Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I already see Gamepass going in the wrong direction, to be honest, with it making up for a lack of day one first party with these 3rd party deals where they get mediocre/bad titles from other companies day one instead. If they do the Netflix thing of increasing the price and bloating the platform with filler content, I won't be happy. I think Gamepass could increase the price and the value proposition is there, I just think a properly curated collection of great games, is better than a massive platform of mostly filler like modern Netflix is.

That is sorta why a Switch Gamepass would be both great for the consumer and probably bad for Nintendo. Such a strong first party line up they could offer us via a subscription, but why would they when they get away with selling them at the prices they do?

I think gamepass also works for MS in part because they have been in the business for a shorter period of time. Most of the companies they have made agreements with are likely still in business or they are being bought by MS and MS can also afford to bleed any costs while the ecosystem is built and then do a price creep.

Nintendo has been churning out games for what 4 decades now? A lot of studios have gone under and licenses are in limbo or mothballed and look at NSO how people complain about what games are on the service...aside from first party games any type of Nintendo pass would be more of the same. Plus the work needed for wrapping the roms for emulation has a cost. Before someone pulls the "but free emulators do what Nintendon't!", they also don't have a budget or project timelines. And they got their start reverse engineering the games and systems they emulate with usually no thought or concern to hardware throughput. A game that was only licensed by Nintendo can't be reverse engineered legally. Opensource/pirates can do lots of things because they have free time (which costs money), a limitless resource pool (coders can drop in and out willy nilly...bad from an organization perspective but still something HR has to hire and train for...which costs money), and technically a limitless budget (not saying that these people have the best machines on the planet but if someone wanted to splash out...there is no budget or equipment requisition red tape to go through.)

And right now GPU is at a cheap price...one that even if all Nintendo could do was dump what was in VC (all versions) on to the switch I would be concerned about the ROI for such a thing. Nintendo games sell, at full price, years later... (a great deal of GPU is current games) so that would cut into profits especially if they offer a GPU style discount. Also MS pays devs upfront to be featured on Game Pass, something that I would think would make shareholders nervous (the idea of that makes me nervous) when devs don't really promise dedicated support or it tapers off quickly after initial agreements to Nintendo. MS doesn't have to worry about being snubbed on anything multiplat (and with PC being a MS wheelhouse and sony putting games on PC...they really don't have to worry). Nintendo likes to cultivate devs by giving them projects, but outright acquisitions aren't their thing (with good reason as given their business model it would not be fiscally sound), and considering how they lease out projects rather than getting a ton of custom made games I can't see how going acquisition crazy will help them as they won't acquire a bevy of IP (which is more important than the staff).

Who need Gamepass if I can get the games in physical?

My backlog is largely what keeps me from investing in GP. Why invest in that when I have 100+ games across all of my platforms sitting around unplayed?

With subscription services, I have to play games when they're available, but I like having access to them and playing them whenever.

It is a good value, though. Once I work down my backlog of games, I could see myself just sitting pretty with a GP subscription for years. If nothing else, I'll probably sub whenever I'm able to get around to playing Starfield (dunno if it'll run OK on my increasingly old GPU).

@Grumblevolcano
All subs are bound to increase price eventually, but I'm not worried about Gamepass atm

You can bank up to 3 years, and if you're not currently subscribed, you can buy 3 years Xbox Live Gold on Amazon for $55/yr ($165 total), redeem it, and then subscribe to Gamepass using the $1 for first month offer and it upconverts your Gold membership to Gamepass.

So... you can get 3 full years for $166 right now. And that covers your online access too (obviously). And not have to worry about it again until 2025.

But even at $15/mo, it's a good price. The cost of 3 $60 games per year gives you access to 400+ titles, with different 3rd party on rotation. I think it will eventually be $20/mo, but right now they're trying to gain subscribers, so I don't expect such an increase until they've hit around 50m subs, and even then, they make keep it at $15 and just play the numbers game.

Yeah between the year I spent getting free games on Epic, cheap used games and quality sales, I don't need more games.

That was my rationale for a long time. But the fact is I still buy new games all the time. And if there's a way to try a bunch of games first, and curate that list of purchases, and try a bunch of games I may not have committed to buying but am interested in trying if I have access, that seems like a reasonable proposition to me... for the price, anyways.

If it was $50/mo then I'd say screw that. But at less than $55/yr? Shoot, why not. Even with hundreds of games in backlog, it's so cheap there's really no reason not to. I had Psychonauts 2 on my Steam wishlist. But now I'll probably just play on Gamepass. It Takes Two is a game I wouldn't buy, but since it's on Gamepass, I can play it with my brother. The Ascent was a game I heard great things about. Same for A Plague Tale: Innocence and The Medium and Greedfall. Now I can try them all out. I can play Windjammers 2 while I wait for the LRG Switch release. And for games I own on Steam that don't need gyro, like Batman Arkham Knight and Nier Automata and Gears Tactics, I can more easily play them on Series X now with quick resume and turning TV on automatically, rather than the much more involved process of playing on PC. And games like Pillars of Eternity 2, which don't have good controller support on Steam, I can now play better on Xbox. And Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't yet on Steam so it's good having access to that. Can try Rainbow Six Extraction which just released and see if its worth a buy on Steam later.

So I guess it's not really about "need" for me. It's more about "want".

Also, having access to cloud versions of every game on Gamepass is something I didn't realize would be so useful. A lot of games have very large file sizes. Rather than commit to download, it's so easy to just select the cloud icon instead and immediately try the game out first before downloading, just to get a feel for whether it's a game I want to bother playing in the first place. Being able to do the same on my phone in a controller grip is even cooler.

The biggest downside is no gyro on Xbox. So shooters are pretty much a no-go across the board. Fine for trying out and sampling to decide whether to buy on Steam, but not for actually playing through. So Halo, Gears of War, Doom, Wolfenstein, Outer Worlds, etc are pretty much Steam and/or Switch only.

I basically only get Game Pass when the 1-dollar trial becomes available again

Last time I only used it try Forza Horizon 5 a bit. Hah it took longer to download than what I spent playing it.

@kkslider5552000 I feel like, for normal people, this is a no-brainer. But for me, someone who has spent years wastefully buying games on sale and then not playing/finishing them, I've accrued my own personal GP. Besides, with GP, you inevitably have a bunch of stuff you don't want, and unless it's first-party, you don't know when it'll disappear from the service until a couple of weeks beforehand (although, at the rate Microsoft is gobbling up the rest of the industry, that might not be much of a problem in a few years!).

I do sub to PS+, but those games are accessible as long as I'm a subscriber if I redeem them, so, in a sunk cost fallacy sorta way, it feels more worth the money to me.

I'm sure I'll get lured into the GP honeypot either way. Maybe after Starfield releases, if that doesn't just turn out to be vaporware.

I think Game Pass is easily the best value in gaming right now, but as someone that also has a huge backlog on Switch, I have more than enough to play as it is.

The value for Game Pass will become even more pronounced as Microsoft's acquisitions actually start to bare fruit over the next few years though. We haven't really seen much come out of those yet beyond better budgets for Forza Horizon and Psychonauts 2.

Anyone here have a rough idea about when the Legends Arceus reviews will be going up across the publication sites like IGN, Eurogamer and, of course, NLife? I'm trying to not be swayed by any reviews/previews so if anyone could give me a rough idea on when to 'tab out' so to speak, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

@Fizza If you don't know already. Wednesday

@MsJubilee Thank you! I'll see you all later then!

3 days away from Legends Arceus launch and its already #1 in the UK eshop charts, may have obtained #1 earlier given I didn't use my Switch much the past few days so I didn't check the eshop.

@Fizza So are you staying away from this site as you're worried about spoilers in the game? Yeah, that's smart as ever since I found out the player is actually Arceus' child my excitement for the game has been ruined.

@jump I hate that I'm not even sure whether or not that's a spoiler. Based on your previous lovable sarcasm, I'm going to assume no.

@Fizza Well it's kinda helpful to be told beforehand so you can choose a suitable name for the avatar. Since Arceus is the God pokemon I'm gonna call mine a famous demigod like Hercules or Gilgamesh.

I'm joking though but...
maybe I'm just saying that so it unspoils the game for you. ;p

@jump Thank you. I'm not going to look at that spoiler tag, but I appreciate you letting me know that it's a fake spoiler. I'm just going to go the generic route and call them Rei, the male protags name, and see what happens myself. I'm actually going to jet away there now rather than later because you never know when someone will just waltz in here with an actual spoiler (don't get any ideas people). See you around!

EDIT: I JUST REALIZED THAT WAS A JESUS JOKE, HOW WAS I SO STUPID.

When will they make a Pokémon game with a fully customizable character? Like, you can choose to be 80 years old if you want to

@TommyTendo
LOL
Grandpa / Grandma Pokemon trainer. 🤣