Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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@JaxonH @subpopz They did it! They actually freaking did it!! Holy heck I'm in disbelief on a grander level than seeing the entire FF series dumped on Nintendo and XBox all at once. I was holding out that shred of hope but as we got closer and closer and they said nothing, I really went into it expecting nothing to change on the digital front and kind of braced for it. Then I went to the eShop on #2....clicked download expecting the "not your primary" error, and instead it started downloading!

I stayed up waaaay later than a sane, responsible adult should have done just playing with every combination I could think of like a kid with a toy on Christmas night. I can download my games on both my systems! I can run my games on my main account on either system! If I have a game running on the other system, it just suspends it while I play a game on the other system and I can freely jump back and forth! More absolutely shockingly, for the company that invented Pokemon Yours, Pokemon Mine, I can play the same game, online, on two different accounts, simultaneously, allowing for "game sharing" and buying one copy to play together with the second player in the house, which has increasingly been leading me to purchase things on XBox instead of Switch, now it brings it back to Switch as primary. On one hand "half price games!" but more importantly: "Twice as many games will be bought, and more of it digitally!"

In other words: It works exactly like X1/PS4 now! Nintendo has joined the 8th generation!

I truly don't understand Nintendo at times. A year and a half of delays with "we'll tell you more later." Then they tell us more and tell us only what they already told us. Then they launch the service, as only the few features they already told us about. Never do they mention they were overhauling their entire digital policy, adding tons of utility, and bringing it in line with the competition. Microsoft presents the feature with a trademarked name and a page of feature lists. Sony presents the feature like they invented the whole concept of account logins. Nintendo: "Implement major feature. Tell no one." Maybe they don't want to draw attention to the fact that they're 5 years behind the competition with this, but a feature is a feature when you're selling a service

Also, I find it very interesting that of my whole roster of games, I believe Splatoon (and demos/testfires etc) are the only things that can't be backed up (in addition to the "old" version of Minecraft pre-Bedrock) MK8D, ARMS, Mario Tennis Aces all support cloud saves. This means the problem is not a Nintendo or Nintendo netcode issue, but specifically a Splatoon team issue, if the cheating isn't an issue on those other online games. That sucks majorly for Splatoon and makes me less interested in dedicating hours to it, but it's good news that it's not Nintendo that's hopelessly behind in that regard but the decisions of a single dev team, not representative of all Nintendo online games. It also means Smash is more likely to support could saves than not, leaving Splatoon all alone with the discontinued version of Minecraft.

Nintendo never overdelivers, and this time they massively did. At this point other than updating Splatoon, and adding folders, I don't think I have any real criticisms about Switch remaining. They pretty much resolved all the open criticisms beyond allowing local backups as well in this one update. Obviously system power/performance is a tradeoff but not a criticism, and the need for folders is actually heightened by this update as it otherwise encourages buying a lot more digital games than prior. For people into voice chat and multiplayer, yeah the current setup is pretty dodgy so that's a real critcism that doesn't personally affect me much.

This is surreal Now I have all those early games I bought on account #2 to work around the mess (RMX, Snake Pass, etc) and am locked into family subs forever if I don't want to rebuy them Switch works now like I dreamed it would on day 1.

@JaxonH Now my new debate is, I love physical for Switch, and storage issues mandate physical for big games like Vesperia....I just have to figure out if I want to swap consoles with player 2 like I did with my XBox and go digitally for mostly everything, or stick with my launch console for sentimental reasons and keep double buying. Hard call on that, but I do think I'll buy more digitally regardless.

So my new question for you is: My Switch download speeds are bad. REALLY bad. A few mb/s while my other consoles do 250, even when wired with the official USB adapter. It is possible that Switch's NIC and/or card reader speed is just that bad. But I've been curious if SD card speeds matter. I'm using a Samsung EVO Select (green) U3 card from launch period. I know you've experimented a lot with different cards. Have you found some to be very slow and some to be very fast? Now that digital is open and my saves are backed up it's a good time to upgrade my card (not a 400....that's just too expensive for SD storage, but moving from 156 to 256 might not hurt.

@OorWullie I had to do the setup on 3 Switches (my own two that are each primary to separate accounts, and one for another player in the house.) They all behaved a little differently with cloud saves in the list. My primary just showed "Not backed up" for everything. If I played a game and saved, after exiting, it backed up, but nothing else tried to back up. I did them all manually. It took like 10 minutes with only DQ:B having a huge 1GB save for some reason (Seriously, Skyrim can get away wtih like 5 mb and DQ:B takes a gig? )

On my other Switch, all games were immediately marked "waiting to backup" and all synced as soon as the system was idle/docked for a while. Same for #3. But on #2 games that had outdated saves compared to what was on the cloud showed a red icon I had to go into manually to make it overwrite the local save (if I just launched the game I was not notified the cloud had newer save data, though that's not inconsistent with PS4 that also lets you launch games that haven't synced without actually checking.) On #1 however, there was no red icon for a few games that had newer saves in the cloud (generated on #2, namely DKCTF that I'd started on #1 but then moved the cart to #2 after about 3 levels.)

So yeah how it initializes uploading existing saves seems kind of random/glitchy. Not sure what triggers it to queue everything. Maybe just a timer and it would have happened on its own.

But it was like Christmas morning and I was just in a TRY ALL THE THINGS!! mood One thing that is certain though is after you save in-game, at least when you exit the application, it seems to force a sync, so most of this is a "first time setup" concern only. Also I found it interesting that every game showed a date and time of the save data locally and in cloud. BotW just showed "Save data found"...I'm thinking maybe timestamps weren't included in the save format in the first few months?

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@EvilLucario Visually Zelda 1 has aged horribly but gameplay is fresher than ever. Meanwhile Zelda 2 looks better, but the gameplay is tied up in so many rigid tropes of the era, nothing could modernize it but a remake. Zelda one is just an action game with a modest inventory in a big open world. It was Ubisoft before there was Ubisoft. Or BotW but uglier, if you prefer

Mario 1, 3, and LoZ are really the only games in that bundle that hold up. I have a soft spot for Dr. Mario, but the 3DS remake was just sooo good it doesn't feel worthwhile anymore.

@Anti-Matter unless they're releasing them as a bundle (and we're talking about Squeenix so who knows) it doesn't seem likely that FF7-9 will be physical. They're old games they've sold digital-only for generations now. They could take the opportunity with new platforms, but games of that age kind of "feel" like digital games. But they'll likely price them no higher than $20 each so that mitigates that a bit.

X/X2, since even first party (Bayonetta) precident plus prior PS4 releases of X/X2 had X2 as digital, I think a mixed physical-digital is the predictable result. They could surprises us. Releasing these games at all is a huge surprise so who knows. But it seems "safe" to deliver exactly what they delivered on PS4 and Vita.

XII: The Zodiac Age, though, I'm guessing will get physical and collectors editions. It's a big game and it's a full remake made originally for PC....that seems like a game to treat as a full retail release. World of FF I suspect will be physical as well since it's been physical on all formats so far, and fits well on Nintendo's retail program with the whole Pokemon-alike aspect. 50/50 on Crystal Chronicles.

I'm thinking because these are games that will sell in Japan, they probably won't require downloads. That seems like mostly a "for western audiences" thing.

@OorWullie @link3710 The way it works makes it identical to PS4 and X1. Your "Primary" console does not have to be online to play its games. So any user on that console can play any games on the primary. Meanwhile the account owner that bought the game can log into any switch unit and download and play their games. So if you bought one digital copy of a game and wanted to play with your nephew on two switches, he would have to use your primary Swtich and play under his account. You would play on his switch and use your account. He can play on your primary with his account because on the primary all users are allowed to run the owner's games. Meanwhile you can play on his because you can play on any machine while actively logged in online. It only works on no more than two consoles, because what you're really doing is using a feature of your designated primary that lets other user accounts play your games without the owner needing to sign in.

If you tried to play (any) game you own on both machines at once under your own account (not the same game but any games you own under the same account on two different systems, the newst one you connected with takes priority and the other one goes into suspend as though you pressed the Home button. (I.E. when you play a game you own you log into your account behind the scenes, and you can only be logged in once so the other machine is booted. But if someone else on your primary plays your games, they're not logging you in they're logging themselves in, and the system allows them to play your games, so no verification of access happens.)

So any user on your Primary/Active console can play your digital games. You can play on any other console while actively online and connected to your own account. And a somewhat unavoidable biproduct of that is that two machines can play a game simultaneously, because the primary doesn't need to verify it's account owner.

Microsoft started that feature and branded it "Home XBox" as a feature of paid Gold subs. PS quietly copied it. And now Nintendo 5 years later quietly copied it

In a way it's a more complicated version of 3DS's woefully underused "Download Play".

It's not too exploitable because you need physical access to someone's primary console to get that extra running copy so the only way it can be used is people in the same physical room swapping consoles to use it, or some people exploit it with friends to share a library by giving their console or account credentials....but that's risky. If your friend turns out untrustworthy they steal your whole library. So it's better for parents/siblings situations mostly, and the player on the non-primary needs to be always-online which is harder to guarantee with portable Switch, and if people permanently swap consoles, the actual owner will be out of luck for their entire library if they don't have internet access. But it's a neat side effect for those with situations that can use it. I find I buy more games because of it rather than less. Instead of duplicate copies I buy tons more games.

And yes it works for single player games, it's actually more reliable for single player than multiplayer (in case Nintendo finds a way to patch out the ability to do so which, with them is possible if they didn't foresee it, though it's perfect parity for PSXBox which has done this for years. MS made an empire out of selling two copies of Pokemon so I'm a little afraid they didn't expect this loophole and will try to get rid of it, but it's the necessary biproduct of allowing all players to play on the primary while allowing the owner to play anywhere, and it adds a lot of value to people who do have access to each other's consoles.

Take it all with the caveat that Nintendo is Nintendo, and it's always possible they'll find a way to prevent that usage, however PS is pretty Nintendo-y on their own and has chosen to continue allowing it for years. And this current Switch implementation is actually more Microsoft than Sony feeling. Which is a good thing. PS4 is ahead of Switch in friends/matchmaking/communication, but Switch is now ahead of PS4 in handling multiple accounts and digital content. X1 still retains top slot in my mind in all those areas. It's the most PC-like.

They like holding data hostage, so Nintendo could always undo it somehow, but, to use Reggie's words, this is the most "fan-forward" thing they've done in a long time along with cross-play.

@FaeNight Hey, I take no blame, my complaints were based on the information Nintendo told us repeatedly, not the information they didn't tell use and snuck in quietly without notice at midnight They did it right and pretended they did it wrong....how Nintendo