Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Blooper987 It's very cute, and I like the hat abilities and sense of momentum behind Hat Kid, but the setpieces, setting, and gameplay leave something to be desired.

Also somewhat annoyed how you can't go back and look at diary entries for previous levels.

@MsJubilee Yeah, November seems likely to me. Or maybe December. I do think it's probably still on for this year, though.

These games are gorgeous

MH Stories 2 Screenshots

MH Rise Screenshot

MH Rise Boxart

edit
Who’s playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps? It’s so good on Switch! It looks immaculate and runs 60fps! Even the Xbox One version was 30fps! This is insane! Genuinely one of the best games of the generation (as was the original).

@JaxonH Holy heck that game looks awesome. That's Monster Hunter 2? Didn't know much about the game before the partner showcase, but I'm probably going to have to look it up after those screenshots.

I don't know much bout the Ori series. Since it's a big deal everywhere I guess I'll have to check it out. Let's just say this partner showcase was the best of the bunch!

@JaxonH
Um, sorry if you still ignore me.
Any cover art for Monster Hunter Stories 2 ?

@Apportal
The top 2 pics are of Monster Hunter Stories 2, a sequel to the 3DS RPG spinoff Monster Hunter Stories. It looks incredible.

The bottom 2 pics are of Monster Hunter Rise, which is actually the portable entry for Monster Hunter 5 (MH World was MH5, and this is Monster Hunter Portable 5th, the portable entry for the 5th generation of Monster Hunter). It’s running on the RE Engine, and looks gobsmackingly good. As a hunter who started on the Wii U with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Who then migrated to 3DS for Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Generations, The graphical niceties of playing on Wii U were sorely missed. We enjoyed the series on 3DS for so long that when the switch version of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate released, The graphical leap felt like a million dollars. Everybody else was saying they weren’t impressed with it, but after 5 years on 3DS, it felt like a PS4 game by comparison lol.

Then World released and we got a REAL look at a genuine graphical leap for the series. It was like a dream come true. It’s everything we friends had been wanting- a proper budget for modern hardware. The only thing it was missing was the ability to be played portably or, even better, on a hybrid system. Enter Monster Hunter Rise, the new Monster Hunter announced exclusively for Nintendo Switch. This is the answer to Monster Hunter World for a portable hybrid system. Except, it’s built ground up for the Switch, and my goodness, it’s amazing what can be done when developing with the hardware in mind. You can tell it’s not quite as graphically impressive as World, but its close, and eons beyond MH Gen Ultimate. And the game is genuinely my favorite series of all time. Monster Hunter, arguably, is what made me into a core gamer. Before that, I had never known what it was like to have a video game addiction where you sunk 600 hours into a game and thought about it all day when you’re at work.

As for Ori, it’s a masterpiece. Plain and simple. DO NOT MISS OUT ON ORI. I mean, if there was one game I would say is so good it’s worth buying an Xbox one just to play... it would be the Ori games. That’s how good they are. IMO, they are the reason to have an Xbox... or at least, they used to be. Now they’re on PC and Switch. They are so incredible. They go toe to toe with Nintendo’s best platformers, even DKC Tropical Freeze. Except they’re Metroidvanias, just, not as hardcore difficult as games like Hollow Knight, and frankly, just better in nearly every respect (and that’s not a dis toward HK, it’s just that Ori is so good).,

@JaxonH Well, Nintendo did appear to have moneyhatted Disgaea 6... at least partially. It's coming to PS4, but in Japan only. Which means one of two things:

1. Nintendo paid for the localization
2. Sales of the Disgaea series on PS4 in the west are so bad that it wouldn't cover the cost of releasing the game.

Now, we know Disgaea 5 sold (last the numbers were reported) 112k copies in the west. While that's not exactly great numbers compared to the Switch's over 200k in under a year, it's a lot of money on the table still.

That said, I did think of a third option:

3. They did the math and figured out making it an exclusive in the west would likely boost the games sales enough to make it more profitable than releasing both.

Exclusives do get a ton of attention... so I can't count this out as the reason. But still, it's definitely odd.

@Anti-Matter
I took you off the block list.

No boxart for Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin yet. This is the closest thing we have.

@JaxonH
Oh, thanks. 😀

@link3710
It is odd, and I won’t discount the possibility it was paid for, but the one thing that makes me think that’s not the case is the simple fact that Nintendo isn’t in the habit of doing that. Sure, they make the occasional odd deal where a game only gets a physical release on switch (SNK Heroines) but paying for exclusivity for multiplats just isn’t their style. It’s not their MO. If it was, we’d see it with a lot more games. So while it is possible, something tells me this has to do with NIS and their Sony fallout. If Nintendo was going to pay for it, I seriously doubt they would pay just for the west.

It could also have to do with censorship. More and more companies are getting angry at Sony’s censorship policies and are starting to migrate towards switch. We saw this with Idea Factory and Mary Skelter 2, which was also exclusive to Switch in the west... but due to the fallout over censorship which is focused in the west. In fact, now that I think about it, that’s actually probably what it is.

@link3710 I don't think it's any coincidence that the game is a Switch exclusive in the West, where just preorder numbers for the Switch version exceeded lifetime sales for the, by then, years old PS4 release. Meanwhile, in Japan, the game was underperforming the original PS4 release by quite a bit.

It doesn't require moneyhatting for a company to tally up the numbers and come to two conclusions:

• the game will bomb in Japan if it doesn't get a PS4 version
• the lost sales from not localizing the PS4 release might be recouped by the boost in attention they'll get + not having to manufacture english-language PS4 discs

I think it'd be pretty pointless for Nintendo to moneyhat this release. A late Switch version of a previous game pretty dramatically outperformed the PS4 release. Why would they bother trying to incentivize people to behave in ways they're already behaving?

Moreover, as has been pointed out already, this scummy "paying just to keep something off a rival platform for a period of time" tactic isn't really Nintendo's thing.

I'm starting to think the reason Japanese third parties don't think Nintendo fans buy third party games on Switch is because, in Japan, they don't. Despite the increasingly dramatic install base disparity, it's not unusual for the PS4 version of a game to outsell the Switch version in Japan.

So much for Japanese people only wanting to play games on handheld, while Westerners are all addicted to their HDTVs.

@JaxonH @Ralizah Oh I agree, it's most likely not moneyhatting in that case. It is incredibly curious to see though, it's very rare for a game to be localized on only certain platforms. And it's almost always been Playstation only when that happens, whether Vita/PSP (Pretty sure one of the Digimon games is Vita only on the west), or Playstation. Plus, again 112k copies in the west on Playstation should more than cover the cost when, well, they're already porting it and doing the localization.

But yeah, the 3rd point I made while typing does seem strong. From pure numbers, the boost in publicity from it being an exclusive could easily recoup the losses from meager Playstation profits. Cause I still think it would be profitable to release it, albeit not by much.

@link3710 Another thing to consider is it being a reverse of the strategy third parties usually employ with the Switch. They've re-released every game in the series to date in complete versions with all the DLC included, so they could very well launch it on PS5/XSEX/PC in a few years as the "complete edition."

@Ralizah Can't argue that, it seems almost certain. And since the game was originally a Switch exclusive, people are less likely to complain about graphics if it's a late port.

Though admittedly, I don't think Disgaea fans and graphics snobs have too much overlap. I do think 5 was gorgeous though in 2D. But I'll admit, I think the style of Disgaea 6 actually really works well for the series, much to my surprise.

Pre-orders go up for Disgaea 6 at noon on NISA Europe's site, for anyone who wants it .... I'll wait for the Steam version, though

@Ralizah I think they'd still skip Xbox like they've done in the past. Base version on Switch, definitive version on PC/PS5.

I think NIS have just analysed the market and decided that - in the West at least - the market in Switch is bigger.

We know:

1- niche genre games like Disgea sell better in the US than elsewhere in the West.

2- the US is the Western market in which the Switch has been most successful.

3- most of the audience that once would have bought Disgea 5 probably owns a Switch now anyway.

4- selling new, full price, games on PS4 will become difficult in the new year. Stores won’t want physical PS4 boxes on shelves in the same way once the PS5 is released. I think the retail presence of PS4 will have a longer tail in Japan.

It’s still slightly surprising though. You’d have thought they’d still have wanted the game on as many formats as possible. A franchise like Disgea needs to spread its footprint as wide as possible I’d say.

Since so many people want to talk about Disgea 6 I'm surprised nobody has just started a thread about it.

A great trailer analysis of Monster Hunter Rise from everyone’s favorite MH fan, Gaijin Hunter

Something about that Balan Wonderworld game looks extremely cheap to me. It looks like a Kickstarter project, not something I'd see from a publisher/developer like Square Enix

There you go, I created one for you, @jump ....