Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@EvilLucario That's true. Though I feel like this year it's a bit more quality over quantity. Knack II, the WipeOut Collection, Everybody's Golf. I'm sure they're all fine games, but I didn't pick them up at launch. If I can get Pikmin 4, Metroid Prime and a new IP from Nintendo next year, that's going to be the best year in gaming with TLOU, Ghost, Sekiro, Days Gone, Control, RE2 and Babylon's Fall. And Dreams too, somewhere in there...!

@NEStalgia Tbh when both PS4 and Xbox One were fresh out of the gates, they were laughably terrible with exclusive games. They didn't receive a single "really good" exclusive until Bloodborne and Halo 5 came out, and Bloodborne isn't particularly mainstream. Everything else were multiplatforms that came out on PC and/or released the generation beforehand (Destiny, Metal Gear Solid V, GTA V, Last of Us, Halo Master Chief Collection). So the Switch is already better than both of them combined within their respective time frames.

The only thing is that they get a bunch of third-party support instead, which I find completely pointless because of PC.

@NEStalgia Oddly enough, it did so well that it placed in the 10 top-grossing games by digital revenue of July, and that's without any micro-transactions, loot boxes, season passes and DLCs. Just the base game. Sitting there between all the service games. EA should take a note of that when developing their next single player Star Wars game... Oh wait! They already cancelled it...

@NEStalgia I think the original plan would've been:
August - Yoshi
September - Smash
October - Super Mario Party
November - Pokemon Let's Go
December - Fire Emblem

Then Yoshi and Fire Emblem were delayed leaving Nintendo with Smash, Smash and more Smash.

@Grumblevolcano That's not entirely true, you left out those "unannounced games" Nintendo apparently has up it's sleeve for the holiday season but refuse to reveal.

Re.Smash. Not sure where it will finish up sales-wise, as it’s still very difficult to predict what Switch will sell. However I get the impression Nintendo sees it as not quite a top tier, Kart-level seller but the most likely to become one. And they are going to hype this version into the ground to push it into that tier.

@FragRed It was never said those unannounced games would be normal games so 1 of them has already been announced, Labo Toy-Con 03. Wouldn't be surprised if the rest is stuff like Labo Toy-Con 04 (there's a few things left from the initial reveal trailer in January), Switch Sports and Switch Fit.

@EvilLucario Oh absolutely agreed. Worse, Bloodborne is ultra niche, and Halo 5 released incomplete and broken. I do agree that Switch is definitely ahead of both in the same timeframe in terms of exclusives, of course I think people expect more of Nintendo because N doesn't secure those third party deals to the same degree. (I don't blame them not playing for the AAA graphics fest but they still have been too slow on that AA Japanese tier uptake to fill that gap.) Personally I think they came out of the gate not sure what way to go, not convinced of the Switch's success. Ishihara of TPC already admitted he told them it would fail....there was doubt in the company, and that doubt carried over into how they persued even Japanese third parties. That's on track now....but it set them back a while, so despite the exclusives being better, they have relied too heavily on pushing them. Meanwhile, now that they have the third parties....they neglect to promote them....

I don't think 3rd party is pointless because of PC. Those consoles are PCs which is really the point the big western publishers wanted out of them. It's just a really cheap, tiny, efficient PC, albeit a weak one. I had a thread here debating between getting back into PC and getting a 1X for my multiplats back in Jan. I went with the 1X in the end. Waaay less hassle than messing with drivers and firmware updates that fix one thing and break 5, and $500 video cards that last 2 years. And no need to muck with a keyboard. But if you have a gaming PC, yeah, most of those libraries are pointless. But the point is you buy that as your gaming PC. XBox was always meant to be that. PS4 just copied at the insistence of EA/Ubi/2K/etc. Publishers just want outlets to sell there wares....thus smartphones and tablets are the final frontier....

@Octane I suppose the raw profits of a service game though make up the difference. They can sell barebones games with low production costs and keep recurring revenues off it. GoW can't do that. IMO publishers won't be happy until gaming is as vapid as Facebook, with just as many members. You don't do anything you just muck with stuff, tell your friends about it, they shouldn't care, at all, but somehow it produces billions. I mean what better business model. Tell the "snowflake" kids everything they do is super awesome, and that the world wants to know about it and they'll spend every waking hour on it We call it "games as a service" but I think it's really less about making gaming into cable TV, and more into making gaming into social media. (Just wait until it's an ad platform!)

@Grumblevolcano I'm tempted to flip flop FE and Yoshi in your list, but yeah, they'd want Yoshi out before Black Friday even though it's a better December release. The rest sounds about right. Still, at least they can pretend to hype Pokemon like they believe it's a bigger game than Smash. Because it is..... It's as though they forget Pokemon is the #1 franchise in gaming..... Heck, just pretend Starlink is Starfox.....because it is.....and advertise it like it's your own.

@NEStalgia Yeah, what a surprise. AAA Multiplayer games sell huge when there's only a few to choose from. Everyone makes multiplayer. AAA Single player games start to sell huge because there's few to pick from. I don't see how these companies can't see that gaps in the market are what drive sales. Well, that and just making an incredibly fun game. At least Bethesda still gets it... mostly.

EDIT: As for the Pokemon promotion, Nintendo has basically no say in that. TPC is fully in charge of promotion, and they hate Nintendo Directs for whatever reason.

@NEStalgia Probably because Nintendo doesn't really know how well to leverage third-parties. They've always been good at pushing their own games, for better or worse, because before the Switch they were all they had (and even for the Switch, pretty much every single game that sold over 1m+ is an exclusive and/or published by Nintendo).

And while PC gaming does have its annoyances, I'm willing to stick with that much more than PS/Xbox consoles that want to throw around power and specs when PC already exists to school them if I actually wanted power. And not only can I play games on my PC, but I can also get work done since everyone needs a PC, but not everyone needs to play games. (And for personal reasons, a beefy PC also allows easy recordings so it can make casual YouTube/Twitch stuff much easier)

You can definitely tell the change in Nintendo's attitude to Monster Hunter since the World situation.

@FragRed Most of those unannounced games are probably third party ports (RE4, anyone?) and other Labo set.

Maybe we get a port of NES Remix Pack or a digital only title like Pushmo or Mario vs DK. Don't expect anything beyond that!

@Grumblevolcano That game should have been translated a while back, didn't the 3DS titles the switch version is based on do well outside of japan?

This may not turn out to be much, but I follow the games journalist Chris Scullion on Twitter and listen to his podcasts and stuff. He knows some people in the games industry so he sometimes knows about games before they're revealed (eg he knew about Smash before the March Direct), but he doesn't leak them or anything. Anyway, after E3 he said he was surprised because there were some games he knew about that he expected Nintendo to announce at E3, but they didn't. I don't think he knew about Labo Toy-Con 3 so that's not what he was talking about. I dunno, it may be nothing but it sounds like Nintendo does have some more announcements up their sleeve for this year.

@Dogorilla for some reason rumours are swirling about them bringing super Mario U as a switch title... which would work..

but surely super Mario maker, makes more sense as a title release or is that just me? haha

On that note, I just looked at Chris Scullion's Twitter account and he makes a very good point about the Smash Direct: https://twitter.com/scully1888/status/1026480384601726977

@Akuza89 Yeah I'd say Mario Maker has more going for it (although I never actually played NSMBU). Maybe they could combine them and Super Luigi U as some kind of 2D Mario collection on Switch.

@Akuza89 Capcom said they didn't release MHGU earlier because of MH World.

As for NSMBU vs. Mario Maker, if you release both then NSMBU first makes the most sense.

@link3710 companies are always dense. After ww2 there was a recession in part because the golden goose of radios suddenly stopped selling. Go figure one everyone had one they no longer bought them as fast. Then they did the same with pcs. Now again with phones. Supposedly smart MBAs generally seem to possess Forest Gump levels of intellect

@EvilLucario of they know how to leverage third parties just fine. they just don't want to. They're protecting first party sales just as Sega did and Nintendo always did. It gets them in trouble and that's part of their third party problem. "Nintendo for Nintendo games"is the environment they actively cultivate.

As for pc, you missed the threads of my awful gaming pc luck. You thought my bad luck was just for xenoblade? Pssshh... If i walked into a casino, not only would i not win, but I'd trip and knock over someone's drink, it would short out a slot machine, which would catch fire, cause millions in damages, and id be confused with a serial arsonist, arrested, but the prison transport would fall off a bridge into the river on the way. That's my luck

The cost and nuance if pc gaming and the fact that i will never again game at a desk kind if kills pc gaming. It was fun back when i didn't have to spend all day every day at a desk in front of the monitor . Sure it's more powerful, but at some point the convenience of "turn it in, get good enough result" beats spending hours tuning. And i was hardcore pc master race for a decade plus. Someday you'll be me

Also i learned never ever game on a productivity box. Keep them separate. Maybe a holdover from the win 9x days but after enough heartache the lesson stays forever and I'd rather do productivity on a laptop outside the office. Portability is King. That's why i play switch.

I went and fact checked this because a lot of claims of Direct patterns have been false, and people spread them around like they're the gospel (Remember the whole "Nintendo Direct Mini's are always followed by a full Nintendo Direct"? That one was based on misinformation, but was believed by many and even posted in the news section of this site). The examples used here, for the most part, do check out - with one mistake. The second example he used doesn't check out (the "Nintendo Direct" was for Monster Hunter 4, and was exclusive to Japan. The actual next full Nintendo Direct was around a month later).

But even though the dates he used do check out for almost all of the examples, I still think this is being very selective. Instances have been found where a general Nintendo Direct follows a specific one, but if you look through the list of Directs, there are many cases where this didn't happen. And there were Super Smash Bros Directs not immediately followed by full Nintendo Directs.

I wish people like him would stop making up this stuff. These claims of patterns are not founded in reality.

@Harmonie True, I suppose I should have checked that before linking to it here. Regardless, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a general Direct by the end of September, maybe with at least one big unannounced game coming before the end of the year.