Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

"The thieves. The thieves. The filthy little thieves. Where is it?
Where is it? They stole it from us. My precious. Curse them, we hates them! It's ours, it is, and we wants it!"

On a more serious note, some thinks it distracts from ordinary development, but ports can quite often be handled with external studios. Most Wii U ports will end up eclipsing Wii u sales making it a no brainer.

With that said, I don't think we will see many ports in the future. Most heavy hitters have already been ported or doesn't make sense (i.e smash).

It isn't like it is a Nintendo problem either, they are all porting from previous gens. And as long as people buy it, it is an easy buck.

@Tsurii Did you download the voice pack from the eShop?

@Tsurii Oh damn I misread. That I don't know, oops.

Ok, I know you have moved on...this past December still going to now has been the month of h-e double hockey sticks for me. A vendor updated their software, broke ours and we are getting yelled at on all sides about it. Plus I've been locked in a two month interview process to get another job. So looking at a computer after work has not been on my list of things to do lol.

OK, so to answer your question. I'm not sure how making yet another revision of the 3ds (which is dying on the dev side by the way if you look at Japanese releases) especially one that have a screen and since you said "slightly more powerful" I am assuming another cpu revision would do anything except add another splinter in the consumer base. When it is same line (as in the internals) there isn't as much of that happening (such as the LL lines) but take the n3ds and the 2ds lines for example new skus difference in games that can be played (yes I know the n3ds exclusive games are small but it is still there and if you are tying to both save money and have full access to the library it gets dicey.) and that promotes consumer confusion.

Edit: Ok, continuing on. Also I'm not sure how that price point would be met with a revision or why Nintendo would find it a decent ROI to persue it. I get that you were making a pie in the sky kinda comment, same as me and the 3ds player but The current consumer space would have little reason to buy this HD 3ds (so I am excluding the Nintendo Faithful and looking at the consumer space as a whole); development and thus shelf space is dying/shrinking on the 3ds, so it would be hard to push a marketing campaign to say to average consumer "this is why you should buy this as opposed to the other 4 models we are pushing or the new hotness we have out now." It would not be easy for Nintendo to make a budget model 3ds that is a better specced machine than the current 2ds LL/XL or the n3ds and again customer confusion would drive sales into the ground as well. We saw it happen with the wiiu (I've yet to meet someone that can give me a convincing argument as to why the wiiu was a bad console either on its own merits or against the competition) poor marketing and consumer confusion left that little box to die. And since we are talking about an existing and in gaming years ancient line consumer confusion would be pretty high I would wager. So in the world of wishes, I agree actually as the main reason that I love the switch is it doesn't flay my eye like the 3ds so a HD screen would be wonderful. However I dont see how that would do nothing but cause issues for the average uninformed consumer looking to buy something on off a shelf to shut up little timmy.

So I still don't think people would buy it but even if they did, let's say your speculation is right... 3ds sections are shrinking in stores ....so the sales for software would be the main heavy hitters everybody buys already. Zelda, mario, pokemon... and they don't need an new system for a sales revival. I doubt unless we got an influx of digital gamers buying this HD system that other devs woudn't see much of an impact. If the library isn't selling systems now (and it is to a point its not like 3ds sales have fallen off a cliff, I'm saying I don't think a revision will give it th sales injection you are expecting.) then new hardware isn't going to turn sales around. 3ds is dying...slowly, and somewhat gracefully thanks to that massive library...but it is dying none the less. Nintendo will phase it out once they figure out something to put in its place for a budget system. (I'm expecting the switch to be that system once the switch 2 comes out....after all how long did the game boy last...I can see them holding on to the XL line and the 2ds until they get there.)

Part of why I feel this way is anecdotal of course. I spent a decent number of years at gamestop so (I survived the wii to wiiu years) so I have seen how consumers react, how they spend, and how they are influenced. (the N3ds nearly made me quit because of the amount of time I spent explaining...over and over and the wiiu...just hurt me. I hated to see a great system die because folks couldn't do 10 mins of googling.)

@Ryu_Niiyama
I am assuming another cpu revision would do anything except add another splinter in the consumer base

But again, I say how? You say “another” but there is no splintered base. Never was. New 3DS plays all the same games as the base model. The one exclusive game is a game that simply couldn’t run on the base model, so that’s not splintering anything. It’s not even an online game anyways. Not to mention the fact the 3DS base is mostly dead now anyways, there’s nothing left to splinter even if it were to “splinter” it (which it’s wouldn’t).

And that takes us to driving sales in the ground, as you put it. Sales are already being driven into the ground because the system is dying as Swhich takes over. By the time this thing would hypothetically release 3DS would be all but a memory anyways. This would be a way for them to extend the systems lifespan on store shelves for an extra two years. There wouldn’t be any other models. Those would have all stopped selling by this point. Meaning they either sell nothing and just let it die out, or release a model that could inject a little more life into the system and keep it from the grave. There would be no confusion because it would be the only model they are selling, and even if it wasn’t it wouldn’t matter anyways because it would kill off whatever remained of the other models, just like New 3DS killed off the OG model. Price wouldn’t be an issue. The increased power needed to double the internal resolution would be peanuts, relatively speaking, and the last model (New 2DS XL) is currently selling for that price anyways. We all know the cost of technology goes down over time. 1-2 years is a long enough time for them to squeeze an extra $20 of power into the system for the same price. Like PS3 selling for $99.

Not to say I think this is what’s going to happen. I think a Switch Pro of sorts will release and the base model will drop to $249, with a dockless model for $199 (which avoids the issue of a Lite release that mounts the controller to the system permanently and thus renders some games unplayable, and can’t dock which contradicts the name- a dockless model would still “Switch” if one so desired and has a dock, and would have no incompatibility issues with games)

That being said, I do think it would extend the 3DS life. Maybe not to a huge degree but, enough to keep it alive. Could probably do another 10-15m on the back of a qHD unit (or even 480p, which honestly would look crisp enough on that small screen, same PPI as Switch in 720p I’d wager). I think a LOT of people would be interested in a higher res 3DS. Especially for $150 (which would be like $70 with a trade in).

Square Enix has done it, they said the Ubisoft comment "Streaming is the future".

Did u get this from Push Square? Honestly, I doubt any article they post is accurate.

@Alantor28 My Nintendo News

You can't stream a game if it isn't even done yet. So I'm not worried. When SE says ''future'', I just assume that takes place in a time when I'm long gone. That's how their time scale seems to work at least.

Indeed, how dare they spread their vile lies?

@Octane Hmm, good point. But I honest'y don't think this is a problem and can't understand why a lot of people are against game streaming services. I love Square-Enix and their games, but I can't fathom the hate they're getting right now. I don't understand why people are out for Square-Enix's heads for every decision they make.

Streaming didn't kill physical media for music and movies just yet either. It's definitely NOT going to kill games any time soon without extreme improvements to Internet infrastructure across the globe.

@Alantor28 Just because a company makes or publishes good games, doesn't mean their business decisions are always good. That applies to any company really.

A streaming future would harm consoles the most. PC and mobile would be safe because of their other functions and mobile games are very different anyway but consoles would lose its advantages.

Um, can a streaming future really harm consoles the most or is that just paranoia? Honestly, whenever talk about streaming on consoles emerges, I find it to be fear and paranoia and I honestly don't believe a streaming future will harm consoles. We'll still get physical copies of games even if this streaming future does come around.

@bluemage1989 Thanks! I definitely recommend you try it out, the game looks much sharper and colorful in its original 4:3 aspect ratio. The Wii U might already do this though, my Wii did not until I manually set it to do so.

And yes it’s be nice to get a Sunshine HD remaster. I’ve just satisified that itch by playing Sunshine in 480p on my Wii. It looks pretty nice for 480p. I wish Switch would get Virtual Console games, at least up to and including N64. It’s amazing how we went from expecting GameCube games before the Switch was officially revealed to begging for SNES games on it

@Alantor28 Why buy a console when you can stream to any device with a screen?

Companies like making money to much to ditch physical media in favour of streaming. There just isn't the internet infrastructure worldwide to justify going all streaming.

@shadow-wolf yeah Nintendo's management of it's own legacy content has been the only negative this generation for me. The only reason I can think of for lack of GameCube VC this last decade is that they have bigger plans for the games. I'd love to see GameCube classics remastered in HD and with tweaks and released on Switch physically. Make it an eight game series starting with Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker and F Zero GX and I'd be a happy man.

What happens regarding Microsoft's Xbox cloud service announced at E3 2018 will be a good indicator of where things are going.

Okay, so let me see if I’ve got these statements straight...

Microsoft announces “streaming is the future”
Electronic Arts announces “streaming is the future”
Ubisoft announces “streaming is the future”
Square Enix announces “streaming is the future”
Sega announces “the Saturn is not our future”
Nintendo announces “something about mobile phones, please understand”
And Sony... well, they’ve got PS Now. So, whatever.