Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I guess it no series will technically be owned by the majority(), but Smash(and Mario Kart even more so) comes really darn close. More than a third of Wii U owners owned Smash Wii U. Brawl did well over 10 million. etc.

@KryptoniteKrunch About 40% of Wii U owner had smash. But Wii U is also an outlier, most Nintendo franchises did better percentage wise. Which isn't that surprising, since it had a much more meager software library. But if we look at Wii and 3ds, it has around 10%-15% tie-ratio. Hardly a majority. It is one of the biggest franchises though.

But I can understand if people are a bit miffed, since if you are not interested in smash, the rest of the year looks really thin. And since they spent half of e3 on smash, I can also understand that people don't want a direct focused on smash. It really reinforces the narrative that Nintendo doesn't have any games this year.

And the question is, what is Nintendo doing? There are not that many games coming to either console at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if we will see a new handheld next year. Maybe a dual screen compatible with switch dev tools?

@Therad
That can be said about any point in the Switch's lifetime. What about the people who weren't interested in Zelda? What about people not interested in online games like Arms and Splatoon 2? What about people not interested in Mario or Xenoblade? What about people not interested in 2D platformers like Kirby or Donkey Kong? Nintendo can't release every single genre each month to appeal to everyone.

@Alber-san yes? This is why it is important to try and have a diverse line-up.

@Therad
My point was that it's impossible to satisfy everyone's desires. The Switch already has a pretty diverse lineup but that doesn't mean there will always be a game for everyone. If someone doesn't like Smash they can still buy Pokemon, don't like it either? Buy a third party or indie game then. If none appeal to them then there are hundreds of games they haven't tried.

Looks like something Bravely related is being teased for the Switch...

https://twitter.com/nibellion/status/1026399449889873921?s=21

I think Smash looks fantastic and I'm gonna get it, but what more can they show off besides new stages and maybe a new character or 2?

It is of the utmost importance that we know there's an extra bruise on Mario's left cheek after you get him past 20.43% damage

Game modes. We don't know anything about what modes will be in it. If they announce a new story mode on the scale of Subspace Emissary it could hugely increase people's interest in the game.

@Dogorilla maybe they also have every game mode from before. Wouldn't surprise me at all...

@Alber-san and my point was that it is always a good thing to make sure most of your fan base have something big to look forward to.

@Mrtoad Smash is a decent seller, but it's not as big as Smash fans make it out to be (or as bit as Nintendo apparently now believes the Smash fans make it to be.) It'll be a million+ seller easily, it certainly will sell well. But it's not exactly Kart or Pokemon. It sold huge on Wii in large part to a very well regarded single player brawler game. It had a big percentage of WiiU largely because only the core faithful bought a WiiU to begin with. Smash has a weird history because Nintendo consoles have a weird history and it's at least a game that anyone from casual to core can buy into. But Nintendo's been releasing a lot of such games these days. Big seller, yes. Enough to bet the whole console on for a year? Less so.

@Therad If they seriously try to release a non-Switch handheld and split the software base again, I'm going to have a very tainted view of Nintendo at that point. They have a hard enough time delivering software for one system let alone two, and having two handhelds competing against each other makes zero sense. Switch is a Japan success because it's handheld.

IMO they're just playing the numbers. They know they can post numbers riding on prior games and Smash through the holiday, and release a slow steady drip of games for the rest of the gen, just stockpiling them in the vault until they need one to fill a sales window. Any not needed for sale on Switch can be ported to launch of the successor. It seems a Nintendo thing to do. Even if they were making 12 games a year, if they only needed 3 to meet sales targets, they'll shelf the other 9.

@NEStalgia Zelda BOTW was the big launch game of the Switch and every single Zelda other than OoT was beaten by the console’s fellow Smash game. If Zelda can sell 9 million and Splatoon can sell 6 million, I see no reason why Smash can’t sell at least 6 million.

If anything, Zelda fits that bill more than Smash lol. People always herald Mario and Zelda as Nintendo's "biggest" franchises, ignoring that Zelda gets outsold by Pokemon, Mario Kart, and Smash.

Zelda's never been a top seller for Nintendo largely because it's never been hugely popular in Japan, and it's of somewhat limited interest compared to what is more "party friendly" like Smash and Kart, certainly. Zelda got a little bit of a boost selling on 2 platforms (WiiU was a disaster but almost 100% of WiiU owners were waiting for Zelda, on either platform.) OTOH, Zelda got a big boost this time by being heavily advertised and praised in the overall gaming press.

I'm not sure what to expect on it. It has a weird history. Selling 8th on 3DS is probably the most informative for Switch though. The Wii was the only of the home consoles that really performed particularly well...the rest were different shades of disaster and near disaster, so only a very loyal core really participated in GCN and WiiU. Wii was telling but it was also the only semi-core game even available other than Galaxy at the time it came out, while Switch has a more mature library to pick from. GCN, WiiU, and arguably N64 numbers aren't very relevant for today, but 3DS is, and Wii might be.

I mean I don't doubt it will sell well, but I'm also not convinced betting the farm on Smash almost entirely in terms of marketing is the smartest way to go (even Pokemon is getting sidelined in favor of Smash-everything...third parties are all but hidden, and we're getting more Smash focus...that just seems silly.)

@Grumblevolcano I'm sick to my eyeballs of Smash to the point it's making me hate Smash....but.....I wouldn't say no to an early demo

@ReaderRagfish Yeah, GCN had a little bit of popularity with kids compared to WiiU (go figure a purple cube looks more inviting to kids than a what can only be described as a rice cooker design. ) It sold more overall, but was also available for sale longer, and it's really hard to compare the WiiU with anything because while GCN was a failure overall, they company still had faith in it. With WiiU by the end of year 2 the company clearly was signaling they had no faith in it and were just looking to escape it. The early NX reveal sent the downward spiral in motion, they no longer advertised it even in Q4, E3 had the awkward "please ignore that we have no games, but we're transitioning to new hardware (for another year and a half)" and after Iwata's death they almost pretended the machine never existed from the start. So it's a little imbalanced to say GCN sold 21M in 5-6 years and WiiU sold 13M in 4....WiiU was only really a platform for 2 years, and then it spent 2 years on life support to not offend existing customers. GCN did have slightly more broad appeal than WiiU, but we're still talking about a platform that in 5-6 years sold about what Switch has sold in 17 months and will have utterly crushed by 20 months. It looks better than it was only because N64 didn't really do all that great either. Personally I still think WiiU was the better console of the two...it's a travesty that it ended as it did, not that I'm not grateful it led to Switch!

Yeah, BotW got a lot of one time boosts I don't expect to see in a Zelda game ever again in terms of sales. And I think a lot of people will be really disappointed by Metroid Prime 4 numbers....that series just doesn't move copies. Still, with Smash I feel like it often sells so well in spite of itself because every time a Smash comes around it's always either on a console with too few games overall, or at a point in the consoles life it has few other games around it. N64, Smash was new and unique as an idea. GCN was a pretty core-only fanbase in general. WiiU was a truly core-only fanbase (and Smash was the only big game coming at the time.) Wii was super popular and Smash released at the height.....but Smash, Galaxy, and Kart were basically the only core games coming out when it came out, and not long after that Wii entered its long slow decline of games. Switch....they've set up this year to replicate that by hiding other games, even Pokemon, and trying to push Smash Smash Smash, but Switch actually does have a much more diverse library at this point vying for money than those did. Unlike Wii that after Smash, the platform just kind of disintegrated into shovelware and little more, I think Switch will keep a momentum. Smash is evergreen so it's sales will be maintained somewhat, but I think there will be more big sellers to challenge it later in the cycle than Wii had (and a more diverse non-core-smash userbase than WiiU/GCN had.) 3DS is probably the most useful indicator. Sort-of-ish.

Looking back at 2014, the August Direct had a 14 minute fighter patch notes style segment similar to what happened at E3. So the August 2018 Direct will possibly be similar but without the fighter patch notes segment.

(the patch notes segment is 17:20 to 31:12)

@NEStalgia I don't expect Metroid Prime 4 to sell gangbusters. It's going to purely a Nintendo fan's Nintendo game. I only expect 3 million max. Even Metroid Prime only sold 2 million on the GameCube, and Prime 3 on the Wii sold LESS than Prime 1 on the GameCube. I hope to be proven wrong though, if it's another critical darling like BotW and Odyssey, then I expect maybe 4-5 million tops because then Nintendo will actually market the damn game.

And people wonder why Nintendo doesn't make Metroid games, because they aren't mega profitable. That series is the better example of a series the Internet hypes up but doesn't end up translating to sales. Which is a damn shame in my book.

I am amazed at the sudden "I dont like it so its bad" and "Its not as good as you say it is" crowd that popped up.

Then I remember this is the internet.

@ReaderRagfish Pretty sure the majority of hardcore fans bought both, rather than one or the other, like I did.