Round Up: Every Switch Game Featured In The Summer Game Fest 2022 Opening Showcase

Why is midnight suns included?

Tmnt for next week, nice!

Light on Switch content, but that's okay. That's what we expected, right? Remember the Wii U days when Nintendo wasn't mentioned at all?

And for me, the Midnight Suns situation is interesting. They could easily make this a cloud version on Switch like Guardians of the Galaxy, but they remove any mention of a Switch version altogether instead. Does this mean fewer cloud versions of games on the Switch? Can we say the people have spoken with their wallets yet?

Midnight fight Express and shredders revenge, day one buys for me.

The Switch is unfortunately pretty dead for me personally; there's the Alan Wake remaster/port sure, but I'm a bit afraid it will have "Switch tax" and be more expensive than the other remaster versions (and they cost around €25) and especially the PC/Steam version that cost half of that.
Other than that there's nothing for me coming up, but that pretty much goes for other platforms as well as I'm only really looking forward to the RE4 remake. And I hope I will be able to play that on Steam Deck, if I decide to get one of those.
If not I might buy a used Series S next year, if I can get one at a low price (which I kind of suspect I can, looking at what they go for now used).
I still haven't decided whether to get a Steam Deck or not yet. I've postponed my pre-order to october earliest. And let's see, maybe Nintendo comes up with something interesting in the meantime.

If Neon White was announced here, I wonder if that Direct rumor is a bust then.

Of course Bayonetta 3 wasn't there.

Yeah, this being a Keighley show I wasn't expecting much for Switch.

But the Switch has plenty of games coming for the rest of the year anyway, doesn't really bother me.

It’s strange given the number of games and the size of the userbase and yet the switch is still semi ignored.

@Ryu_Niiyama the userbase for PS4 & Xbox one is bigger than the userbase for series X/S & ps5 but we still hear people complaining about those consoles still being supported

@Would_you_kindly I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Both of twins have successors. I am talking about a current, supported and in production system.

@korosanbo @blindsquarel

Midnight Suns was announced for Switch back when it was first revealed.

But now I think they cancelled the switch version

Flashback 2? Wasn't there already a sequel, Fade to Black? Which was rather good too.

Bunch of nothing there for me...

Well surprise, surprise..game industy tells Nintendo users to drop dead. Why I am not surprised?

No matter if nintendo is kicking sony's and MS' butts, they will never support Nintendo or care about their fans. The best we can get are insulting and demeaning cloud versions.

To hell with third parties,

@mjharper I think the cloud games aren't selling, hence why you aren't seeing many announced anymore.

@DK-Fan After Nintendo's monopolistic practices with the NES, many of the third parties wanted nothing to do with them again. Trip Hawkins basically laughed off Nintendo when they asked EA to develop for the NES, and even when EA made games for the Super NES, they brought a lot more content over to the Genesis. Going cartridge based burned off a lot of support with former strong third party developers like Square. And then going "casual centric" with the Wii. Despite the Switch potentially becoming the best selling console of all time, to them it's still "oh, kiddie friendly Nintendo."

I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get a Series S. At this point, there are games that I want to play like Elden Ring that I know are never coming to the Switch. I don't need a full blown PS5 or Series X (and you can't find them anyways), but plenty of Series S consoles around and I think I'm going to pick one up soon.

@kingbk That was 40 years ago and a lot has changed since then. They simply cannot stand a company that doesn't depend on them. They have tried to destroy them over and over and they cannot, No wonder why they hate Nintendo.

Gonna be honest, Cuphead, Street Fighter 6, and TMNT were the ONLY parts that saved this thing

Quite a weak show, though Geoff had already hinted at that.

Not surprised by the reduction of 3rd party support on the Switch. It makes sense, technology has advanced, making games compatible with a 5 year old tablet is not always possible. The ones that can do get ported over, which is mostly indie games.

Geoff gets a pass, only because we have a shredders revenge release date.

Didn't expect much to be honest. Good thing too. Makes me laugh with all the unit sales the Switch has that so many 3rd parties still refuse to develop for it. Heck, I still don't understand why Soul Hackers 2 from Atlus of all developers is coming to not just next gen and pc, but also current gen, but not switch.

@KryptoniteKrunch I still really hope for a Direct, but you make a good point. Plenty of Nintendo games to come. Plus, I have plenty of unplayed games waiting for me. ☺️

@Madao It's going to mostly be first party titles and indies moving forward. You'll get a handful of third party games, but it will mostly be rereleases of older titles and very few brand new games.

@MS7000 Third parties look at the sales figures that Nintendo exclusives get and when most of them don't get even close to that number, they question why they put in the effort at all.

Flashback 2 seems like it would be pretty cool, especially for those of us who loved the Prince of Persia / Out of This World style games.

There are reasons I never watch these streams live. That was boring as fudge.

@kingbk if I am being really honest, Summer Game Fest or any show by Geoff Keighley doesn’t have or show a lot of games for Nintendo Switch.

Maybe some of these games would be announced in a Nintendo Direct. But I doubt it but who knows.

Other companies could show stuff too

The game industry feels like it’s in a weird place. Overall, everything thing feels….mediocre. Boring.

@DK-Fan
A lot of the time a game will miss the switch or get a cloud version because the game would have trouble running on the switch.

With more devs transitioning to the ps5/XSX i feel we will get more games missing the system until the next Nintendo system comes out.

Nintendo is still getting third party releases however even if quite a few games do miss the system, with a few games getting released first on switch like the live-a-live remake and older games some getting released in the west for the first time like trails to zero and azure.

as mentioned in a previous topic i am still hoping that those Final fantasy remasters make their way to switch.

They may be saving a lot for a surprise Direct that turns out to be great. Who knows.

It was a bad showcase though there were a few good reveals and Nintendo Life chat made things enjoyable.

It's been quite something this week with Nintendo crushing all signs of a general Direct from the Xenoblade 3 trailer and special edition preorders going live to the Three Hopes trailer + demo to Neon White appearing in Summer Game Fest with precise release date. Given the current path it would be very fitting if tomorrow Nintendo shadow dropped a Bayonetta 3 trailer and that's why the My Nintendo Store brought the game to the top of the list.

So can we agree that the direct thing was wrong now? All the remaining leaks showed up here.

Just waiting for a Nintendo Direct! They will Blow All of these game announcements Away!!!

I suppose everyone is developing for Switch-Pro. #Switch-Pro-Confirmed!

@link3710 yeah probably wrong

@NintendoEternity Nintendo will probably not have one. They will probably keep doing these shadow announcements. All evidence we had of a direct is now gone. There is no direct.

Probably low on Nintendo content because the big N is planning for a direct to release very soon.

@Ryu_Niiyama @Ryu_Niiyama developers are stopping developing for the PS4 & Xbox one because they say they aren't powerful enough anymore so it wouldnt make any sense for them to stop developing for those consoles but then continue developing for the switch which is less powerful than them

@Would_you_kindly most of the devs that snubbed the Switch did so from day one citing install base and when that grew they never showed up. So not the same reasoning as with the old twins. Especially when devs are still doing multiplats across mobile and stadia and pc (which has to have a wider range of specs to work with) so the graphics first argument especially with an untapped revenue source doesn’t quite add up. It’s about money, but I am not sure the angle.

With Neon White and TMNT releasing next Thursday, I think that’s a huge indicator a Direct is next week… whether Wednesday or Thursday, I’m undecided which makes more sense. But considering those were more pitched as Switch centric games, I wonder if their presence at SGF was Nintendo’s way of playing nice without showing anything major they have from their eventual Direct.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Flashback 2 (misnomer notwithstanding) for me!

@Ryu_Niiyama honestly I don't think it's about money at all. Most devs in the west just seem to be technophiles at heart and just have an interest in making the most visually advanced things technology allows, and that never is Nintendo. I honestly think it's just lack of dev interest. They want to make prestige games, show off their talent and be recognized for achievement. Switch does none of that, even if it makes bank.

If money enters into it it's because one game design sells on 2 consoles and PC, while switch is a whole other thing of. If it was all about money and not ego, they'd never not target mobile...

Darn, the chibi looking Casey Jones & April O'Neil ruined the TMNT game for me. I hate that style of character. The turtles themselves didn't look bad, though. That sucks for me. That game fest was horrible for anyone who doesn't play survivor horror, or horror games, like myself. Glad i didn't get my hopes up for it.

@JJtheTexan yes, switch is a fantastic 2nd system. If everyone had another way to play games other than Nintendo 1st party games, they really wouldn't have a reason to be disappointed in switch. If switch is someone's only console, then i can understand the frustration sometimes, but i would recommend it as a support console to ps5, XsX/S, or a gaming PC.

Pretty sure the cozy puzzle tidy-up-the-house game [A Little to the Left] had a Switch logo at the end of the presentation?
Can’t help but feel there were more 🤔

Edit: Oooooh that was all part of the 'Day of the Devs' segment, lots of fun Switch titles included there though - Bear & Breakfast, Time Flies etc etc 🤓

Oh goody, TMNT is coming right after my payday!

Such a lackluster presentation. Nothing was announced that was even remotely interesting. This definitely is not a replacement for E3. Hopefully a Direct and P25 times will happen soon.

@NEStalgia I feel like if that were true there would be less bugs and patches rather than more (and yes I acknowledge that games are more complex than ever). It feels like a rule of cool design philosophy that is a fundamental difference between not even western and eastern devs but current devs vs devs of the 80s and 90s. Devs of the past, it feels like, took more chances and told more varied stories and had lots of more interesting game mechanics.

Perhaps I am missing something, but so many games feel more like tech demos and less like games. At first I thought that I was getting burned out but I have been having fun on my switch and with some indies. That’s why I feel like it is about money (or perhaps the focus placed on graphics…maybe this is educational/training focus idk) because a lot of games seem to be about brand, big budgets and high ROI. That profit margin would explain why so few devs aside from the usual suspects aren’t pushing true multiplats (remember when some games came out on everything under the sun? I’m talking about that) but it imo stifle technical ability.

Nintendo and its second party studio push the switch to its limits so games can be made; good games, pretty games and technically demanding games (as in what is under the hood. Optimization is work as well) and can turn a profit and I have not yet seen a huge push graphically on the new twins or even PC that suggests that devs are technophiles in the truest sense. It feels like this part of console wars is popular both with devs and consumers and so it shapes how games are made. It still doesn’t quite make sense to me though.

@DK-Fan It doesn't help that Nintendo insists on using nearly decade old hardware from 2015...

It will only get worse the longer Nintendo goes without stronger, more capable hardware...hopefully they announce something soon, within the next year or so

@Ryu_Niiyama When I think back to the shovelware of the NES, and even the arcades, it reality it wasn't that different from today in terms of taking chances. So much of it was nearly identical clone games following safe formulas, even then. Today, for the most part, the exceptions to the rule are what remain and have floated to the top and we think of it as the full library, but most of the library at the time was, ok, maybe not eShop-bad, but Wii-era shovelware bad at least. With budgets today being so exorbitant, producers and publishers are no doubt tighter on the purse strings and more likely to follow proven templates, Hollywood-style. But I'm not sure they were that much more lenient back then, either. We've just forgotten the massive body of pure junk that existed because most of it isn't still around, and most of us were wise enough to not buy it back then, either.

It wasn't as buggy, though. QA was easier, cheaper, obviously games were simpler, and more importantly with the price of media distribution, it was a necessary expense to avoid a loss, while now it's just a cost line. I think that goes beyond games. It's software in general. Games are the most complex so it's most obvious, but it's been a downward slope for a long time where software used to be designed along rigid engineering principles and tested as such. But demand has been for steadily easier and easier tools to put things together with less and less time and money, relying on more and more powerful hardware to brute force terrible designs for less time and skill to be required to produce anything. Plus the rise of middleware and outsourcing means nobody knows how all the parts actually work, to begin with.

But as for the rest, yeah, you're not wrong. I think it's a clash of roles that end up in the same place. From the top, the producers and financiers certainly are looking for high ROI, brand, etc. They're in it for the money, and increasingly are no longer software people but are media/film people applying the Hollywood approach, or just plain old businesspeople applying the consumer product approach. Back in the 80's most game companies were privately owned, usually by the people making the games. Now they're public companies with investors appointing CEO's who's role is maximizing margin. Of course Yamauchi was the latter and Nintendo ended up Nintendo, but he found a golden cash cow in Miyatmoto by coincidence, who really set the tone.

But at the same time, using Miyamoto as the example again, he'd push back (uncharacteristically for a Japanese worker, especially back then, but Miyamoto does Miyamoto) for his ideas, and because he printed money reliably, even Yamauchi caved to his insistence. But that's just it, the market responded to Miyamoto's ideas at the time so that's what they cloned. But I think devs today for the most part have a different mindset (especially while dev now means everything from artist to animator to "digital lighting" and not software design.) It's a mostly young workforce (how many don't burn out fast?) of mostly short term work, that just wants to be part of The Next Big Thing, wants to play with the biggest tools to product the most impressive things. Wants to build their resumes... So much of the modern "tech demo" feel, I think is just a result of the mindset of the modern young creative that dreams of making video games (or movies.) They want to see what tech boundaries they can push just because they can (and because it builds their portfolio), how impressive they can make a thing, how big a thing they can say they were part of, etc. The games then are an amalgamation of a vanity project to satisfy the indulgence of young creatives led by Hollywood-minded business leaders looking to "wow" an easily amused market space with spectacle for the maximum acceptable cost. Shake that up with a market that is easily wowed by flashy things and equates flashy with more valuable, and there we are. Every game is a Michael Bay masterpiece.... If flashy ever stops selling, those budgets will crash and the creatives won't get their vanity spending accounts anymore. But darn the market...it sells...it always sells... so that's what we get.

I mean, we're down to a market willing to spend more money, far more money, on cosmetics in games than on games. Where a "free" game gets people to spend hundreds on a single game, to play Barbie with it. We just got a Saint's Row trailer, and entire trailer, for a character creator. They're not even advertising the game, they're advertising digital dress-up in an app outside the game!

From the business side, they just look at where the money comes from, you're right. Specacle sells, flash sells, vanity sells. Quality? Really doesn't sell. Tech demos sell. What's the easiest way to get the biggest spectacle to the biggest audience? Slap it on the 3 similar architecture systems that are mostly low effort to port between the 3 from a single design and you capture most of the market with much more spectacle than other platforms. Boom, business is taken care of. Switch, even mobile is an outlying market that isn't worth looking seriously into. Even if mobile is 1000x bigger, it's a different product needed.

From the creative side, that connects nicely with the vanity projects. The brass wants to pay for flashy spectacle, they want to make the flashiest spectacles they can make, they're happy. But need more budget to do what they want. And even though it's all terrible when combined, inexplicably the market throws money at the result. So next time they double the budget and expect double the market.

Nintendo's a big market, but it doesn't feed into that. You can't create spectacle and guarantee return. Business won't like that. It's not tech for the sake of tech to flex your awesome tech muscles of awesomeness, so the creatives won't like it. And you can't copy your one-design-fits-all product onto it without holding back the spectacle elsewhere, so it just doesn't fit. Plus the Nintendo market isn't a market as wowed by flash, otherwise we wouldn't have our 2017 tablet with 2012 hardware in it still. Nintendo intentionally releasing limited technology is the only thing that forces it to have a creative landscape. Because the flashers can't put their vanity projects on it, only things that aren't so much vanity projects can really fit on it. IDK how long that will hold up, but for now, that's what saves it. Usually, anyway.

I don't think the technophile part refers to a software level optimization to push a piece of limited hardware. That's just a nerd in the biggest pocket protector sense, lol. No, it's about pushing technology to technology's limit, not a particular limited hardware like Iwata's calculator baseball game. It's less about coder tech (optimization/Iwata) and more about effects rigging tech, vfx tech, shader tech. More from the artist/animator side. "Creating the most realistic thing possible by technology" is the obsession. A switch will never ever do that. I don't think they're really into making games particularly. They're interested in replicating reality, digitally. And I'm sure, development wise, they're working on pushing the new twins hardware. Dev kits haven't been out long enough to see the results in consumer space yet, and business is enforcing cross plat for very valid business reasons. Most of the games coming out were in production before the dev kits existed, so that makes sense. Just wait till the 15-30fps framerate flashy masterpieces once current production comes out.

In the mean-time please look forward to the second remaster of a 9 year old game now with more realistic lighting and a new texture pack!

(Ugh I tried to be short, and that's what I ended up writing! )

@anoyonmus
That’s my point, why have a game that in all likely hood won’t be coming to switch.

@NEStalgia I will respond but I have to go to work and I need to read and digest your reply. So I guess we are back to this huh? Long discussions about the state of the industry? With all the dust ups around here, I welcome it.

@Ryu_Niiyama LOL, yeah, I sensed while writing it this was inevitably to be one of those multi-giant posts that I eventually never get back to replying to you and we leave it dangling here.....but I pressed on anyway!

So as always I can’t overly comment on the NES library but I feel like for the time it had a decent mix of sports, arcade ports, shumups, adventure, rpgs, beatemups and run and gunners which pretty much covered every available genre at the time. However the sheer number of devs throwing something at the NES and SNES with new ideas (even if they were never seen again) still only feels matched by PC. Shovelware is relative and is primarily imo a gatekeeper term because if the game play is decent/fun it imo matters less if it is a clone because after a point you run out of whole new genres to invent. New gameplay ideas and stories are plentiful but whole new genres? There are only so many themes that entertain people. Also that “shovelware approach” that you disdain is likely what I miss. Multiplat used to mean everything we can get it to run on. That’s why you have console gamers vs PC gamers. If it was just about the best place from a technical perspective to play or dev a game PC gaming would have been forced by the industry and that would be that.

I do certainly agree that now that gaming is a sure fire business that those that call the shots and aren’t indies are much more judicious on where development is pushed. No one wants to carve a market anymore; they want to go where the table is ant sit down and eat with minimal investment. But again that is part of what I am lamenting. I’d rather seen experienced devs turn out multiple passion products (which a lot of the old schoolgames were. TES for instance) rather than being stuck on the AAA treadmill. I would argue that Nintendo is doing their best to avoid that as that are keeping steady output with a mix of safe and experimental or smaller games and that is working for them. Sony and MS imo have an exclusive drought baring buying studios or timed exclusives and so much of that output is not in house of second party. Yet the AAA devs cling to them. I’m not saying I want everything ever to go to switch, that’s why I buy the big 3 and maintain a gaming PC. But it still seems off that it’s indies, Nintendo, well known AA studios (falcom, capcom, Squeenix) and AAA western devs. And that means that there is a gap. Both in licensed games (they exist but not to the same amount as before) and B-A tier games. You know the ones that are fun but janky.

Part of this is money. Time already invested and all that, but it still feels odd to leave a potential avenue to languish. Especially since the alternative seems to be whale hunting, micro-transactions and GaaS. However I supposed if gaming companies are staffed the way most IT and app dev departments are they are spread so thin. I function as an entire department and semi dev (ever have a job you would love if they didn’t work you to death?) and I pretty much just work and sleep so perhaps it’s money in the workforce sense and less in the investment in R&D sense. Which would tie into your letting the tools do the work, brute forcing argument. It’s just that makes little sense in the long run both for keeping and developing talent and for making a quality product. However you addressed that when talking about both the dev and exec approach to modern gaming. I suppose then my sticking point is that it doesn’t make long term sense to me both in number of revenue stream available or as a development philosophy. I will have to think on it more.

@Ryu_Niiyama Whoops, I wasn't tagged so I almost missed this!

The shovelware approach still exists, it's just from indies. And Sega, lol. IDK about "everything you can get it to run on." Back then games were more exclusive to one platform by default, just because it was usually designed around particular hardware. I don't recall a huge list of true multiplats at all back then, and often games that were multiplat were really different games entirely. There were some. Bubsy and some others ring a bell, but overall, it was much more common for most of the library to be exclusive just because of the design differences.

PC...despite being the technical best if you spend the most money, as an average falls behind consoles though. Yeah, the PCMR snobs will have $3k+ rigs, but most of what's running as "PC" in the wild is pretty weak hardware, well below the consoles of a given generation. But largely, that's exactly it. Most games are PC games that run on consoles now. There's not much distinction outside genres that still depend on mice. And that's part of what happens to Nintendo, it's not just another PC to port to. Technically it's just another smartphone to port to.....and port to it, the mobile devs do! Much to the chagrin of eShop shoppers. But most of the major devs are PC devs. Whether PC is the primary or the port, they're really designing PC games, and the consoles are just efficient PCs with a custom OS.

Going off-topic in an on-topic way, though, after watching this weeks presentations, I've come away feeling that the AAAs mostly are caught up in the treadmill in such a way it's largely uninteresting (except for the big Microsoft WRPGs which is mostly made by those old passion project PC folks...), but mostly the AAAs have truly become carbon copy, generic money treadmills, and I've seen the "indies" stepping well up into that sweet spot of AA games. Things like American Arcadia and....can't remember the names but Portal-but-not-Portal and 3D Pokemon with sheep shooting SMGs.... we've maybe come full circle, where AAAs have elevated themselves into something other than premier video games and are into some weird virtual social sim platform thing to supplant Facebook, while the former "indies" are now into AA that creates the main tapestry of "gaming" now. I.E. yesterday's indies are becoming tomorrows AAAs, and the old AAAs are becoming digital social networks (with guns.) I could be wrong, but it seems to be a sort of transition point where the cycle is restarting (one foot in this year, probably 2 feet in a year or two.))

But I still think so much if it is just the mindset of the people that go into game making in general. Maybe the new indie wave is fixing that, but look at the dev interviews with most of the featured indies this week. "Old people". Not just "thirty somethings" which counts as old people in the AAA world, but people in their 50s, 60s, classic game people. People familiar with the old ways and what made it good. A lot of people that fell out of the major studios in the past. Both in the West and Japan. Then look at much of the devs you see for the major AAAs, it's the young, fresh, out of school, 20-something "artist on a mission." There's every sense to me they're less interested in the "game as a whole" so much as excitement for flexing their artistic muscles on the biggest stage with the biggest creations. Their interest is what excites THEM as artists, and not what creates the best packaged product. It's a theme in commentary/interview after commentary. And I get it, and I understand what they're thinking and why, though I couldn't do that myself, I'm no artist, I know that's just how artists tend to work. And part of that is that games used to be made by a small group of people involved in the game. The modern games are so big with so many people most of the people involved have no sense of the game package at all, they know their piece. Amazing lighting. Amazing animation. Amazing models and terrain rendition. That's their little piece of the world, and the thing they're excited about. The resulting game is a hodgepodge of an animator's most impressive animations, a modelers most impressive models, vfx specialist's most impressive vfx, glued together by a game designer trying to make a cohesive tapestry from a bunch of disparate quilt squares made from 20 different companies on 4 continents. Add in business that doesn't want to take a risk and follows the trend....and we get what we have.

Worse is that the trend is "social media but with guns" and you get some pretty bland games....

If you've never played The Magic Circle, you really should, btw.....

@NEStalgia ok gonna need to get a free moment to digest this. I don’t have free time to speak of any more….

@twztid13 Nintendo Switch is my Primary Console and my Xbox Series S is my secondary console. Why does the Nintendo Switch have to be second? I play my Nintendo Switch OLED so much more Video Game wise!

@JJtheTexan and ps5 and series x are already outdated compared to High Tech Gaming PCs. Why do you think they're releasing pro consoles of them.