Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Yosheel The year starts with winter. Year ends with winter. Always, it's winter. fus ro dah.

Time is weird.

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future...

Anyone played Dust: An Elysian Tale before?How does it measure up to Hollow Knight? Stuck in 2 minds whether to buy it or not. It looks lovely and I'm sure I'll enjoy it but I'm not sure I've got the motivation to start another Metroidvania right now. I've got Hollow Knight and The Messenger on the go and Steamworld Dig 2 sitting there unplayed. Also got Bastion preloaded. Looking forward to that! I know it's not a Metroidvania but I just thought I'd mention it anyway.

@OorWullie played it on the ps4 a few years back and got 100%. Was a really fun time, nothing genre changing or earth shattering, but still a solid, well designed and paced game. Would recommend it if you like Metroidvanias. Haven't played Hollow Knight so can't compare to that unfortunately.

@NEStalgia why is my name being taken in vain now?

Ah. Yeah well so long as there isn’t a Zelda edition I am good with the switch I have. I like that Nintendo tends to sell the joycons (which is really what makes switch pop anyway) so I can buy them and be content. Since the system is region free I don’t have a gateway reason to buy multiples.

I do like the let’s go joycons but I still need the EU/JPN splatoon ones to have a set of green.

Edit: auto correct is weird.

It's no where near as hard as Hollow Knight (neither is Bastion), but is still quite fun and provides a decent challenge.

Don't think the Crystal Chronicles remaster was supposed to be in the Direct. That one was most likely always intended to be announced at Sony's TGS show.

@IceClimbers I'm really up for playing CC again. More excited for this then FF15 pocket edition. Yeah I don't think it was intended for the direct either but we have to surely have that tonight or tomorrow morning.

Man, I feel like a piece of me is dying every time I look at the Amazon sales chart rankings.

Valkyria Chronicles 4, which is sitting at an 86 on MetaCritic now, is doing soooooo bad it's embarrassing. Down to #650 on PS4 and #350 on Switch, and visa versa for the Collector Edition, give or take... it's so low that it fluctuates by 100 rankings or so every few days. You only see that kind of volatility when you're dealing with an extremely small number of copies.

I just don't understand. I know it's not call of duty and isn't going to set the world on fire, but come on. And it's not just that, either. Dragonball Fighter Z is at #358. Dark Souls at #348. Diablo 3 at #174. NBA 2k19 is at #1,093... ya.

The only thing carrying preorders on Switch is Smash, Pokémon and Mario Party. That's pretty much it.

Idk... game sales on Switch have been doing great ever since launch. But I don't know what's going on here. It's like everyone just decided they don't care about buying games on Switch anymore. How does DB Xenoverse 2 sell 500k copies on Switch, and yet Fighter Z, the game everyone was saying they really wanted instead, is being completely ignored.

I guess I'll just have to enjoy these games flowing in while they last, because they're certainly not going to last if games start flopping like this.

@JaxonH It's all about promotion, Nintendo has made it look like Super Mario Party, Pokemon Let's Go and Smash Ultimate are all Switch has for the rest of the year. Stuff like E3 matters and Nintendo wasted it on Smash Ultimate.

@JaxonH those are sadly poor figures. I don't know if it's lack of marketing to people who may not read sites like this on a regular basis or perhaps people really do have so much to play that they don't feel the need to go out and buy so many games but whatever it is I hope word of mouth can see these titles take off in the next few weeks. I also wonder if the nature of the Switch means more people are going digital.

@Grumblevolcano
No doubt they squandered e3's full potential, basically just a gag reel for Dragonball Fighter Z and countless announcements left on the table.

But I don't think that is actually what's going on here. This is something else. All I know is when games sell they keep coming and when games start flopping they stop coming. And I'm seeing evidence that a number of very high profile, highly demanded titles are going to fail spectacularly. And for the life of me I can't understand why.

I think a pretty decent factor is how September -December 2018 is quite a bit busier than the same time frame last year. Hence why some of the more niche games and ports of Switch games like DS and Dragon ball are low.

Although I think more "core gamers" and people online should be more hyped for VC4( good points made by Jaxon in comment section of the review). Overall, VC is niche.

@JaxonH Maybe the charm of the idea of playing console quality games whenever and where ever you want is no longer exciting to people and do they just don’t care about buying third party games on it. All I can say is that if poor sales leads to third party developers and publishers stopping the shop of the Switch, then Nintendo is going to have a massive problem.

@FragRed
They would indeed have a massive problem, and so would we, since we actually care about this unique system that's offering us something no other gaming system has been able to since the dawn of the retro era.

I honestly don't see how the charm and idea of playing console games could wear off though, given that it's actually the most practical step forward for the industry I've seen in my entire life. It's just dang useful. But, there are a ton of games being ignored and that definitely needs an explanation. It's like people are only paying attention to first party titles and indies. Which means people are paying attention to things that aren't being headlined. I don't know if it's a comfort zone thing where a lot of Nintendo fans just feel comfortable with indie games, yet for some reason don't feel comfortable with retail titles? Idk. But it's very odd seeing so many random indies doing so well and then these amazing retail releases being completely ignored

@subpopz
I believe Nintendo recently said on average 25% of sales were done over the eShop now. I don't know if that is skewed because of digital only releases, but it's definitely not the percentage seen on other consoles, at least not yet.

I do think there has been a massive shift to digital though. It might've only been 10% going into this generation and we more than doubled that to 25% in just a year and a half. Who knows.

For Valkyria Chronicles there's a possible answer at least: I, and probably many others, plan to pick up the cheaper VC1 first before investing in the full priced release. FighterZ and Diablo III both suffer from being late ports many people have on other systems, especially Diablo III. And then FighterZ is in a niche genre to begin with so...

Amazon preorder rankings aren't always indicative of a game's success (or lack thereof).

I definitely plan to purchase FighterZ at the very least, but probably not right away. Busy with Spider-Man and I have a backlog on Switch that I need to clear before buying anything else. That's on top of some non-gaming expenses coming up.

Not everyone pre-orders. In fact people have been burned by pre-ordering quite badly in the past (No Man's Sky comes to mind) so many have learned not to listen to the hype and to wait till reviews come out. And not everyone shops via Amazon either. If I'm buying games online for example, I either go through Walmart, Gamestop, or the company that makes the game to begin with if I know they have a store. This means that, for instance, I shop on the Square-Enix site for their games rather then Amazon, and am more likely to check the Nintendo Eshop then Amazon if I want a new Switch game.