Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH I don't think you remember the backlash when Sony announced it. Sure, there were people saying they didn't mind it because they were already paying for Xbox Live, or they believed the online infrastructure would be improved or something like that, but I can assure you many were not happy with it.

@Octane
Of course there were people not happy (like me) but the overwhelming majority were basically telling those people to get bent.

edit
I think most people were willing to turn a blind eye in light of the fact we came extremely close to an online only future. Had Sony followed suit, we'd have had zero recourse. And credit for that should be given, even if their motives were purely selfish to capitalize off MS. The sad part is, paid online was snuck in on that Trojan Horse of offline game sharing. And that moment right there changed everything. That's when paid online became standardized.

@JaxonH Maybe, I'm not sure what corners of the internet you were visiting back then

You are right that the "good news" of sharing games, no mandatory Kinect, etc. softened the impact of the news.

I wish I could go back in time and see how people reacted to the reveal of the Xboxone and ps4. I only heard about one when the Dead Rising commercial came out.

Well yeah, the errors made by Microsoft did soften the negativity of PS4's problems but negativity did still exist. There isn't anything to soften the negativity this time.

@ReaderRagfish Honestly this generation was absolute garbage until 2016. The period from 2013 to 2016 was when I really fell out of a lot of console gaming to stick with MMOs and my 3DS. Everyone sucked for the most part until they tried to turn things around at that point.

I can't wait until next generation. I wanna see how people spin it and the new iteration of fanboys.

@Tsurii Oh man, that's pretty true. I mean, I enjoyed Bethesda's presentation, but it wasn't great. All the rest of them didn't hold a candle to Microsoft's though, with both Nintendo and Sony dropping the ball in particular in different ways.

The problem with the Xbox Conference is that was all stuff that is definitely coming to Xbox...but its not going to get people to buy an Xbox.

@Knuckles-Fajita I think Microsoft is fine with the knowledge they aren't going to get people to buy an Xbox this generation, or to the point they will catch up with Sony. That's why they deliberately talked about purchasing 4 development studios, setting up a fifth studio and making sure everyone knew that they are hard at work on the next generation consoles. Microsoft are gearing people up for the next generation and that is not a bad thing to be doing.

And that is fine...but the ramifications of that are only hopeful and a few years out. The actual tangible gaming products they had to show...were either a long way off and nebulous like HALO and Gears (All 3 of them), studio acquisitions that again, the results will be a long ways off or just straight up buying studios who already work exclusively with them anyway so what changes exactly? And the other stuff? All on other systems so...

Weren't they billing the XB1 as the last step in the console's development tree because after this it would just be hardware tweaks and improvements? (such as the X and S models)

Or am I remembering things wrong?

Just started Shining Resonance Refrain

World design isn't as ambitious as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or Ys VIII, but it still looks really nice and is a boon in the sense that, as of yet, the visuals have been really crisp in portable mode, with solid performance.

Seems like it's gonna be pretty standard fare in terms of gameplay & story, but I must admit the character design is great, IMO (and no, I'm not just talking about the fanservicy designs). Oh, and there's just something so satisfying about ripping through foes as a dragon.

@Knuckles-Fajita That kinds sounds like how Sony has typically been doing things - showing games that are a long way away or are also on other platforms. The thing is, because Phil Spencer's predecessor did such a crap job at running things, it's taken this long to get the Xbox brand into a position where they can finally move forward and build up it's first party exclusives etc.

E3 2018 as a whole was very meh and crappy. Microsoft was nothing but multiplatforms and "exclusives" (Microsoft exclusives, sure, but still can be played on my PC), Sony had their stupid as hell venues and boring conferences, Nintendo focused on Smash a lot (I loved it but it seems even fans of Smash thought it was much), EA is EA, Ubisoft sucked too, Square Enix was flat-out pointless, and Bethesda was ok but nothing too big.

Come to think of it, E3 2017 sucked too. Microsoft were dancing around the Xbox One X, Sony pulled E3 2016 again and had a boring, rushed conference, Nintendo barely showed anything new, and everyone else was also meh to bad.

E3 as a whole shouldn't be getting even a quarter of hype that it gets anymore. It's why I'm happy that Nintendo Directs are the main way to show stuff off. Why else do you think Sony and Microsoft followed suit with PSX and Inside Xbox? Because as behind as Nintendo sometimes is (online lol), at other times they can be way ahead of the curve, like with their treatment of E3 and designing the Switch hardware.

@EvilLucario
Agreed. Next E3 will be interesting if only to see what/if Sony and Microsoft are gonna do with their next consoles.

@rallydefault From a hardware point of view, if it releases next year then there will be events prior to E3 much like what happened when revealing the current generation of Xbox and PlayStation and E3 itself will be, hopefully, fully focused on launch games. Though I am expecting them to do this during 2020 with a November that year release.

Nintendo has been long known for taking weird risks and innovating. Granted, those weird risks don't always pan out. Virtual Boy for example failed, and failed hard. As did the Power Glove. Choosing to continue using cartridges despite the new industry standard being cd disks due to having more storage space was another time they messed up. Nintendo believed that cd disks were just a 'fad' and that cartridges were the future of console gaming. And to be fair, with the Switch that belief has been justified due to technology catching up to intentions.

But when Nintendo gets it right, they knock it out of the ballpark. The Switch it's self is a fantastic system that has me more excited then any home console has since I was a kid first playing Atari games at a friend's house. Is the Online service going to be one of their missteps? Eh, probably not. It'll probably go down in gaming history as just another paid online service, one among many. In a year or two few people will even remember the hoopla being raised over it right now.

I am, naturally, curious what Nintendo will do next. Nintendo does tend to Go Big or fall flat on their metaphorical face.

I don't think "but it's also on PC" is a valid reason to dismiss Xbox exclusives.

For one, not everyone games on PC. For two, PC gaming is kind of a separate entity from console gaming, and when we talk about exclusives, usually PC is excluded. Most of the time when people say "but it's on PC, thus it's not exclusive, thus it's not an asset to console XYZ" it's just an excuse to de-legitimize a game that can't be played on any other console, and a lot of times the people saying that don't even game on PC or have one powerful enough to run the game properly anyways.

For three, every game is an asset to a given console, exclusive or otherwise. Being console exclusive is a huge boon to have. Because if you are a console gamer (as in, you play on consoles and don't care that home computers can play games, because you like the plug and play aspect of consoles, and you don't want to deal with borderless windows and fixes and black screens and resolution issues and incompatible settings and whether a game can run properly, etc) that's the only place you're going to be able to play the game.

I thought Microsoft 2018 e3 was one of the best I've ever seen. One for the history books. And I thought Nintendo 2017 was one of the best Nintendo e3's I've ever seen. Maybe not the best overall but certainly one of the best that Nintendo has ever put forward. And Sony had a decent e3 both years.

Idk, i'm just not sure what people are expecting nowadays. Sometimes I think people expect to see an entire generation's worth of games announced all in the span of 40 minutes, and anything less is failure. I expect a couple brand new game announcements, and some new trailers and info for announced games that still hold a shroud of mystery.

Wasn’t Sony’s conference the one with the 30 minute pause in between games?