Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Well, they could have a "Forgotten Gems Direct".

But overall, it is Nintendos job to make me want to buy their goods.

@FaeKnight Sorry for the slightly late reply, but that's who I'm talking about. Phil Spencer is the vice-president of Microsoft's gaming (Xbox) division. (I think it was him that made the comment about Banjo-Kazooie in Smash.) Of course, his opinion doesn't speak for the whole company, but it means there's at least a small chance.

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I could start using it just for smaller games that I may otherwise be unsure of or possibly forget like @subpopz and @JaxonH seem to say. But for major games like Dust or Limbo/Inside that I know that I want but am waiting for a sale, there doesn't seem to be much reason to include them.

Since it can at times be hard to find games in the store's UI, I use the wish list as a sort of shopping list of games I want but can't afford yet or am considering but not completely sold on.

@JaxonH "I add games to my wishlist I'm interested in but not sure about,"
Logical fallacy detected. Object referenced does not exist.

@Therad Come now, don't you remember all those games they showed at E3? There were at least 20 of them.....they covered them in 10 or 12 seconds, didn't you see?

@Dogorilla I doubt anything at MS is blocking Banjo since K. Rool was already permitted. Either Sakurai doesn't have an interest in those characters, or whatever the terms were to get K. Rool aren't terms they'd abuse too often. It's good marketing for Microsoft though so there's no reason for them to deny them, and the two companies seem to be in a very cooperative phase for as long as Sony is eating both their lunches.

Tales of Vesperia Switch isn't all on the cart.

See the download notice on the Switch game boxart.

I'm kinda liking this trend now, just makes it that much easier to waive a game I'm tempted by when I know the physical edition is compromised.

I'm buying digitally anyways (Although I did get the special edition cause, awesome game, one of the best)

I dont like it, but I got into this hobby to enjoy video games. When I realized I was so far gone I was literally thinking of skipping games based on the storage medium, it was a cold splash of water in the face. Completely lost sight of what matters.

Only time I'll ever let that come between me and a game is when space is a crucial issue.

@NEStalgia, Nintendo wholly owns all DKC characters, so unlike with Banjo, they wouldn't have needed Microsoft's permission to use him.

He's actually been used/referenced a lot over the years (I think in one of the Mario soccer games, as a racer in DK Barrel Blast, a trophy in Brawl, a street name in Odyssey, and I think was even the main villain in a pair of GBA/DS DK spinoffs, one of which I think was called King of Swing), it's just that Retro wanted to put their own mark on DKC as to why they haven't used the Kremlings in the new DKC games.

Man I can't wait for Vesperia. Gonna be playing that with a friend, actually!

@RR529 Hmm, maybe. But then I remembered reading about Kremlings and K. Rool not belonging to Nintendo. Not sure which is true.

I guess we'll know if we see a Microsoft or Rare copyright in the Smash credits...

@JaxonH I mean, I bought my X1X as an all digital machine. Almost 4.5TB of games downloaded. And I still am not comfortable with forced Switch downloads. It's bait and switch. the whole point of a cartridge is to contain the game to freely move between machines and/or not need bandwidth you may not have and/or not have to wait forever to play. On Switch it's exacerbated by the fact that a 400GB SD card costs more than my 6TB HDD for X1, and on top of it all Switch downloads hideously slowly and requently stalls even when wired. I can download 65GB of Desitny 2 Forsaken on X1 or PS4 in about an hour or less at 250Mb/s+. Switch takes longer than that just to grab the L.A. Noire mandatory download.

To make matters worse I can't just say I'll go all digital because then Nintendo won't let me play my games on any hardware I pick up, so instead I need the physical as an unlock key to play digital games. It's not physical games, it's license dongles like AutoCAD used to have. It's a real black eye on the otherwise nice cartridge system. Particularly since most games seem to do this now. Nintendo really had an obligation to sort out their card distribution rather than chasing every penny of the bottom line. Guaranteed, Iwata would not have let the platform develop this way.

TFW your Wi-Fi is garbage so it takes like 6 hours to download 80 GB games off Steam

@NEStalgia
It may not be ideal, but its far from prohibitory. Just a lot of "what ifs" and "but theoretically's".

Particularly since all games play a portion of the content given what's on the cart (the game is not unplayable without the download) and the eShop will likely be around for a long time, and SD backups are a thing.

Also, from the horse's mouth there isn't a download:

https://nintendoeverything.com/will-tales-of-vesperia-definit...

@NEStalgia
Btw you can actually play your games on any hardware. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you.

I have 2 Switches and can use either one, just not at the same time. Deactivate on eShop for one, launch eShop on the other to make it the active system.

That's not changing.

edit

Also, it's simply not true that "most" games are doing downloads. It's just not factually accurate. Most aren't doing downloads. Some are. Some fairly, some unfairly. But most aren't. The bigger games tend to though. But we don't get too many of those.

@EvilLucario If that's garbage, what do you call it takes 5 days to download 80GB game... (that's with not turning off the laptop)

I was originally going to make Resident Evil 2 my January game, but I'm leaving on a vacation a day or two after it launches, so I'll just go with Tales of Vesperia on Switch instead and pick up RE2 cheap down the road.

I'm holding off to see if it comes to Switch anyways.

Been down this road too many times before.

@JaxonH Well they confirmed in EU it doesn't.....that doesn't confirm if they're short changing the US or if the photo is wrong. I'm hopeful though. So far I suppose some games play a portion from the cart...that's at least a plus.

Having to deactivate and change your primary isn't really a solution at all, that's something different. I don't know if Nintendo has any caps on how often you do that, I know Sony and MS do have caps on how many times a year you can do it. But unfortunately since you have to do it for the entire CONSOLE it defeats the point. If I buy Smash digitally, and I buy Bastion digitally, and I decide I want to play Smash on Switch #1 and Bastion on Switch #2, and want to play each, I'd have to keep switching my "primary" several times a day. That's not how "unified accounts" are supposed to work. If I could move it per-game that would be one thing. If I had to be online to play on a non-primary (like the other consoles) that would be fine. But telling me I have to deactivate all my digital games on one machine to play any of them on another machine, plus must have both machines in hand to switch it back and forth....that's not really a solution, that's abusing account administration in unintended ways to work around a glaring hole in their digital licensing model. As it stands physical lets me move my games (and with cloud saves, all my saves except Splatoon, Smash, etc) from machine to machine like I used to with 3DS on-cart storage. Digital? Locked to one machine, or, rather, I have to keep changing which machine is my primary every time I want to play a game on a different system than last time. Imagine an all digital library that way? System 2 would be unusable without access to system 1? Or I have to buy games on different accounts depending on which machine I wish to play it on which is based on which long game I may have running in one or the other. Also rendering useless the benefits of cloud saves (without continuously changing your primary system.) That's not really a workable system. And I wouldn't trust that non-stop primary changing raises red flags about possible abuse/hacking/piracy etc and gets ban hammers if abused. I do remember people talking about that "solution" but it's really not a solution. The whole point of unified accounts is the ability to log into any system and play your library (which does not involve first deactivating your other one as playable.) Without that, it's not really unified, we might as well have the old system because I need separate accounts with separate purchases on each Switch I may own. I suppose with cloud saves though I could still use account 2's purchases that way. Better than nothing, but if I buy physical I need only one copy, not two, to do that.

Edit: PS4 deserves some grief for how archaically they treat digital as well. You can move a game from HDD to HDD, but you can't copy it, meaning there is no possibility for backups at all. That's pretty backward. But Switch takes the cake that your account is locked out of your games outside whatever machine is marked as "yours."

Edit2: Well "most games", may in this case mean "most games NL writes articles about" so I indeed my have a perception bias there

@NEStalgia
Well ya, you'd have to keep switching it.

But the complaint last gen was, games were tied to hardware. Lose the system, lose the games. That's no longer true.

Switch is a portable system. When are you going to honestly need to switch games to another system back and forth? That's why I say it's just hypotheticals. In practice the Switch comes with you. Unlike Xbox, you don't need to access on another system that's stationary at some other location. It goes where you go. And you can still access games on another system. Beyond that seems nitpicking compared to where we stood with Wii U. A complaint for a future generation, not today. More pressing issues than the slightly inconvenient nature of signing in back and forth on multiple Switches that are portable in the first place. I dont see the issue anyways. One account at a time. Nothing wrong with that. As long as it's not tied to the hardware.

@JaxonH Good point about the games not being lost with the hardware entirely, though IIRC don't you still need the old system to deactivate and thus still need to call Nintendo and beg them to believe you? So it only half fixes the problem and is still pretty backwards. I love some ways that Nintendo is backwards, but other aspects continue to amaze.

But yeah, much like their presentation of cloud saves, they seem to think that all that matters for online is "disaster recovery" and not, you know, actual usage. Digital content's main feature is convenience. Switch manages to make digital more inconvenient than physical, and it becomes even more apparent, ironically, with the addition of cloud saves, since now my physical games can be used the same way I used 3DS games between systems, while digital can not. Definitely a swing and a miss as far as Switch digital goes. With Amazon dropping discounts, had Nintendo let me move my games freely I'd have splurged on a 400GB card and gone digital. But with the restrictiveness, no, physical still must win. It's ironically more convenient and is, in fact, the only meaningful way to get the most out of cloud saves!

Not a hypothetical, though. You yourself have 2 switches. I have 2 Switches. And they want to sell multiple Switches in special editions like with all handhelds before it. My usage pattern comes from the way I used my 3DSs. One "big" game loaded and always ready to go in one unit (Dragon Quest, Xenoblade, ACNL, etc. that's my kind of daily go to. Leave it in suspend at all times ready to play without save points. Then have various, games to either whittle at (Octopath, Sushi Striker, in the past, Project X Zone, Devil Survivor) in the second machine...two different experiences ready to go. If I want to move onto a new "main" game but still noodle with the old one, main game goes in #1, old game moves to #2. With physical, now with cloud saves, it's identical to 3DS so my needs are mostly met. But it does mean digital games don't really become an option, limited to unpleasantly dealing with indies that way, and big online games like Kart/Smash/Sploon. Of course if I switch actives to play my indies on #2, I can't play Sploon on #1....

Cloud saves (finally after a year and a half) restore the way I played with cart-saves on 3DS. But it not only doesn't entice me, but actively gives me reason to avoid digital because it provides less usability.

Plus, the outside theoretical example that you don't have your Switch you're playing with someone else's and want to show them a game or play a quick local session on theirs....you don't have access.

But it's definitely not nitpicking or a future generational complaint. It has an actual influence on how I can use it today, and makes digital less functional for me. It's a valid, and immediate criticism. It may not be the mainstream use case, but digital comes with certain minimum expectations by precedent. If it were just sign in sign out I wouldn't actually matter. But device activation/deactivation has a little more serious consequences to it (even if they're not raising red flags for it currently.)

Also the ability to deactivate it online really would be useful for that disaster recovery situation. Calling and begging isn't very modern.