Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Anybody know if Sifu has a reversible cover with the female protag on it?

Gaming is definitely not an expensive hobby, not necessarily at least, even with Switch. When budget is a concern, my rule for buying games is for each hour of playtime to be worth 1 € or less, eg if I buy a game for 30 € I should get at least 30 hours of playtime from that game. This is not an absolute rule of course, as many games are easily worth even 2 € / hour, but in general has worked quite nice so far.

On average, I use my Switch about 600 hours each year, which means that I spent 600 € maximum, even less when you factor in RPGs, farming sims, roguelites, etc, that offer huge value and replayability. This means that I spent about 50 € each month for gaming, which is a very fair price, much better than other entertainment media imo, because you get to keep the content and have the option to play it again in the future, or even sell it (physical) to get back some of your money.

As an example, if someone decides to buy Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Hollow Knight, and Monster hunter Rise (pretty wide variety of genres), you can easily spent 600 hours on those games alone in one year, for less than 200 €, almost 100 € if you find some of these games on sales.

Agree that gaming is not necessarily an expensive hobby. It really depends how you approach it.

Sure, if you the top-spec versions of every console and regularly buy AAA games on launch...yeah, that adds up. Same if you're big into collecting, particularly for certain retro consoles.

But personally I find in these instances time becomes the limiting factor. The more games you buy, the more likely it is you're getting less time out of each indvidual game.

Video games generally offer great value for money. Let's say you buy Breath of the Wild for £50 and get 50 hours gameplay out of it... I personally can't think of many other hobbies that cost only £1 per hour. And that's just taking things at face value. Many games are massively replayable - I've personally got over 200 hours out of Fire Emblem Three Houses in the space of 3 years, and over a lifetime of owning Pokemon Red and Blue I suspect I've put over 1000 hours in.

And then there are just loads of options for saving money. Whether it's sticking to the previous generation, buying cheap games seconds hand, or sticking only to Xbox Game Pass (which has quite an expansive library - wouldn't be surprised if some people relied on this for all of their gaming needs).

Not to mention that most adults got into gaming when they were kids, where I'm sure they only had a small, finite pool of money to play around with... (Personally I got maybe 4-5 games a year and still spent a large chunk of my free time gaming)

Tldr: there are ways to afford gaming if you're smart and selective about what you play. Naturally, as with anything, there are compromises to be made.

Gaming is technically expensive for me (even in a non system year I spend at least a grand (usually more) a year and I did buy a ps5 and series x this year) but I am not a collector. I just have an interest in a lot of genres so that adds up. I also have an interest in gaming adjacent collecting like statues/figma. However things like gamepass help mitigate costs and I am winding down my collectibles spending. That being said this is likely my last gen of buying all systems. I’ll be redoing my PC when TES6 comes out and I have a backlog that should comfortably take me into my retirement years. I’m going to spend next year working on my retro setup.
My focus is shifting to maximizing my career(s) and wealth , finishing my formal education and preparing for my mother (my siblings can care for our father) needing assistance as she is now 70. Obviously I have time but the next decade is crucial. So I’m trying to step outside of hobbies that have no value outside of pure entertainment. I’m also finding that gaming doesn’t fulfill me the way it used to as I expected it to be in a better state by now.

That's an interesting snippet of insight into your mind. What kind of 'better state' had you expected?

Ok, I personally don't have a Switch, but my ex-best friend got one a few years ago. We used to play it all the time, and I need help remembering the name of a game we played. I'm gonna name some things from it based on memory. There's some kind of dog with wings, you might have orange-red hair. Your raft thing broke and you gotta find all the pieces to it. The game is rated E10+, and the title has "2" in it. EVerything in the world is made up. There's some purple wand thing you unlock later in the game. It's sort of a puzzle game, from what I remember. I also remember some area you unlock later is called Lonely Road. I haven't played this game in 4 years and I wanna at least remember the name.

The way I see it... the purity of physical games is likely to continue to be eroded. I'll still be buying physically, but the attraction of building a physical collection next gen will likely further diminish due to Day 1 patches, partial downloads required, etc.

...so I see Switch as possibly my last hurrah. Therefore I'm buying up nearly everything in physical form that I can get my hands on and see merit in if it looks at all possible that it will become scarce. Spending a lot. But Switch is the golden age of gaming, or as close to it as you can hope to get, where portability, resolution, breadth of library all come together like never before and perhaps never again.

Whatever comes after Switch, don't expect it to be nearly as successful. I just can't see how it can be. And then by the time the Switch successor is itself getting succeeded, we're going to be that much further down the line of digital delivery and big capitalism dominating the gaming environment.

Wallet... now is the time.

@gcunit
Switch is going to be like Wii, I suspect. Lot of ppl will keep playing the system for many years into the next generation.

But, do not underestimate the demand for Switch 2. There's a reason ppl can't stop talking about it and rumors won't go away. Ppl are thirsty for the hybrid concept. If Switch 2 can hit a $399 price point and offer 8th gen power, it's going to get inundated with quality ports from 8th/9th gen consoles that couldn't run on Switch. And ppl are gonna be all over that

Just like Switch was inundated with Resident Evil 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, Revelations, Revelations 2... Switch 2 will see RE2 Remake, RE3 Remake, RE4 Remake, RE7, RE Village, etc. All the games skipping Switch this gen are going to flood onto the next Switch.

Basically, handheld/hybrid gaming will essentially stay 1 gen behind in terms of getting the big games. And there's a lot of ppl who will want those games on a hybrid handheld system, and there's a lot of ppl who will have not yet played them. Just like we see today with the games Switch gets.

Idk if it'll match Switch numbers, but I don't foresee any future Switch that doesn't break 100 million units sold.

Anyone else find this 3 month gap before Zelda a bit sus?

If a new system were to be announced 3 months prior to Zelda and release day and date with it, what would we expect to see?

I would think we'd see no major games release during that timespan. Food for thought. May turn out to be just a gap leading up to a big release. Or, it may turn out they plug the gap with Advance Wars or something else.

But this doesn't exactly inspire confidence we won't see new hardware launch alongside Zelda.

And there aren't many games scheduled afterward. Either we get a February Direct that fills out 2023, or we get a Feb/Mar Direct that announces a new system for May.

The Switch will definitely be like PS2, where people were just buying games for it years after the successor released. Probably not from Nintendo, but definitely third-parties who will want to keep milking that userbase.

Switch 2 will be day one for me (or launch year, depending on how soon it releases) if purchases carry forward and its the same basic concept. I'd love a continuation of this generation.

@JaxonH That is definitely an interesting gap. I wouldn't be surprised at this point if this was due to new hardware. However, I could also easily see this gap being filled out with games in the February Direct.

@JaxonH My prediction is we see:

• December - Advance Wars (given a release date in the Indie World tomorrow)
• March - Detective Pikachu (given a release date in a January Pokemon Presents alongside the announcement of a Scarlet/Violet Expansion Pass)
• April - Metroid Prime remaster(s) [announced in the next general Direct as the "one more thing" alongside a confirmation that Prime 4 is still coming to Switch]

@Eagly It was likely announced way too early to coincide with the hype surrounding the Detective Pikachu movie.

@Eagly @Grumblevolcano The first game had a lot of facial animation mocap stuff. I assume the sequel also has this, and that stuff is pretty much impossible to do in a work from home environment. In other words, Covid likely hit this games development like a truck.

@JaxonH It certainly is a notable gap, as things stand, and in the context of the Mario movie in April, no new Mario game since Feb. 2021, and Tears of The Kingdom having taken so long, my 'new hardware in Spring 2023' fire is burning that little bit hotter.

Nothing surprising about the gap in the first party release schedule. The frequency of first party releases slow down as a platform gets on in age. I'm just curious to discover if MP4 will be a swan song for the current Switch or a launch title for the Switch successor.

This is kind of the issue though. Switch took off because handheld players had been stuck at 240p on the 3DS or with an abandoned Vita, and Wii U was near-enough abandoned in 2015. Millions of people probably hasn't engaged with Nintendo products since the Wii/DS days.

The market as a whole was hungry for a well-supported HD hybrid when the Switch launched in 2017.

But now, the market as a whole is not hungry for something like the Switch, because the market has whole-heartedly bought into Switch and the games that go with it. The new blue ocean of hybrid gaming has been tapped.

So when Switch 2 launches, millions of customers are going to be in that position of still being content with their Switch and buying Switch games.

This could impair Switch 2's chances of replicating Switch 1's early success. And if Switch 2 doesn't take off, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the age-old third party support issue become 'a thing' again.

Now I'm not talking a Wii U situation, but I'm more envisaging a 3DS situation - a bit slow to follow-through on the Day 1 success and ultimately only get to 60-75 million units.

Now obviously, a significantly beefed up Switch should see a lot more ports from the PS4/PS5 generation, but those kind of games e.g. the likes of Witcher 3 and Nier Automata that we get now, are not the games that are going to get the millions of families with 1-3 Switch units in their household to upgrade.

The DS and Wii were notable innovations that got everyone's attention. The Switch is a notable innovation that got everyone's attention. I just feel it's too soon to expect Nintendo to innovate sufficiently to get the same level of attention.

That being said, I am still faintly holding on to the idea that Switch 2 will offer 1080p handheld resolution to make VR that bit more attractive, and Nintendo will commit to it with proper VR experiences for Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Kirby, Xenoblade etc. Offering that kind of family friendly VR option baked-in to a Switch 2, against PlayStation's $1,000+ VR option, would help Switch 2 catch attention.

@gcunit I agree with everything you just said. Bravo!

With every day that passes, I think it's increasingly likely it will be both.

@JaxonH yeah this gap between Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a bit suspecious, and with the news Creatures is doing H e R on a next generation hardware, Switch sucessor is 2/3 years closer to release