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Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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NEStalgia

That's really sad. Heck I'm almost rooting for ea. Of the 3 they make more actuall games....

@Octane i really don't know how the entire system hasn't collapsed yet, long before the setback of the pandemic. The focus on short term gains is entirely unsustainable for any functioning economy.

NEStalgia

FragRed

@Octane That would explain why there was a rumour I heard about the potential sale of DC Comics. Though they did spend well over $100 billion buying Warner so I am guessing now they asset strip it and hope it can be used to pay off the even bigger debts they mounted.

@NEStalgia I cannot tell if EA being the best of a bad bunch is something we should be happy about.

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Magician

@FragRed - Oh I dunno. The Switch's successor is all ready to go. Nintendo is just waiting for the cost of the Tegra Xavier chipset to come down to a level of profitable mass production. If Nintendo wanted to sell hardware at a loss (like Sony with PS5 and MS with Series X) then the Switch 2 / Switch Pro would already be made available to consumers.

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Octane

@FragRed Are you sure about that? Because they're selling the entire Warner Bros. division for (only) $4 billion right now.

Octane

FragRed

@NEStalgia It isn't sustainable, hence why big conglomerates have gone bankrupt in the past. The reason they mostly survive, for the most part, is because the little people like us are the ones whom face the hardships of when anything goes wrong either through our jobs or billions of tax payers money being handed over to ensure the company doesn't collapse. In short, the economy can't afford all the big companies to go under - its bad enough when or two fail, let alone most/all of them.

Last year in the UK, one of the largest construction companies in the world collapsed, in the process taking many many other businesses and jobs but also a massive amount of government contracts that were handed to them likely to try and ensure they wouldn't go bankrupt and cause the chaos that proceeded.

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FragRed

@Octane I should have worded it as a thought rather than fact. But its also not unheard of that businesses do this kind of thing, especially if they find themselves in huge debts (they must have known they would be in this situation when buying WB Interactive) which is where my thought came from. And as for being $4 billion, that's actually incredibly high when considering what you are getting. Most of the IP WB use have either been inactive and of little value or are licensed and not included in the sale. Remember Lucas Film was $4 billion and that came with Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

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NEStalgia

At&t pretty much jumped the shark buying Dish, and then trying to be a telephone company competing against disney in an industry they know nothing about. Then again their phone plans are so expensive in amazing they have any debt at all.

I think the question we should all be asking is wtf did a phone company own a media publisher to begin with. Then again i guess there own investors want that answer too

@FragRed so the short answer is we've already been in the second great depression since at least the late 80s, and we mostly exist in a fantasy land where endless deflation holds up the economy until it resembles Zimbabwe. That's swell!

NEStalgia

FragRed

@NEStalgia You could ask the same about why Comcast own Universal. This idea of big conglomerates buying into other industries has been happening for decades. Gulf+Western went on a buying spree in the 60s with Paramount Pictures, Sega, Deslu Studios (who were behind the programmes like Star Trek) and loads of others. EMI in the UK went into all kinds of weird things like films, through a merger with Thorne they tried NHS electronic equipment, lighting, part owned a TV station, fire extinguishers etc etc. When you have so much market in your main industry, and shareholders wanting more - you have to expand.

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Grumblevolcano

@Magician Pretty sure @FragRed is just talking about the software for the future Nintendo systems, Nintendo's had 1st party game drought problems at various times since they entered the HD era. Wii U had plenty of 1st party game droughts and while Switch managed to somewhat combat this early on as a result of abandoning the Wii U early and porting lots of Wii U games to Switch, the 1st party game droughts have become more common recently (2nd half of 2018, 1st half of 2019, most of 2020). Fortunately, the 3rd party support for Switch has been rather strong so overall droughts become somewhat less noticeable.

Now the Switch focusing on Wii U games (ports and projects moved from Wii U to Switch) worked because the Wii U flopped but how well would porting Switch games to the Switch's successor work given Switch is a success. Well Nintendo tends to avoid porting games are already playable on the system so if Switch's successor had backwards compatibility at most you'd probably get a crossgen launch title like Metroid Prime 4.

It's not just a Nintendo problem though, it exists throughout the gaming industry though plenty of companies have put strategies in place. I predict the GTAV approach (1 game for multiple generations) will become the new norm for multiplayer games.

Edited on by Grumblevolcano

Grumblevolcano

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FragRed

@Grumblevolcano Thank you, that’s exactly what I’m getting at and how you put it was better than I could. And I agree with what you have said about this being an industry problem.

@Magician The difference with Sony and Microsoft is they don’t need to worry about their first party droughts quite as much because they have a huge amount of triple A games that through marketing deals and exclusive content, sells systems and games. Nintendo doesn’t really have that and is totally about their own games. So if Nintendo goes months without games, even when there are other games out there, we notice. And this is going to get a lot worse as they find themselves heading towards more powerful hardware. And Nintendo’s seeming fear of spending money especially on new studios or purchasing studios is just going to make it more evident. This is exactly the reason why both Sony has over the years done this and Microsoft more recently too. It allows them to try and minimise the droughts.

Edited on by FragRed

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NEStalgia

@FragRed comcast and universal aren't so strange. Comcast is a media company at it's core from the start via it's cable network.... Both as a syndication buyer and as an owner of various shows and channels.... So buying into a non cable broadcast and motion picture business was still in their field of expertise. ATT otoh knows utility service, communications, and back from the bell labs days, technology and software. Companies buy outside their sphere but usually just in terms of monetary ownership, not operations. ATT tried to get into operations and become a media company with a utilities corporate structure.

NEStalgia

NEStalgia

@FragRed nintendo seems to focus now instead of on a lot of games, kind of a return to n64 thinking. A stable of 12 to 20 "evergreen" pick up and play games that endures the entire generation. I think in nintendo hq the thinking isn't "we need 8 games in the next 6 months to complete with 30 aaa games we don't have". I think it's "we have kart, splatoon, arms AC, zelda everyone will buy hardware to play. Were good until next hardware.

And to constant frustration of all us.... That strategy actually seems to reliably work.

NEStalgia

Octane

I really hope they invest in another big new IP. Something on the scale of a Zelda or Mario game. Take some risks Ninty.

Octane

NEStalgia

@Octane Iwata took risks... And shareholders snarled but he was the visionary with the magic touch so they bit their lips. Monolith, Splatoon... Switch itself.

These guys now are spreadsheet pushers. Add columns G through M, subtract collumn R, quarterly up or down? They seem focused on the sega, konami, capcom route of focusing all risk outside gaming. Parks, merch, tie ins. Maybe not stupid. Maybe they see the end of gaming other than smart device apps and streaming services, and they're in no form to complete there.... And their existing brands will be much more beneficial to milk in that environment than something new and risky.

NEStalgia

JaxonH

Ya Nintendo does need to acquire more studios and crank up the output. I’d say 6 more studios. If each one can put out 2 games per generation, that’s 12 extra games, or an extra 2 per year on average. They already put out quite a lot of games each year but an extra two would really fill things out.

They are getting way more third-party support than they’ve ever gotten before though, and their output is higher than any single platform in the past (but less than both console + handheld combined, obviously due to increased resources needed for HD development), but, now that they’ve consolidated to one device and their handheld games are getting within a stone’s throw of the power consoles, people start viewing the system in a different light. 3DS received a pass for not getting any of the big third party games because obviously it couldn’t run them. Was in a different league. And though that is also true for switch, to a lesser extent but true nonetheless, it’s gotten close enough to the competition that people start viewing it differently, and expectations start changing. Expectations of getting the same games (even if that’s not technically feasible once you dive into the details).

Even if they don’t acquire studios though, they definitely need to start working with third parties and pushing for more releases and more attention toward their platform and more exclusive titles built for the system ground up. Why does Capcom have two brand new games, big ones, already announced for a console that’s not even out yet, but they told shareholders it was “normal to start with ports for a new system” when asked about lack of games for Switch. We are in the fourth year and they still haven’t put a new game on the system besides MegaMan. That’s just downright insulting. And Nintendo seems to be OK with it. Why? There should be at least one exclusive Resident Evil, one exclusive Monster Hunter, one exclusive Street Fighter, etc. One of all their top franchises built just for the system. They don’t have to try to squeeze all their biggest games onto a system that can’t run them that well. If they could get them to run that would be perfectly acceptable but if they can’t or just don’t want to try, fine, but at least make one bespoke entry of each franchise for the system not only to represent each IP and expand your audience, but because there’s a lot of money to be made and games built ground up that take advantage of the switch could look extremely good, and would almost certainly sell millions of copies.

So they need to do something. They can continue this generation as is, just because they’re putting enough good exclusive games out, they’re getting enough third-party support that’s appealing to a lot of people due to the hybrid nature of these versions. But once all these games have been ported and we go into the next generation of hybrid systems, then what? Sure, there will be a lot of 8th gen games that could then run and be ported, but there’s going to be far fewer of those left to port next gen compared to the massive pile of 6th and 7th gen games and limited number of 8th gen games being brought over now. So they need to get this sorted by the time next generation rolls around otherwise there’s going to be far fewer games releasing. Compound that with the fact they won’t have an entire generational Wii U library to draw easy ports from anymore either, so that’s really going to be a double whammy.

Edited on by JaxonH

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kkslider5552000

I don't think they need a ton new studios, but I do agree they need to do more to convince studios to make games specifically for their system. At the very least timed exclusives.

But I do wonder if its the problem of the 3rd party publishers themselves. Like the big problem I've had with mainstream gaming for this entire generation is that it feels like all these big companies barely even make new games anymore. I remember in 2014 when Capcom released one new video game that whole year (at least in North America), and it was the saddest thing to watch. And they're not making a ton more than that per year nowadays. So I wonder if that's not a big reason, they're not gonna make one of their infrequent new releases be exclusive to the system with less power.

So maybe we should be annoyed these other companies aren't making more games in the first place. Which they should, regardless of Nintendo. SE kinda gets this nowadays and...they're making Nintendo exclusive games, look at that!

Edited on by kkslider5552000

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FragRed

@JaxonH This is all very true. Nintendo has huge amounts of cash it’s sitting on, in case they come across a rainy day/week? Or because they really are so stingy that their purse strings are forever tightened. I’m not sure, but if Nintendo doesn’t do something now than they aren’t going to be able to head into the era of the Switch’s successor with enough games in development to keep a steady flow of games. Seeing as it takes time to build studios, get projects off the ground etc, or even just buying studios still takes time to get things in place, I would assume any move they’d make would be of benefit for the next console they release and not so much the Switch.

Nintendo does have some third party studios whom make nearly entirely exclusively for them and their machines but they aren’t enough to fall back on. Next Level Games for instance only has one team as far as I’m aware so whatever they now work on isn’t going to be ready for three to four years potentially, maybe it’ll be for the next console meaning one Switch release.

As for the true exclusives from bigger third parties, Capcom releasing 2 exclusives for the PS5, Bethesda also releasing 2 times exclusives for that same system and we know Square Enix are doing at least one and I bet there’s more we don’t know about, it starts to get me scratch my head why Nintendo aren’t throwing money into the ring to build up their library. They used to back in the GameCube era and they even had Ubisoft release one exclusive launch year title and a whole Star Fox exclusive version of a toys to life title which name escapes me right now. But they weren’t published or funded by Nintendo and as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing more like that coming out from Ubisoft exclusively for the system. Sega are really chummy with Sony these days and even a bit with Microsoft again. But not so much with Nintendo outside of the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics.

It’s just sad to see Nintendo assume they can get by the way they are because the Switch is selling so well, which it is. But this ain’t gonna last now next generation are coming. I think no matter how Nintendo looks at it, they will affect Switch hardware sales to some degree and when it comes to launching the follow up Switch successor, they’re gonna need to come out all guns blazing or face another potential Wii U moment.

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Octane

I personally don't think they need it desperately, I just want a big new Nintendo game that isn't another Mario or Zelda. Not that I mind those, but just something new. The last single player focused new IP they released was Pikmin on the Cube I think. Yeah, I know Platinum made some games for them, but they're not the same.

Octane

NotTelevision

Anyone think that Metroid announcement is coming next week? Seems like about time, with hype season upon us.

NotTelevision

BruceCM

SE are not doing any PS exclusives, @FragRed .... FFVII R is 'timed' & Project Athia has already been confirmed for PC with PS5 What Capcom PS exclusives? RE8 & Pragmata will launch simultaneously on PS4/5, XB1/Series X & PC? Ghostwire Tokyo & Deathloop are timed exclusives for Bethesda, too
So, no 3rd party actual exclusives for PS there! List some more & I'll check if they're in similar situations?

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