Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Like don't get me wrong, I would love a massive open world Pokemon game that feels actually modern. I love a good open world busy work simulator. I am enjoying Far Cry 6 way more than critics seem to and loved Biomutant earlier in the year despite a mixed critical response. However, it just seems the Switch can't pull it off.

Stories 2 is kinda what I want out of a Pokemon game, but my understanding is the technical performance of that wasn't great on Switch either, even with some severe downgrades compared to the PC version (where I played).

So, if the compromise is a sort of hybrid meeting in the middle of old and new and it runs well and doesn't have the entire world popping into existence only when you are like one millimetre away, I will take it. At least until hopefully the Switch Pro or sequel comes along with more modern hardware and we can finally get our true open world Pokemon game that doesn't run like *****.

It's pretty obvious they couldn't pull it off, regardless of the power of the console. (not unless they give up updating the look of in-game models anyway)

Pictures just don't do it justice. Even so, it does somewhat convey how nice this OLED Switch is.

Comparing my v2 DQ Switch, which is the brighter of the 2 I got (there's a lot of screen variation on those LCD panels) and it's still pretty evident. In person though, the difference is much more noticeable

@Pizzamorg
Switch can pull it off, as we've seen with numerous open world games. Be it Zelda BotW, Sniper Elite 4, Borderlands 2, Saint's Row 4, Assassin's Creed 4, etc. Even Dying Light shows a competent open world game can be made at 1080p and hold 30fps the majority of the time for an 8th gen AAA game (albeit with cut backs). So a game like Pokémon could absolutely do an open world Switch game. Gamefreak specifically, they can't pull it off. Though to be fair, Sword and Shield was perfectly playable. By no means was it a disaster if playing solo. The biggest issues were when playing online (not something I care about in the slightest in a Pokémon game). It was just a bit rough.

Also, there were hardly any downgrades in MH Stories 2 vs the PC version. It's probably the closest gap I've ever seen between a Switch game and its PC version. In fact, one of the biggest complaints on the Steam side was how it looked basically identical to the Switch version, framerate and resolution aside.

That lack of downgrades was it's only problem. They actually probably should have made a few concessions to iron out the framerate in Ruto village (overall the game is pretty good on Switch, except Ruto village and a few select areas near it).

@Link-Hero
Honest truth- I make $70k a year. So... basically middle class. Certainly it's more than many make (I think median income in US is around $53k?) but it's not drastically more. I also live in a smaller town in Wisconsin, where cost of living is far lower than in a big city.

I did make an investment in crypto which made me about $55k net profit, of which I pulled out roughly $35k last year. But after $ for taxes set aside, paying off CC debt, putting some into ROTH IRA, buying a new TV/surround/headphones, it didn't really leave me with any extra.

It probably appears to be more than it is to an onlooker. BestBuy would track how much you spend, and $5k per yr got you access to Elite Plus membership. At the time, I had GCU and exclusively bought through BestBuy, and I just barely made Elite Plus status each year. So I estimate I spend about $6k/yr on video game related purchases.

But I don't really have any other hobbies. I'm not out blowing money at the bar, or on weed, or buying up tech gadgets, etc. So to spend $6k out of $70k annual salary is less than 10%. Which seems reasonable for discretionary income.

$6k goes a long ways. It's $500/mo on average, or 10 games per month (5 per pay period). Granted, systems can boost the cost, but then there are slow periods where less than 5 games are releasing in a 2 week span. Then again, I double dip for digital copies of the top games I really love, and that adds to the cost. All in all it averages out to about $6k per yr. Some months are more, some are less.

Not that bad, really.

I don't see anything wrong with the pricing on this N64 stuff.

Leave it if you don't like those games or the AC expansion.

I have a hard time finding sympathy for people who complain about a 5-7 bucks a month service when they most likely sub to half a dozen streaming services they barely use that cost more per month.

@rallydefault The problem is the quality of this service. It's now reaching the point it will sell for the same price as PS+ & Xbox Live. Which to me, they're both better services(Better deals, free games, better servers) and I hate paying to play online. I think it's dumb. Yes, it's optional, of course, it is. Everything is to an extent, but Nintendo still never fixed the problems the basic online service has. Crappy servers, no messaging, no party's, etc.

Another thing I have a problem with is that Nintendo has never given(maybe I'm wrong) a schedule on when they will add more titles. Hell, I don't think Nintendo did that with the Snes games. It's just random. This service is Russian roulette.

@JaxonH
Wow, is that your job currently with very high income ? 😲
No wonder you can purchase a lot of video games.
With my current salary as school librarian + extra curricular teacher, I can only buy until 5 - 6 games ($30 games).

@Link-Hero
Everyone's situation is different, but, I do have a few words of encouragement to anyone looking to climb the ladder.

I used to be a junkie and hard-core addict from age 16 basically up to 26. I lost everything- car, wife, job, even my freedom doing 18 months in jail. I was pitching tents in the backyard of churches at one point.

When I finally got to rock bottom for long enough and started to rebuild, I had literally nothing but the shirt on my back. Started working a job raising donations by phone for $10/hr, 30 hrs a week. And I felt rich from it. Even that little bit was incredible to me after never having discretionary money for so long (anything I had got immediately spent on supporting my habit).

But after a few months, as standard of living slowly began to increase (actually eating 3 meals a day again, for starters) I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere on that kind of pay. It wasn't even enough to offer insurance as full time.

So, I spoke with the temp service who got me the job, and asked them about working at this die cast manufacturing plant I'd heard of. It was full time 40 hrs a week, and all the OT you wanted. Insurance, dental, the works.

Those first two yrs I practically lived at work. 80-84 hr work weeks I was putting in. Like a kid in a candy store- you could have all the $ you wanted, provided you were willing to work for it. I'd been deprived for so long, I was desperately accumulating as much as possible.

But after two years, I was up to $13.50/hr and starting to ease off the OT. It wasn't needed as much anymore. Stability had settled in. That's when I decided I wanted a career. Not just a job. So I evaluated what I'm good at (for me, that's math), and looked for opportunities to leverage that strength to start climbing the ladder.

I had no high school diploma (dropped out in 9th grade), some college credits but no degrees. But I knew I had aptitude in that particular area, so I watched internal job postings. One day, an opening came for quality dept. as a CMM programmer. I had no idea what a CMM even was, but it said "strong in math, good with numbers and blueprints". So I applied, and pulled up YouTube videos learning how to read engineering drawings. Took the math test and blueprint reading test, and got the job.

4 years later I'd jumped from $15.50 to $17.50 to $19.50, and finally mastered my craft in metrology. I spent the first year in that lab feverishly teaching myself as fast as possible, watching YT tutorials, reading quality engineer and GD&T books, and learning as much as I could. I was hungry for advancement. Got ASQ certified and took a few official courses for certs.

I worked for years and eventually earned a reputation as one of the best problem solvers at the company, and an indispensable part of operations. Finally approached the vice president and said look, I'm making less than $20/hr. I could take a job anywhere else for far more. So they bumped me up to $25.50 with group lead 5% bonus on top. And today, I'm basically at $30 after a raise or two.

Point being, I was quite literally at the lowest point any person could possibly be at. And with determination and hard work, 10 years later I have what I consider a good career with a job I like making above median salary (though I must acknowledge God's hand in this as He blessed me beyond measure, even though I didn't deserve it in the slightest). I know everyone's situations are different. But I do believe if you really work to attain it, and you're hungry enough to put in the work needed, you can at the very least advance a good ways from wherever you're at today. But I do think one needs to want it badly enough to do whatever it takes.

@MsJubilee The only reason Nintendo’s online is so poor isn’t because Nintendo doesn’t get it like a lot think. It’s because they don’t have to “get it” because unfortunately, they know too many will moan and complain then just fork over the money. It’s been proven so often that they can literally point and laugh at us all while they talk about the new expansion and they know enough people will pay up either because they want them N64 games or because of AC New Horizons paid online expansion thingy.

Until people stop paying Nintendo each time they pull this kinda crap, Nintendo has no incentives to ever play catch up and add basic online infrastructure like party, messaging etc. heck even just decent servers would be welcome. The sad truth is, each time this happens Nintendo will push it further and further with what they can get away with.

Maybe I just have a different perspective on NSO and that's why I have less of an issue with the service. In my mind the classic games are the bit that's being tossed in. We pay for online play, stuff like Tetris 99 and the voucher program and we get NES and SNES thrown in. And for NSO+ we're paying for an expansion service which happens to also expand the classic games part of NSO.

It's not N64 and then Animal Crossing DLC thrown in. It's a service for DLC like the Animal Crossing DLC where N64 titles are currently the main non-DLC draw

Now with dread in the rear view mirror for me( an easy 10/10 btw), not sure what I want to move onto. I should probably finish bravely default 2 since I'm dangerously close( within 10-15 hours I'd say). However, there are 3 games that I'm kinda itching to play since it's the Halloween season. Harmony of Dissonance via the collection, RE4 which I've beaten before, or fork over the cash for dying light Tuesday 🤔

@skywake
If there was a consistent trend of separately sold expansions being included with the service, I might be inclined to agree. But we only have this one example. And, when the service was announced, they didn't advertise DLC, they advertised N64 and Genesis, being the main selling point.

It would be one thing if all DLC for 1st party games was included with the expansion pass. Then it would be a completely different dynamic. But as it stands, it's N64 and Genesis, with one DLC pass for one game. Which if you play the game and want the DLC, you're gonna value it differently. For me, anything I can buy separately I'd rather buy separately. Like Tetris 99.

But I've never been particularly bothered by the online service. It's just a pay wall like every other system. But at least it's cheap, and the cloud saves auto upload and download make it worthwhile. As does the NES/SNES (and the vouchers when they were around- that was awesome). I take no issue with the $20 base service.

It's the $50 service that's reaching. For some it'll be worth it, and that's cool. I'm not a pocket watcher. But for me, it's asking too much. At least, for the single membership. Family membership is a bonified steal. Which is why I'm not upset. I'm actually very happy with what I'm paying.

I've heard this argument before and I hope you are right, but it has seemed like games like BOTW or Witcher 3esque ports are more miracles, than the norm for the Switch.

However, like you say with some of those ports and S/S, compromised visions to get something to be "mostly playable"... I am just not sure it is worth all the effort at this point? At this point I think cutting their loses and going for these .5 remakes and using a MH Rise style system for Arceus is still the best solution. But I do want them to try again, whenever the PRO/Switch 2/sequel whatever comes out. because S/S's problems were more than just choppy framerates and egregious pop-in, they also did nothing to update the battle systems at all and I think Stories 2 showed how outdated two monsters statically jumping up and down on the spot for all the attack animations was.

My understanding was the performance for Stories 2 was really bad on Switch, maybe that has been ironed out somewhat through patches or people exaggerated at launch, I dunno. However, between that and the extremely low resolution on the Switch, it seemed a no brainer to grab it on PC instead.

@Pizzamorg
Not sure where you got your info, but allow me to address some of the incorrect impressions.

The resolution was top shelf. Full 1080p docked. Full 720p handheld. MH Stories 2 on Switch is a sight to behold. Absolutely gorgeous game. I held my Switch side by side with the PC version and it's hard to tell them apart. Like, it is not compromised in any way. It's one of the most high quality Switch releases of the year in terms of resolution and visual quality.

The problem was uncapped framerate and particular issues in Ruto Village (and a few other places). It initially threw me off thinking the whole game would be like that, so I put 20 hrs into Steam version, then I came back and realized that wasn't the case. Once you get out of Ruto it's fine (uncapped framerate still kinda sucks at points, but it's perfectly playable). If they'd just locked it at 30 with dynamic res, it'd be basically flawless. But Capcom values resolution so much they refuse to use dynamic res. It's kinda ridiculous, actually.

I like the direction of Legends. We'll see how it turns out. But either way, at least we have BD/SP in the meantime.

There's been enough open world games on Switch to show its an issue of developer skill, and whether it's a fast and sloppy port or proper conversion. That's especially true given the fact we have well over a dozen examples of immaculate ports of open world games. Something built ground up for the system should do even better, especially a game that eschews realism. Some devs just don't know how to code properly. Gamefreak is one of them.

What they need to do is swallow their pride and ask Nintendo for help. For real. Nintendo is a majority investor. And as such, they'd be more than willing to send some top talent over and coach them through the process. Ask to borrow the BotW engine, and ask for 10 guys to help them through it.

Their ego likely won't let them though. Pokémon is mega successful and I imagine it's hard for their top devs to admit they suck at making games to the point they need to ask for help.

From what I'd seen of side by sides, even docked, Stories 2 looked jaggier/blurrier than the PC version at the same resolution and it was running at a much lower FPS, so I made my decision on that basis. I also heard the framerate was bad, lots of stuttering etc but that might have been patched since or exaggerated I dunno.

It would have been the same for Rise, to be honest, had the two come versions come out simultaneously but now I already have the Switch version, the PC version kinda has no value to me. I don't like the insanely low resolution for Rise, but the rocksteady FPS as far as I can tell is almost as valuable as just having a high FPS imo.

Designwise Stories seems built for the Switch just like Rise does, so all the resolution from the PC version really does is reveal how lifeless and flat the environments are, but I'd still choose higher resolution and performance, if I have the choice at the time.

Man, an Open World Pokemon game in BOTW's engine... that sounds so beautiful.

@Pizzamorg
I would choose FPS and resolution every time too, if all consoles were sedentary boxes that only played games on the TV. But there's a lot of other factors that offer value to me- hybrid advantage being top of the list, provided the FPS is playable and its at least HD on the TV (so 720p min, though more is better). Gyro aiming is another that ranks top of the list. Which is why any game that's a choice between PS5 and PC, is PC every time. Any game that's Switch and PC is gonna be Switch every time, unless it's unplayable or sub-HD on the TV. And even then, sometimes I'll just buy both if the experience is fun enough handheld (Doom Eternal being a perfect example- love playing with Gyro on PC, but no game has given me thrills on the go on the level of Doom Eternal- that game is so fun in handheld).

It's all relative. To some ppl anything less than 4k is inadequate, while for others, anything 720p or higher is good enough as long as it's coming with benefits like 3 versions in 1. Just depends on your perspective.

As for Pokémon, that's precisely why it'll never happen. They seem adamant about building their own game engines from scratch. Even on Switch 2 I'm not confident they'll be able to do anything impressive. They're like Falcom in that respect (although I love their games and Trails of Cold Steel 3 and 4 on Switch are excellent). They don't know how to take advantage of hardware.

Yeah, I like playing my Switch in bed, but otherwise I am a fully docked guy. Other than going to see my Dad once or twice a year and maybe some friends across the country, I don't really travel - I have moved to working from home entirely in the last two years, so the portable element of the Switch isn't really taken into consideration for my purchases. Especially when there is a noticeable performance difference between the Switch and PC versions. And like you say, you can split hairs on what a noticeable performance difference is and so only you the consumer can decide.

And yeah, in terms of Pokemon, we will have to see how Arceus handles the Rise style hub world, if it works then at least we have that.

@JaxonH
If we want to be pedantic then technically they didn't announce the DLC with the service because the DLC wasn't announced yet. And they held back on the pricing until the AC direct. The Animal Crossing DLC was always going to be included

But you're right to a degree I think. Perception is reality. They revealed it as a service for N64 games so people see it as a service for N64 games. Nobody thought of what else it might include so when they included something else it must've been an afterthought. And right now it's just the Animal Crossing DLC so it's probably just the Animal Crossing DLC

For my part, I'm not so convinced that's what it is

@JaxonH Right now it does make most sense to treat it as a very expensive way to play N64 and Genesis games but I would say It's too early to say that's the purpose of the expansion pack. There's a few things to consider:

1. Timing of the announcements - Can't really announce DLC presence in the expansion pack before the DLC has been announced and given the state of Animal Crossing prior to the Animal Crossing Direct the free 2.0 update content had to be announced first. So the only possible outcomes would've been to either announce DLC presence in the expansion pack later on alongside the Animal Crossing DLC (which happened) or to spend 20 minutes on Animal Crossing in the September Direct (like Smash Ultimate in E3 2018) and announce the expansion pack after the Animal Crossing segment.

2. At this point in time adding existing DLC would cause an even bigger backlash and upcoming DLC is very limited - Smash Ultimate ends later today and Age of Calamity ends on October 29th of which both had bundles containing this month's content available for purchase for a long while (January 2020 for the former, February 2021 for the latter). That leaves Animal Crossing DLC which announcement came at the time as being put in the expansion pack.

So I'd guess we don't really get the full picture until early 2022. Nintendo mostly announces DLC via Directs and unless they decide to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Directs later this week with a Direct (first Direct was on October 21st 2011), I honestly don't see a Direct happening until around February 2022.

It would be really cool if @skywake is right and the expansion pack's purpose is an alternate way to get DLC, especially if it means paid Nintendo games continue to avoid microtransactions completely and FTP Nintendo games are limited to mobile games. The multiplayer map pack approach is way better than the microtransactions (loot boxes, battle passes, etc.) approach.

Realistically they can probably just barely get away with this service for a year with just the Animal Crossing DLC and N64/Mega Drive. But even now people who aren't into Animal Crossing have little to no reason to pick this up outside of being the person at the end of Family Plan. But after this year is up and the Animal Crossing people have had their fun..... then what? I'm into the Animal Crossing DLC, I'm not subbing again just for a second year of it

I'm ready to eat my words if we don't hear anything at all additional between now and E3 next year. But practically I can't see how this service works if there isn't more content added over time. And not just more N64 titles or even more classic consoles. I mean, maybe if they open up GameCube/Wii it can justify itself on retro titles alone at this price but I can't see that happening. A bit of DLC or new content every few months seems more realistic