Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano Yup. My guess is they’re holding back the September update until after the online launches to promote it more. Might be the 4.0 update people have been hoping for and it might include the large amount of content that data miners have been finding.

Shovel Knight physical up at gamestop!!!

The 10 hour eshop maintenance has been delayed to September 10th.

I can’t believe we’re gonna have to start paying for online. It’s not much and I’m not upset about it but it’s just kind of ‘wow’ if you know what I mean.

I'm not actively upset by it, but it really just means one less feature for my Switch since I don't see myself playing online enough to warrant even the $20 price, which is a bummer

It'll be sad seeing matchmaking taking longer and some games just becoming inactive. It was super cool being able to find a MK8 Deluxe lobby within a few seconds for example.

I mostly just want to keep supporting and playing splatoon 2 so it’s a bit of a bummer.

@Knuckles-Fajita Republic of Congo? Siberia? East Timor?

@DarthNocturnal They should give us a Fork Knife for even playing it.

@Grumblevolcano I still feel like Switch paid online should have been in place day 1, or not at all. Doing it in the middle, interrupting some games, is going to cause a lot of problems for the online experience. Much as I hate to say it they should have charged starting launch day and/or made it "pay for" with a "promotion" of $0 for a limited time as a Switch launch celebration. Something to make pay obvious rather than make it a sudden stop point.

@NEStalgia I agree, starting it now will alienate a lot of users that have taken the free online for granite. Had it been 6 months after it would've been an easier pill to swallow. 1.5 years later seems pointless to me.

@subpopz Never underestimate human stupidity. A lot of people will be caught off guard. Most people don't read the Switch news on or off the system. People won't know until it smacks them in the face. Dedicated online players won't change. But a lot of casual Splatoon players, Kart players etc will drop. Especially with Nintendo a lot of people just drop in and out and don't play a whole lot to justify it. Even a lot of people here, hardcore enthusiasts, are going to skip it out of either budgetary or principled reasons. Some games were dead even with free play (BlazBlue)....paying will kill it.

And Fortnite will suck in some of the former Splatoon players since it's free. Microsoft did it from day one, so everyone knew what they were getting. Sony duped people into it but because MS was so bad at the time, people just sucked it up and went with it. But Nintendo has a different audience not as into things like online play outside occasional play. If they did it from day 1, they'd have built customer expectations when buying a Switch. Building expectations after point of sale is just asking for backlash, or, worse, a drop in active players.

I agree with @NEStalgia in that it would have made more sense to establish that expectation early on. Though I also see their logic in waiting until they had an actual library of games to play online. I just think they should have planned it way better, in the sense that they should have had a release schedule closer to launch that would have justified charging for online play right from the get go, rather than this awkward timing they've decided with. Especially since their "bonuses" that they're offering to go with it will hardly make up for the annoyance that many people are about to find themselves with when they see they've gotta pay to play the game they've been playing online for free for the past x amount of time.

@MisterPi The weird thing is they did have a game lineup to sell the online a year ago....and then inexplicably delayed the online. I commend them for waiting until it was ready but how badly could they have planned a paid hosted service that honestly doesn't do much of anything, if it ended up delayed a full year after they intended to do it which was already 3 months after the product it was supposed to launch with, which was in development for years?

@subpopz Anecdotally I've heard far more than I'd expect both here and on a Splatoon forum that aren't going to be paying for it, either because they just can't afford the money after scraping together pennies for the hardware (students largely.) or out of principle because they just don't play online enough to justify spending $20 more on it. The first group just wouldn't have bought a Switch to begin with maybe (or maybe not Splatoon.) The second group would have been easier to convince when they bought the hardware than imposing the fee spontaneously later. I do think it will thin the herd. Even the Splatoon devs have admitted that. And yes, f2p games will be an option there....which isn't going to help the player base of Splatoon to endure, but worse, Pokken, Blaz, DBZ, Doom, etc. XBox owners were internet gamers from the start....the internet features were a big selling point of the system (and it's predecessor the Dreamcast.) It was an easy push on them. PS4 owners weren't, but a lot of PS4 buyers were XBox defectors fleeing the impending disaster of One (Sony commented that the majority of first month PS4 sales were former XBox owners not PS3 up-graders.) Nintendo just doesn't have that built-in online audience outside the Smash core and newly formed Splatoon core. It's a harder sell for them from the start, but..."new console, pay the price" flies. Even Sony would have hit harsher backlash had they done it in Spring 2015.

I'm not saying it's going to destroy the Switch, but I'm saying it's a significant speedbump that will be felt by players and those responsible for maintaining online portions of games.

Shovel Knight Treasure Trove physical version is all on the cart:

As for the online, it really depends on how Nintendo actually promotes it. Based on what Nintendo has done so far, what I see is most Switch users turn on their Switch go to play an online game like Splatoon 2 and find out they can't play anymore. Rather than paying for the subscription, they do something else like play Fortnite instead.

Maybe when we enter September Nintendo will actually do something but by now I would've expected the following:

• All 20 NES games announced
• Cloud saves detailed (as in the process, different consoles handle it differently)
• The kind of discounts provided
• Announced something big happening around launch (e.g. new mode for Splatoon 2, new tracks for MK8 Deluxe)

But Nintendo has been very vague about the online service.

@subpopz Agreed, but my interperetation in this case is the opposite. The people on an internet forum like this are the loyalists, apologists, and people who already accept spending a significant portion of their time and money on video games and Nintendo specifically. I.E. the people here are much more likely than the average consumer to justify the costs even if they can't afford it or won't use it much. Thus my interpretation that if I'm noticing a higher than expected (but not terribly huge) number here and other Nintendo forums.....what must the actual mainstream casual market look like?

@Grumblevolcano I'm with Gruble on this, I see that scenario of loading the game and getting an error that you have to pay to play now, and people going onto something else. This is especially true with the launch now coinciding with the #1 and #1 online game in the world being A) on the platform and B) Not requiring payment. A new game, for free, and not needing to pay will be enticing to many after being surprised by the pay wall splash. And it's a game they've all heard their friends talk about.

Release it with 70%+ off every major online game for members only.....that might push people over the edge, 1 week only.

Well I mean if you can't fit shovel knight on a cart, your storage medium is in serious trouble...

Yeh that's a good idea, but I wouldn't limit it to online games, and I'd extend the offer to nearer a month. It will get loads of positive word of mouth/keyboard, and many people will be nudged into dropping some money on a game they might otherwise not have bought. It was the buy one, get one free deal with Mario Kart 8 on Wii U that launched my last 4 years of crazy spending. Without that deal I may have never bought my favourite game of all time, which made me fall back in love with gaming, so I may never have made gaming the massive part of my life that it is now.

As loss leaders go, that one by Nintendo was super effective, on me at least.

Awesome news about the Langrisser Remake. It will feature original artwork and music as a 'classic mode'. Man, I hope it comes West.

Remember, Nintendo almost never give anything above what they have announced. So a conservative guess is the best.

If I would venture a guess, the NES game will be the same as in the NES classic mini minus third party. Changing max 2. Those are the games people want the most after all.

The discounts might very well be the same they do at your birthday, i.e 20% off a game you own. I don't expect any third party deals, except some Indies.

And they don't have any big coming for existing games.

And quite frankly, the save will be explained ad nauseum by fan sites. I don't think Nintendo will even bother with any big in depth showcasing.

And the killer feature is paying to play online. But most will swear they bought it for the other stuff.