Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Nintendo Switch UK eShop Charts - February 18th 2018

1: Bayonetta (NEW)
2: Rocket League
3: Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition
4: Stardew Valley
5: FIFA 18 (Up from 6th)
6: Golf Story (Up from 7th)
7: Overcooked: Special Edition (Up from 9th)
8: Celeste (Down from 5th)
9: Enter The Gungeon (Up from 10th)
10: Arcade Archives: VS. Super Mario Bros. (Up from 11th)
11: Worms W.M.D (Up from 12th)
12: Human Fall Flat (Up from 13th)
13: Bayonetta 2 (NEW)
14: Dragon Quest Builders (Up from 15th)
15: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Down from 14th)

Bayonetta 2 finally showed up on the charts. Wonder how it has done physically as a niche Nintendo product in retail in the UK tends to not show up in many stores. If my theory is right Bayo 1 is so high due to the codes included with physical copies.

Also FIFA 18 keeps climbing.

I should point out that this matters more in regards to indie games rather than bigger retail third party games. VC isn't going to affect sales of Skyrim or Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 that heavily. Random indie title #35 though? Yeah, it absolutely will affect it.

It's a psychological thing. People are far more likely to pick up an old Mario or Zelda over an indie game because they're known brands. That's on top of the fact that said Mario or Zelda is likely to be cheaper.

Is there anyone here who can honestly say they really wanted to get X indie game, but they didn't get it because they bought a VC game instead? It doesn't work like that, does it?

Even if you literally only had £8 available for buying a game... if you wanted to buy Scram Kitty on Wii U but also wanted an N64 VC title, you might get the VC game first, but it would be unlikely to deter you from eventually getting Scram Kitty.

In most cases the only gamers going to be that financially restricted are kids, and are they really going to buy a SNES/N64 game ahead of a new 3rd party release anyway?

@gcunit Look at it at it this way. Let's say you wanted to buy [insert indie game] which released on Switch on a Thursday but on the day before there ended up being a Nintendo Direct that revealed traditional VC was starting on the same day as [insert indie game] with games like SMB3, SMW and LttP being the first VC games with new games each week. So you buy SMB3, SMW and LttP day 1 then say on the next Thursday F-Zero and Super Metroid comes so you buy them and then the process continues which may mean you don't buy [insert indie game] at all because of all the VC games or your purchase is massively delayed say a year later for example. If enough people did that, [insert indie game]'s sales would be much worse off than if VC didn't exist.

Yeah, indies on Switch are definitely shining and lack of VC is one of the factors. For me, I don't mind the lack of VC on Switch. Between Wii, 3DS and Wii U, my VC needs are pretty much covered.

@gcunit I'm not speaking for the majority I'm sure but there have been many times I have taken a VC title over an indie title (only have sporadic access to eshop cards so the balance is admittedly often low!!). There are some great indie devs out there and I have bought there games plenty but I have been burned by more indies than I have VC titles and so I just go for what I feel is the safer bet.

@Grumblevolcano

100% agree

To be fair, this is the first time a Nintendo Switch gets consistent quality indie titles too. There were hardly any quality games on the Wii shop. And the Wii U missed out on so many good indie games, no wonder the VC titles topped the weekly charts.

If an Indie is less interesting than a Virtual Console title I already own a few times over, than I don't think that's Nintendo's problem.

I don't like this idea of depriving us all of VC because it might help Indies sell more. There's got to be some other way. In a market where Sony and Microsoft are able to support Indies and the release of their own kinds of "VC", I don't understand where the problem is.

@Harmonie Well on Sony's end the "VC" is so poor quality and hilarious infrequent it may as well not exist, so no issue there.

And MS is pushing towards services exclusively so everyone is along for the ride regardless.

@Harmonie It has nothing to do with being less interesting. There's many interesting indie games that can get skipped in favor of a VC title solely because the latter had Mario or Zelda in the name.

Also, Sony and Microsoft's classics don't have issues coexisting with indies the same way their current titles don't have an issue existing alongside big 3rd party titles. Nintendo's systems typically have way different purchasing trends - third party games get completely stiffled by Nintendo's own titles. This is true of their legacy content vs indies as well.

I'm sure the lack of VC on Switch has played some sort of role in Indie developers success, how much so is debatable. But another factor is that the Indie scene has grown considerably since the Wii.

The Wii was limited in technology and a tiny amount of memory space. Wii U was powerful enough for most but wasn't easy to develop for and was a failure. The Switch has plenty of power, only a few Indies don't find it enough, it's a breeze to develop for and it's doing well. And one last thing, I remember on Wii U, developers had to sell a certain quantity before they got paid any money. Nintendo have improved terms and relations with Indies. Sorry, no, one more last thing, Nintendo have gone after Indies in the last number of years. They can't get the big 3rd party support so they went down this avenue.

There's no reason why you can't have both but Nintendo haven't given 3rd parties all that they want. But I've said it before that if I was given a choice between Indies or 3rd parties, I'd choose the latter all the time. When I hear another Indie game is coming to the Switch, I immediately think there's a good chance it'll be one or a combination of; 2D, pixelated, sidescrolling, platformer.

There have been some truly excellent Indie games but you don't buy an expensive supercar to drive at 30mph when it's capable of so much more. I'm sure there are a lot better analogies but I'm tired and I'm going to sleep.

https://nintendoeverything.com/yonder-the-cloud-catcher-chron...

On another note while you guys are talking about indie, Yonder is coming to Switch. Hmmm, kind of tempted to give it a try on Switch but I'm not sure.

It does looks great though, maybe I should watch some let's play to be sure.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE And it's not another of 2D, pixelated, sidescrolling, platformer you are ticking off ( o-o)

@IceClimbers "Nintendo's systems typically have way different purchasing trends - third party games get completely stiffled by Nintendo's own titles. This is true of their legacy content vs indies as well."

But that can't be the case anymore, otherwise the sales would have been abysmal for games like Dragonball Xenoverse 2. Oh wait, I forgot that portability sells anything, carry on.

@darkfenrir He is right about one thing though, there are a metric TON of any combination of side-scrolling 2D indie platformer games on Switch. I'm surprised over saturation hasn't set in yet.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE On Wii you had to earn enough first before payment. There was also the 40MB limit on sizes.

On Wii U, both were removed.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
I used to be like you in how I thought of indies, especially with the last thing you said: when I heard of a new indie game, I used to assume it was yet another pixelated platformer.

Hrm...it's tough, though. 'Cuz yea, many times they ARE pixelated platformers!

But by god, these games have heart. And in the last 2ish years I've slowly learned that they have more heart than many of these bloated 3rd party sequels that are being shoved down our throats on other platforms.

I think my change of heart started when I got Stardew Valley on PC when it first launched. I was totally anti-indie all through the previous generation and with my Wii U; didn't even buy Shovel Knight. But I started dabbling on PC last year, LOVED stuff like Stardew and the Steamworld games, and now I'm full-in with the offerings on the Switch. Celeste was one of my favorite games in the last few years, and I still kick myself for waiting so long to buy Shovel Knight. Sina Mora is a blast, and I've put 40ish hours into Graceful Explosion Machine. In a way, indies are kind of becoming mainstream to me. It's like they're picking up where the larger 3rd-party games are starting to lose sight of what gaming is, at least to me.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still gonna go hog wild for when the next big Tomb Raider game and Last of Us come out. But I've seriously soured on a lot of the big series. Got burned by the Division, Destiny, Assassin's Creed, CoD, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars... a lot of those games aren't even fun to play anymore. They're just time commitments slicked over with movie-quality cutscenes. And don't even get me started on the unbridled greed behind loot boxes.

Indies seem to get that video games are about GAMING: ya know, deriving fun from tight controls and addictive gameplay hooks. For example, controlling Celeste with just 2 or 3 tight and responsive moves was infinitely more satisfying than AC: Origins (how many times will they profess they've "reinvented" the thing but still it's the same?) with its floaty combat and spacey detection with the free running moves (as always). You have to REALLY be into the narrative to get lots of pleasure out of those games, and I'm just not that kind of gamer.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years. Will some of these big 3rd-parties just implode on themselves? I don't think so because the new generation of gamer seems totally fine with what is being served to them. But people my age... I don't know, at least for me, I'm not feeling a lot of those games anymore.

Has anyone played Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf? I really like the looks of it and am thinking about getting the Switch version. Impressions?

I can say with confidence that there were Wii U indie games I would've bought had I not gotten the few VC games I got on Wii U. There are at least a few games I missed out despite actively focusing on supporting (mostly) quality indie games during the middle of Wii U's lifecycle. Probably Wii as well. Not as much on 3DS, but largely because I was avoiding buying more retail 3DS games in order to play certain smaller games (steamworldheistisbetterthananyfireemblemdealwithit).

Very objectively, time and money put into games is time and money not put into other games. It does not AUTOMATICALLY mean you would play X instead of Y, but it is still relevant. And when some of the most popular Wii U downloads were old games that were already available on the far more successful Wii with no permanent VC price drops since 2007, it says a lot to me to how Nintendo's and its fanbase's focus on its own IPs can be detrimental to competition on the same platform.

Right.

Most people will buy, say, 2-3 games a week. And a lot of people don't even do that. Those games are $10-$15 apiece- that's $20-$40 a week being spent. If Nintendo starts releasing VC and we get two games a week that cost dang near 10 bucks apiece, are people suddenly going to double their budget for the next five years? I'm betting 95% of people wouldn't. They might increase their spending by one game a week to account for more games but, there are still games being left on the table, getting shafted as a result. Even one VC game a week can have that effect. But selling them en masse separately from the Switch can garner the same revenue, while not affecting people's eShop budgets. It's a psychological thing- people will spend that same money on the games, but they're not spending it on the eShop so they see it as a separate purchase like buying a tricycle or pizza on Friday.

Heck, even I, at times, have skipped out on indies that I was otherwise planning to purchase because so many games released that week. Not necessarily because of money but because I just want the best of the best and I felt like buying seven games that week was excessive, so I chose the top 3. Sure, those games were just other indies but the same thing will apply to virtual console- it's a game just like any other, and people will choose them over other games just like they would any other.

There is a reason we have not seen Virtual Console yet. Do people honestly just think Nintendo hates money? Do people honestly think they just said nah, we'd rather make less money so let's not release virtual console, or let's postpone it for years because we're already making enough right now... is that really what people think is going on? VC is a sure bet. Guaranteed money. Easy money at that, compared to the expenses associated with developing a brand new modern game, when they can release a Virtual Console title that can sell 1 million copies (probably even more) because it's Super Mario Brothers. They are not going to actively avoid making extra money unless there is very good reason to do so. Notice how they didn't hesitate to release these games on the last three platforms. Don't you find it a little odd they haven't committed to doing the same for the most popular console in years? Does that not strike you as even a little odd? It should.

They aren't idiots. If VC had no detrimental effect they would've already released the games. They would've released them within months of launch, just as they did with the Wii U. Get that cash rolling in and bounce back strong from the Wii U era, please those investors... Why do you think it is they are finding alternate methods of selling these games? Methods which avoid the problems that arise with weekly releases monopolizing the digital storefront? They are going to continue selling these games- it's just a question of how they are going to do it. And right now it seems weekly releases that dominate the consumer's attention and wallet is off the table. They might loosen up when the online launches, because the system will be nearly 2 years old by then and it's success will be on a trajectory well past the point of no return.

@RunninBlue If you like choose your own adventure books this game is right for you. If you can get the past the long loading screen when you launch the game and the weird controls(especially during fights),i would recommend it.