UK Retailers Optimistic About Nintendo Switch, But Lingering Doubts Remain

So UK being UK? Alright then

Lets be honest. Like many Nintendo things this wont take off here. Its just something you need to accept at this point

Of course storage is not a big problem if:

A: The games don't have to be installed to a hard drive (they don't if retail cart copies).

B: There isn't huge day one patches to fix broken games.

C: Games are properly optimised to make them smaller.

These are all things Ninty normally adheres to. The question is can 3rd party publishers do the same?

Storage Space
Re-re-buying virtual console titles
Lack of virtual console titles if there are any
High Price
Low specs
Artificial shortage of units on release
Terrible online features
Continuing changing franchises for the worst

Yeah, the market for Nintendo is pretty grim here but I think, outside the DS/Wii anomalies, the Switch is geared to be more suitable for the sort of market that might buy into to the idea.

Basically they need to get Fifa out on it and sell it as 'play Fifa with mates anywhere' machine. People bringing a decent game of Fifa to work on breaks etc would go down a storm in the UK. Not interested personally but there ya go. (Edit: I know portable Fifa has been done numerous times but the local multiplayer on Switch will feel more like couch co-op).

Bethesda games will help too.

I don't think backwards compatibility will make any difference to UK sales beyond a small niche group.

I personally will buy anything Nintendo puts out within reason - the Wii U first party line up is simply amazing and 3DS remains the most played console in my house.

I'd say I'm cautiously hopeful but not 100% sold yet.

Think of it like this: I'm kind of a perfectionist so it's not about all the things the Switch has gotten right (and it has gotten a lot of things right) but all the things it can still get wrong. At least one of those looks like it has happened, which is the lack of ability to effectively have backwards compatibility with both DS/3DS and Wii U games (even in digital form) because of it being a single screen experience regardless of how you set it up. There is a chance you could still play DS/3DS games on the thing via emulating the two screens one above the other on the Switch's single large screen (if it's actually touch enabled; another one of those unknowns that could go either way), but we'll see how that plays out. Wii U games though, I just don't seen how you're going to be able to play a whole bunch of those that focused on the use of two separate screens; think something like Star Fox Zero for example (not that I'd want to play that mediocre game on Switch anyway, but still).

So, it's going to come down to the rest of the stuff we learn about from now until launch before I decide if Switch is mostly a triumph or basically another potential "Wii U" as I see it.

I'm sold. The rest of the UK, though, is another story.

I'm sure the UK will manage to sell the 3 dozen it's going to get out of that 2 million shipment, most of which will hit the US and EU. Japan can wait, they'll all be busy playing MHXX anyway.

Biggest question to me is still the touchscreen, I think it will have a special one, but it's Nintnedo, so maybe not. And if it doesn't, I'm not sure the world is ready for a 6" tablet that doesn't have a touchscreen. If there's not enough storage you can always buy more, but you can't make a non-touch screen touch after the fact.

I don't blame anyone for having doubts. We still don't know a tonne about Switch.

How I long for the day when the world is like it is in the commercials where you see people with their 3DS or Switch or whatever outside or on the train or bus playing games and having fun. Where I live you're not a gamer or you're frowned at and usually made fun of for playing any console or game to do with Nintendo. Nothing Nintendo related sells well here. People just want shooters and e-sports on their Xbox and Playstation.

Though I do admit I have urking questions to be answered by Nintendo about the Switch.

@GraveLordXD Apparently you'll not be allowed to use it that way. When it's in the dock you can only use the TV screen, and when it's out the dock it's only available in portable mode. That's basically what Nintendo itself has confirmed in saying that it's a single screen only experience, as you said. I was hoping that what you said about using the TV and Switch screen together would be possible, specifically so we could get BC with DS/3DS and Wii U games, but apparently Nintendo thought differently, which seems like a pointless limitation to impose imo; there's just so many good games on DS/3DS and Wii U that would have been great filler titles for Switch just in case there were any lulls in releases of proper Switch games (and they'd just be great titles to have access to on the system regardless, and a whole lot of them at that). Honestly, I had fantasises that the Switch was going to be the ultimate BC machine, capable of play virtually every single Nintendo home console game and portable game from its great history, but sadly it looks like that dream isn't going to happen on Switch.

Well the thing that got me annoyed was that the footage wasn't real, it was of games that aren't even in the development stages for the console so really we don't even have an idea of what it can play. We just have an ideal of what it can play and that's never good.

However if it can play games like Skyrim and Breath of the Wild fine then yeah, my next worry is what the battery life will be like outside the house. It needs to be AT LEAST 5 hours of gaming. For me anyways. XD

Storage space on the shop shelves will be in Nintendo's favour, more games to be displayed as the cartridges take up less space.
Storage space under the T.V shouldn't be a problem, looks compact enough.
Storage space for game saves will hopefully be on the cartridges themselves..
As for actual storage space, as long as my current external HDD's are compatible I'll be happy, but please no memory cards!

I'm a collector so physical always comes first, so the whole storage thing to me is non issue but I can understand why it is for others.

if you ask me they should include the smallest SD card they can find to make it as cheap as possible and let me buy my own SD card.

I have doubts. They definitely need to get this price right. The wii u is still going for the same price as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox. I have a feeling the switch will be much higher than the PlayStation 4 price

Although the storage on the Switch cartridges shouldn't be a problam knowing how much high end SD cards are now able to hold. It's just the cost of using anything too much above 32 gig may add quite a bit to the cost of games.
I'm assuming the cartridges will be able to have save points on them, and I'm hoping they have the ability to use the saves on friends/family consoles.

I think price is the key for the UK. It has to be lower than XB1 and PS4 for it to take off here. Not sure they could sell the Switch for under £250 here though, but I'm no expert.

I hope it sells well, but it's likely the UK won't be one of the regions where it does.

I have a really sinking feeling about the Switch, I fear that in the background of the vastly superior platforms of XBOX/PS/PC it will have very a hard time making ground. Plus I think that Ninty will just mark it up way too high (again). As for portability, the 3DS is still excellent although old now. I got a WiiU collecting dust so I think that I for one will be passing on this NeXt generation Ninty console and stick to PC gaming, oh and of course Pokemon on my 3DS.

What I see is a console that hopefully will hit 30 million in sales. It will not have the impact the Wii had. It's certainly a step up from the Wii u.

Games nowadays are up to 50gb, how big are these carts? Or do they need a big download top up?

On the bright side, it's an new era for Nintendo and Switch is designed so Nintendo can focus on one platform which has not being the case since the early days of the NES. More games has gotta be good.

The thing with the slow reveal is that it fuels even more speculation about the Switch than we had with the NX. And unless the Switch can live up to this speculation a lot of gamers will be disappointed and put buying the Switch on hold.
Ultimately the launch games will help sell the Switch more than the commercial showing how you can play Zelda at an airport.
If the Switch is of very high spec, then the Jan announcement will help sell the two million and even create a shortage. But low spec will leave a surplus.
All we know, apart from what the Switch looks like, is that we can play games on the go, better than we could with the Wii u. But that alone is not the big selling point it first seems.
I don't know how much extra work is involved for 3rd party games companies to programme their games to transfer to the Switch tablet; but it was to much for a lot of them doing this for the Wii u.
What else does the Switch do apart from allowing HD games to be played at a lower resolution on a smaller screen on the move and with a limited battery life?

As much as I love me a good Nintendo console, the rest of the UK simply doesn't. Heck, the UK in general seems to hate games as a whole. Some just so happen to be more acceptable than others in the public domain. Methinks Microsoft is helped along purely because it's also into the computer scene. Their software/hardware literally everywhere over here. Sony's phones and other electronics help increase awareness too. Nintendo don't have either.

This might just be nonsensical ramblings of someone who knows nothing about marketing and the general situation in the UK, but that's what I've observed from a Brit perspective all these years.

Expect us Brits to be ripped off with price.

Why would Nintendo even bother with the UK? What a waste of time, they should just focus on EU countries that matter...

Price is going to be a big issue. It would have to sell at $300 or less for it to do well, and that even includes being over here in the US. Seems that a lot of people lost faith in nintendo (which is a shame, as all of those people probably had NES systems and played them to death, as NES introduced many of the games they are currently playing on other systems). I love my PS4, but there's always love for nintendo with me, and I'm sold on this console!

Hard drive space is definitely another issue, but...the bigger the HD, the more money it would cost, and I don't think nintendo wants this, they want to go the cheaper route like all of their consoles, especially since this console is coming out when the PS4 and XBONE will be almost 3 years old. If you can add USB Thumb Drives, SD cards or even external hard drives to give you more space, then that's fine, I don't mind doing that, but if you can't, or you have to wait for that feature (Wii took 3 years to add that feature), or if you're limited to how many games you can showcase on the console itself (the cursed Wii and it's only allowed a certain amount of channels no matter how much space is left), then that could hurt it too.

I also agree that they need the sports franchises going for them. FIFA, NBA, NHL, PGA TOUR, MADDEN...yeah, even though I'm not one that buys them regularly, they definitely need them. They could even delve into re-creating their classic sports franchises each year (which they seemed to end with the Super NES and N64)...something that Sega needs to do too...(I miss the College Football and World Series Baseball franchises).

The other thing, is backwards compatibility. This could be done with DS and 3DS, if it's touch screen. Even if they didn't add that feature, they could sell a separate handheld version, or even make it to where you could plug in the DS or 3DS handhelds themselves...giving them a bigger library. Small Memory Sticks have those little adaptors so that they fit in bigger SD slots, which nintendo could make this kind of adaptor to fit a DS or 3DS game into the SWITCH's slots. They could even make a separate controller pad with touchscreen options on it...think, more money for nintendo! As for Wii U, they could add some of those games onto the E-Shop, just take out the double screen option or touchscreen options. Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3 and some others could be used without touchscreen or dual screen action, to still give the players that didn't pick up Wii U's, another chance to play them.

Nintendo needs to not only bring the consumers that skipped the Wii U, back into their side, but also make the fans that bought the Wii U happy too, and nintendo needs to look at that. Hopefully nintendo makes things right, but I still worry about the 3rd party support. If the 3rd party companies are bringing games that are 4-5 months old on the other consoles, are they going to sell for the high price on the SWITCH...which could lead to nintendo losing 3rd party support again. It all goes with the sales...if the system sells greatly, we'll get the games, if it struggles...3rd parties will walk away again.

Hopefully the console itself will have minimal storage, to keep the price down, but it will have seamless SD card support.

The concerns retailers have about storage is more of a concern for their own business than for the success of the console, as if the Switch goes mostly digital, then that means less business for retailers selling physical copies of games.
Personally, I think it's a little misplaced... they should be more concerned about the price of digital downloads... as it is, that's the only thing that's keeping a lot of people (including myself) buying physical copies rather than digital, as physical often works out cheaper.

@rjejr I have faith in Emily Rogers claims on the touchscreen - let's face it, the list of stuff she got wrong was tiny, her Switch stuff was bang on the mark and leaked prior to Eurogamer.

I'm inclined to believe the other rumour regarding an IR pointer in the JoyCon which could be used to allieviate the touchscreen issue (not useable when docked) though it's not an elegant solution and I suspect they won't rabe about it for fear of Wii comparisons, if true.

On the other hand, the dock would need a sensor. Saw no sign of that. Roll on January.

Again with a lot of UK hate (mainly from UK posters). Wii U has flopped just as badly in North America as it has in the UK, but why do posters on this site act like it's not the case? The performance of Nintendo hardware in the US and UK almost always match up. The 3DS launched poorly in both, had a boom period in both between the death of the 360/PS3 gen and the pick up of the XB1/PS4 gen, and then has died off again in both. The Wii was a monster success in both regions but then sales fell off a cliff after 4 years in both regions and allowed the 360 to surpass it. The DS as a huge success in both regions. The only times the UK and US have reacted differently to a Nintendo machine is SNES and prior, and there are a ton of very good reasons for that, mostly Nintendo not considering Europe as a whole to be of much importance. It was only when Sony showed Europe was a massive market that Nintendo started to try.

Every week it's people banging out about how the UK cares about nothing but FIFA. Have you seen the North American top 10 most months? FIFA is in there too, and joined by Madden and NBA, and for a few months after launch, NHL games too.

HMV games buyer Nathan Allen also had a positive response, and expressed the desire to see Nintendo sell the console at a competitive price:
I find Nathan's comments a bit more than cheeky considering my local HMV hasn't stocked Nintendo games for the last couple of years. I expressed many times to HMV staff my desire to purchase Nintendo games and was told many a time that would not be happening.

I do have questions too, but I'm sure they'll all be answered in time, and I'm also sure I'll enjoy the system anyway. Wii U may have been terribly marketed, and has terrible storage space (which even bothers me when I buy physical when possible, given the XCX install data), it's still one of the most fun home consoles imo, with some of my favourite games ever. And since they combine home- and handheld console in one, it's no surprise all of my favourite handhelds are Nintendo ones, so I believe they will deliver something worthy.

So if this thing fails to sell, will people be saying "man, they really should have had that backwards-compatibility..."?

I mean at the least they need to give some kind of serious incentive to existing system owners - I'm talking beyond a modest discount a la Virtual Console, which never lived up to the glory of the Wii on the Wii U.

You'd think limited storage space would be a good thing for retailers, no? Sell more physical copies and SD cards.

@CTMike The IR sensor is said to be at the top of the Switch screen, which protrudes from the dock.

Furthermore it will cost us even more in the UK following the crash in pound sterling (£) due to the foolish outcome of the Brexit vote D-X

@StuOhQ ah, I missed that, thanks

So as an American, I am curious as to what the average UK gamer uses the most, as y'all's UK sales chart shows a general disinterest in Nintendo stuff.

How can Rhythm Heaven do so poorly!

@Yorumi

Since the Switch's architecture shares so much in common with tablets I'm gonna guess, it'll feature either 64GB or 128 GBs of internal memory. The premium models for popular iPads and Surfaces top out at 256 GBs and the Wii U topped out at 32 GB so I don't think the Switch'll go higher than 64 GB.

Besides they'll be a SD card slot for an extra 128 GBs and an external hardrive can be connected to the dock for memory expansion. I don't see why people belly ache over memory so much.

@Yorumi

Agreed, it will indeed. Especially if games exceed 32GB. I'm thinking that digital buyers (like myself) will be putting entire game collections on external hardrives and keep a modest number of on-the-go titles on the Switch itself.

Hopefully, the Switch'll be compatible with SD cards that exceed 128 GBs down the line if that becomes the maximum capacity it'll supports at launch.

@impurekind

Ya never know. I seriously doubt Ninty would just cut off all possibility for the Switch to play digital versions of DS/3DS, and Wii U games. I remember before Iwata passed... he did say something about the "NX" absorbing the Wii U's architecture. And you see how much work was done to get DS games to run on Wii U's virtual console. Would be a tragedy to let all that effort go to waste.

My guess is that the Wii U Gamepad'll be compatible with the Switch to.... (at the very least), eventually play digital DS, 3DS, and Wii U games. It'll also be a good incentive for Wii U owners keep their console around after the Switch releases.

@Yorumi

I'm keepin' my fingers crossed but I'm optimistic swapping games from different storage options will be as seamless as the Switch is at switching between portable to home console modes

And I'd go digital all the way unless a retail version is significantly cheaper. Like Warriors Orochi 3 (digital = still $59.99 but retail: $10).

@StuOhQ

Am I am the only one who thinks IR on the screen in the dock is a poor idea?

The dock would either have to be on top of the screen or directly below it to be intuitive. I mean imagine the Wii but instead of pointing at the screen always pointing 5 feet left of the screen.

As much as I'd love it to do well over here, the sad fact is historically the UK hasn't been the best source of revenue for Nintendo. The Wii did pretty well, but that's about it. I've said before the vast majority of people here who buy consoles mainly want to play FIFA and GTA.

Maybe we might be wrong this time, if they get either of those titles they might be in with a fighting chance. Here's hoping.

Bit surprised by all the negative UK comments here.
Think the three issues raised - batteries, storage and price will be crucial anywhere.
UK presents challenges with our island location and our own currency, but especially recently Nintendo have been pretty good with us (barring occasional currency conversion rip-offs) and think we've been good for them too. Come on England!!

@cmk8 Come on ENGLAND 👍🏻

The problem I see and I could be way off. Nintendo don't have reps on the ground like Sony and M$ do in the U.K. And definitely not in Ireland.

I'm going back to the GameCube era. I was looking at the window display of HMV. Xbox and PS2 were clearly seen and in the corner on its lonesome was the GameCube, you could barely see it. Nintendo don't have reps coming into these shops telling them "put that there and I'll give you this" but I'd say Sony do. You need reps coming in all the time with promotions.