Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Nearly 850k in just the US for October. Add in Mexico and Canada and it's likely close to 1m for all of North America.

Add 200k for Japan (physical + digital) and the historical Metroid norm for Europe of 50% of whatever NA does, so 500k, and we're estimating 1.7m globally for October.

Add in another 2 weeks of sales in November and we've gotta be approaching 2m globally by now. With Christmas right around the corner too? It's gonna smash.

Also factor in that from the time of its announcement 5 months ago, Metroid Dread has remained in the Amazon Top 100 Best Sellers. If it was only fans buying it, you'd expect a sharp increase at announcement, then a steep decline until release, then a sharp increase, followed by a steep decline. That's not what we see. What we see is a sustained sales trend over the last 5 months and even now, it's still Top 50 on Amazon and top 5 on the eShop. That's legs. That's how evergreen games behave in sales charts.

I believe this is convincing evidence that Metroid Dread has breached the fan bubble and is pulling in new players outside of that niche. And all evidence seems to indicate continued momentum into Black Friday and Christmas, and beyond.

I ended up turning down the difficulty down in SMT V in the end. It seems you can only save at the Layline things, not from the menu anymore (unless I am being stupid, which I may be).

I beat the meremaid mini-boss, but barely. Had about one demon left and a couple of HP myself. I kept pushing forwards waiting for one of the laylines to show up so I could restock, but I died to the attrition before I could find one.

Since there is no auto save I guess and because you can only save in specific places, the result was about an hour of lost progress. Not worth it to me. I’ll play on casual lol.

@Pizzamorg
No shame in that. I hear even Casual can be difficult. It's no pushover difficulty (that would be Safety difficulty).

Enjoy games on the difficulty right for you. I go on reddit and all I see is, "starting on Hard, starting on Normal" like nobody wants to speak up about playing on casual.

Screw that. I'm gonna try Normal but if I encounter too many problems, Casual it is.

I'm playing bravely default 2 on casual and even so, I'm getting my rear kicked quite often.

I played Ni No Kuni on easy because I wanted the combat to be over as soon as possible. I think difficulty options are important in JRPGs especially because it really determines the pacing for the player. Whether it's through challenge or tediosness nobody wants the game to be boring.

It is just those mini-bosses. Even on casual, they are pretty brutal.

I'm playing it on casual, too, @Pizzamorg .... I generally play games on easy, tbh or even very easy I'm happy there's options for the lunatics who want to play on hard or whatever, of course

Man, basically every enemy in SMT V who isn’t something you can catch in the wild, is brutal and has heaps and heaps of health. I appreciate it probably isn’t in the spirit of things, but I am having to keep using the safety difficulty as a crutch. Whenever I face these enemies, I do try on Normal, when I fail I then try on Casual and if I fail again, I then drop down to Safety. I managed to get the Mermaid down on normal, but it cost me everything. Everything else has been on Safety.

I know that the way the game is meant to be played is for you to grind it out, keep making new fusions all the rest but I just ain’t got time to grind for hours on end to try and counteract the difficulty pacing. I’m sure people will tell me SMT then isn’t for me if I don’t want to do that and maybe? But I’m just glad the game can give me a way of keeping the progression going, so I can organically move through the game and keep experiencing new things, rather than being forced to stay in one place to overcome artificial humps.

Ok, I’m officially in love with SMT.

I loved SMTIV and the others I played like Strange Journey, but their dated design made them a bit harder to get into. THIS is what I needed. It’s modern, it’s fresh, it’s got excellent movement and jumping mechanics, it looks amazing graphically on the Switch OLED… and the music. Wow.

This is the SMT game that’s going to make me a diehard fan. No doubt about it. SMTV is seriously dope.

@Slowdive
That… doesn’t seem like a problem? Certainly not for me anyways.

I mean, who doesn’t have a Nintendo Account? I’m not worried about games that require that. Anyone who has a Switch has a Nintendo Account linked to it, so it’s not an issue.

I know ppl think up hypothetical scenarios in which it may theoretically not be possible to play a game, but from my perspective these are hypothetical scenarios that just aren’t very realistic or probable.

Man, all this SMT talk makes me want to pick it up 😬 it's out right when I'm in between other games, maybe I should take that as a sign lol.

@Slowdive do you have to sign on once and then you're good after that? Or is an online only deal?

Good helper video for SMTV

@Slowdive
Ya but it is still playable offline in the future. As long as you have a Nintendo account which again, who doesn’t have one? Once you have one you never need to go online with it. That gives you 20 to 30 years to sign up for a Nintendo account if you don’t have one, and everyone has one anyways.

Also, LRG didn’t make the game or the decision, so I’m not sure how they’re a “scam company” due to one game from one developer who put a restriction in that doesn’t even prevent offline play- unless you’re living under a rock for the next 30 years, and then wake up one day and just suddenly decide to start playing video games by purchasing a 30 year old copy of a 60 year old game for a 30 year old system, in which case, sure, you might run into a problem. For everyone else, there really won’t be an issue.

@Slowdive
Ya, I agree single player games shouldn’t require online, but I think there’s a far cry from needing online “at the time of playing“ and simply “having an account” everyone already has anyways and you have the next three decades to get if needed. And even if you did need online “at the time of playing”, there’s a far cry from needing online one time and needing it every time.

It just strikes me as one of those, “mountain out of a mole hill” situations. If the game required you to be online the entire time you played it then I would not buy the game. If the game required me to check in once the first time I play, I wouldn’t care. But the game doesn’t even bother to do that. All it asks is that you have a Nintendo account, which anyone with a switch would’ve signed up for when they set their switch up.

If people want to get a refund over such a benign issue, I mean, that’s their decision to make I guess..

@Slowdive
It’s not that I don’t agree in principle, because I do.

But even so, sometimes there are things in life that just don’t make a difference and aren’t a big deal, even if you disagree with it in principle. It’s like, pick your battles, ya know? Not everything has to be a catastrophe or flawless. There’s a lot of gray area in between, and if something genuinely isn’t going to affect me (and it isn’t, because I have a Nintendo account) why act like it’s some catastrophe for my experience? Anyone complaining about this who has a Nintendo account (and I’m willing to bet that’s virtually everyone) is literally complaining about something that won’t even affect them.

I like the little built in stand this comes with

Welp, so much for playing Switch anytime soon. Past few days Switch connection has been very bad and the only device to be like that. How bad you may ask, well it's taken over a day and SMTV Safety mode isn't downloaded yet (I figured given SMTV will be my first SMT game, I start on either normal or casual and decrease difficulty if need be) which means it stands no chance about the gigantic BDSP day 1 patch or playing any games online.

You have this problem as well?

I seem to have a Russian roulette when it comes to Switch download speeds. Sometimes a game will download at a normal pace, others I basically have to leave it going all night to download just a couple of gig. Sometimes if I have Bluetooth headphones synced or third party chargers plugged in, it just seems to stop the Switch downloading anything entirely. It is really odd.

And this is the only device that behaves this way, so it is something to do with my Switch hardware like the wireless card or something to do with NSO, rather than on my end.

I've never had issues downloading on Switch, be it wifi or wired (current OLED is wired, Lite is wifi, and OLED is wifi when playing handheld). I get 35 mbps on Switch in the test screen, and only get 25 mbps on Steam when actually downloading. Maybe it's less when actually downloading, Idk. But if it is slower, it's not a disaster or anything. I downloaded over 2 TB of games to my OLED in a few days.

However, if a game is suspended or being played, that can bork or even stop your downloads depending on the game.

The Safety Difficulty is like 3 MB. So you've got a serious issue, either a suspended game, or, you're too far away from your router, or, something else is hogging all your bandwidth, such as someone downloading on another device or streaming 4k Netflix, etc. If you've had Switch for 4.5 years and never encountered this, then something clearly changed. I just downloaded Pokémon Brilliant Diamond so, it can't be eShop servers unless it's a very recent issue (like, within the last day) and if that's the case it should be resolved soon.

I'd delete the connection and re-create it, make sure nothing else is hogging bandwidth (windows updates in the background of your PC, streaming, other consoles, etc) and make sure no games are suspended on Switch. Might also check your microSD and make sure it's not a write speed issue from going faulty (unlikely, but still good to rule out).

@JaxonH its decent.

Game Awards nominees are being revealed on Tuesday.

@Pizzamorg @JaxonH I know why it's happening but I can't solve it. Switch keeps connecting to 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz, usually restarting the Switch when it connects to 2.4GHz makes it connect to 5GHz but that doesn't work anymore.

@Grumblevolcano
If your router has separate names for them, delete the 2.4 Ghz from your Switch's memory. If they're both under the same name, and it's handled automatically by your router, then there's nothing you can do to stop it. It switches if the signal gets too weak.

Thing is, if 5.4 is getting too weak it has to Switch, and 2.4 can't even handle 3 MB, then something is borked with your router's signal strength. Perhaps interference from a new device from a neighbor.

Try going into your router settings and changing the CHANNEL of the 5.4 Ghz signal. And maybe even the 2.4 Ghz. Can download an Android app, WiFi Analyzer to see the signals around you and what channels they're on. Then you can pick a better one.

Switch also can't detect channels that are over 100. And I've found 50 or less is even better. Perhaps the router is switching the channel automatically. Might be time to go digging in the router settings via your browser (or app if it's a rented router)