Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH Nintendo did say Switch was barely halfway through its lifespan in May 2020 so the Switch will be abandoned around early 2023. Whether that's a traditional approach where Switch's successor launches early 2023 or some kind of situation where a meaningful new Switch launches in 2021/2022 and get exclusives from 2023 onwards is yet to be seen.

@Grumblevolcano
Furikawa literally just said it’s halfway through it’s lifespan this week.

So ya, he doesn’t mean exactly half, as in, count the months and double it. He just means we’re roughly, approximately, in the ballpark of, being around the middle (which is a range, an interval- there’s an entire 3-4 year span that could be labeled “the middle”),, and the fact he just said so again this week proves that you can’t be that precise with it. Otherwise you could double the time from now and get 8 years. You could do the same next year when he says it again and get 10 years.

The fact is, most other consoles last 7 to 8 years. 3DS got support for 7 to 8 years. Nintendo is on record stating they want to extend the lifespan of the switch. Extend it in comparison to what, exactly? Past lifespans, obviously. And if past life spans were 7 to 8 years then there’s no way they mean “6 years” when they say “we want to extend the lifespan. Even judging by their shorter console lifespans- even those have been 6 years unless artificially cut short to 5 due to poor sales. And extending from that would mean 7-8 years. If extending from handhelds it could be 9 years. They’re gonna rock this thing until people stop buying it.

At most we’ll get a final revision in 2023 to push at the tape until 2024 or 2025. No way they’re abandoning Switch for a new generation just two years from now when Switch annual sales are still climbing and haven’t even begun to show evidence of declining from a peak (or shown conclusive evidence we’ve even hit the peak yet) which, even after that happens, the platform will be able to coast another 3 years until sales finally dwindle into single digits.

After all, we’re just getting warmed up

We’re likely going to see something similar to the Nintendo DS lifecycle at a minimum. 7 solid, strong years. But I suspect they’ll squeeze an extra 1-2 years out of Switch if they can. Clearly they want to.

@link3710

My expectation that BotW2 will release this year INCLUDES the assumption that there was an 8 month delay! I was originally thinking it should come out by christmas 2020. So I'm pushing that expectation back to christmas 2021 because of Covid. That will have been over 4.5 years since the previous game. An insane length of time for a sequel that reuses the engine and assets.

@Magician i expect Switch lifetime total sales to be 125/135 milions consoles sold with Animal Crossing New Horizons with 45/55 milions units sold.

@Giancarlothomaz
That’s actually a very well reasoned estimate.

I was going to predict a range of 115m + with 99% confidence, 125m + with 95% confidence. Or 130m + with 90% confidence. I think it can do 145m + with 50% confidence, and 155m + with 15% confidence.

These are all Bayesian estimates based on my knowledge and evaluation of the numbers and trends, not hard, calculated statistics.

@Dezzy See, the issue with that is the question of when Age of Calamity was supposed to come out. Given it seemed really polished compared to K-T's other titles, we can assume it probably wasn't rushed. So it almost certainly wasn't meant to come out after BotW 2. Would they really have had a BotW prequel in the Summer (at the earliest), and BotW2 at the holiday?

@link3710

I'm assuming that was always meant to come out about a year before BotW2.

It probably didn't take them too long to actually make, given that it's almost entirely based on assets from BotW (and they pretty much just copy and paste their game mechanics code between all of their games).

If Switch 2 is BC, they can comfortably rock the Switch for a decade I feel; as that will give users a budget option with a massive and transferable library. One of perks of digital is for most games you can come in late and still you know, find the game you are looking for at retail price or less. If it isn’t the evergreens or the latest hits you are often at the mercy of the second hand market if you go in too late.

So kids, broke people and stragglers don’t pay new system price, but are still buying into the Switch ecosystem. I am assuming Nintendo will make a successor rather than a new concept though. Which they should. It works for the twins and psudo worked with ports from NES to SNES.

Ironically the pandemic's really helped Nintendo boost Switch sales. Animal Crossing was released at the absolute perfect time as well. Now they... just need... to MAKE GAMES.

Returned to The Switcher 3 to play through the Blood and Wine expansion. I'm digging it so far: the art direction in this new region is gorgeous, I've got this nifty little house where I can store trophies, access my storage, etc. The whole region seems to enjoy a better qol than I encountered in Velen, for sure. I don't feel like I'm constantly waist-deep in corruption and human misery.

The expansion's graphics seem to be pushing the Switch a little too hard, though, as, ironically, it just doesn't perform as well as it does in the base game. On handheld, I can appreciate the beauty of Toussaint to some extent, but I learned quickly to keep this off the TV. Base game isn't too bad when docked, but Blood and Wine was pretty hideous.

Also, the "bloom" lighting is horrible, and gives everything a harsh yellow tint. Turning it off massively improves the clarity of the image. Really happy that tinkering with the post-processing graphics options was patched in.

@Ralizah

That reminds me why I sold my Switch version, and am waiting for the next-gen patch for the game

Just not the kind of game you should in handheld unless you have no alternative, in my opinion.

Nice to see The Big Yin up and about.

@Dezzy For me it's basically the opposite. It's the type of game that there's no way I'm ever going to make the time to play unless it's handheld.

"little house", @Ralizah .... it's a vineyard! How much of the story have you done in that so far, then?

Everyone knows real games like Wtcher can only be played on a TV whilst the only games that should be played on a handhled are ones like Snake or Tetris! ;p

Quite clearly not! I think AoC was clearly always penciled in for 2020. Which means that BoTW 2 was never intended for 2020.

I do wonder whether Nintendo's long term plan back in 2016 was for Metroid Prime 4 to hit Christmas 2020 (obviously completely scuppered a couple of years ago with the reboot of development) or if there's another big holiday anchor project out there that we don't know about yet that slipped because of COVID (or just general development issues).

Maybe Pokemon Snap 2 was meant for Christmas 2020 and was a victim of COVID delays?

@StuTwo when Shiya Takahashi give the Metroid Prime 4 development update video, before anouncing it rebooted devopment, it give me a impression that Metroid Prime 4 was gonna release on 2019/2020(be the Holiday title of this year).

Super Mario 3D World+ Fury leak online one week before it release(be careful of spoilers).

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/02/super_mario_3d_worl...

@StuTwo With all of those Prime Trilogy rumours in late 2018 and the large game drought in the first half of 2019 it did seem like perhaps Prime Trilogy around February 2019 and Prime 4 in 2020 if Prime Trilogy Switch was to be a real thing. Though the about a year gap logic didn't work with Bayonetta as Bayonetta 1+2 Switch came in February 2018 and Bayonetta 3 is probably launching in like 2022/2023.

Last time i remembered there will be a Boxing game on multi platform with Rocky Balboa franchise.
I really hope Boxing games return on modern consoles as Boxing games were absent since 2010, handphone and Steam got Boxing games but NONE of them really meet my expectation.