Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@theJGG
The FE collectors edition doesn’t even include a switch cart but a download code. Which is an absolute asinine concept. Why spend out for a game in a retail store to then go to a digital storefront to get the product you purchased at retail?! It’s why I never see the Fortnite games move off the shelf at all although I’ve seen them returned.

@Ralizah
I can see VC returning. Sooner or later the majority of consumers will see how dumb it is to pay for an online service to play a random mish mash of games offline. With VC you can curate your own gaming collection rather than having big N saying which games you can play. Unlike current games these are just ROMs dropped into an emulator.

@GameOtaku The majority of consumers will go along with whatever Nintendo decides, because there's literally no other option outside of physically collecting the real games or piracy, lol. With that said, I think most of us would be satisfied with the current approach if we had access to a wider selection of systems via NSO.

@theJGG My guess is that Fire Emblem will join NSO after the timer runs out. Perhaps this is an experiment to have something akin to a Virtual Console service on Switch, where the games are available for purchase for a limited period of time? I dunno.

@GameOtaku We're not getting VC back anytime soon. NSO has around 30mil subscribers now, and being one of the few features the service even offers, they'll be leaving the retro service as it is.
The 'majority' of consumers are just that - consumers. They consume the current generation of games /systems and then move on when they're done with it or when the next gen comes. The majority don't care about curating a collection to keep for decades.
I'm not thrilled with how they've handled it or the selection they've chosen for it, but it is what it is.

I think Hamster have done a better job with arcade games than Virtual Console ever did. Best move Nintendo did was to stop the service (I mean, it wasn't really much more than a filter on the eshop lol) and let everyone bring their older games to the console. Capcom are bringing the arcade stadium over. Konami have released a couple of collections. Namco started (and I really wish they would bring more). As for Nintendo's own games, I like the fact they are trying to balance remakes with remasters and NSO. Honestly, I have so many of my favourite games on Switch that I don't miss the drip feed of 1 a week (with the subsequent moaning on forums how there is nothing for them this week lol) at all.

@Shadowthrone
Problem is it’s a online subscription. Lots of consumers don’t play online so it’s a waste of money to only play games offline a week and then need to check in again. Not to mention you get a lot of games you don’t want and they take up space instead of just buying games ala carte. The best solution would be to have both.

I share the same sentiment. We are getting a lot more collections now that we don’t have VC as a gate. Which also means higher chances for obscure gems (after all not everyone is frothing over mario or super metroid) to be re released. While I would like to see NSO pick up I am pretty happy with the 100 plus games we have as a bonus to online play and I want companies to keep throwing out collections. That being said the best way to play old games legally is old systems and games. Some stuff will never see the light of day again.

@GrailUK Now Sega have done the Astro City Mini arcade (which I did order), one would hope they'd follow suit and actually make the games available to purchase along with other arcade games via the eShop you know, since they obviously aren't bothered to bring the system west even though it was clearly made with the knowledge it would be imported (hence the English language option for menus)

@FragRed Indeed. Even though the SEGA AGES series has finished, they have said that they would still be reworking other games. Just not under that series. I'm sure we'll see more. Look at what Capcom are doing after releasing that arcade stick (albeit without AvP)

@Ryu_Niiyama
Many of the old games you cannot find (or at least affordably). Seeing how some of the games are both on NSO and collections I can’t see any reason we can’t have many ways to play the games. Not to mention compilations are very hit or miss ex. Castlevania Legends is missing from the Castlevania one and Contra Force and Alien Wars GB are missing from the Contra one and the Genesis collection only has Sega IP games and no third parties like Power Rangers the Movie. Being able to play these games outside of the original hardware that tethers you to your home and old CRT on the switch is the best.

I don’t have internet (neither do lots of other rural places) so a online sub to play online games is a waste of money. I can however (well for the most part because 2020 shut down a lot of public WiFi) go to a public WiFi spot in town and buy games off the eshop and play them offline.

We’ll have to see what happens in 2021. I suspect the timed releases of Mario and Fire Emblem may have something to do with an overhaul of their classic games.

@GameOtaku Price is irrelevant overall as no one is required to make access to games comparable to what IP holders offer (in price or quality). High prices and rarity for old games are not the fault of IP holders; that is the fault of the second hand market. If consumers are willing to place a high price value (and then whine about Nintendo’s prices) on a game then you get stuck with high prices. Free market and all that. It’s also not their concern/problem since the games were originally released to market.

Still for the majority of games that has always been the only option. Which is my point. It’s up to the buyer to decide if getting ripped off by a seller is worth it or not. Either way that’s the best anyone can expect for many/most games. (I’m in the retro purchases thread complaining about how much money I made somebody on ebay quite often so I am saying this with a practical standpoint)

Since Nintendo or any platform holder would have to go through licensing (the part that consumers consider to not be their problem) to legally provide games, plus having to build emulation around offering the games there will never be a real legal solution beyond buying old games and hardware. They will never offer everything and the money makers will be in a subscription service or if you are dead set on vc buy a wiiu. Granted the wii shop is dead but you can still get the wii u vc.

However at least with platform holders moving to subscription services it is more attractive to IP holders (as you earn something no matter what than releasing a game to die next to popular games) and it offers less competition to collections which often have entries that won’t show up anywhere else. Licensing alone always meant that VC would fall short and even fail. While still maturing, subscriptions give you access to a curated selection of games for a fraction of the cost.

That being said I am moving on from this topic as it tends to go in circles. Either way it is what it is.

Edit: as for your current situation about internet (I’m a country gal so I know what you are talking about) it really is a it is what it is sorta thing. Business is not going to twist itself to cater to a fringe customer. And I feel they shouldn’t have to. You may want to buy old systems since you can’t use internet as much or change what you play. I pretty much had to stop playing ps4/xbone for a few years till I moved. But that was my problem not Sony/MS.

@GrailUK People often point at Nintendo for making such backwards decisions but SEGA are by far the worst. The amount of money they leave on the table by easily throwing their back catalogue onto digital shops (they don't even need to do physical versions). Never mind the endless Mega Drive collections, how about the Master System which sold 13 million almost entirely in Europe? Or what about the Saturn and Dreamcast games? I know Saturn is a nightmare to emulate and a fair few games have licenses in one form or another, but there are workarounds for these problems. And yes arcade games are plentiful with Sega. Just make them available to buy. So God damn easy money.

@Ryu_Niiyama
They don’t earn much off of the subscribers. They’d make more money selling individual titles. The games offered as of now take up space on your system whether you play them or not on nso. With vc you could buy individual games you would play. Seeing the cost in 5 years time would equal to $100 I could in that time buy games on vc to play indefinitely and never play a single online game and come out ahead in price comparitively.

If companies aren’t going to even try to remedy illegal emulation then they need to shut up and let people emulate. Really I don’t see why both the subscription and VC couldn’t coexist.

Again, this is what happens when we buy horse armor.

The entire NES and SNES app combined is like, what, a few hundred megabytes? Who cares.

And 30 million subscribers at $20-35 each is like $1,000,000,000 each and every year. They make INSANE BANK off subscribers. And it’s sustained, predictable revenue. Companies value that. It’s why MS is focusing so strongly on Gamepass. And, they don’t want to have to deal with the entitled, “why do I have to rebuy all these games again every generation“ nonsense, which is exactly what we heard all throughout the Wii U and 3DS era. A subscription eliminates that issue outright.

For $100 you could barely buy 12 SNES games the entire generation. And then have to rebuy those same 12 SNES games the next generation. Or buy once on Wii U, then again on 3DS.

I’m not arguing my preference. Personally I would prefer to buy, even though it would cost me MUCH more in the long term. But I honestly just don’t care that much. They’re old games. A subscription model works fine for me, especially when that cost ALSO includes online and cloud save data management across multiple devices.

@JaxonH
We have an account system now in place. In fact you can tie it to your 3ds and wiiu. It costs much more in the long term for subscriptions. Games occasionally go on sale so you can buy it cheaper. A onetime upgrade fee per generation would be a compromise (ex $10 to transfer vc titles to switch from wiiu/3ds and going forward essentially buying the emulator software). Just because a game is old doesn’t mean it’s bad.

@GameOtaku
It only costs more if you never keep your games current from generation to generation (and if that’s the case, then why are we even having this conversation? People own these games already on Wii U and 3DS- if you have no desire to re-buy them again on the current hardware then you’ve already got what you want). But most people want their games on the current system. Yet having to continually re-buy the same games over and over again was one of the biggest complaints people had. Most people buying VC do not wait for occasional sales, as the sales charts show those titles are evergreen year round at full MSRP.

Never said retro games are bad. Just that they’re really old, and as such, are much less important. We’ve played them multiple times, and for all the complaints about Wii U ports and not wanting to play a game again you already played, it puzzles me how those same people turn around and say they want to buy and replay old games they’ve played half a dozen times already. Which is it? If rebuying retro games is highly desired, why wouldn’t rebuying Wii U games also be highly desired? Either way I don’t care, I’d just like to see some consistency.

But... it is what it is. Like it or not, this is the system they have in place.

Yea, it may cost less over a long span of time if you wait for sales and stuff to buy individual games, but I'm not bustin' out my freakin Wii U just because I wanna play <insert game here>.

I'll pay 20 bucks a year or whatever for a service. It's fine. It sucks, but it's the way of the console world.

I'd like to see the numbers you are basing this on. We can roughly guess what NSO brings in. At 30mil subscribers and lumping them all in at single person year long plans is about $600mil a year. If half the subscribers are family plans, that number jumps to about $825mil per year. I don't see how that "isn't making much".
We can derive how well VC would have to do to generate the same income. They'd have to sell 125mil copies at $5 each per year just to hit the lowball end of what NSO brings in. I don't see how you can claim that, unless you have some sales records of VC doing this astronomically well and also sustained every year.

Now that the Aleste Collection has finally released I wonder what the chances are of M2ShotTriggers possibly bringing the PS4 port of Dangun Feveron, Ketsui Deathtiny, or Battle Garegga over to the Switch?