crossplay, there isn't much crossplay since most games it would matter on aren't on Switch anyway. PS5....I don't see that being a big part of the hype machine going into the platform. An important feature to a subset of players, maybe....but it's a feature that mostly doesn't exist on any platform yet. Even XBox (PC aside, which, again, means Windows, which is MS's own platform.)

@YummyHappyPills If Microsoft bought EA, I could see an in between situation where Nintendo's access to EA games isn't limited. Maybe even use EA to make Sony budge on crossplay?

@NEStalgia While I agree two games aren't a lot, I'd like to point out they are two of the most critical games that Microsoft could have budged on. Rocket League and Minecraft are both HUGE games, despite their budget price. Besides, what other games are there that the Switch has gotten that would have benefited from crossplay, and aren't made by EA/2K, neither of whom have shown any interest in implementing it?

@YummyHappyPills blah blah, yadda, yadda....my takeaway is the EU has REALLY bad taste in games. Like, why even bother?

There's more company synergy between those two and a direction for gaming between those two that were already working in tandem than anyone else. But EA....is big.....and expensive....that's not just a buyout, that's a merger....and I'm not sure MS wants to bother with a merger and stock swaps on that scale to buy.....a controversial gaming publisher that's kind of a fly in one of their B-tier industries. Especially not with Nadella at the helm....that doesn't fit his roadmap at all. That kind of debt creates trouble for a long time. They haven't even dug out of Nokia and Skype yet. If they were going to pull a merger on that scale I could more easily see them merging vertically with Dell, HP, Cisco, etc, etc. Not EA.

Besides, EA operates like they're part of MS already anyway..... it's like the corporate version of "Friends with benefits."

@StuTwo Disney could do it and Iger is on a media consolidation buying spree and is tightly integrated with EA as well. But they just CLOSED their game industry specifically to just outsource to EA. I can't see them wanting to buy. But then again, MS also close most of their in-house game studios to just contract out. A big games publisher just isn't an attractive buying option for any company for growth. It's very directional and niche. Vivendi wants Ubisoft desperately but they want to bleed it dry as a vault to stem the losses in their other businesses and leave it for dead, as they did Activision before. And Ubi's cheaper than EA.

@link3710 That's just the point though. Those two are older, established, multiplatform games, and it's clear MS is HEAVILY invested in the wide distribution of Minecraft to the point of showing a Switch rendered in game at their E3 presentation that was focusing on X1X. Rocket league was certainly a good fit, and though popular, its existing widespread appeal made it easy to go that direction on. But Nintendo doesn't get many games that would benefit. And the BIG titles are the 2k/EA ones that are unlikely to budge. And even still, PS makes up the most significant chunk of that market, so if PS denies crossplay, it effectively doesn't exist. If Crossplay really just means "XBox and the handful of online multiplayer multiplat games Switch gets that aren't from major publishers plus Minecraft" what crossplay is there to really speak of? If it's not Crossplay between XBox and Playstation, and as long as Nintendo isn't a host of most 3rd party games that hit those two, it's not really Crossplay as a platform feature, it's just a perk in certain titles.

Switch is barely 10 months old, and there are very few games on both Switch and Xbox One. And of those that are, even fewer have online multiplayer.

So naturally there's only a couple games with cross play right now but that number is going to be growing over the next few years. Now that MS is all for it and Nintendo is all for it, pretty much any game that has the capability of offering cross play... will offer cross play. Unless the developers just flat out don't want to do it.