Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I think in the case of Youngblood it may not have been profitable to put the game on a cart and still maintain the $30 price parity.

To me it's a pick your poison situation: either go download only and maintain price parity or have the dreaded Switch tax for the sake of having a cart. Releasing at $50 or $60 the same day as the $30 versions on other platforms would have been suicide

@WebHead The main drawback is always internet speeds. Too many areas, including the UK, US and Australia etc have appalling internet speeds. They aren’t suddenly going to dramatically improve in the next few years unless you’re in a city or town where it’s already decent.

Meanwhile the music industry continues to release new things on LP. Zune an iTunes are a great example of owning a license that can always be revoked at any time without compensation.

@FragRed I dont think its as big of a deal as people who make this argument make it out to be. The average netspeed in the us is 10mbps. Is that good enough for streaming? No but for downloading its sufficient. I bet 8 out of 10 people who habe a current game console have an internet connection. Truth is i think gamers are just stubborn.

@IceClimbers
Same deal with Capcom. They don’t see it as worth it for their $20-30 games.

This is why I find it so incredible when companies like THQ put Darksiders on a full 16gb cart without any mandatory downloads, or even so much as a patch or update needed (it’s literally on v1.0). The game was $20 elsewhere, and they taxed an extra $10 for that 16gb cart. And I am totally on board with that. That seems to be what people say they want. So I think it’s important to go out and support these games and show these companies hey, when you do this your game will sell well.

Of course I’d like to have all games on a cart, but that’s not going to happen. I know people don’t like it but, some games are going to have to have a download or be digital only. It’s not preferable but... we live in a digital world. Shouldn’t be surprised when companies leverage that to their advantage to mitigate cost. Now that 1TB cards are a thing, and costs have come down on 512gb cards, it’s not nearly the issue it was even a year ago.

Hellblade is digital only. Wolfenstein Youngblood is digital only. Games like FFX-2 come as a download (although you you can simply order the Asian version and get both on cart). It’s just what it is. I’d prefer to pay a little more and have a full game on cart for collectibility’s sake but if that doesn’t happen, I’m just glad to have the game on Switch. I’ve been increasingly buying my games digitally anyways. Getting up to change your cartridge every time you want to play a different game just feels so 1980s

@subpopz that will be fixed next gen at least for PS and Xbox. But this is def an issue for Nintendo.

@WebHead No, there are certainly places where internet connectivity is a real issue in the us. It’s not just people being stubborn. I’m 50 minutes away from Savannah, 1 1/2 hours from Jacksonville, and under 2 hours from Charleston. Those are major population centers. Yet between these areas there are ISP with data caps, Satellite with exorbitant pricing past 2gb download/month, or no ability to use cell or satellite.
The reason physical media still exists isn’t just because people want something to see and touch. It’s because the loss of providing it greatly outweighs the profit of digital only.

Thats really anecdotal but I see your point, I suppose.

@WebHead I do agree gamers are stubborn, but as long as there are people buying physical - even if in the form of Limited Run Games, or where countries like Japan vastly prefer physical over digital, I don't see an all digital future being the only way to go for next generation. That said, I will certainly be all digital when that time comes purely for space reasons. I have ran out of storage. But I am lucky, I don't have data caps and I have a good internet speed, but even then I think my provider still limits my download speed should I venture over 100 GB per month, they just don't say it too loudly. It's in the small print. And I bet a lot of them do that if they don't outright have a data limit. As long as people live in these situations where internet speeds and data caps etc are an issue then physical media will always be a thing.

In fact, now I think about it, companies like Limited Run Games will be the reason more than anything in the years to come that physical remains relevant. Just look how vinyl keeps physical music selling. Physical media will likely never outright die in entertainment.

I won't even start on how crazy it is we are seeing streaming pushed by the likes of evil Google and not quite as evil Microsoft etc.

@subpopz That’s why I pointed to Limited Run Games in my statement. That’s the nearest to the gaming equivalent to vinyl. So while big publishers may move entirely digital, I can see small niche publishers continue springing up to full the small void that will be left behind.

Its not that anecdotal, it’s a fact that large portions of rural US just don’t have the infrastructure that suburban and urban development areas do. I don’t see physical media going away completely anytime soon.

Physical probably won’t go away soon, unless a catalyst propels us into the all digital era. For example, if MS and Sony go digital only for their next consoles, people will adjust. Just like they have with every other medium. Now, do I think that’ll happen? Eh, I have no clue. I think it’s possible.

I think it’s the era of streaming gamers should be concerned about, not digital. When streaming arrives and starts taking over gamers will wish they had digital. And I know a lot of people tend to mock streaming, but there’s a lot of very big companies that believe that is the future, and they all have their finger on the pulse of where markets are heading. Google is betting big on streaming, as is Microsoft. How many times have we heard Ubisoft or EA say streaming is the future.

“Core gamers” may never accept it, but “core gamers” don’t account for the majority of video game sales. It’s the casuals who buy Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, NBA 2K, FIFA and GTA that account for the bulk of revenue. If over the next decade we see a mass migration of the casual gamer over to streaming, what effect will that have on the console market? Nintendo probably won’t be affected that much, but MS and Sony are a different story. Would there be enough demand left in the market for two similar consoles that play non-streaming games (physical or digital)? Would PlayStation sales take a dive into the 50 million range instead of the 100 million range? And if so, would that drop in demand affect the justification for physical games? Questions to think about.

@ReaderRagfish
Fair point, but it’s important to keep that number in perspective. There’s over 350 million US citizens. So less than 0.3%

Of course, you’d have to account for the number of people who don’t have Internet at all because they don’t have access, and find out how many of those people are gamers (because people who live out in the boonies who don’t have access might skew older, or have a lower percentage of gamers than other demographics, we don’t really know)

@subpopz
Clearly there’s some barriers that streaming will have to overcome, but lag seems to be mostly a non issue. The Stadia has the equivalent lag of an Xbox, which for most gamers is going to be good enough.

I’m not sure what the average American connection is, but, I am willing to bet that the average connection for the gamer demographic is going to skew much higher than the average connection for people in general. Not to mention, if upgrading internet speed package one tier higher is the only obstacle between buying a $300-400 console at launch, and just playing games on demand, I think a good number of casuals would opt to simply upgrade their Internet to the next tier up.

That said I don’t expect it to eat a large chunk of the market out the gate, I expect it to be a gradual increase over the next decade. We saw how quickly Netflix took over when it released. Sometimes you don’t see it coming until it’s already there.

A lot of people have also been predicting the death of the home console for the last decade or more with pretty much constant regularity.

I'm sure streaming will become more prominent, but it's unlikely to become the dominant distribution model for gaming software in the United States with our information infrastructure being the way it is. "Very big companies" and tech writers will prattle on about it, of course, because they live in a bubble, but mass adoption will still be unlikely in the world's largest gaming market.

As file sizes increase, the concept of "physical media" will become increasingly dodgy. Home consoles discs are already nothing more than glorified install discs, and even then, huge chunks of data still have to be downloaded on top of that. That trend isn't going to reverse. Games will still have "physical" versions if only to maintain a retail presence and avoid the optics associated with abandoning discs completely, but you'll absolutely be downloading the majority of the actual data required to play the game sooner than later.

@JaxonH there is rumor of xbox "lockhart" not having a disc drive but that's off topic.

It'll be interesting in a few years to finally see the answer to the big question "Does a console need exclusives to sell well?".

@Grumblevolcano I think the answer will always be a yes, the question is how good quality do they need to be to shift hardware outside of the core deviated fan base? Nintendo relies almost entirely on first party to drum up interest in their consoles while Microsoft seems to be taking the quantity over quality approach for their Game Pass service. It will be interesting to see what the new studios they now own will come out with to see if quality improves.

lol guys physical is definitely going away, and soon.

Physical releases will be left to major releases only along with boutique, special runs for certain games and from niche companies.

The argument about the infrastructure thing has always been funny to me. Guess what: these massive companies genuinely do not care if you're one of a million Americans or whatever that still have dial-up. I'm an American, and I live in a relatively "middle of nowhere" small town in coal country - I've had access to broadband for the last decade, if not more. Those "million people" (however accurate that is) are probably spread across the country in the craziest places like need-a-plane-to-get-my-house Alaska, off-the-grid Wyoming, etc.

And the "people have been saying consoles are going away for years, but look!" argument is not analogous to this lol Software and hardware are a bit different. One literally runs the other.

MS is aiming to be the Netflix of gaming. The leading rumor is that they'll be entering the next generation of platforms with two SKUs. One that'll be the traditional set box while the other will be a download/streaming-only device. MS is introducing a discless Xbox One later this year as a testbed for that plan.

To corroborate that rumor, MS plans to mash together Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live together as one service. Ready to be made available on all devices possible, maybe even the Switch.