Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Jacksonbrw Not this, it's a special collector's edition only available through one site. Plus, that site looks super sus.

Only 160 more days of dreaming about playing Monster Hunter Rise...

@Giancarlothomaz
That’s actually a really good find. It does seem they’ve got something KH related in store for Switch. Could be the collection, or it could be an exclusive title like Dream Drop Distance. Either way I think people will be very happy. Personally I’ve never been much of a fan (I mean, I like the games and kinda got into a couple of them, but they never held my interest beyond a few hours- I’ll given the series another go if it comes to Switch).

@link3710
Following the link to Go Nintendo for the KH news, I saw they had an article about Atelier Ryza 2 CE selling out in a matter of hours, and pointed out the store page that said no additional copies will be made available. Yikes. Maybe that’ll change but... something worth knowing I guess.

@Magician
Makes me sad seeing both YS IX: Monstrum Nox and Trails of Cold Steel 4 Collector Editions being largely ignored, and even Disgaea 6.

@JaxonH

Borderline criminal negligence by any rpg-loving Switch owner who has yet to place a preorder for any (or all) of those games, yes indeed.

@Magician @JaxonH I don't think it really says much about the game, just perhaps interest in that collectors edition. Personally, I have zero interest in all that other 'stuff' regardless of how much value it is because it's clutter I don't need and so wouldn't buy this edition. I just want the game.

Or maybe people are just opting for the $40 cheaper 'Pact Edition' found in various other places. Maybe people just aren't keen on paying for it this far in advance since it's at least 8 months away, if 'summer 2021' means June being the earliest, and sales will pick up when we get at least a few months closer.
Given how far off the release is, I think it's pretty premature to read into anything going on with its preorders. Disgaea as well. We're just at the end of summer 2020, paying for a game not coming out until next summer may be stretch for many, especially since they'll need games now going into a socially distanced, self isolating winter.

Trails of Cold Steel has a much closer release date and it's Switch stock is down below 25%. The PS4 version of Ys also has a much closer release date (and also is an end of winter stuck inside game).

@Shadowthrone
I get what you’re saying and your point is well taken. Of course there will be many people who just want the game.

But we’re not so much reflecting on the notion that everyone interested should want a Collector Edition, but more so that it’s a fairly reliable indicator of interest at large. Especially in comparison with the same game’s CE sales on other platforms, and in comparison with other game’s CEs on the same store.

It just seems that these games aren’t getting nearly as much attention or interest as we’d hoped, especially given the quality and caliber of the games in question.

But I hope you’re right. I hope as we get closer to release we see a renewed interest in these titles. I’m just wary after seeing Trails of Cold Steel 3 flounder on Switch despite being such an incredibly amazing game. And part of that can be attributed to the fact it was the first game to ever release on Nintendo platforms and there wasn’t an existing fanbase, and the first two games never released on the system, but still. YS VIII Lacrimosa of Dana did very well on Switch. We can only hope this new entry sees the same success. Same for Disgaea 6, which I’d expect to do even better given the exclusivity.

wow 22 consectutives months on EUA that impressive and Switch is becoming closer to outsell Wii very soon and maybe PS4 too.

The reason nobody is talking about the Switch’s insane sales streak, as pointed out by Piscatella, selling “at or above levels never seen before in the US”, is the same reason so few are talking about Monster Hunter Rise despite all the coverage they gave Monster Hunter World: Nintendo is an afterthought to the majority of gaming media outlets and influencers. They don’t treat Nintendo news the same way as news for PS or Xbox or even PC. And I’m not even sure it’s intentional in many cases. It’s a subconscious bias.

Take YongYea, for example, who covers gaming news across the board (but has a clear bias toward Sony). I like him, he makes great content, but he typically only makes Nintendo videos when it’s to rag about something (with a few rare exceptions here and there). He’ll make videos about how anti-consumer Nintendo is by limiting the release of Mario 3D All Stars, and he’ll make videos for how lazy and horrible FIFA 21 is on Switch, and he’ll make hype videos about Assassins Creed Valhalla and Immortals Fenyx Rising, but not a peep when Monster Hunter Rise was announced. And to this very day, still nothing. Negative Nintendo news = yes. Hype PS/Xbox news = yes. Hype Nintendo news = no. And it’s the same for most everyone else. I don’t think it’s intentional, I think they just don’t care. They just don’t really have any interest in Switch, regardless of how good a game is and irrespective of whether they’d be hyping a game up if it were on other platforms (with rare exception- usually new mainline Zelda and Mario).

You get used to it after a while. Switch is on a tear to the point it will likely outsell both the Wii and PS4, but nobody’s really paying attention. The fact is, the majority of the gamership doesn’t really follow Nintendo Switch. Which is kinda surprising given its popularity. Kinda feels like the Wii in that respect, except most of the people buying it aren’t soccer moms and grandmas.

Oh my god, the Pro Controller really IS amazing. I regret snubbing it for so long. It even makes playing Super Mario 64 somewhat more tolerable.

I can't wait to play Monster Hunter Rise and Age of Calamity with this thing!

@JaxonH It's the same for 3D World and MH Rise, Amazon rankings are low for both but they're coming out in 4 and 5 months respectively. I'd imagine both rankings will increase in January when the holiday season is over and Nintendo pushes 2021 Switch games harder. Right now the focus is existing games, Pikmin 3 and Age of Calamity.

@Ralizah
Ha! Ya the pro controller eventually won me over. I used to only play with split joycon, but the pro controller is so good, I eventually got in the habit of just using it. Because despite how nice dual joycon are, they’re harder to set down due to having 2 of them. Just slightly more convenient with the pro controller. Though I do tend to still use split joycon for some games.

Welcome to the club.

@Grumblevolcano
Monster Hunter Rise at least went on a tear when the listing first went up. The CE got all the way up to the #3 spot I believe, with the Deluxe Edition not far behind in the top 50 and normal edition around 100. Then the CE sold out and the other versions slowly fell. But ya, they’ll go back up closer to launch.

@ToadBrigade @JaxonH I think I was suspicious because Nintendo hasn't really designed a good controller since the GameCube days. The Wii and Wii U Pro Controllers both felt like junk made of cheap plastic. The wiimote had a solid build to it, but it only really worked for a limited number of games designed with the controller in mind. The Wii U GamePad was too bulky and had terrible analog sticks.

But the Switch Pro controller is very nice. Granted, I tested out the D-Pad, and it has the problem with registering additional directional presses that everyone said it had, but, as much as possible, I'll be using the amazing 8bitdo M30 controller for 2D games. This is purely for 3D stuff, and it just melts in my hand. It feels better than the controllers offered by Sony/Microsoft, honestly.

I dug out my old tablet mount. I might just start primarily using the Switch in tabletop mode when I'm away from the TV.

@JaxonH Nintendo news doesn't bring in the views. Simple as that. However, if it were the other way around, you would be filled to the brim with Nintendo content from these YouTubers.

Another thing, do you really want Nintendo videos from these people? When they're just going to repeat the same thing, the last guy said? Take Yong Yea, for example, he couldn't come up with his own opinion on something to save his life. Yong(and every other gaming YouTuber) repeats what other creators say or what the idiotic vocal community is spewing at the time while getting paid to do it.

@JaxonH Maybe. I think that Nintendo's prevalence (or lack thereof) among the "gaming press" is down to a few things.

Firstly it's the fact that Nintendo is outside of the hype cycle for the games that really motivate that audience (and directly put cash in the pocket). Like Doom Eternal will come, Overwatch has come, the Witcher 3 has come etc. but in all cases the Switch was always the late comer - long after the initial paid advertising blitz had subsided.

Secondly Nintendo doesn't fit their neat narrative of the market. Nintendo effectively doubles the complexity of what you have to cover. And some Nintendo series (i.e. Pokemon...) are so dense and with such a large but really dedicated fanbase that you can't attract or hold that fanbase to your site/channel if you're not dedicated to those games yourself.

Thirdly Nintendo is in some ways a reminder that video games are an inherently childish pursuit which some of the games press don't want. They want to feel like they're playing "serious games" that have important things to say about the world and not - you know - being 30 or 40 something man-children who should probably have got "real jobs".

Of course the flip side to this is that we are sitting here saying "Nintendo is big news - it should be on an equal footing inside the games press" but we would recoil ourselves if we were told "mobile games are big news - they should be on an equal footing" even when we know that in terms of developers employed, revenues made, people playing and gaming hours logged mobile gaming is bigger that all three consoles combined.

...

As to the continued sales of the Switch - I think it's obviously great news. The new consoles will have an impact but Switch is almost 4 years old now and crossing the 100 million units barrier in 2022 certainly seems likely at this point.

...

@Ralizah The only complaint I have with the pro controller is that the d-pad is poor. Overall it feels better than any other Nintendo controller and I can't imagine anyone using the joy-con grip for docked play if they've ever held the pro controller.

imagine if Nintendo colaborate with Koei Tecmo to do 7 adaptation of Nintendo franchises into Dinasty Warriors gameplay for future Warriors games adaptation of Nintendo franchises to release on Switch and it sucessor.

I just want a Final Fantasy Musou game

Call it Gaia Warriors, have it feature every protagonist and party member from the main entries including the Hot Topic swordsman from Final Fantasy XVI and the XIV classes, the gameplay would basically be like Dissidia meets Warriors and the story would probably involve Chaos and Cosmos bringing the characters together again but not to fight each other

@Giancarlothomaz

Urban Champion musou would be my choice.

@Ralizah
My first pro controller did that with the dpad. I sent it in to Nintendo and the sent me a different one within a round trip span of 7 days. And that one had worked well ever since. I know it’s a systemic issue, but I wasn’t having any of it 😂 Thankfully it’s not actually much of an issue playing most games, so you’ll probably be fine.

@MsJubilee
Hmm, I’m not sure if I necessarily want videos from them specifically, just... it would be nice to see big news not completely ignored. But ya it’s a lot of copycat video topics, that’s for sure.

I’ve also noticed that big news does still bring in views, when they actually bother to cover it. IGN video for MH Rise has over 200,000 views, for example. Maybe not as much as some videos targeting games on other systems, but that’s still a fair amount of views for an audience primarily interested in non-Nintendo consoles. And I believe more coverage overall would lead to more interest.

@StuTwo
Interesting point about mobile. Here’s what I’d say to that. While mobile is indeed large, it’s the game structure and design that separates it from the rest... from the dedicated gaming devices. I think there’s not a large crossover between the audiences for mobile and dedicated gaming. Something I think is specifically not the case for Nintendo and other consoles. I think there’s a huge overlap and that’s evident by how many people own 2 or more consoles. Nearly every person who’s seen MH Rise trailer has asked “is it Switch exclusive?” because they’re interested. And while a huge segment of the other gamers out there don’t have a Switch, maybe they would if they actually saw the games that are on it, something that will never happen as long as Nintendo news is ostracized by those who claim to cover “all gaming news”. It’s one thing for a PS dedicated channel to not cover Nintendo, it’s another for a channel that supposedly covers all platforms, but in practice only decides to talk about Nintendo when it’s Zelda, Mario or a Smash character, or better yet, something to rag about.

I don’t necessarily think all Nintendo news is big. But, there’s too much focus on budget and not enough focus on quality. Pikmin 3 is one of the best games I’ve ever played. If it were a PS exclusive or Xbox exclusive with better graphics, it would be covered a fair bit. But because it’s on Switch (and I’m disregarding the fact it was a Wii U game because nobody played it on Wii U- 99.5% of the gamer ship has never played it), it’s ignored. But I can’t say it’s only budget- I think that’s part of it, but Monster Hunter is clearly a big budget game and even that has been largely ignored. It’s gotten coverage from the MH diehards, the Arreks and the Gaijin Hunters and Casey Defrietas at IGN, but that’s about it. And it’s a series we know people like. I’ve seen more “I’m buying a Switch for this game” comments than I can count, and that’s just from the limited coverage it has received.

@JaxonH sadly the reason most gaming media and influencers is not talking about this impressive feat of Switch selling for 22 consectutives months, and with the huge possibilty of outselling Wii and maybe PS4 too, is because they regard Switch(Nintendo in general) just because they refuse to make a console with it tecnical power equal to PS5 e Xbox Series X/S or higher then they, power only matter for this people not this weird console with this stupid gimmicky, if this people are in Nintendo leadership, they will problaby push Nintendo to make another console like PS5 e Xbox Series X/S, they feel ashamed that a underpowered could sell more then PS5 e Xbox Series X/S combined.

@Magician what Nintendo franchise is that?or is a Third Party franchise?

@JaxonH I don't think the coverage would be positive if Pikmin 3 was a PS or Xbox exclusive. I think it would be "why isn't this game free for owners of the last gen version" (see the massive backlash about Spider-Man Remastered for PS5 not being free for PS4 Spider-Man owners or the Control situation for example) and "where's Pikmin 4?". The same approach would be applied to all the Wii U ports if they were PS or Xbox exclusives instead.

Microsoft especially is putting a lot of pressure on the focus of new games and supporting existing versions of old games rather than new versions with the existence of smart delivery.