As we head towards the Nintendo Switch launch on 3rd March, and with some pre-orders still possible in some countries such as the UK, Nintendo has recently had some weekend interview features published with major British newspapers. This is certainly a positive in terms of boosting awareness in the UK, as national newspapers get well beyond the 'core' audience that Nintendo reaches with its online streams and presentations.
One of the better articles was an interview published by The Telegraph, with Shinya Takahashi (Director at Nintendo, General Manager of Entertainment Planning and Development) and Yoshiaki Koizumi (Deputy General Manager of Entertainment Planning and Development) on hand to answer questions.
One answer that stood out to us was a continued emphasis on the ease of development Nintendo feels is possible through the system. Not only are engines such as Unity and Unreal 4 essential to this, but in addition there's the sense that the architecture and NVIDIA GPU help to at least make the system understandable and accessible to developers of various sizes. It's another 'concept' system that lacks the raw graphical grunt that some expect, of course, but Nintendo clearly feels developers shouldn't be held back by the tools at their disposal.
For those eager to see the confirmed line-up of games grow, there's reassurance that a 'lot more' announcements are yet to be made.
Koizumi: As you know we've been focussed on development on first party games, but with Nintendo Switch we've also put a lot of energy into making third-party cooperation possible, and that includes a lot of attention paid to the development environment that we are providing to these partners as well as the middleware we create for them. Soon you will [see] a lot more announcements from third-party partners.
What kind of things are you doing to help woo third-parties onto Switch?
Koizumi: I think a lot of it comes down to the development environment we're providing, because these are third-party providers that are bringing games to Nintendo hardware we want to do everything we can to make that experience comfortable for them including providing support for Unity or Unreal 4, which are platforms a lot of people are already using.
So one example I can give of this is SnipperClips which is made by a very small development team in England, which uses Unity so they were able to develop it very quickly.
So are you looking to have more independent developers on Switch?
Koizumi: Yes, in fact we already have a lot of indie developers that we're talking to, with several teams working on several different projects.
Another point we picked up in the interview was the echoing of Tatsumi Kimishima's recent remarks that Nintendo is responding to initial demand and ramping up production; supply will naturally be scarce at launch, but the aim is to clearly keep retailers stocked in the days and weeks that follow.
Finally as we head toward launch there has been some reports of stock shortages. Are you confident that anyone that wants a Switch will be able to buy one?
Maybe within the first few days! It does sound like there might be a few shortages here and there, but once you get past that I think we'll have a very steady flow. Some of our employees are worried about getting one... but we are making a lot!
Are you reassured by the confirmed games for the system and range of third-party titles, or still anxiously awaiting more announcements? Let us know, and it's certainly worth checking out the full interview by The Telegraph below as it's one of the more detailed newspaper features from this past weekend.
Thanks to all that sent this in.
[source telegraph.co.uk]
Comments 293
They absolutely need more third party support. As it stands there's no real major exclusives or killer third party game. Even their Superbowl ad had 1 third party game in it. Street Fighter 2. I played that 20 years ago. That's hardly going to attract the masses as great as it was and all back then. And they preferably need to be exclusives, not old, overpriced, weaker ports.
There's another interview with the pair of them in the Guardian as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/13/nintendo-switch-it-may-be-weird-but-it-is-for-everyone
So when are we expecting to see these third party announcements? I hope some at least are going to be made physically available in stores as that will help make the barebones line up look somewhat presentable when against Sony and Microsoft.
Reggie seemed pretty sure of himself when he talked about making sure the early adopters don't experience software droughts.
So I believe it if he says more software is ready for announcement.
More third party and I don't mean mario party 3
i hope the announcements are more 'available at launch' or 'available within a month of launch', instead of 'next year' or 'are interested in'.
If you had more third-party support ready, then why hasn't it been shown off yet? The system launches in a couple weeks.
Well, that sounds reassuring!
Good news. I hope this means the big boys aswell as Indies. I love cheap cheerful Indies but it has to have AAA.
@Phin68 Sure you could ask the same as to why they haven't told us anything about VC, transferring games, online, voice chat, will it always require a smart phone, its actual cost, etc?
As the fact that my hype (which was only when it was still called the NX) has left after the announcement...yeah, more games need to come out for it, and I'm talking about exclusives (not just the ones made by nintendo). The only games that I saw that I would even pick up for it would be Zelda and Super Bomberman R...and the latter is also coming out on the other systems. I'd like a machine to be able to play games that aren't already out on the others, because I enjoy getting trophies on the PS4, and since Switch doesn't have a reward system, then it'll just be for the exclusives...and with Mario Odyssey MAYBE coming out by the holiday (I still see it as coming out sometime in 2018), there's nothing to get me excited for it. Maybe if a Rabbids-Mario crossover comes out this year, I'll change my mind, but I doubt it.
I believe it when I see it.
good once i get an idea of what kind of 3rd party support it's getting then i'll order one for sure, once they become available that is because everywhere i look they are already sold out
guess i missed my window
I'm glad to see a very different approach for this hardware from Nintendo. The fact that they're trying to accomodate for third party developers makes me really happy and how we've seen several developers say how easy it easy is to port to the system reassures me. It's awesome to see so many indie games being ported, but I do hope we eventually (and hopefully soon) see more bigger third party developers. Still very hyped for the switch tho!
@JLPick Since when has Super Bomberman R been announced for other consoles?
But.....but.....what about more first party announcements?
Wonder if they'll air a special Switch Direct for this? Would definitely put them in the proper spotlight, I think.
I can buy it and play it, or I can't buy it and play it.
Everything else is noise to me.
We've seen time and time again the big 3rd party devs all say they will 'support' the switch or that they have something in the works. But we all know this is code for 'we will wait and see an install base before we pledge actual support to the system'. Some of you are saying "where are the AAA games" but you should know by now that they aren't coming. Not yet, anyway.
When they see how well the Switch sells - THAT'S when you'll see announcements of AAA games coming to Switch. No company is going to pledge their support to a system that hasn't even launched yet without knowing what they're getting into. That's just good business sense.
Two options for you; wait a couple of months after the launch, then revisit this topic or don't count on 3rd party games and take the Switch as is - a great hybrid device that can be played anywhere. If enough of us buy the system, the third parties will come.
@JLPick Super Bomberman R is a Switch exclusive. Konami doesn't have any plans to release it on other systems, at least for now.
I shall remain Switched OFF until the actual library backs up these claims. I was burned too badly by the Wii U, especially the ridiculous delay of Zelda to make the Switch seem more appealing at launch.
I would also prefer to be able to buy the system without the dock, and have an XL model announced. Until then, yeah... Switched OFF
@ThatNyteDaez Nintendo should have waited on Pokemon Sun and Moon and delayed it for the Switch. So many more people would be lining up to get a Switch if they had done that.
@Darkwario1 More first party games will be announced at E3.
Seeing that they weren't announced already, I assume they won't be coming out until summer or later. Depending if their indies or not.
I've recently noticed that the lack of games at launch is being used by Nintendo haters to badmouth the console in general... I'd usually just laugh that sort of thing off, but it is actually starting to put people off getting the Switch.
The haters are basically just telling them that everyone is saying that the Switch is a terrible console because of the limited launch line-up (which is moronic on a number of levels)... but the problem is that people then go away to check if what they're saying is true, but only search for articles about the line-up... so they see all the articles expressing concern for the Switch due to the line-up, but not the ones praising the console and the games.
@FragRed It hasn't. He's just guessing it will to be a bit negative.
I wanna know more about VC.
I know now PS4 and XB1 have a bunch of games but if you recall the launch of both those consoles, there were very few games. I think the Switch actually has more launch games then either once you add in eshop...and yes, I'm also accounting for ps4 and Xbox live. Both of those consoles were pretty barren for about 6 to 9 months, and the launch titles for both were "meh". Breath of the Wild, all though also launching on Wii U, is a massive title for launch. Sony for example had Killzone and Xbox had Dead Rising 3 as their big launch titles. Zelda easily is a better launch game.
You can't compare a launch library to the libraries of consoles now 3 to 4 years old
I don't know about anybody else but I've been playing Xbox One & PS4 since they launched and now I'm bored beyond belief.
The games are melting into one big messy genre that existed in the 360 & PS3.
This is why Nintendo should always try to be different.
If you want to play CoD, BF etc then why would you play on a system with weaker graphical capabilities? That's not what the big N is about. They provide an alternative, a space where colour, fun, imagination & a mature, friendly, social environment exist.
That's why I love Nintendo.
@Monkeyofthefunk I thought not. I did a check to make sure nothing had just been announced.
@DragonEleven "I've recently noticed that the lack of games at launch is being used by (consumers) to (raise concerns about) the console in general... I'd usually just laugh that sort of thing off, but it is actually starting to put people off getting the Switch.
The (potential customers) are basically just telling them that everyone is saying that the Switch is a (potentially) terrible console because of the limited launch line-up (which is (reasonable) on a number of levels)... but the problem is that people then go away to check if what they're saying is true, but only search for articles about the line-up... so they see all the articles expressing concern for the Switch due to the line-up, but not the ones praising the console and the games.
Fixed it for you : )
Well, there you go.
And people thought Nintendo was doomed...
Tsssss...
@Phin68 Sadly in business a "non-negative" is a positive. Sure that screws the consumer, but these people with business degrees don't know (or to be more accurate, care) things like this. They work on numbers. "Not saying no, but not saying yes or even maybe" is better than "no" to them. Yet it just infuriates, annoys and potentially turns off actually paying consumers.
Here comes all the junk games that were on the original Wii. Lol.
I'll wait for more announcements before getting excited.
Nintendo needs to accomodate western developers. Japanese developers will have a Japanese bias for Nintendo so they're easy to convince and convert.
My reaction to this news...
https://youtu.be/CASGNmf0Pec
That's what's up. I plan to go all Nintendo Switch anyways. Pretty much done with everything else in gaming as far as Sony and Microsoft goes. Good news!
Fed up of 'more to announce'. Enough words Nintendo, time to show your hand!
@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Why your comments are continious negative? If you don't like Nintendo's World Why are you writing the first comments on this site!
I'd imagine most people are always waiting for new announcements. Odd question 😁
The continued emphasis on ease of development is great. Indies, big publishers, mobile game developers (I actually think an easy development path from Android is a great idea). The more the merrier.
@Kunteper You're allowed to be a Nintendo fan and not be happy with what they're doing. Some of us remember when Nintendo was leading the industry instead of trailing ten years behind.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE just because you played street fighter 2 20 years ago is irrelevant. There is millions of kids n teens who may not have played it and this could be their first time to enjoy it and make it successful. The world is bigger than the little bubble you and I live in remember
Wait, people are still complaining about a lackluster launch line up? If you were a 3rd party would you want to release your game at the same time as a new Zelda title? No, that would just hinder your sales. Additionally, why would Nintendo want to release more 1st part titles to compete with each other. A steady flow of first and third party games would be best for the console.
As far as 3rd Party goes, honestly most haven't announced this years titles yet for any console. I'm sure we'll hear more at E3. Did you all really want a flood of last year's games for the Switch at launch? Remember folks, this is a March console launch. Most of those big name 3rd party titles don't come out till November anyway.
@Kdaesung I think it's more about knowing at this point. Being so close to launch, and with details of games in the future being thin on the ground, I am starting to wonder whether I need a second console. Many are still looking forward to the release and I am happy about that. Third party companies are releasing big guns around the time Zelda releases, such as Horizon: Zero Dawn (aware its basically first party) so that isn't an issue. The problem arises when no big guns arrive on Nintendo's console as well. I want it to do well and I want to buy it. If people don't buy it and the sales don't come in, then third parties wont make games for it...and we know what happens then.
I like the looks of the coming games, since I do love me my RPGs. But there's still some crucial details that Nintendo are keeping in secrecy, and as time creeps by, it becomes less certain that we're going to hear about those before launch.
I'd like to know more plans from some of these developers, such as if that illustrious Assassin's Creed Egypt is a thing or not.
Was discussing upcoming JRPG at dinner with the family last night, Ni No Kuni 2, DQ11, Kingdom Hearts 3, XC2, FFVII Remastered. Switch is getting 2 of those, supposedly this year, XC2 and DQ11, but we really don't know much about those either. I'm not even sure DQ11 will be closer to the PS4 version than the 3DS version. NNK2 and KH2 will likely be PS4 exvlusive, who knows if FF7R ever releases.
I think this is one of the overall problems with launching a console in March, companies aren't talking about holiday 2017 games yet so the future looks barren. Spring and E3 should bring some game news, but we have to wait.
All of the talk of indies does get boring after awhile, and while I sort of agree with others that games like CoD are purchased more on other consoles, I think Switch still needs more than FIFA. Red Dead Redemption 2 will be this year's GTA. Destiny 2. Switch doesn't need every game PS4 and X1 get but half would be nice. Do we even know for sure if Skyrim is closer to the remaster than the original?
FIFA not Madden
COD or Battlefront
Destiny or Titan fall
Witcher 3 of Fallout 4
RDR2 or ME:A
A racing game like Forza or Gran Turismo
Switch needs more of a rallying cry than just "The indies are coming, the indies are coming!" Name recognition is important.
Fortunately Switch has Zelda at launch, then Mario Kart and Spla2oon, so it doesn't need them right now, but shut up already about the indies and other games that are coming, either tell us the names or shut up. We've had 2 full years now of NX anticipation, just spill the facts, enough riddles.
Well probably more indie support than triple A big studio games. Better than nothing but still not expecting the big guns...
@rjejr Going by what that particular Titanfall developer said in laughing off the Switch, you can scrap that one from the list, I'm afraid.
@rjejr
Exactly nintendo has been quiet for two years they should have way more I the pipeline then what's been shown secrecy is becoming their Achilles heel rather than helping boost excitement. No VC info nothing said about online services yet. Not many games from3rd parties to get ourv attention. They are always quiet about the specs of their console gpu/cpu. I'm waiting until more secrets are revealed before i make the jump
@UK-Nintendo
Hahaha...Mario Party 3. XD
Sounds nice, but they haven't announced many third-party titles yet.
Starting to lose hope a little for a final direct. Oh well.
@Yosher I smell a direct coming this in a week.
My wish list for 3rd party:
1. The Sims 4 (by EA)
2. Story of Seasons Switch (by Marvelous)
3. GoVacation 2 ??? (by Bandai Namco)
4. any kind of cute RPG like Fantasy Life (by Level 5)
5. Chibi Boxing games
6. Collaboration between Disney characters and Japanese developers
7. Rhythm games
8. 3D platformer with human as main character
9. Any kind of Music Maker games like KORG series
10. Cute futuristic games with design somewhat like Spectrobes Wii settings.
I wish they'd just announce them instead of telling us they have some to announce...
We really need a new Direct with those announcements. I'm happy with Zelda and I Am Setsuna, since those will tide me over for a good while, but I'd like more variety a little more in the catalogue to choose from.
@Anti-Matter It helps to create a list of less than 4 games, so you will never meet disappointment. Unless you won't be disappointed by any news.
@18wonders yeah, lol, I figured. Again, my comment was to be a little funny, but I am looking forward to many of the third party games. Some of them outclass first party sometimes
This is why I haven't committed to purchasing a Switch. Show me the major 3rd party support and something awesome outside of upgraded ports. I'm just going to purchase Zelda BOTW for Wii U and cross my fingers for a multiple console sellers to sway me.
I think that the devs will wait the sells of Switch before to announce much games, obviously, for now Nintendo will grow the unity base with their first-party. Maybe Switch should reaches more of 10mln in this year, imho
ps. In Italy the advertising of Switch is alredy started, good Nintendo!.
@DonkeyKongBigBoy Exactly. And not to mention that this version of Street Fighter is completely new, so no one has actually played it yet, but as expected, all the little negative worms come creeping out of the woodwork yet again to criticize things they have no solid information on but assume will end up bad anyway...
I understand it can be annoying, especially with all the cloak and dagger stuff from characters like Reggie, but why ALWAYS negative? No excitement, joy, positivity or even the slightest bit of hope. Just moaning, nagging and complaining. It's so short-sighted. It's sad, really...
A more neutral wait and see approach is apparently far too much to ask nowadays, so let's just all be negative, because it's okay to nag about every bit of gas that Nintendo passes...
I like the launch day line-up. Zelda on the go is perfect!
@Phin68 "If you had more third-party support ready, then why hasn't it been shown off yet?"
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2017/02/09/09-roll-safe.w710.h473.2x.jpg
@ThanosReXXX I know I'm so hyped for the Switch! I haven't been this hyped for a console since the original PlayStation!
Give me a Godzilla fighting game like the one on Gamecube and I will be happy
What's everyone worried about? I thought nobody buys Nintendo consoles for 3rd party games. Right guys?!
@ThanosReXXX Its far too fun to poke at the negative more than to look at the positive.
@Shellcore I think you've underestimated the sort of people I'm talking about.
They weren't just expressing concern... they were just badmouthing the console, and using the limited line-up as an excuse to do so.
A limited line-up does not make the console itself bad, which is what they were saying... it could make a good console struggle to get started, but that's it.
They wouldn't listen to anything good anyone had to say about the Switch... they'd just respond to everything with "it's crap" or "it's got no games"... and when asked to back up their argument that 'everyone' was saying that, they'd just refer to articles expressing concern by the sort of people you were referring to, which don't actually support their argument.
But the morons who were listening to them didn't care... they couldn't be bothered to actually read the article... they just saw that it mentioned the limited line-up and were accepting it as being true.
@00Wyvern Well, I don't know about you, but I can't see the fun in it at all. Constructive criticism is something I'm fine with, baseless nagging not so much...
@ThanosReXXX Exactly! This new version of a classic Street Fighter game is insane!
@Kunteper glad somebody has noticed,doing my head in.
@DragonEleven Exactly. The phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" comes to mind. More people should get a handle on that frame of mind...
@ThanosReXXX I've not felt the genuine kind of "hype" or excitement for anything in a long time. It'd probably take Monster Hunter for Switch to cause that to happen. Might be getting old.
I for one will not be buying Street Fighter for different reasons (I returned Pokken for the same reason), but why do you think Nintendo is still sticking to this, as you call it, "cloak and dagger" thing? Wouldn't it help them to generate more excitement and momentum by informing us, rather than playing Zorro?
E3 here we come
To all the nay sayers and doubters, HA...... eat your words.......................................................................
@remag Can you blame those who doubt, when you consider everything Nintendo still hasn't told us?
@gatorboi352 I'd say it's about time for a Switch in that mindset.
@DragonEleven I agree that there are people bagging on the console with no goal but to downplay something to get a rise from others. Glad we can both differentiate between people who just aim to upset, and others who care but would like to know more.
@UmniKnight I don't know how old you are, but I'm 46 and I see no reason to be overly negative yet. I'm not over the moon or on any hype train, just in a slightly optimistic wait and see mode.
P.S.
Cloak and dagger means being secretive. Has nothing to do with actual capes and swords, let alone Zorro...
@ThanosReXXX Well, you know how Zorro is quite the mystery man, right? I mean, you're old enough to have seen it at it's time of release xD. As for me, I am 25, but I feel I'm rather out of touch with today's generation of gamers, so I feel more like I'm 60+.
I'd just like some more certainties, and personally, I am fighting conflicting thoughts as to the Switch. I'm looking for the Wii-U's successor, a home-console, and the Switch is the only thing in this department. Being marketed as a home-console, yet striking more the look, and power, of a souped-up handheld, with a dock that's 90% plastic, 10% tech I don't know how to feel about it. I'll probably enjoy the feel, and the games, but the nagging feeling that some serious sacrifices have been made for the handheld part of this supposed, by Nintendo's own words "home-console" will linger for a long time. Unless Nintendo themselves make efforts to dispel such thoughts.
@Monkeyofthefunk well said!
@Anti-Matter a music maker would work so well! Specially with motion controls , something I'm not normally that excited about. But air drumming and holding an air guitar etc should work well with the more refined motion tech and the HD Rumble.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE you beat me to posting this link of interest to me was the comments. I like hanging out here because it's mostly Nintendo fans sharing their passion and criticism on a company we (mostly) love. The guardian is (reasonably) mainstream so the comments are more reflective of a basic gamer/gadget fan. Definitely seems to be a general feeling of being of interest but will wait and see how the games and pricing develop. Me? Day one and excited!
@00Wyvern
Well....at least 1 of my 10 wish list will come true (Story of Seasons for Switch, officially announced).
@KIRO Smart man. Pretty darn smart.
The comparison between Switch lineup and what is coming out the same period on Ps4 is embarassing fot the Nintendo console. Even if I wanted a Switch at launch there are simply too many great games on Sony console coming (or just arrived)
"Steady flow of stock" Uh huh. Sure, whatever you say Nintendo. -_-
@Anti-Matter You gotz that optimismmmmmmmm yeah, yeah, YEAH! I truly respect that, i do.
@Kunteper Because he secretly love everything Nintendo but is a very cranky and negative person in real life. I got a theory that he works for Nintendo life and is here to generate traffic with his negative comments but who knows. He's been doing that for as long as I have been on this site and the moderators support him, so it's usually better to just ignore his comments.
@arnoldlayne83
Switch launch line-up> Ps4 launch line-up.
@Kdaesung
Usually when people spend $300 on a new system they will buy at least 2-3 games. 1-2 switch, bomberman, and street fighter will almost certainly sell well at launch because their aren't great options for a 2nd game.
@UmniKnight I agree on feeling out of touch, although maybe we should turn that around. These so-called "gamers" nowadays are actually out of touch with what gaming is all about:
1). It's a hobby, so nothing to get so worked up about
2). Gaming is not about being a multi-media device
3). Gaming is about more than graphics resolutions and frame rate
4). They can't satisfy everyone, so there's ALWAYS going to be something left to desire
5). If you don't like it, you don't HAVE to buy it
@ThanosReXXX
"The phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" comes to mind. "
That's true in general, but for Nintendo the last couple of generations no announcements have meant no content from most of the big third parties. Plus no one is as secretive as Nintendo. Most third parties get the hype train rolling several months if not years before releasing a product. It's not to say there will be no third parties on Switch, but it does feel there won't be any big reveals for 2017 from third parties. At least from a AAA standpoint.
@00Wyvern believe it.
And anyway I was talking about feb-mar 2017 releases, not lineups
I'm not convinced, expecting there'll be plenty of droughts at least until holiday 2017 as if there really is lots of support coming it'll probably mostly be revealed at E3 so Nintendo isn't forgotten about due to the Scorpio/PS4 hype train.
Really hope I can get one within launch month :/
Yes it does! And I don't mean Indy titles
@Kdaesung I agree wholeheartedly. 2017 as a whole is unusually healthy looking for a launch year, with no obvious droughts. Nobody really wants to compete with Zelda. I do believe that's why a lot of games have marked themselves as "March" instead of launch day.
I do think it's going to be one of the best year ones a Nintendo console has had for a game library if everything gets out on schedule. Year two depends on the sales.
@GamePerson19
I thought I had dreamed that game. Destroy all monsters. My cousin had that I played it with him a few times, blast from the past.
My main third party dream title for the Switch right now? Rocket League. PLEASE make it happen! I would love to be able to play that on Switch, and especially on the go.
I swear I'm going find Reggie and put him in a headlock until he tells me whats happening with Virtual Console!
@18wonders Sorry...just happened to see on Gamefaqs.com, that it was also listed for PS4 and XBONE. It could be wrong, just happened to see it. If it's an exclusive for Switch, then it's definitely one I'll get...whenever I get the Switch.
I wish they would stop conflating "3rd party" with "indie" as though they're the same thing. 3rd party implies large professional studios making product s for the platform. Indie is what it says, small projects, often amateur.
Granted there's no happy middle. The big studios run generic same-y games filled with bugs, and indie games feel cheap and unpolished. What happened to the game market of the 90's where "small professional studios" could be a thing. There's a few of them out there, but so many have been lost.
As excited as I am, I can understand those with concerns. Basically theSwitch needs more than indies, even if some of the indies look a lot of fun. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for 1/4 of games on other systems to get ported. I have a PS4 for those but not everyone can get multiple consoles.
The bigger thing to me is hoping that their are 3rd party games made just for Switch. These would take advantage of the system much better than a watered down port. I personally am counting down the day I can take FIFA with me to work, but give me a top notch title developed by level 5, atlus, or sega for the Switch and go ahead and take my wallet with you on the way out.
Patience will be the name of the game. I don't see anything huge announced before E3. Doesn't mean a Switch direct in the next 2 weeks wouldn't go a long way to answering questions.
@FragRed was on Gamefaqs.com listed as a game coming to PS4 and XBONE. It may just be a timed exclusive for Switch or it could be just Gamefaqs doing their normal adding a game and showing it as cancelled later (they did it with quite a few PS3 and Wii games in the past). It is a site though that I've found quite a few that were only released over seas for the systems though...even though a few didn't play on my systems, but I'm thinking it could just be a timed exclusive for the system...just my opinion into reading something that could be wrong though.
@cleveland124 It's true that they are the most secretive, hence my "cloak and dagger" remark in a previous comment, but they have chosen a new path, are making good progress in their marketing campaign and seem to have gotten several other messages as well, even though they could have announced a bit more, so I want to stress that I'm not denying that.
Having said that, there's no need for baseless negativity, and all it's supposedly based upon, is things that Nintendo has done in the past, which is hardly a good frame of reference. But because it IS the only frame reference we have, of course, that's why it is probably so easy to look back to it and expect the exact same outcome, but we can't and shouldn't compare this to the Wii or Wii U era, because it's already different, and there are plenty of signs that point to that.
Also, results of the past are no guarantee for the future, and that goes both ways, so there's just not anything conclusive to say on the matter (yet), which is why I will stay in a wait and see mode rather than to bash every little word that Nintendo utters. That truly is ridiculous and petty.
I'm not a vindictive person by nature, but one side of me somewhere in the back of my mind truly hopes that all of these negative Nancy's are going to fall flat on their face and will have to eat humble pie and finally hold their tongues for once, because constant negativity without any constructive word in it is not only dumb, it's also useless because it doesn't fix anything.
Sad thing is that even if all their "demands" are met, they'll probably still find something new to complain about, because that's just how it seems to work these days. It sometimes makes me long for the days without internet and just one or two game magazines a month, and no anonymous keyboard warriors spouting all their useless bile all over the comments sections...
@NEStalgia Well, it's not like their lying: anything not from Nintendo or their partners is third party software. That people seem to think that third party only translates to big companies and their titles is their problem, not Nintendo's.
As I was reading on Konami's website, Super Bomberman R is coming to Switch for the launch...other plans of it's release are to be mentioned later. It is shown with a release date for the PS4 store at the end of the year, so it's just a timed exclusive for Switch right now. I'd love to have this game, but the price is keeping me away, as I see it going down to $20 in the near future, but it should do and sell well as there is not much that looks as good (with the exception of Zelda) coming at launch for the Switch...something tells me this and Zelda will be the games I pick up, unless I know a little more about the Binding Of Isaac...the video for that one doesn't really show a lot and the description doesn't really tell me a lot either.
@Rumncoke25 That's the same thing I was saying. I own a PS4 too, so I'm not in the way of ported-down titles, but I want exclusives by 3rd parties.
I'll believe the 3rd party support when I actually see it.
And there actually ARE a lot of titles coming, so nothing to complain here, move along...
That's 103 titles in total.
Big version for a better view:
https://s30.postimg.org/n49ifw2bl/Switch_releases_2017.jpg
@ThanosReXXX It's technically true, but it's a bit of misdirection. And I'm not referring to big AAA western games (I'm not one of THOSE people ), SMT5, Octopath, Puyo Tetris etc. still fall in line with 3rd parties from professional studios.
I just think it's a little intentionally misleading on their part to say "3rd party" and refer to amateur garage productions and non-retail games (I'm hesitant to say retail versus non since some large productions like Ace Attorney end up download only in the West, though it's retail in Japan.) It comes across as "Of COURSE this time we're paying attention to what 3rd parties want. Lookie here, there's Bobs Big Bubble Burster. Kenny, the developer said his computer teacher was really impressed! Please look forward to Fire Emblem in 2018."
Indies are their own thing, a relatively new thing, and present their own product type at their own price point. Nintendo certainly knows what they're doing when they group it all as one for appearances. I'd much rather see them be honest about what's what. It's not like they don't have real third parties, they do. I realize those parties aren't making announcements in Feb, but this was a forward-looking statement from the start addressing that. Why use indies as your lead interview response? It actually makes the situation sound worse than it is. It sounds like a dodge because they don't have real third parties, which I don't believe is the case.
@ThanosReXXX BTW, where did that infographic come from? I noticed SMT was on it, and it looks like it's an NoA graphic. "Officially" SMT5 was only confirmed for Japan, so if you got this from NoA it would be awesome to see it officially appear.
SMT games are a reason to buy a console, no exceptions I still wish Persona 5 was coming to Switch. I know it's unofficially officially a Sony franchise, but it would have been such perfect hardware for it. I have it on preorder, but I fear I'll end up always putting off playing it, preferring to play something on Switch instead.
I'M EXCITED!
@NEStalgia First off: who says they were talking about indies? They haven't really gone into detail, so even though this is probably the case for most of the titles, it is still a baseless assumption to consider the worst from the moment that statement was published.
And I don't agree with you AT ALL that indies are some sort of separate class. They've been in the public eye for well over 16 years, and have been around for even longer than that, offering their games on BBS boards and what not, so Indies are a well-established part of the third party community.
That's like saying that when Nintendo says it has a garage full of cars but we find out they're "only" Ford Fiestas then they aren't "real" cars because they aren't a BMW or a Mercedes, which would be equally ridiculous.
And that leads us to the undeniable conclusion that Nintendo are NOT lying or misleading us, but simply stating facts, without going into detail, as they so often do, so nothing out of the ordinary there. It's more that people/gamers are misleading themselves because they are making ridiculous demands that they actually know full well that Nintendo is never going to fulfill or will only partially fulfill.
As for that infographic: it comes from a slide, I do believe it was from one of the presentations, but I just screen printed it from a YouTube video that was also addressing the baseless negativity surrounding "how few titles are coming to the Switch"...
If the system is released with 50 games poor Mr Buyer only has funds for two maybe three games of which Zelda is number one choice leaving a hell of a lot of games with poor sales then we will get the old head line Nintendo consoles only sells Nintendo games so a steady release of games gives up buyers change to buy other games we may have not on the day after all after playing Zelda for 80 hours you will need another game to try this year (lol) - Bomberman got you in my sights 😁😁😁
@JLPick it's been confirmed there's no trophy-like system for the Switch? Too bad, that really adds another layer of feeling accomplished when those platinums pop!
My mind is split on this.
The optimist: Woohoo! More third-party games to woo people to the system!
The pessimist: We hear this about nearly every new console....
@ThanosReXXX So then Thanos, for the sake of discussion, what's your take on the Dock? I would've really liked to have seen some more tech in there, as it seems mostly plastic, which I find a shame, as there's a lot of unused space on it.
And, what do you think the chances are of getting a direct, or in some other way, more news on the details they've been keeping silent on? (Not necessarily paid online, since they do sort of have a free-pass until Fall 2017, since that's when they're not charging yet)
My hopes are ready, Nintendo.
Hopefully the lack of official announcements is a sign that these are actually new games, that just aren't ready to be announced yet. If publishers are giving us ports of games that are a year or 2 old, there's nothing stopping them from telling us what it is, BUT... If these are new games, that aren't ready to be announced for PS4/Xbone either, they can't announce it now just for the sake of giving Nintendo something to say. Especially in the case of yearly franchises, where they're still supporting last year's release. Those will get announced the same time they do every year.
@NEStalgia There's a slightly altered one I just found on the GameSpot forum, comes from a Nintendo Switch Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/nintendoswitchc?lang=en
@UmniKnight My take on the dock is that I agree with people that it's too expensive and I also agree with you that it could have contained some more tech, but as someone else has also said before, and was even posted here in an article, all these separate parts do make it easy to incrementally upgrade the system and future proof it, so a dock 2.0 that actually DOES contain extra power, or maybe that infamous SCD built-in could come in a few years to upgrade the system to better standards.
Chances of a Direct before the E3 seem realistic, although you can almost never tell with Nintendo. Next month or April would seem a logical time to do (at least) one more Direct before the E3, but it will all depend on what they still have to show us or what they are willing to show us.
Maybe they want to save it all for the E3 to make a big splash there, although it could be argued that they could at least spill some of the beans or give up some hints to appease the aggressive mobs with their torches and pitchforks...
@BiasedSonyFan Indeed...
@ThanosReXXX I think I'm, in my mind, attaching a few separate interviews with Takahashi, Koizumi, and Takeda. But his use of Snipperclips (not indie, but not a retail game), followed by the indies discussion, and their use of other mentions in other interviews of 3rd parties and they always leap to discuss indies and these eShop games.
For the record, NO I'm not talking about big Western AAA's, or other huge games. Simply professionally made retail games (the main point of the console, of course.) Some eShip games can be included in the retail games category (the ones explicitly priced as retail games. Snipper Clips actually can apply, we don't know price point yet, but it's getting retail level support and coverage and is a firm studio behind it.)
So yeah I'm well aware of the unreasonable expectations. I think you're assuming I'm referring to that type of "why doesn't it have what PS4 has?" camp. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm just talking about a statement separating 3rd party retail support of a 3DS-like level (which was excellent) from indies and eshop. And I also am fully aware they can't talk about the 3rd party commercial studios release yet other than to say "they're there."
And indies are certainly a separate category. Otherwise they wouldn't be called "indies" it would just be "games." They wear their special category proudly.
The graphic: Oh, that might be a general Japan slide then. Hard to tell though. I'm sure SMT will be coming here eventually, I just got excited for a moment seeing it on what might have been an NoA slide.
@BiasedSonyFan LOL, indeed. I'm guessing they either want an XBox that says Nintendo on the lid for nostalgia, or want an XBox that can play Nintendo franchises too (too cheap to buy a Nintendo as well, but not cheap enough to not buy COD every year?), Or just want a Nintendo that plays COD/Uncharted/Whatever, and are too cheap to buy a PS4, but not cheap enough to not buy Super Mario World every other year for 20 years
Edit: I should join that chorus, because, for my money, the Nintendo hardware is simply superior. Switch is my dream form factor, and I want all my Sony games on Nintendo now. I should stir the pot on Push Square
My preorder is on lock. And I'm getting Zelda and bomberman. Both will tide me over nicely.
@Phin68 And WHERE is the eShop and mobile app information as well?! Nintendo needs to get its act together!
Considering most of these announcements will be Japanese games and indies, I have no trouble believing it. I have no issue with that though, as those are what I want. Not really interested in the big western AAA third party games these days. Only ones I want are South Park, the Crash remaster, and Red Dead.
Also, this is far more believable coming from Koizumi than Reggie.
@Ryu_Niiyama There's still plenty of time for something to go wrong with those preorders. I'm getting more nervous as it gets closer after the reports of random cancellations at both GS and Target.
It'll probably be fine....but I'll feel a lot better after I have it in my hands.
@NEStalgia Indies are only separate in the sense that they are independent developers, hence their label "Indies", but they are very much a part of the third party developers segment, there's no argument possible there.
And if you take a look at those infographics then there's plenty of high value software on it, also from Indies. Unless of course we are going to make yet another unfair distinction between games that are only released digitally instead of physically...
@Tyranexx
"The optimist: Woohoo! More third-party games to woo people to the system!
The pessimist: We hear this about nearly every new console...."
That basically covers it. Both positions are entirely justified as well.
@BiasedSonyFan
The Switch is a very powerful portable. I don't know why people wouldn't want AAA games on it since it provides something the PS4 doesn't.
@LegendOfPokemon
"And WHERE is the eShop and mobile app information as well?! Nintendo needs to get its act together!"
Agreed
@BiasedSonyFan
The PS4's portable now? Amazing.
@JLPick hate to pop your bubble super Bomberman R is switch only.google it.i did before I made this comment
@ThanosReXXX
I don't want you wishing me to fall on my face I'll stop after I add one comment on your infographic.
The Gamecube had 20 games in the first month and a half then had 147 games in 2002 and is generally thought to be a poorly supported system. Of course I loved the Gamecube which means that qaulity is the most important thing instead of raw numbers and qaulity is subjective. That said the amount of ports on the list does concern me. The game most likely to push me towards a Switch purchase is Mario Odyssey but I'm hoping for something else before that.
@ThanosReXXX And what's your take on the Switch, as a whole? I've heard many people say it's a handheld that docks to your TV, yet that's confusing as Nintendo markets it as a home-console, made even weirder by them saying it will co-exist with 3DS (for now).
Handheld people can choose between 3DS and Switch, home-console people, when wanting to play Nintendo first party, along with third-party, have no choice but to "Switch".
I believe Nintendo is playing their 3rd party hand in a smarter way this time around. They have a lot to prove to AAA development studios. AAA games have not sold well on Nintendo platforms in the past. The longer Nintendo holds off on releasing these games the larger the Switch install base will be. This will only increase the chance of sales.
The first year of Switch sales will be good with or without 3rd parties. It will mostly be Nintendo fans buying the console for the first 6 months. We all know what type of game these fans will buy at launch "Myself Included".
Nintendo could have had lousy ports for the launch of the switch. Why repeat the Wii U debut? I see the lack of these games as a good sign. Hopefully everyone will consider buying larger 3rd party games later this year when they surface.
@cleveland124 Wouldn't want you to fall on your face either, even if it's only a figure of speech, since you are actually one of the few that are at least a bit more contemplative and thoughtful in nature instead of just being negative.
It's like I said: constructive criticism on any topic is just fine, so that includes gaming, but baseless negativity is neither wanted nor useful in any way.
As far as that list is concerned: it was said that this is only the list of games known so far, and there are more to be announced. Don't ask me why they haven't done that yet, I don't have a seat at Nintendo's board, but they'll undoubtedly have their reasons.
All I see is a cautious line up on one hand, but a lot of good actions, such as a FAR superior marketing campaign and a decent hardware platform that should indeed be a lot easier to develop for than the Wii U on the other hand.
To me, that is more than enough reason to be cautiously optimistic and I'll reserve my final judgment until after this year's E3, because it will probably be by then that all or most of the currently still unknown factors will be revealed.
@ThanosReXXX Generally indie games represent a very different market. They are generally pretty low budget amateur made games. They generally run at a lower price point (by far) commensurate with that reality. Bomberman R represents, not a "western AAA game" but a polished professional product. Yes, I do believe it's overpriced and should have been an eShop game, glad it's physical personally though, but it's still a professional output game based on what we've seen (won't know for sure for a few weeks.)
I think that's getting into a whole different argument, but for many consumers, myself included, "indie" games don't provide an appropriate level of polish to view them as anything but the "budget games." Some of them are creative, some of them try new things, and before you point it out, of course there are a few handfuls of indie games that come out way over the average quality of the genre and can stand on their own as a "proper" game. There will be examples that don't neatly fall into a category. But indies, in general, on average, are a different production than commercial titles.
But without arguing about opinions on indie games, which those two camps will never agree on, it's safe to say they're different products for different markets, and representing them along with professionally produced products is the kind of gap-filling shtick they tried with WiiU. "Look at all these games! (What about retail games?) Well, no, none of those, but look at all these low budget games made by very dedicated amateurs! If you're a good person you'll support them!"
Now, if we were talking about AAA western games, of course you could say "those are pretty amateurish in gameplay design too"....which would be very very true I give no passes to the Western AAAs. Their budgets are high, their quality is low. No punches pulled on that one!
@NEStalgia
I wish they would as well. At this point, after so many major third parties have said they have "no plans" for porting their big games to the Switch, it's reasonable to assume that Nintendo is doing it for a reason.
The reason is that indies are likely going to be a majority of third party, non-Nintendo support.
@ThanosReXXX "As far as that list is concerned: it was said that this is only the list of games known so far, and there are more to be announced. Don't ask me why they haven't done that yet, I don't have a seat at Nintendo's board, but they'll undoubtedly have their reasons."
Remember the awesome E3 2014 that showed new game after new game? Then remember E3 2015 when they showed...all the same games? And then E3 2016 when they showed....the remainder of the same games that hadn't come out yet?
Yep, in terms of 1st party games, I think the list contains pretty much everything for the '17-'18 timeline, but I think they're reserving one or two announcements for E3 to keep momentum and stem backlash. Back with E3 '14 Nintendo could do no wrong. By 15, the fickle fans hated them for getting it all wrong. Guaranteed all they have to do at '17 is say "Metroid Prime!" and everyone griping in this thread will be praising Switch as the most awesome thing ever. (Until the following Jan when same people complain about not having a sequel announced.)
I think most of the difference is the Western (&JP) AAA's that WILL be supporting Switch really can't announce anything now, because if it's truly multiplat, their announce window is E3 or just before. So those games "don't exist" yet for any platform. That will indeed be the moment of truth. Watching the big publishers expos and seeing if there's any "PC, PS4, XBox One, and Nintendo Switch" announcements. I suspect most of the big pubs will have one "big" game they experiment with Switch on, probably for the 2018 timeline though.
Nintendo Switch Will Have A "Lot More Announcements" on Third-Party Games Soon
The proof of the pudding and all that...
@SharkAttackU Nah, I don't think indies will be the majority support (well, in quantity they are on every platform, but not in terms of presence.)
I wouldn't bank on tremendous AAA western publishers support, I think there will be more than WiiU but AAAs and Nintendo are still water & oil. But I think Nintendo isn't intending Switch to be a big iPhone either. Nintendo handhelds have long had a niche of dedicated commercial, mostly Japanese "single-A" budget games, and I certainly imagine that continuing on Switch ("Home console" or not.)
About the Western AAA's, yeah, they're not going to come in force, but I think they'll test the waters again as they always do. And meet with more success than WiiU. The existing games that they've said are not coming to Switch are games that have been in development for years, and a last minute pivot to add a new platform is the last thing those teams need as they get into crunch time to finish up. Games we already know about never stood a chance of making it to Switch even if it was "the next XBox." It's the games we don't yet know about that are more likely to come. I was actually surprised to see Steep from Ubisoft announced early. Though they have a closer relationship with Nintendo than most, and certainly were among the first outside Japan to get a dev kit.
Lol Nintendo can just make the official tag line: "please understand"
Switch: please understand
@BiasedSonyFan Yeah, the sports games have been a big gap in Nintendo's lineup and it seems they're aware of that and actively courting the big sports publishers. I definitely think they're working to close that gap (and sports games have big appeal to casual gamers, which is a big market Nintendo aims at.)
I also agree CoD has a sufficient Nintendo history with sufficient sales prior to WiiU, that that's probably an easy win for Nintendo/Acti (and the great relationship with the dying Skylanders needs something to fall back on.)
I think RL & Overwatch would be an interesting fit on Switch. Taps into the Splatoon audience well. And the mobile play could work well for it.
I think each publisher will probably soul search to fine 2 or 3 franchises they see as meshing with Nintendo and try to see where it goes. Ubi: Steep, AC, probably something new or revived. Activision: Maybe Overwatch, CoD.....crazy thought: WoW, though that's so played out. I think a lot of devs will see the quick multiplayer games as great potential success stories on Switch since you can't do that "instant lan party on the go" kind of thing with any other platform. But I also think the big RPG/sandbox/epic/MMO devs might see the portable potential (with Bethesda kicking off that line of thinking.) I hope Skyrim does well (or well enough for what it is) as that could trigger an influx of consumers and devs realizing the big games work well on the hybrid. It depends how well they can sell the idea off the backs of BotW and Skyrim. Adding portability to massive games could be a huge market boost for them as the sheer size and time dedication of the games turns off a lot of players that might be interested if it was a moving activity.
I do think that depends on the success of Skyrim though, which is unfortunate since it's not exactly a new kid on the block.
@UmniKnight Well, I won't say it's simple to decide, since a lot of people are either in the handheld or home console camp, but to me it's simply a hybrid, because it's a somewhat under-powered home console AND it's a really powerful handheld all in one, and there are all kinds of different setups, which makes it (kind of) clear that we're not dealing with a typical "either/or" here.
@rjejr has coined the word "tribrid" because of its multiple setups. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's actually kind of growing on me...
@NEStalgia Shrugs. I consider myself a positive realist (positive but still practical) in general so I'm not really worried. I've never had a launch go wrong, although this is my first system purchase from Amazon. But I've never had an issue with getting games so I expect the same result. That reminds me, I need to cancel my Gamestop order of Zelda. Either way at the end of the day... It is a game. Everything will be alright.
I have to work (new job) and I can't take off yet. Thank Iwata that the Switch launches on a Friday. I'm not doing ANYTHING when I get home.
@ThanosReXXX Haha, I can see how that works aye. Could you perhaps indulge me in putting my nagging feeling to rest, that major sacrifices on the home-console front have been made to get it's handheld component?
I will pick the system up on March 3rd, and I really hope the Switch grows into it's own as a machine worthy of being called a hybrid, but right now, I see a handheld that can connect to your TV, and as a home-console gamer that uses his 3DS for on-the-go, that isn't very appealing.
@NEStalgia There's so many Indies that could walk toe to toe with those "real" third party titles that I simply cannot agree with you.
Snake Pass, Yooka-Laylee, Oceanhorn, Rime and such are all prime examples of bigger or professionally produced games that can easily rival or even outperform other third party offerings. In the case of Yooka-Laylee that is more than likely dead certain.
Personally, I don't think that Nintendo announcing one single game extra, like Metroid or F-Zero, will appease the angry mob, and if it does, then all (or at least most) of them are a bunch of lousy hypocrites, because one more game certainly isn't going to tip the scales from "bad line up" to wonderful line up, so that seems highly unlikely to me.
Of course people will be happy and most of them, myself included, will welcome a new Metroid, but logically speaking, that single game should not be able to change their minds on the Switch or its line up of games and/or support.
And that mindset of "remember 20xx?" is EXACTLY what I've been trying to drive home in so many comments already:
IT. DOESN'T.COUNT.
We're living in 2017, I don't give a rat's @ss about what happened with the Wii or the Wii U, that's in the past, Nintendo has gone on a different/new path, their marketing is miles ahead of what it has been for the last decade, and like I also already said: results of the past aren't a guarantee for the future, both in a good or in a bad way, so it can still go in ANY direction.
But people keep on harping about how bad it went with the Wii U when third parties were also promising all kinds of support and titles, but even in that first infographic, there is already more promise than there ever was for the Wii U, and then there's also the list of confirmed developers, which is also much more diverse and bigger than we've ever seen on any Nintendo console since decades.
Just to remind you, here is just a sampling of that list, comprised of about a third of them:
http://images.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/there_are_now_over_100_games_from_70plus_developers_in_the_works_for_nintendo_switch/attachment/0/original.jpg
Just compare that to the Wii U's initial list:
http://gimmegimmegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/nintendo-briefing6_1661862c.jpg
A stark difference and one that should already show you that we're not looking at a similar situation AT ALL.
Look at the current situation, and look FORWARD, not backwards. That's not objective and certainly not constructive...
@BiasedSonyFan
Yes but the PS4 isn't portable and the switch being a hybrid is, so you can see why....Oh no, to be fair you probably cant.
@cleveland124 a
Ports are the way of the world now though. How many third-party console exclusives are there at the minute?
@NEStalgia
Rocket League would be a great fit (and is a superb game). I have a sneaking suspicion we might see AC and COD (even if the latter is just Remasters). Plus while we're talking about games that have built up a bit of a relationship with Nintendo users, surely Watch Dogs 2 is a cert after the originals roaring suc....No can't do it.... Hahahahahaha
@UmniKnight Sure, just look at it as if you're playing the same game on two PC's: one is a mid-range PC, and the other is a higher ranged PC (not going to pretend Xbox One and PS4 are any more than that, because a true game PC will totally destroy them).
You can play the exact same game on the both of them, except you will have to lower certain settings on the mid-range PC, but other than that, it's going to be the same experience overall.
Having support for most, if not all modern game engines, and this time around not only having those engines, such as Unreal Engine 4, but also the official support of Epic Games themselves (which means FAR better support and cooperation with bringing Unreal Engine games to the Switch) the Switch is already leagues ahead of where the Wii U ever was.
Wii U had some Unreal Engine (3.5xx) games, but was never officially supported, so that is a MASSIVE difference. It also showed because almost none of these games were fully optimized towards the Wii U's hardware, which was more focused around the GPGPU instead of the other console's more CPU centered architecture, resulting in poor ports of Xbox 360/PS3 games, that for all intents and purposes should have looked quite a bit better on the Wii U, but they didn't...
So, I don't believe that MAJOR sacrifices have been made at all, only medium level ones, and with the scaling abilities of all the engines and the Switch's ability to run games in 1080p/60fps on the TV, it really won't look half as bad as some people seem to think or fear...
And they could even offer a Nintendo alternative to Nvidia's GeForceNow service, which allows you to play all those third party games that the other two consoles also offer, which is something that the old Nvidia Shield could already do, so that may be a very real possibility as well.
Just look up Nvidia Shield TV game streaming on YouTube, and be amazed at what is on offer and what the hardware can do.
And then combine that with the fact that the Switch has more memory than the Shield and it probably also has a more custom chipset, but at the very least it has its own custom API to get more out of the hardware, and contrary to the Shield, the Switch doesn't need to run an Android layer: the Operating System of the Switch looks very sleek and streamlined and is supposedly running on a Unix/Linux fork, making it possible to program "closer to the metal", which is yet another way of getting more out of the hardware.
All those factors combined actually make this a pretty decent device, and it's actually quite an achievement how they were able to put all of this in such a small form factor, and I suspect it will be able to do more than most people on here are now thinking.
Would that be enough to give you some piece of mind?
@ThanosReXXX Your explanation makes sense, and it's something I can reason with. I would've liked more information on stronger docks/other ways to empower the Switch. I'm sure you can understand that, personally, there's little extra value to be had for someone like me, that will leave their Switch in the dock for 90% of the time.
@electrolite77
AC I almost assume as a given. Ubi generally places great faith in Nintendo launch windows, and AC is their most "mass market appeal" brand. Assuming there's a new AC this year, that is.
You almost got me on the W_D thing though....I was reading this thinking "how could anyone expect W_D when I got to the punch line
@Ryu_Niiyama Ahh, you got yours on Amazon, that's right. Not that nothing ever goes wrong with Amazon, but yeah, I'd feel a lot more safe there. I forgot about that. I've got GS, and there have been reports of random cancellations from them and Target. I got 3DS and WiiU there on preorder....WiiU wasn't a problem of course, 3DS arrived...so it's probably good...but I'm still cautiously optimistic!
Don't forget, you need to charge it for (up to) 3 hours or run it on the cable! That's going to be a very painful 3 hours I suppose I can use some of the time to pay final homages to the WiiU before I spend the rest of the time rewiring everything to fish the HDMI cable from the WiiU on the bottom shelf and bring it all (somehow) up to the top where the Gamepad went. I'm out of ports on the HDMI switch, so the WiiU will have to be a designated OffTV machine.
@ThanosReXXX I think you're confusing "B-list publishers" with "indies". The B-list publishers are the types of studios there's now far fewer of than there used to be before the days of the EA/Activision buying sprees. But most of the games you listed are not indies at all. They're professional studios, most with publishers, most releasing retail games. They're the true 3rd parties I'm talking about, not the indies.
Heck even binding of isaac has gone retail + publisher...that's not even indie now (though I personally don't understand their success.)
So that might be where the conflict is coming from: You're calling commercially published games "indies" and using that to support the role of where indies are in the industry
The negative ninnies, a bunch of lousy hypocrites? It can't be, it just can't! Oh I think if that game has a name that starts with Metroid and includes a character named Samus, the hypocrites will be all over it (at least for a month or two.) I think if it's not it'll just further enrage the mob. (Queue: Metroid Prime x Animal Crossing TRPG! )
Hey, hey, hey, don't lump me in with that "WiiU all over again" trash mob, I'm not part of that at all! I'm the group that's happy with Switch and the way it's shaking out, a few qualms about how they were presenting 1-2-Switch and the Joycons in mid-Jan aside. My point of "remember 20xx" wasn't "it's like WiiU all over again", my point was that's a specific error they're going out of their way to not duplicate by staggering their releases and release announcements and a big reason they haven't announced anything else yet.
Just give me my Skyrim, that Dark Souls trilogy on Switch and my Monster Hunter... and I'm good. Honestly I'm good. Well, toss in that Ultra Street Fighter II and Sonic Mania, cause those look slick as they come, and gimme my Tales game. Then I'm good.
Dark Souls trilogy and new console Monster Hunter, both playable in handheld or console... that's my dream.
Of course, 1st party is whole other discussion (need my Fire Emblem, need my Metroid). But that I'm not too worried about.
@UmniKnight It will be powerful enough as is. A lot of current gen ports on both Xbox One and PS4 float in between 900p and 1080p, so as long as the Switch can match that or come close, then differences will be minimal.
I think Skyrim Special Edition will be a good indication of that, once it arrives. Contrary to what people think, that version is from October 2016, so that's pretty recent, and it looks pretty good, even for an enhanced version of an old game, so if they can get that to look more or less on par with the versions on the other two consoles, then the Switch will do just fine...
@NEStalgia Yeah, there's a bit of overlap here and there with companies starting out as indies and then picking up publishers along the way, such as PlayTonic did with Yooka-Laylee, but in essence, they have still developed the game entirely on their own, with only moderate help from Team 17.
But yeah, my bad, partially. But the whole indie debate started because people complained about those games coming only being indies, so most of them are probably making the same mistake that I did, come to think about it.
Yet another fine example of the misconceptions of the general audience. they really DO need to have some sense slapped into them...
Sorry for misreading you about the whole ""remember 20xx" thing, but it seemed like you wanted to use that to point out that back then, it also looked good at first but ended up bad in the end, to signify that the exact same thing can/will happen to the Switch.
And I indeed also see them taking all kinds of measures to not duplicate that disaster, so we actually agree on that one.
@SirRandall lol Banned? For what? Expressing my opinion that you don't like. I don't swear, I don't throw abuse at people. I want Nintendo to succeed, I've been a fan for 30+ years but I see them making so many mistakes.
Calling me a cancer? That's a disgusting and vile thing to say. If you knew what my family and I have been through, as well as countless other families, with that disease.
I would love an announcement from Capcom for a Monster Hunter game for the Switch or FromSoftware announcing a Souls game for the Switch. Both would be immediate buys from me.
@electrolite77
I guess I don't consider simultaneous releases ports. Some of those games have been available for years on other platforms.
I would also like to add my voice of complaint that there are no games available for a console that hasn't been released yet.
What are Nintendo playing at? I mean apart from...
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild(Nintendo, March 3rd)
1-2-Switch (Nintendo, March 3rd)
Just Dance 2017 (Ubisoft, March 3rd)
Skylanders Imaginators (Activision, March 3rd)
Super Bomberman R (Konami, March 3rd)
Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (Nicalis, March 3rd in the US)
I Am Satsuna (Square Enix, March 3rd)
World of Goo (Tomorrow Corporation, March 3rd)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation, March 3rd)
Human Resource Machine (Tomorrow Corporation, March 3rd)
Snipperclips - Cut it out, together! (March 2017)
Splatoon 2 demo global testfire (March 24th-26th)
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (April 28)
ARMS (Spring 2017)
Splatoon 2 (Summer 2017)
Fire Emblem Warriors (autumn 2017)
Pokémon Stars (late 2017)
Super Mario Odyssey (holiday 2017)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (TBC)
New Fire Emblem (2018)
Fast RMX (Shin'en, March 2017)
Has Been Heroes (Frozenbyte, March 2017)
Puyo Puyo Tetris (SEGA, April 28th)
Rime (Tequila Works, May 2017)
Disgaea 5 Complete (NIS America, Spring 2017)
LEGO City Undercover (Warner Bros, Spring 2017)
Sonic Mania (SEGA, Spring 2017)
Snake Pass (Sumo Digital, early 2017)
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, late 2017)
NBA 2K18 (2K, September 2017)
Project Sonic 2017 (SEGA, late 2017)
Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games, 2017)
Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (DotEmu, 2017)
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (FDG Entertainment, 2017)
1001 Spikes (Nicalis, TBC)
Arcade Archives (Hamster, TBC)
Cave Story (Nicalis, TBC)
Constructor (System 3, TBC)
Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia, TBC)
Dragon Quest X (Square Enix, TBC)
Dragon Quest XI (Square Enix, TBC)
Dragon Quest Heroes I and II (Square Enix, TBC)
Dragonball Xenoverse 2 (Namco Bandai, TBC)
EA Sports FIFA (EA, TBC)
Farming Simulator (Focus Home Interactive, TBC)
Graceful Explosion Machine (Vertex Pop, TBC)
LEGO Worlds (TT Games, TBC)
Minecraft: Story Mode - The Compete Adventure (Telltale Games, TBC)
Rayman Legends: Definite Edition (Ubisoft, TBC)
Redout (34BigThings, TBC)
Seasons of Heaven (AnyAny Productions, TBC)
New Shin Megami Tensei (Atlas, Western release unconfirmed)
Stardew Valley (Chucklefish Games, TBC)
State of Mind (Daedalic Entertainment, TBC)
Steep (Ubisoft, TBC)
Syberia 3 (Microids, TBC)
Project Octopath Traveller (Square Enix, TBC)
Taiko Drum Master (Namco Bandai, TBC)
New Travis Touchdown game (Suda 51 / Grasshopper, TBC)
New 'Tales of' RPG (Namco BandaiTBC)
Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers(Capcom, TBC)
...what have Nintendo ever done for us?
(Source:IGN)
Spotted online...
@ThanosReXXX I'm away from home and have barely any internet connection, this is the only page I've been able to load. And I'm glad you've been busy here talking and given me something sensible and positive to read. Good work, thanks
@BiasedSonyFan
I do but there's a few games I'd love to take on a night shift or those trips home to visit family. Sheer selfishness basically 😉
@cleveland124
Ah. I'm with you. Think I misunderstood. My bad.
@ThanosReXXX It all gets pretty confusing because there was this massive paradigm shift around 2000, or around the time the original XBox came out where the whole nature of the industry and its composition started to change. Back in the 90's the publishing model actually meant publishing, and it worked much like the book publishing market. Virtually ALL studios were independent private businesses, and when the game was through a design and prototype phase, they would shop the concept around to publishers, hoping to land a big one, sometimes landing a small one (often landing none), to then invest a substantial sum into the development of a game. A few of the bigger ones became publishers themselves with a few internal subsidiary studios. Flash forward to around 2000 and the big publishers started buying out the studios they used to publish, gutting them, and making them in-house teams, so the publisher and developer was all the same company, the handful of independents were working more under contract rather than under publishing agreement, and the industry started to operate more like film studios than book publishing. Playtonic is one of the last vestiges of the old model (ironically going from "under contract" with Nintendo, to "in house sub team" at MS, to breaking away and going independent, shopping a publisher. They played the last 25 years in reverse.
Generally "indies" no longer really means independent company studios, the few of those that remain (or resurrect/rebrand) are just plain old 3rd parties as they used to be that get lumped in with the actual indies somehow in the mainstream under the new "film studio" model. I'm hoping as the "film studios" capsize under their own bloat the industry can kind of reset to where it was under the book publisher model. It was a lot more vibrant that way. What we call a "publisher" now referring to the big ones, aren't really publishers at all, they're "labels" or "studios" in the record and film model.
So yeah, you're not the only one to get tripped up in that morass in between. True indies are more like Choice (Bit.Trip) and the like. Although even they had publishers and therefore aren't actual indies (that was when phones were bursting on the scene though so it was an odd era.)
Haha, no worries, after reading the endless rants of negativity it's easy to go into Hulk mode and read every post that mentions anything that can be construed as being related with a "MUST DESTROY!!!" mentality. I almost did that to electrolite77 with his joke about Watch_Dogs until I realize it was a joke But yeah, we're in agreement about Nintendo's approach there, and I certainly am not in the group seeing "just like WiiU" at all!
@gcunit Gee, thanks for the compliment, man. Much appreciated. Nice change from all the negativity.
(and just to be clear: not yours, but the general sentiment towards the Switch and its apparently already failed future)
@WiltonRoots @Mii_duck
These are two of the best posts I have ever seen. The bingo chart is hilarious and accurate!
@TreasureFan MH for Switch is almost a guarantee at this point, but they can't very well announce that until they sell through XX on 3DS!
From Software is on the chart, so I can't imagine too many franchises they'd bring over unless they're going with a new IP or Armored Core. IMO, Bloodborne/Souls doesn't mess too well with Nintendo, but then neither does SMT and that does well.
@NEStalgia Well, if there is going to be an "industry reset" let's just hope it's not going to lead to another industry crash...
Nintendo saved everybody's behind the last time that happened, but I don't think they are in the position anymore to do so again...
@ThanosReXXX If Nintendo can teach the Switch to attack people I can start calling it a triffid.
Tribrid will never catch on, but it's certainly what they are going for w/ the Japanese marketing materials - portable, home, tabletop. And tabletop is actually an important part of that equation as it shows off how 2 people can play on 1 system, it's the basis of their tag line "anytime, anywhere with anyone". 2 people can also play docked but portable mode is 1 player. So the portable/home dichotomy is less than what the system is capable of. If it were simply a portable and dock w/ a separate Pro controller, as seen in the 30 second Super Bowl commercial, it would be much less of a device. Those removable Joycon actual are what make it a "platform". You are getting 3 systems in the "Switch" box for $300, not 2.
@ThanosReXXX I'm going to create a dart boards. The white spaces are "industry crash", the black spaces are "reset to safety", the green are "Microsoft destroys gaming" and the red at the center is "Nintendo at the top again."
Honestly though it's 50/50. There are too many games from too many studios at the bottom, including phone games, overwcrowding a market with race to the bottom pricing coming from phones and Steam. That's Atari circa 1981 right there.
At the other end we have the EA/Sony/MS/Activision, etc. behemoths driving expenses up to unreasonable, unsustainable levels, trying to claw their way to added value in every sleazy, heavy handed way imaginable while producing the same products as each other year after year.
Under the bad outcome, the combination of both extremes leads to a complete crash. Gamers both burn out, and lose all sense of value in digital games. It becomes taboo.
Under the ideal outcome, the behemoths capsize under their own ill advised race to recreating live action cinema, the bottom garbage pile vaporizes due to the race to the bottom gutting it's income and consumer disinterest, and things move to the middle with the relics of the behemoths scaling back, and the success stories of the bottom moving up in the world, and end up in the 90's like independent studios & publishers model again.
Option 3 is games become subscription based MMOs and you chose your "film studio" you pay your allegiance to. That might be the scariest of all
@FragRed "Since when has Super Bomberman R been announced for other consoles?"
We should all know that it's exclusive, but unfortunately, there are some people in here who care little about facts.
@Mii_duck You missed Story of Seasons, Marvelous, not sure of release date.
Out of this extensive list, I am definitely buying 9 and have another half dozen or so as maybes (depending on price and reviews). And only a small handful of those are Nintendo games. So much whinging about lack of third party, and yet third parties are everywhere.
@rjejr There's just no pleasing you, is there?
I actually give a thumbs up to your invented word, and there you go with wiping it off the board again... man, what is this world coming to?
As for the Triffids: some of these gamers are plants already, so being sucked up by one wouldn't make that much of a difference.
It would make the comments sections nice and clean, though. And soothingly quiet as well...
Might even be good for the actual gamers among us that simply want to enjoy our hobby without constantly feeling you have to defend yourself for liking it...
@rjejr D-did you just say something promoting the value proposition of the Switch and not even call it a tablet once? Who are you and what did you do with rejjer?
@ThanosReXXX I think we could feed some of these commenters to Audrey II. For the sake of a bit of peace.
@NEStalgia Well, I actually hope that they will just hit a speed bump and calm down again for a bit instead of wanting to go ever higher and faster. Even though I have my own thoughts on certain companies, I wouldn't want any of them to fail or die off, because if any of them falls away, that is almost certainly going to leave an irreparable gap.
And even a scenario in which only Nintendo remains would potentially be very bad, because they would HAVE to get some competition for the market to stay healthy, so we would then have to wonder who the heck is going to come to fill that gap.
Maybe Retroblox...
@DizziParadise - I fear they'd taste a bit sour.
@NEStalgia I will admit that I have an "in" with gamestop (although not so much since I moved cross country) as I am a former assistant manager and I built a network. But I've never had issues with getting systems at launch...even during the wii era. And that was a nightmare. Usually with GS if they over book they will put you on the next shipment. The only time you get cancellations (usually) is online.
@WiltonRoots So I laughed for about ten minutes over that... And then I started thinking of which users fit into each category.
@Mii_duck Stars hasn't been verified has it? I thought that was just wishful thinking from the "third game" people?
@Ryu_Niiyama Well, I ordered online.... I was amazed to get the order in, I didn't get the emails from them, brought the laptop to bed to check it right away in the morning after the presentation and got an order in. They were gone an hour and a half later or less. Amazon was already long, long sold out. Target still had them. Best buy is unknown.
My local GS did have a few preorder slots open by afternoon when I got there, but I didn't switch to a local order since I already had the online one in.
@NEStalgia
I think 10 years ago when the costs to transition to HD were skyrocketing that point of view was common. But right now all of the major players Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft are making money so a collapse seems very unlikely.
I'm not really sure race to the bottom pricing is much of a threat anymore. Sure Steam and PSN sales can get pretty great sometimes, but they are always on older games. $60 is the standard starting price for a large release and that hasn't changed.
Sure the video game industry is competitive and some developers will be forced into bankruptcy but only some, not a large scale like in 1981. And as consumers we only have limited money so we can't really save any company. If you like what a company produces spend money on their games and hope for the best.
@Ryu_Niiyama Print it out, when you get an article like this one just post BINGO! when you get a full line, shouldn't take more than 10 comments.
A Star Fox article will get you a full house in no time whatsoever.
Sadly it's missing Fire Reggie and Miyamoto should step down.
@UmniKnight Well, in spite of not competing in terms of raw power, the Switch's modern architecture will benefit it well with third-parties. 😉
@ThanosReXXX My thanks for your time, Thanos. I'll be looking forward to getting hands on, and seeing how Switch develops. I've got a feeling it's going to be a product that becomes better, and stronger overtime. Both in Dock and the system itself.
I've some lingering worries, but who doesn't? Let's see where it ends.
@UmniKnight You're welcome. And don't get me wrong: it's definitely not all rainbows and unicorns in my mind either, so that's why I'll just sit back for now to let things unfold and see how it all turns out.
We can always bash Nintendo later on if the need arises...
@WiltonRoots I will start doing that. I'll consider the "Fire Reggie" as a free space. I will never understand the hobby of vitriol. I'm not saying that you have to be in love with everything, but if something causes me more annoyance than pleasure... it is time to get a new hobby. But that's me. I hate wasted time. YOLO and all that.
@ThanosReXXX I'm sure there are plenty of clubs we can borrow for the occasion. That said, I hope there shan't be a need for them.
To keep with the discussion, do you think the 3DS will end in the Switch? And could we see, as I've seen some suggest, a Switch-Mini that is 100% handheld, or perhaps something in the other direction, that has more power via the dock, or an external appliance?
@NEStalgia Not everyone uses gaming marketing speak (tm). Indies and more established studios are indeed 3rd party. If we keep diluting the base by using terms that don't have agreed upon meanings, all it does is further the elitism complex that gaming has had since (as far as I know anyway...born in 85) the 90's. A good game is a good game; doesn't matter if it is made by Capcom or WayForward.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE Also disgusting and vile (your words, I may note): comparing yourself to battered women because you don't approve of a software library.
@PanurgeJr I didn't write that. I agreed with the analogy. And that's all it is, an analogy. Get a Life!
@rjejr
oh my word, starring Howard Keel?
haha. my wife loves him in 7 brides for 7 brothers. I'll have to make her watch this...
@Mii_duck
Slightly misleading. A number of those are only confirmed for Japan. A great number more are ports I can play without a switch.
That said, if there is a MUST-HAVE game (like Mario Odyssey) then those become very important for padding out a library. They just won't sell the system.
@speedracer216
Isn't the point of 3rd party games that they're ports that you don't need a specific system to play? No console platform has the number of exclusives Nintendo consoles get.
@ThanosReXXX It doesn't seem like there's much hope of them slowing down. The rush to press to every more perfect graphics is a disease they created. The told consumers that's what they should demand, and now that's what consumers demand. The gameplay never needs to evolve, it just needs to look more real than 2 years ago. Now we have PS4 Pro (a joke) and Scorpio promising the "highest quality pixel's anyone's ever seen", and dual PC graphics cards pushing farther and farther, with each dev going out of their way to push that to the point of strain.
Gunpei Yokoi spoke of that very problem so very long ago and cautioned it as a bottomless pit and something to avoid. Nintendo avoids that fairly well. The western (and increasingly Japanese) devs, not so much.
It's a neat coincidence that nVidia caught onto that problem a while back and despite being the earliest driver in that direction, was already well into their repositioning into mobile and embedded instead of "moar power" and arrived at the right tech just in time for Nintendo to be backed into the right corner to need it. I think if Switch were to become a BIG success (not sure it will be THAT big) that could be the speedbump that saves the industry from itself again....they'd have to slow down graphics to be able to run on mobile versions as a primary. It wouldn't stop the train, but it would set back the clock a bit and buy some breathing room.
@Ryu_Niiyama Of course there's no difference, because neither of those two are indies either
I think you're making the same error as ThanosRexx did, and many others, a lot of indies that people call indies aren't indies, they're just smaller 3rd parties. There's huge difference in quality between the output of "independent studios" WayForward, Playtonic, etc. who often have publishing agreements, and actual indies.
I don't think it's about marketing speak so much as recognizing the differences between types of games. Indies don't have the budget to work with, and as a result have to constrain the scale of the game considerably in order to actually produce it. The end result is very obvious and tends to be reminiscent of games from 25+ years ago. That's not a bad thing on its own, especially for people who like the games of 25+ years ago. But nobody will confuse a game of that scope with a game of much larger scope (including WayForward's games, which is a full scale studio.)
@NEStalgia
fair enough on 3rd parties, but with stuff like Cave Story it's hard to get pumped about those on Switch. That said, while I would NOT buy a switch for those, if I bought a Switch (say for Smash or DKC or whatever) then I WOULD get some of them for the portability factor. But they gotta sell the system first.
As for indies, whether indie or small 3rd party - I think if Switch is really easier to develop for AND Nintendo lets them set their own sales... could you imagine if Switch had the library and portability and DISCOUNTS of something like Steam? It would make Switch everything the Nvidia Shield had hoped to be and THAT would be awesome.
"Nintendo Switch Will Have A "Lot More Announcements" on Third-Party Games Soon"
We will see. We will see. . . .
@SLIGEACH_EIRE Then explain to me why drawing an analogy with domestic abuse is acceptable but drawing one with cancer is vile and disgusting.
@NEStalgia
"It doesn't seem like there's much hope of them slowing down. The rush to press to every more perfect graphics is a disease they created. The told consumers that's what they should demand, and now that's what consumers demand."
I don't really understand the point of this quote. One of the biggest selling points is that the Switch is the most powerful handheld ever. More capable than the Vita before it. And Nintendo has some games that are gorgeous Pikmin 3 is one of them. Many games that look great are excellent video games and some aren't.
@Slim1999 Good to know...I hope it remains an exclusive though, unlike many on the Wii U which found their way to PC, MAC, PS4 and XBONE. Nintendo needs the exclusives from 3rd parties, but the one that I'm really hoping they get back, and it's been quite a while, is Super Monkey Ball...I'll even go for anyone bringing back Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg or even Viewtiful Joe (seriously, what happened to those games).
@JLPick Super Monkey Ball would be perfect given that Nintendo is pushing that HD Rumble as a groundbreaking feature. Eternal Darkness would work well with it too (controlling slightly shivering to imitate blood dripping down the walls. Gold!).
Sadly I think Sega will, to the end of eternity, crush my dream of having a Billy Hatcher sequel. Such an underrated gem.
@speedracer216 Yeah, Cave Story's a great game, but that's pretty darned aged at this point. I still have my near-launch 3DS cart to prove it.
It'll be interesting to see how the sale thing pans out, and pans out by region. The Humble Bundles on WiiU and 3DS proved nintendo's open to ideas regarding indies and pricing.
Since the Switch is more or less the cousin of Shield (and nVidia's direct involvement is probably what got Epic and Bethesda and such on board at all) it makes a lot of sense that it's everything nVidia could never have made the shield to be on their own.
@NEStalgia Blame Thanos, he brings out the best in me. And I know I was clowning around as always but that Web browser article really made me give up my tablet delusions, for the time being. I just can't call it a tablet w/o a Web browser and Netflix. It's still physically a tablet, and I think the OS is adequate to be a functioning tablet, but Nintendo really doesn't want it to be. I still think it will be some day, but right now it isn't. Maybe they are saving that aspect for later, it's already capable of console, portable and tabletop modes, it doesn't need to function as a solo tablet right now. Maybe they are waiting for the 3DS to fade away to unveil Switch tablet mode as a portable replacement?
@ThanosReXXX That was me being pleased, I think you just reacted negatively to it based on the whole dung heap this thread has become, like so many others before it. I don't even know what the frak is going on with SLIG. Maybe we need to start passing around a conch?
@BiasedSonyFan
It's based on the wants of the individual. People looking for a replacement for the 3ds are likely to be impressed with the Switch screen. People who only game at home likely won't see a large jump from the Wii U.
I dissagree, look at Nintendo reviews and sans the original Wii generation most reviews mention their graphics favorably. They use a different art style than most AAA developers that hides graphical deficiencies well. But you can't expect every game to use cartoony graphics. Particularly in sports and racing games I don't think it would look great.
@cleveland124 That quote was referring specifically to the Western AAA 3rd party studios (and increasingly more Japanese AAA studios), not about Switch or Nintendo.
Namely their endless graphics arms race regardless of the required development costs and likely return, and instead making the games more and more graphically intensive, pushing the budgets stratospherically and THEN trying to figure out how to monetize it enough to make it work (such as the infamous Squeenix lamentation that 5M sold was a failure for Tomb Raider.)
But it's not new, it's the same thing Yokoi discussed with his withered technology ideology in the 90's. And the Switch actually does represent that ideology to a degree. Yes, it's the most powerful handheld by a huge margin, and it's not even underpowered as a home console (still a bit above WiiU), but it does still force the balance of game design to focus on efficiency as a function of energy consumption versus just making eye candy for the sake of it (if you make a Switch game about pushing eye candy, portable mode won't be ideal or will run only a short while), arguably a good thing and MUCH needed release valve for the graphics arms race in the industry.
As for Nintendo's graphically impressive games, Nintendo, for the most part, doesn't and never has done graphically impressive games in terms of the tech arms race. What Nintendo does is they focus on art style, and use the machine's strengths to achieve it. That's why Nintendo games from today like Pikmin 3 look great, but will continue looking great forever, and Nintendo's old games also still look great all things considered, compared to older games from the graphics race companies that look very dated and irrelevant the moment the next iteration comes out. Those Nintendo games aren't actually technical marvels at pushing computations, but their focus on the actual art and overall visual design ends up creating as good or better an impression on the player than trying to make it photo realistic (Twilight Princess is that rare Nintendo game that went somewhat more photorealistic, and aged poorly as a result (the HD remaster, however, is gorgeous.)
@rjejr Haha, I'll have to give @ThanosReXXX a cookie.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the web browser thing was explicitly designed to make you stop calling it a tablet. Reggie did say they read the comments and forums, after all. (Hi Reggie!)
@NEStalgia
So because of graphics you strongly recommend the Wii U version of Twighlight Princess over the SD versions? Didn't know you felt graphics were so important.
@cleveland124 In the case of TP, that was a game where they went with a more photorealistic art style instead of their usual "timeless" types of art styles. Who knows why, but I've always assumed it was due to backlash from WW, giving the fans what they were demanding.
The problem is like games from all other companies that go with a more photorealistic art style, it does not age well at all, and in the case of TP, the hardware limitations of that era, at least on the Wii meant the game had a very weird disorienting "blur" filter, particularly in the Twilight Realm. Blurry low res textures also meant it was at times difficult to determine what exactly you were looking at. So yes, in the case of TP the graphics matter, IMO, precisely because of the attempt at realistic graphics that always leads to a game looking aged too fast.
The good news is we've kind of plateaued though. From TP HD, the actual functional issues presented by graphics limitations no longer seem to apply, and I don't think that game will really become dated at any point from now.
Though my other issue with TP before was i had the Wii version not the GC version. Those waggle controls were brutal and unpleasant and I couldn't even get myself to play through it the first time. Stopped around the water temple. Tried to go back to waggling a few years later and just couldn't do it. So HD gave me a chance to really PLAY the game for once...so I might have a little bias there
The only other Nintendo game I can think of that time hasn't been kind to is OoT on N64. The memory limitations on N64 were severe enough that even without a realistic art style, that kind of early-3D era game bit off more than it could chew and failed to represent what it was trying to show. The 3DS remaster really fixed most of that and modernized it quite a bit (but it's hard to argue "3DS because graphics!")
@Mii_duck You can probably take Dragon Quest X off that list for Europe and North America. We are never going to get that one. Possibly might not get XI. Its been real good with Dragon Quest Lately but the ship may have sailed for Dragon Quest X. I would get it if it ever came out of Japan.
I will be very happy if we get anywhere the flow of games we got on the 3DS. You talk about near perfect execution. 3DS has been my Console since it came out. I have a feeling we might see a 3DS type of operation with Switch.
@UmniKnight I honestly have no idea where the whole handheld department is going to go, but I think the 3DS is going to stay around for at least another year or so, looking at titles still to be published, so there's definitely going to be some overlap.
Other than that, it's anyone's guess.
@Priceless_Spork Wow, I have expectations now... I guess I have to step up my game...
Wait... Am I just idle entertainment!?
I think this iconic scene sums up the newly embraced reasoning behind Nintendo's historically unusual degree of secrecy surrounding the NS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjYjUdMsf00
Wait a minute... It's all starting to make sense now... The obsession with the color red in marketing materials? The allusions to "cloak and dagger" secrecy? The near-religious fanaticism of endless faith in a Nintendo product, of which the public knows less about than any previous major hardware release? The readying of a sacrificial lamb for the NS release's success, known as Breath of the Wild? The replacement of WarioWare (Wario has garlic) with 1, 2, Switch (which has... uh... balls and milk)?
I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner... But it's too late now... There is only one explanation for all of this...
Kimishima is Dracula in disguise!!!
@NEStalgia
If your opinion is that photo realistic graphics takes away from games and simple colorful graphics enhance them then that's fine. I'm not here to debate subjective things. But that's actually an argument that graphics are very important, but in your case you want graphics to achieve graphical perfection through artstyle rather than through increased detail and resolution. So you do want "perfect" graphics like the masses. You just define perfect differently.
@Zadaris It was underrated...but sadly, I remember it being launched along a slew of great classics at the time...bad launch timing for the Sega classic. Sega had many classics I'd like to see be returned, and I'm glad that there is a development studio working on a new Toe Jam And Earl title...part 3 to that was the only reason I owned an X-box back in the day, and ever since I've been waiting for them to re-release the 3rd one or make a new one. But...how about this selection for Sega to bring back or redo in HD resolution: Greendog, Ristar, Altered Beast, Streets Of Rage, Kid Chameleon, Crazy Taxi, Outrun, Hydro Thunder, Seaman (would be a great one with the touchpad on Nintendo, or even with the camera on PS4), Ecco The Dolphin (imagine what the graphics would look like nowadays) and Chakan The Forever Man...I'd even go for a new Vectorman! Hopefully we at least get Billy Hatcher on the Switch's virtual console to at least give people that missed out on the gem another go at it...and, if enough buy and download it, maybe they'll think about a sequel...it's definitely a crazy fun platform title that's fit for nintendo consoles! As for Eternal Darkness, I'd love to see an HD remaster of it (still looks and plays great on my gamecube) and I see it happening in some way or nintendo will just add it to the virtual console, but time will tell. I'm hoping that someone can pick it up and make a true sequel...the story, setting, graphics, acting and the whole 'mess with your head' was perfect and made it a cult favorite! One title I was going to pick up at launch and ended up waiting a year or so later on, where it came out and was ignored by many. Should have had more advertising for it...nintendo should have had a bigger hit with it!!! Gamecube had many great NEW Ip's that became lost, and it's a shame...the Gamecube was my favorite nintendo console and still is to this date...I had lots of fun times with the NES, but I always come back to the Cube!!!!
@ThanosReXXX I'm with you on the 3DS...it'll be getting games still towards the end of 2017, but I see that if the Switch becomes a money maker for nintendo, nintendo themselves will focus more on the Switch, passing the 3DS to anyone else...3DS will get more indie and 3rd party titles into 2018 (and probably very few at that) and barely get anything added onto the E-Shop after that, but nintendo won't cancel it out probably until the end of 2018...giving at least a year or so to keep it's legacy alive! At least I hope so, but just like you basically said...time will tell.
@Windy Dragon Quest X is confirmed for NA for PS4, so I'm sure it will come onto the Switch too...probably be a year later for us though. There's too many Dragon Quest games coming out though, and I'm afraid that it'll ruin the series with too many in just a few years...I'm still completing Dragon Quest Heroes on PS4 and I just got Dragon Quest Builders to realize that the next one to Heroes is coming out soon on PS4 and there's others coming out on both PS4 and Switch. I'm just hoping that the series doesn't get ruined or burned out like the Assassin's Creed titles seemed to get. There's just some games that should only be released one per year or so, not 2 or more per year...eventually people are going to get sick of the Call Of Duty titles...too many, and (even though I love and have them all) the Lego games will get old quickly...look at how many are actually out for each console...PS4 already has a dozen or more Lego games already!
@NEStalgia Agreed on the aging of some of the games. All people really need to look at is some of the RPG's from over the times. Wind Waker and the Gamecube titles still look good, but in all honesty, the graphics didn't change much for nintendo consoles over the years. The Wii however, unless they are the games made by nintendo themselves of other big 3rd Party developers, really look horrible now and I'm not sure why. PS1 looks horrible, Dreamcast looks horrible in a few, PS2 some of them and after playing the PS4 a lot, some of the PS3 titles are looking their age already. The N64 looks bad now, but Wind Waker and it's cartoony approach, looks pretty good still!
@NEStalgia you are proving my point. By the basic agreed upon definition of a third party both companies I mentioned meet the requirement. Not really sure what criteria you have for an indie developer (budget, dev team size...but that can vary even among veteran devs so...) but I am sure you can find ten people on this site that don't share the same view. I don't care who is an "indie" and who isn't and chest pounding and drawing lines in the sand about who is and who isn't splits the gaming message among the fan base. We should be hyping good games and spreading that word to our fellow gamers (of all marketing definitions) instead we have camps and "wars" that no one at any gaming company cares about. Way too much gatekeeping for a simple hobby. However that's just me. I do agree with @ThanosReXXX though.
@JLPick
Yep. To be fair the N64 NEVER actually looked "good", the limited texture memory before the expansion required such low detail textures, with so much repetition and so much anti-aliasing that it always looked pretty bad. But it was more of a continuation of the SNES Starfox concept of "barely beyond wireframe" 3D graphics. The N64 had awful texturing, but was pushing polygons to build whole worlds before the competition. Everything looked like a crude tech demo, but the tech was cool and unique, and allowed a new type of gameplay and navigation, so in its day, it didn't hinder it. But it was destined to always look terrible. Wii, technically there's no reason for Wii games to look bad. It was more powerful than the GameCube which never looked bad. 3rd parties just cheaped out and pumped shovelware onto shelves because they couldn't condescend to lower their standards to something other than new tech, but business reality said they had to. Half hearted attempts look half hearted.
But PS1 has the most amazing graphics ever!! Oh, now they look bad but PS2 has the most realistic graphics ever realized!! Oh they look bad now, but PS3 is where it's at, it's just like being there, and it's all HD!! Oh they look bad now next to PS4..wait that's not much better...how about PS4 Pro? And there's the problem with going for realism in graphics. It's always impressive until something more impressive comes along, then it looks bad. And that reality has spawned the annual-rehash franchises where the new one replaces all sales for the old one, while people are still buying 30 years worth of Nintendo games. Because with a fresh coat of paint the old is new again because the game's foundation isn't its appearance. The same can't be said for most AAA's. The game IS the graphics. Once it's obsolete the game is obsolete. There are some standouts of course that remain memorable, but they're the outliers not the norm.
@cleveland124 My point was neither that photorealistic graphics enhance or detract from games. My point was that they create a core problem where, because processing power is effectively never actually photo-realistic, the graphics never stand on their own and are compared only to how close the latest and greatest compares to reality, and as a result, will always date themselves quickly into obsolescence, while a unique art style is forever.
There's a happy medium were the visuals are "good enough" and I think that was mostly reached in the PS3/X360/WiiU trilogy which is about where PC's were 15 years ago. The "all about graphics" crowd sees this too. PS4 isn't seen as much of a step up visually from PS3 to many. And really all of them don't look all that different than top end PCs. Sure the graphics are shinier, more texture detail, more model detail, more lighting and shadows. But the trouble is, while that looks great in passive entertainment, in interactive entertainment the brain filters out what it's seeing to distill necessary information. The lesser graphics tend not to be noticed compared to the better graphics while playing, because the brain is filtering them out entirely and focusing on distances, velocities, surroundings, etc.
So the trick for the graphics race was to get it to a point that the graphics don't IMPEDE the functionality of the game. TP on GCN/Wii, the graphics could impede the functionality by making objects/terrain indistinct. From there, all you can do is make it look prettier, but it no longer interferes with the game.
The race to endless increase in detail is silly from a cost perspective. Cool purely from tech perspectives, sure someday we can create Holodecks or VR simulations that are entirely indistinguishable from reality (I'll leave that up to the reader as to whether that's a good thing or a horrifyingly dangerous one) but from a COST perspective, it's an endless push to spend way more than consumer entertainment will return.
@Ryu_Niiyama Those companies both have publishers and retail products. Neither is an indie. WayForward has more in common with Capcom than they do with Atooi.
Somehow we started calling anyone who is not themselves a publisher an "indie" rather than calling unpublished studios "indies." Most of the names tossed out when talking about indies are in fact, published studios, not indies. Atooi is unpublished. They are indies. Renegade Kid, it's forebear was published. They were not indies.
Perhaps the name "indies" should be dispensed with, as it's a holdover from the music industry which applies a somewhat different context. Maybe we should go with "published titles vs. unpublished titles" for consistency. Sadly, I don't think my posting that here will go viral and change the dialogue around the net.
Maybe it should be more like film. Independent films are not treated the same as studio films. They don't appear in major cinemas, they don't participate in the Hollywood self-gratification awards. They have their own circuit of theaters, and their own awards festivals. As such they don't have to try to pretend to compete with the mega-blockbusters they're not competing with either financially, or by market share, or by nature of content.
Beyond published or non, yes, there's a budget difference, and the end product must reflect that, but that's less defined. Xenoblade X didn't have CODs budget but made a game far bigger in scale, Yooka-Laylee doesn't have Xenoblade X's budget but appears to be progressing as a game much more polished, and then we can go down the line. Ultimately the entire point of signing on with a publisher is signing away your rights and profits in exchange for a cash infusion and support to build a larger scale game. To not sign on with a publisher is to willingly limit the scope of the game to fit the available budget, which is extremely limiting, but an accepted tradeoff. The goal then becomes to make the best realization of the vision that can be reasonably done with a tiny budget. It's a self-limiting medium, which is why it's very unfair to try to throw the actual indies in the same pool with the rest. It's a medium that has to be appreciated in context with what it is.
But, I'm getting the feeling the "indie" term is so misused (I'm channeling my inner ThanosRexx at fuming at mususe of terms ) "independent studios" are studios that work in the 90's book publisher model and shop their pitches to publishers. WayForward is that. Which is not the same as "indies" working unpublished and self-distributing.
But of course we had the "Nindies" program calling a bunch of published companies indies....Nintendo is part of the problem, not the cure here
I'm already pre-ordered, but actions are stronger than words when it comes to getting more 3rd party games being announced. If they are holding anything back it really should be announced soon to drum up some more excitement. I don't think we necessarily need a bunch of exclusives from 3rd parties, but just would like to see some upcoming games be announced that in addition to being on PS4 and XBox One that the games will be available on their launch date for switch too not a port at a later time, but same time launches as some popular titles.
@NEStalgia For me, the worst thing about the N64 was the choppy camera. Super Mario 64 was a fun title, but when he first jumped into that cannon, I almost got motion sickness from how bad the camera continued to move. Donkey Kong 64 was even worse with the camera, and the sound in DK64 is just plain horrible now. Some games on systems still stand out great, others, just cheap and horrible.
@JLPick Yeah, I was always of the opinion that, graphically, the N64 era was a huge step down from the beautiful sprite based graphics of the SNES. It all looked wrong. But it's one of those rare cases where it was all in service of new types of gameplay so it's excusable (free roaming in a way not possible in 2D games.) But yeah, the early polygonal era, or actually it was all triangle mesh back then, had really crude camera controls. PCs were using mice so the cameras were smooth. Doing it with digital controls and a single analog stick....that was all so bad in hindsight. The sound I suppose was "good" at the time though, considering the SPU chips beeps & boops that came before it Even on PC, Soundblasters sounded far from ideal, producing mostly 8 bit audio.
Ahh, the good old days!
@Ryu_Niiyama BTW, entirely off-topic PSA, but since we were talking about pre-orders yesterday and you mentioned you'd moved recently, make sure if you placed your order before the move, since it's on Amazon that you check the INDIVIDUAL ORDER for the shipping address and change it if needed. Changing it globally doesn't necessarily change it for existing orders.
You may or may not have already done that but I figured it would suck very badly if it ended up going to the wrong place
@NEStalgia Yeah... graphics-wise, we're on the path of ever-diminishing returns, so something's probably got to give at some point, but maybe not in the next couple of generations to come, so we're stuck with it for now, I guess...
Would be quite something if Nintendo and Nvidia would be responsible for saving the gaming industry, since Nintendo would then be doing it AGAIN. It'll probably remain a nice thought rather than a reality, though...
@rjejr Yeah, sure... go right ahead and blame me. Shoulders are broad enough to carry that burden for you...
As for that passing the conch stuff: I'm not really the type to hold my tongue until I'm allowed to speak, so that wouldn't really be my thing...
@NEStalgia A cookie? A web-cookie or a chocolate chip one?
@NEStalgia
I picked Pikmin 3 because it uses fictional characters in a photo realistic environment. And you said this games graphics will stand the test of time. There is alot of room to have unique artstyle and still have parts with realistic graphics.
Eternal Darkness and Mario Sunshine both look quite aged to me when I put them on my HDTV and compare to the current generation. But they are both fantastic games and worth playing today if you haven't or replaying today if you have.
As technology improves, consumers will always expect better graphics and developers will have to balance those expectations from a cost perspective. No game is immune to this. Mario Odyssey looks like it has a tremendous amount of more detail than any previous Mario. If VR takes off there could be a tremendous amount of growth over graphics we see today.
@cleveland124
Pikmin 3 doesn't really have photo realistic graphics though. It certainly creates that impression in your mind, though, doesn't it? The beauty of art style! It uses photographic textures, but in terms of lighting, shading, shadowing, specularity, refraction, it's about as far from photorealistic as you can get.
As the other companies push photorealism it's not just about the textures and geometries. They could do that years ago. It's all about light rendering as accurate as a ray-tracer used to take hours to render a single frame many years ago. That's the goal they've been striving for. When we talk about photorealism in graphics it's about making light react in the game as it does in real life. And the astonishingly intense computation required to do so. That means every surface and material has to have an appropriate refractive index and the light source has to simulate photonic physics. And none of this contributes anything to the game other than making it look more like like was shot on celluloid instead of being rendered. It's impressive, and a marvel, but it comes at such tremendous cost to developing that world in terms of manpower and time, that they need to either charge a whole lot more for the product (which would interest fewer customers) or sell to a lot more customers. They keep trying but not succeeding as they need on the latter.
Imagine it like a food business. You can buy a pasta dish for, say $13. You can buy a gourmet pasta dish for $25. You can buy a pasta dish in which every noodle has been carefully positioned into a gemoetric pattern...but will you really buy the $70 pasta plate? How about the pasta plate where each noodle has a filigree hand engraving, for only $500? If they can't reduce the manpower and time required for such detailed worlds, they need to expand their income beyond what the market seems willing to pay. They have to reduce that manpower and time either technologically (tools that automate it), or by no longer chasing the dream of photorealism.
Meanwhile, Pikmin 3 that did none of that managed to convince you it was photorealistic enough anyway. Eat that, EA!
Your last paragraph is entirely correct, and that was exactly what Yokoi was saying that it's a never-ending abyss to promote graphics as the reason to upgrade. No matter how much better the graphics you give them they'll always want more, and he promoted instead making tech accessible, affordable, and fun. While Sega was readying to promote Blast Processing, he was designing the Game Boy in all its monochrome glory. We know how that turned out
Then the Wii and DS repeated that truth in the face of the X360 and PS3 and PSP.
Will Switch do it again in the face of PS4 Pro and Scorpio? Everybody wins if it does.
Maybe even the devs at EA won't be held for weeks on end like a hostage situation near crunch time...no...that's probably too much to ask for.
@ThanosReXXX Yeah...those returns are diminishing more by the year. We can probably push consoles a few more generations with the old Intel tick-tock approach, but dev costs right now are set on PC as the high water mark....and pushing much further from where they are now are really about pushing into Hollywood pre-rendered CGI levels of detail. That costs a fortune that will never ever be feasible in gaming. I think Tomb Raider probably set a turning point in AAA thinking at a lot of studios. Squeenix seems to have really changed direction after that. EA doubled down on the diminishing returns. Activision....I'm not even sure what direction they're going in. Endless sequels are tapering or them. But they have some steady output still going on at least in the "quasi-subscription-game" realm. We already know what PS10 is. It's what a good PC is today. After PS10, where does it go? (Don't say VR until a 5 hour marathon isn't damaging )
I think, whether the industry realizes it or not, depending on how Switch goes, it could be a turning point. If the demand is there, you can bet Sony might start thinking "Hmm, maybe PS5 should be a mobile device?" After all, the beige-turned-black box makers never imagined 10" pieces of glass and ultrabooks would almost completely eliminate the PC market, and here we are. The quest for more power plateaued and the quest for portability and energy efficiency perked up in general computing. Maybe the same can happen for gaming.
Chocolate chip. I wouldn't trust a web cookie without a food tester
@NEStalgia
I thought we were talking about an artstyle, but you are talking about a developmental technique. So why would Pikmin 3 age worse if it used photorealistic lighting? Isn't that what you're saying is that this technique causes games to age worse?
To understand why big studios put so much developmental effort and resources in some games you'd have to look at the industry 10 years ago.
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-most-video-games-arent-profitable/https://www.cnet.com/news/why-most-video-games-arent-profitable/
Most games lost money ten years ago. So it was only a matter of time before studios started focusing on the Epic games they produce and improving them and cutting the filler titles that weren't profitable. Ultimately consumer purchasing decisions have led the market to where it is now. So if you want to blame people, blame people that line up to buy the games made.
@ThanosReXXX OK, conch analogy was a stretch trying to work in my LotF overview of NL I'll admit but I'm sticking w/ my assessment of this place of late, LotF. I knew this would happen once those Reply emails kicked in, guess I should be happy it's taken this long to get so out of control. I think the Switch news has brought in a lot of new people fro the greater internet who don't understand that this place is monitored and we try to be nice to each other, not tear each other down. I feel like the name calling and personal attacks has grown from about 1% - usually 1 troll at a time - to about 5%, which isn't much, but it's noticeably worse. I'm not opposed to disagreements or even arguments, but some people just go way too far. I don't even read my email anymore unless it's from a name I recognize. I don't have to be friends w/ them, I just need to recognize it, I probably recognize at least 80% of the names on here.
@NEStalgia No worries, we've already decided to shelve the VR debate for now, remember? Wouldn't want to have to struggle through yet another text-wall measuring contest...
And PS5 or 6 will probably be a streaming box anyways; it's the only way they can overcome the diminishing returns and the losing battle against the PC master race...
@rjejr LotF? Legends of the Fall?
But yeah, I think your assessment of how things have changed is pretty sound. Still, I'm not going to let that scare me away from the site, it's still one of the nicer communities I've come across.
I was going to send you a little message with "see? it's still coming" concerning Darksiders Warmastered Edition, but I already imagined you replying in a still somewhat unsatisfied manner that the tweet wasn't clear enough because even though we now know that it's still coming, we don't know if it's going to be a physical or digital release, so I decided against it.
But it was still on my mind, so there. Said it anyways...
And by the way: my bet is still on physical...
@ThanosReXXX Indeed!
I don't see Sony heading down the streaming box route, at least not for the 5, maybe too early to see what the 6 will be. For now I see them continuing down the "convenient mini PC in a plastic box" route. Streaming is just not viable to too much of the market and there's no signs that it will be any time soon. Maybe in the metros in the very advanced countries it's fine, half the US it would be a disaster, and still many places in smaller countries and the US with either really slow, really unreliable, or very capped account.
Even I'm on a semi-capped account (not capped but don't use it too much, whatever that means!) and it would be a no-go out of the box. Someday we'll have 5g wireless free and everywhere and it won't be a problem. Until then, Sony would be giving up tons of potential market. I can't seem them letting go of all that territory and basically ceding it to Nintendo and Steam.
@NEStalgia I'm of course going by the assumption that we won't see a true successor to the PS4 and Xbox One for at least the next 5 years to come. They will not give the PS4 Pro and Scorpio such a short live, so these are going to last us for quite a few years to come.
After that, even most of the more remote areas will have a decent enough connection to be able to have solid streaming services.
There probably always be dark areas, or at least darker areas, simply because the infrastructure won't be there or won't be there in sufficient quantities, but overall, it'll be quite a bit better in the next 5 to 10 years.
And if you look at streaming game services now, they are already pretty competent: Steam, GeForceNow and so on, all deliver solid experiences, so no reason why consoles shouldn't be able to do that as well, and they will probably have to, because they will never be able to match gaming PC's, so when they'll reach the end of that diminishing returns road, streaming is the only solution left to get games that surpass the power of the system itself, so I'm pretty sure that this is the most obvious solution.
Time will tell, though. But I'll be focusing on my Switch, so I couldn't give a damn either way. I'll probably shell out for an Xbox One S or a Scorpio as well, because I haven't been collecting all these "Games with Gold" Xbox One games all these years for nothing, so I need something to install and play them on...
@ThanosReXXX Hard to say what happens in 10 years. I'm not seeing it in 5. Honestly unless there's a MASSIVE change in the politics of this stuff I don't see it in 10. And every time we talk about high speed internet we keep talking about cable companies running wires from building to building like its plumbing as though this is 1987. Where's the wireless? We had WiMax...AT&T/Verizon did everything they could to shut it down, and they did. WiMax 2 was more than capable of doing real wireless internet....the telcos stuck us with LTE and 4GB data plans. With their lobbies, their stranglehold will not change.
Tech has gone mobile and our internet connections are still wired to the wall. That's silly and backward.
I'm probably going to go LTE-only because, as a Switch fan, it all makes sense with how I intend to use it. That means no Netflix, no streaming-PS5, because our wireless internet is a joke, but I've adopted almost all mobile tech and I want my internet just as mobile. It's an interesting schism between the direction tech is going (more and more mobile....and even the nature of a streaming service could benefit hugely from mobile thin clients rather than needing big power guzzling bricks) and the direction that internet mimics telegraph connections from the 19th century.
All that aside though, I just can't see Sony doing the streaming box thing, because ultimately they'd be gutting their own market. Who needs a Sony streamer when an Apple, Samsung, or Huawei streamer will do it just fine? As a mini-PC they have their niche as PCs for people who aren't going to be buying PCs (which is most people.) As a streamer they open themselves up to pretty much EVERY electronics company as a competitor. And PCs themselves for that matter. You're far from the only one to say they will, though lots of people said Switch would be that, too. Maybe you're right...but they have a more grounded position as a seller of name brand tiny gaming PCs than they do as yet another display and WLAN adapter provider for streaming clients. At that point "Sony should go third party and must make PC/Android apps" would be the gripe.
I think the diminishing returns isn't yet in the hardware realm, it's the AAA software studios. Hardware will have to evolve into something other than power, but Switch might, oddly, save Sony there. But I don't think the need is going to be using streaming to gain access to even MORE powerful hardware. I think the need is going to be to have the software be less complicated. They can't keep spending these budgets on graphics. It's not just the processing power, it's the amount of detailed art assets required.
If games go to streaming, I think it's a loss for all the console brands and a win for PC makers and tablet makers. Not that they needed much more win in the tablet market! Though with nVidia doubling down on power efficient mobile high performance computing.....they clearly see a reason to keep the hardware local and think it's viable for a long while.
Haha, I never pegged you for an Xbox fan! I have my PS4...it collects a lot of dust next to my Nintendo hardware, but it gets it's use from time to time....still has it's niches that both MS and Nintendo lack.
@JLPick You're killing me man; for the longest time I've wanted a new Streets of Rage, something akin to 2 rather than the missteps they took with 3. Ristar too; he was the type of mascot style character that deserved another game. The music in Ristar was soooo good; that boss theme is one of my favourites.
The Switch VC is where Nintendo could make a big splash if it brings the right games to the party. The original Beyond Good & Evil would be great, particularly if the rumours about its sequel are true. Would love to have Timesplitters back too. If they added online functionality to the second games multiplayer mode I'd be stuck to my Switch until I'm 60!
@Zadaris Man, now you're bringing up Timesplitters!!! I won't go into any more, as it seems that you want the same ones to return as I do! I would though, also like to see a new Startropics and Faxanandu title, but I'd also like to see Ducktales 2 get revamped too...as well as Chip And Dale's Rescue Rangers. So many great titles from the NES and beyond that would be great to have back...even some of the Atari games deserve a fresh new take (we got Haunted House, why not Pitfall or Adventure?) You're definitely right about Ristar, as he definitely deserves a sequel, so does Greendog! Hopefully nintendo gets the virtual console library it had on the original Wii back, and they keep on adding more sega genesis and masters titles, as well as more Turbo Grafx games too. I'd love to also see Dreamcast get added, as my Dreamcast is beginning to take a plunge for the worse. I've been getting happy with the PS4 and Sony announcing PSP titles making their way over (Loco Roco, Patapon and more) so hopefully nintendo follows the same way!!!
@NEStalgia I still remember when I had the three systems at the time, and I will say that the N64 was more crisp and gorgeous with their games...Conker and even Mario looked incredible as well as Link...but Mega Man looked horrible. Dreamcast seemed to have the updated graphics at the time and Nintendo coming in second...the playstation 1 I never really got into (except the Spyro's, Crash games and You Don't Know Jack)...just didn't excite me, and I really never felt the love of Sony until the PS3 era (granted I still play the PS2 to death). Nintendo I've been a fan since the NES and still even play the games they made on the Atari...but the Wii U left me down for them, and I haven't felt the love for nintendo consoles after the gamecube...I got the hype for Wii, but it was short lived with the dump games (but they still had many great ones) and the motion controls started getting to me after a while (just wish you could've had the option to play with a regular controller or the motion) and the 3DS didn't seem to have the charm of the original gameboy for me...hopefully the Switch brings me back, but I'm still not feeling the hype for it and I'm not sure if it's because I feel that it will be another Wii U or if nintendo will start their normal droughts of titles or messing with the IP's in horrible ways. Time will tell, and I'm still looking forward to getting a Switch (as long as I can find one), but for now, it's Sony and Nintendo, unless sega decides to actually put another console out (which will never happen). Dreamcast was excellent but far beyond it's era and was overlooked by the PS1 too much (same went with the N64). Nintendo needs something big, more than just games here and there and the same games coming to the E-Shop time and time again...they need the new ones and ones from 3rd parties (some of which are even no longer around) and the E Shop needs to go back to what it once was on the Wii (granted it was WiiWare) and to stop the only 3 games per week nonsense...and the maybe one virtual game per week nonsense too. There's a boat load of NES, Super NES and N64 titles that they could add! I'd love to see Conker's Bad Fur Day make it over to it! It may be RARE, but RARE let Donkey Kong come over!
@NEStalgia Well, Xbox fan is a big word, but back then, me and 5 friends all decided to buy an Xbox 360 because of wanting to play certain games with each other and the online service was better than Sony's. But next to that Xbox 360, I also have an aging game PC and a Sega Dreamcast, so I'm more a multi-platform person.
Other than those, all my systems are from Nintendo: GBC, GBA, GBA SP, DS Phat, DS Lite, DSi XL, 3DS XL, N64, GameCube, Wii and Wii U. Softmodded the Wii to run Wii & GameCube games off of a hard drive and to make it into the ultimate retro machine, emulating almost the entire range of games possible in the list mentioned here, except for DS/3DS, but with additional consoles as well, such as Atari2600, Colecovision, NES, Sega Genesis, NEO GEO TurboGrfx16 and even PSX. And it also runs mods from the BoR engine (Beats of Rage, a must-have on any platform if you're a side-scrolling beat 'em up fan, look it up if so).
As for the whole internet debate: totally agreed. The big companies always remove/kill the better options on the market: Betamax, cars running on water etc. etc.
But I was thinking more of glass fiber. Most cities over here in the Netherlands are also now getting HUGE overhauls to remove the remaining copper/DSL/vDSL from the ground and replace it with glass fiber, and new installs are almost always done with glass straight away, so that means huge gains. I went from being able to download 500KB-1MB/s to 5MB-8MB/s in only 2,5 years, so that's quite a step up.
Now there will always be certain areas, like I already said, that will struggle with this. Even over here, we have small pockets of areas that are similar to their larger brothers in the States, where there's just two or three houses and a barn, so the infrastructure will be different there, but in general, it will be a lot better.
And come to think of it, I also forgot to mention those Google internet balloons. They might come in handy if they truly take off.
Either way, we're both just going to have to wait and see and the info we have at our disposal may not be enough to truly judge which way it's going to go anyway.
As for Sony? They've already experimented with PSTV, so I'm truly expecting that to come back in some more advanced form, and like I said: for consoles in general, streaming will eventually be the ONLY solution to overcome the huge gap in graphics and services that PC gamers are already having now. There's never going to be a closed-off box more powerful, let alone equally powerful than a $1000 gaming rig, even if all of them become a lot cheaper in the future.
And as consoles grow in power, so do PC's, and with the advent of quantum computing, which will be exclusive to PC's for years to come, I only see consoles lagging behind even more, so: streaming. The aforementioned Steam and GeForceNow services are already well-established and pretty solid, so I see no reason whatsoever for that not to take off in a bigger way.
But for me, that will only affect my Switch or Xbox, because no Sony device will ever cross this doorstep again. I may be living over here, but in true US fashion, I still use the old "three strikes" rule, and Sony have had their chance and screwed me over three times in the space of 5 years, so no more, ever again.
The only time that will happen is if they become the only video or audio supplier in the world, and luckily for me, that's not going to happen any time soon...
@JLPick I saw you mentioning your aging Dreamcast. Don't know what's wrong with it, but if it's the drive, then you can simply buy a new one; they're still available.
Other than that, there are also options to mod it and have it use an SD card slot or USB drive to load games instead. There's more than enough tutorials on YouTube to show you how that's done.
And if you don't have it yet, a VGA Box is highly recommended as well:
https://www.amazon.com/VGA-S-Video-Adapter-RETROBIT/dp/B000SL4IIG/ref=pd_sbs_63_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MFH2DQQN81NDMZNS356T
Cable to go with it:
https://www.amazon.com/VGA-S-Video-Adapter-RETROBIT/dp/B000SL4IIG/ref=pd_sbs_63_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MFH2DQQN81NDMZNS356T
It's a bit pricey, but the Retro-bit is the best one, and well worth it. Some Googling might even produce some lower priced ones, I don't know. I haven't paid the Amazon price for mine is all I know...
Here's a review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Bc-J2opX8
@ThanosReXXX The real problem is the lid, but I just end up putting a book on top to keep it from popping open...not a big problem. The only other thing, which is weird anymore, is 2 of the games don't even play in it anymore...Hydro Thunder and Ecco The Dolphin. Don't know why it's doing that, but the rest play. Other than that, I'll just pick up another one, but it's still weird. Haven't really had problems with consoles (besides the 360 breaking on me 4 times...no worry, got rid of that system)...just the original genesis I had, which started smoking the one day...glad I had a second one for that one though.
@cleveland124 Sorry, I replied to ThanosRexx and never got back to you!
Hmm, examples, it's pretty broad because there's a few different types of examples. The easy thing to say is "most AAA Western games." If we take a look at most of what EA is putting out on the Frostbyte engine (Battlefield, Mass Effect, FIFA), or Activision with COD (actually for them, it's mostly only COD these days their other games are not following that formula.) From Squeenix Tomb Raider, (Deus Ex falls half victim to this but half not because they've gone out of their way to do that monocrhome/duochrome art style, so I'll leave that one out), Anything Kojima, Ubisoft games...not sure how to rank them. They technically do, but their engine is fairly duct taped together and tends to fail at that objective to the point it's hard to bundle them in. Their new games don't look so different from their old games, and the flat lighting almost becomes a unique art style. It's just that they're not intentionally trying to create that style. But it works in their favor ultimately Splinter Cell is the only series from them that really (really) falls victim to the photorealism that looks rapidly aged.
There's tons more examples, but that's kind of the general thinking.
Pikmin 3 hardly pushed hardware boundaries graphically, yet came away looking more genuinely GOOD and even creating the impression of realism (hyper realism more like) even better than the games that are going for actual film simulation accuracy. BUT, it was also exploiting over saturated coloring and flat lighting to achieve its appearance. It wasn't trying to render, in detail, the actual lighting and fade through the trees, the diffusion of shadows, and the limited dynamic range, chroma shift, grain, and contrast of particular brands of 8mm film along with the compression/expansion of a telephoto/wide-angle lens as the AAAs tend to go for. They spend too much effort building photography simulators, and not enough time building games and the result still comes out looking aged in a few years.
The trouble is the public has been trained to judge a game's quality by how perfect the photography simulator is, and not by the game.
Of course we've drifted a pretty long way from our original discussion!
@ThanosReXXX "it's still one of the nicer communities I've come across."
Man, I don't want to know were you've been hanging out.
I know, it's still l prolly the best place on the internet, that you'll go, but it used to be better. And I was optimistic that once Nintnedo came down off of their mountain and spread the word of Switch people would get happier, not nastier. Can't say I can blame anyone, seems like it's been a string of more bad news than good of late, Nintendo keeping alive their mantra of 1 step forward, 2 steps back, but I was hoping.
LotF is Lord of the Flies, which is what it's become here. Well nobody is eating anybody yet so maybe it's just another reality show of back biting and negativity, only w/o all of the sleeping around. I'm still here, just here less.
And yeah, I obviously thought of you reading that Darksiders article, and you guessed it, I was less than impressed w/ the comment. "Working on it" or whatever they said doesn't mean it's finished or coming out. Though a few other comments said March so you may yet be correct. I hope it does come out, Wii U owners could use a break. And it was a really good game too.
Were you in the Zelda DCL threads? I feel like I saw your name once or twice but don't recall a lot of back and forth in there, NES was going at it w/ Plywood I think, and a couple of Sony guys I know. Nintnedo seems to be very good at making decisions that half this place embraces and half detests, leading to verbal abuse. I think if they could go more 80-20 one side could drown out the other, the even splits get a little to raucous for my liking.
@JLPick The Dreamcast...such a sad story. That was a great console that could have put Sega back in the game, but they squandered all their good faith with both customers and the industry so badly before it even launched, it never had a chance despite that it wasn't even doing badly. Though the GCN, graphically, really made a better Dreamcast than Dreamcast. Nobody ever seems to agree though.
PS1, back when it came out I was so Nintendo focused I didn't even know it existed. I'd see it and think "what's that?" It never even registered with me. It wasn't until much later that I learned to appreciate the PS1 as unique, along with PS2. IMO PS3 & 4 lost a lot of the charm that PS once had with the original two. They're good systems...but they're something different than the PS1 and PS2. I like them because they fill the void that my exit from PC games left more or less, and I'm happy about that. But I think the Vita was on track to being more PS1/2-like than PS3 and 4, and it's a shame what happened to it. Maybe Switch will make them create a Vita2 after all
Wii...we was sad from a gamer's perspective. It did have some good games, but they were so burried in the muck. Nintendo found a new market, thought they didn't need us anymore, were quick to mostly abandon us, and then when the fad ended realized they needed us after all. The waggling was so bad I didn't even play Twilight Princess past the water temple until HD came out on WiiU! I hated TP, now I love it. The Waggle did it. And the odd blur effects on Wii and stretched textures. The real shame with Wii was after the initial boom and glut of good games and shovelware alike, after Return to Dreamland it became a wasteland like WiiU after it except for Skyward Sword.
Personally I couldn't feel more different about 3DS though. For me, I never thought any console could surpass SNES in my mind, but the 3DS managed to. The library is just so big with so many stand out great games, and the hardware is nicely made, it really has become my favorite. I say that as an original DMG GameBoy owner (and it still works!) The 3DS is what I imagined my GameBoy was when I got it. I happen to love the 3D as well, as it makes the small screen look huge, but even without it, that library is hard to beat unless your favorite games fall within its handful of gaps (sports, shooters, etc.). I found I've often ignored my WiiU AND PS4 in favor of 3DS.
Thus, Switch is the absolute ideal hardware for me. It's the answer to "why can't I take my NES games with me" thinking when I got my GameBoy in the 80's. The portability and convenience of 3DS, the performance of WiiU (plus some), and, hopefully, a library that will combine the above. Time will tell on the last part, but I think a lot of the 3DS devs are already on board in one way or another, so at least for my interests, it seems likely to be a big winner.
For you, though, it might depend on what magic seemed missing from 3DS for you. I definitely don't think there will be droughts this time. Nintendo was running back and forth "make games for 3DS this year, WiiU next year, 3DS the following year", and with the 2-5 year turnaround times on WiiU, they'd run in stops and starts it seemed. Getting rid of dual platforms will keep things a lot more focused. And third parties, there's plenty of debate to have about western 3rd parties, but so far it seems like all the 3DS third parties are on board at a minimum. That's at least a great start.
eShop/VC, I'm not sure where that's going. It's seemed like they've really wanted to get out of that for a while. Nintendo games, sure they can do. But getting those titles from 3rd parties and working out the licensing, especially with how many of those companies have changed hands multiple times with split or unknown rights holders over the past 20 years... I can imagine there's 5 lawyers for every developer involved in VC. That can't be a fun business to be in. People complain about "$8 for a 25 year old game?" but they probably spent $800,000 in legal fees to get it out.
PERSONALLY I'm super excited for the Switch hardware, it's just the ideal form factor to me that I've dreamed of for a long long time, and I'm pretty optimistic that the worst case is that it gets the software of Nintendo handhelds plus the 1st party software of Nintendo consoles. For me that would keep me happy along with occasional games on my PS4. If it turns out getting even more than that, it's a big win.
For your interests though, that probably depends on what kinds of titles you like? For their mass market advertising they seem to be pushing the social and group multiplayer games angle (kind of meh for gamers.) Yet the reveal presentation showed no less than 8 RPGs, 3 sandboxes, and Bomberman. If the 3DS wasn't great for you though I'm going to guess you're not a big RPG fan since that made a bulk of the 3DS library?
@rjejr A new Nintendo release and you thought people would hold hands and sing Kumbaya? There aren't any guillotines being set up. This is a win!
I think the internet is a reflection of everything else. Every object/person/object has two opinions. The right one , and the wrong one. Mine is always the right one. So pretty much everything there is gets split into two equal groups, both as polar opposites, and both certain they're the right one. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, new games, it's all the same. "If it's not the product that I wanted, then IT'S A HORRIBLE PRODUCT AND NOBODY WANTS IT AND ITS DOOMEDTHEYJUSTCANTEVERGETITRIGHTWHYDOESNINTENDOSONYCOCACOLAHATEME ITSTHEFANBOYSFAULTS ?!?!"
Yeah I think Thanos was in the one DCL thread, Plywood in the other
@ThanosReXXX Yeah, I had the 360, too. Never got a One though. I'm generally multiplatform myself. At least your'e not "one of those"
Out of curiosity (moving the bottom of your conversation to the top) what is it that made you strongly anti-Sony compared to XBox?
Internet: (Trying to pare down the text walls as they get larger since without a quote feature they're hard to follow), yeah, fiber...I'm in a fiber covered area, but I never got the hookup for it. I'm kind of in a frame of mind that fiber or not, physical wired internet connections are so absurdly backward, I'm going to defiantly avoid them and push to where wireless can go. The fact that they're doing NEW fiber rollouts like that depresses me. We were supposed to have flying cars, why can't I at least get wireless mobile internet that works like wired internet used to and isn't $800/MO for 100GB? Wireless streaming to my Switch-like device, or I won't accept streaming. The tech exists, WiMax 2 does amazing things....and they actively keep it from going anywhere. No doubt because the companies that own the towers also own the land lines and don't want to give up their fiat monopolies on the lines so they make sure they can't replace themselves with wireless. I. Will. Wait!
Was that 8MB/s or 8Mb/s?
I'll say wireless has come a long way over the past 10 years, but I'm shocked with the advent of mobile, that it's still sold in data buckets, throttled blocks, and they still can't handle the traffic. I really thought we'd see a stronger push into really solid wireless than we have by now after the smartphone/tablet explosion (I don't mean the Note 7 )
I disagree with console power though. Moores law more or less still applies. The PS4 is already leagues powerful than my $2000 rig was 10, 15 years ago. PS8 will be leagues more powerful than a $2500 machine today. The little Switch is leagues more powerful than my $2000 machine was 20 years ago for that matter in terms of gaming performance. No reason to believe that 10 or 15 years from now a console or handheld won't stomp the most awesome liquid cooled game PC of today. Especially with that quantum computing thing. I think quantum largely goes the other way, it puts so much power locally it reduces the need for "cloud". I see quantum as a reboot to the 90's where local power will start becoming important again as sheer brute force will rapidly eclipse the cloud tech.
The big boon for streaming in my mind, other than music and video which require no power, it's just content delivery, would be its mobility. And with the above discussed wireless internet problems, remains an impossibility until that changes.
The bigger problem isn't the hardware. It's development costs of software. Whether it's running in a server farm, or on a black box under your TV, the cost for development remains the same. Or gets even worse. In a market where consumers will demand LOWER pricing commesurate with the cost savings in bulk music streaming. That would really kill dev costs! I bet Taylor Swift and Metallica won't be on Playstation!
I also can't see XBox going cloud, despite Microsoft's philosophy of being a cloud first company. The hardware is their reason to exist. If it's just streaming they would shut XBox down entirely and just make it part of Windows Live.
@NEStalgia "hold hands and sing Kumbaya"
Well I was kind of naively hoping, yeah.
Just seems like more endless bad news though, or no news that leads to bad thoughts.
$300 Sitch is fine, but people were expecting $250 b/c Nintneod took freaking forever to announce it so unreal expecatations were set.
Paid online. For MK8D and Spaltoon, both of which have free online on Wii U.
Voice chat. Which only works on a separate smart device.
12 Switch and ARMS full price.
Where's the Gamecube VC? Where's any VC?
Nintnedo either seems to have good ideas they present poorly or bad ideas they push too hard. They always seem to go half way towards making people happy. People are arguing over what the definition of "soft launch" is. That shouldn't be our focus, all the great games coming out should be our focus. Zelda BotW has 5 nice looking amiibo. What do they do in game? Anything? 3DS has Mario Sports and Pikmin coming, shouldn't the focus be on upcoming Switch games? They continue to tantalize, but the pay off is never there.
@JLPick Ah, okay. Well, modding is still an option, though. Even a "new" Dreamcast, even though it's refurbished, will only last so long.
And that VGA box is a nice add-on whichever way you go...
@rjejr "Well I was kind of naively hoping, yeah. "
Hey, you know that bridge over there in Brooklyn? I could let you in on a piece of that action for a nominal fee....
Eh, I don't see that much in the way of bad news. Just ranting and railing on assumptions just like every console from Nintendo since the WiiU releas....no...ever since the 3DS was releasing to its death as mobile was taking over...no...since the Wii was for babies with it's motion gimmic....no...since the GameCube still didn't use normal DV...no...since the N64 had cartr...oh, no, since the SNES could never duplicate the success of...oh wait, since the NES was releasing after the video game market was a proven failure. That's the one I was thinking of. '83, '17...same old same old!
"$300 Sitch is fine, but people were expecting $250 b/c Nintneod"
"Introducing the Nitneod Sitch. We are back to the feature!" That could sell! In Hong Kong.
Well, people were expecting $250 because random blowhards on Youtube said 250. Thankfully only internet people even know that was a thing. THAT'S one issue that isn't even the fault of Nintendo's delay. That's just rumor mongers and the press's penchant to lap it up for ratings.
Paid online, not a fan, but if they DO improve online, I will be a fan (I'd rather not pay because i don't even play online much, but as a member of the Splatoon core community, I can say I hear the complaints and long-time requests for paid, better online...so they are giving their fans what they want there...they really are. IF they improve the online, of course. Even Thanos' comments above, he chose XBox for the superior (paid) online over free Sony in 7th gen. There really is demand for that in the core online communities. At least Nintendo's is cheap!)
Yeah, voice chat, not my thing, I wouldn't use it, but I can't deny the oddness. Though do we know that for sure? The official licensed headsets suggest a mic IS possible locally. That might be miscommunication. Or you might need to manage friend lists on PC/phone, but can chat through the console. I think we need to wait for more info still. And yes, we shouldn't have to need to wait.
1-2-Switch, yeah...I think the second hand market is factored into the initial price. It'll be $8 soon enough. Arms? TBD. Not my kind of game, but fighting games have a way of being detail oriented and demanding their price tag. It looks like a deep fighting game is in there somewhere. My instinct is to mock it but I might end up wearing egg by jumping to conclusions.
GCN VC.....Yep, there's an ap...err, thread for that!
"Nintnedo either seems to have good ideas they present poorly or bad ideas they push too hard"
So very true. I think a lot of that comes down to it's a company, like Blizzard, driven by creative-types. Creative types are terrible at business. Business is boring. They like fun! They like creating! Activision reigned in Blizzard, but they had similar issues back in the day. The Amiibo are boxed and done and they're onto the next thing. Wait, we forgot to tell people about it? Well, whatever, we're onto Metro...err....Project Z now!
I can see the push for new 3DS games. It's a current platform. Even if it's being phased out, as of 2/15/17 it's still their primary platform until 3/3. They're selling it. People are buying it. Showing support for the platform is essential. The future of Switch should be grateful they're not doing a 32x/CD/Saturn trifecto. I do think they should be focusing during the launch period more on Switch, but I can also see the desire to not alienate 3DS customers. They're being very clear in interviews about the future of 3DS: It's an ongoing platform for baby's first console until they grow into Switch. Opaque investor statements aside, that's what the real direction is, less condescendingly, from the mouth of Takeda, the guy running the hardware show since Yokoi.
For Switch, they're marketed the heck out of a console that's already sold out. No need to further Milk that. All the early adopters that are going to get in are already in. I think starting release day it will be a renewed push as replacement shipments come thorough, ending in mid-spring, before a renewed push in Ocotober/November/December. (plus E3 of course for the fans.)
They DO have a knack for getting things wrong though. But I think Wii and WiiU has too many people, you included, looking at launch day with a skepticism not often seen in consoles. I can't remember the last console launch that was actually GOOD. Actually WiiU was the best console launch I can think of. It just sputtered out immediately after.
@rjejr "Man, I don't want to know were you've been hanging out."
Well, I could say IGN, GameSpot, YouTube game channels and such, but since you don't want to know, I'll save myself the trouble...
But seriously: I agree with you on the current state here, and that it used to be better, especially when compared to a couple of years ago.
"Can't say I can blame anyone, seems like it's been a string of more bad news than good of late, Nintendo keeping alive their mantra of 1 step forward, 2 steps back, but I was hoping."
I can understand most of your points most of the time, but I have no understanding or patience for most of the whiners on here. They make all kinds of idiotic assumptions based upon incomplete information or pre-made trailers, that will more than likely have inserted game footage in it, much like the Switch reveal trailer, in which none of the devices were actually displaying a game, if the actors in the trailer are to be believed, although some proof that the video was indeed compiled of inserted game footage is available online.
A similar discussion has now already been raging for days, like a forest fire, concerning the recent Fifa footage. It's a viper's nest and I'm not stepping in...
Lord of the Flies, hùh? Heard of it but never seen it. Read the plot on wiki, doesn't seem like something I'd watch, but good to know where that whole conch thing came from, so I can put it in correct perspective.
Darksiders will come out, it's confirmed. More people have gotten reactions, except none of the answers confirm physical or digital, so that's the question that still remains.
And yes, I was in the Zelda DLC thread, but only with one single comment, I believe. Nobody responded, so I'm in the clear...
As for my two cents on that topic: I do NOT think it's yet another failure of Nintendo, because it's the exact same thing they did with Mario Kart 8: instead of ripping content from the original game and selling it to us at premium prices, they actually give us some REAL extra content for a reasonable price, so it's DLC done right, far as I am concerned.
And yes, Nintendo is still doing their thing, being Nintendo and that'll probably never change, or at least not completely, so I wouldn't hold my breath expecting them to make a sudden U-turn and comply with whatever the world expects from them...
It can certainly be infuriating at times, but to me, it's also what makes Nintendo the company that they are and as such, they are the only one that can also completely blindside you with something brilliant, and my guess is that they have the potential to let the Switch be that brilliant thing.
That is, if most of the uninformed, conch-grabbing idiots can at the very least learn to only give verdicts on things that they have actually tried for themselves, instead of condemning things based upon badly compressed YouTube trailers and possibly biased internet articles...
If you look at how genuinely enthusiastic a lot of developers are, how the hell can they subsequently decree from their smelly and decaying basement-dwelling armchairs that the Switch is rubbish, it isn't going to sell and Nintendo will fail "again"?
Just look at that "Greg Wohlwend on TumbleSeed and What Makes Nintendo Switch Special" article, and read what he says when the interviewer asks him "What were your thoughts when you first saw the Switch?"
His answer is SO elaborate and genuine, that it simply cannot be a marketing ploy or BS. This guy is for real and more people should take information like that to heart and at the VERY LEAST adopt a wait and see stance, until such time that they can experience all this for themselves.
That is the only part that annoys me, and as the older, (much) wiser, been there, done that guy, REALLY makes me want to bash some skulls together or slap some sense into a considerable amount of them, but even then, they probably STILL won't learn...
@NEStalgia "the best console launch I can think"
That's easy, Wii, it was sold out in NY for about 2 years. Got to 100 million on basically the pack in game Wii Sports. Wii would have sold nearly as many consoles w/ only Wii Sports and MKWii as it did w/ everything else. I don't recall the launch line-up but it dind't really matter everybody bought "Wii Sports" for $249, not a $249 Nintendo console.
And that was part of the problem. Well my problem as I tend to put everything in historical context. Nintnod has a habit of always saying "we learn from our mistakes". Sometimes people believe them. Wii sold for $249 w/ Sports in the box. Wii U faltered at $299 no game and $349 w/ a game. 3DS strugled mightlity at $249, cut 33% to $169 only months later. Nintneod shouts from the rooftops - "dont 'worry, we learn from our mistakes" so people look at that history and think, oh well, Nintnod wants Switch to sell, so they'll make it $249 w/ a game in the box b/c that's how Wii sold. So it wasn't just the blowhards on YT thinking about $249, it was anybody looking at their history, listening to Nintendo and believing they actually do learn from their mistakes. I don't believe they do so I wasn't surprised about $299, but no game in the box at that price was a surprise, so was 32GB storage for what they keep calling a "home console" in 2017. Even my wife said "that's a phone or a tablet".
So you can't just look at now and say to people "what did you expect?" b/c what they expected was Nintneod to learn from their past, both successes and failures.
None of that will matter though for the first 2 million early adopters, or 3 or maybe even 4 million, Zelda can do that for a console launch, but we'll have to see where it goes after that.
@ThanosReXXX Yeah, Nintnedo is Ntinedo I guess. No matter how I type it. I'd leave here, but as you pointed it, there really is no place else to go, I came here to escape IGN after all. Guess I'll just be happy it took 6 years for them to make their way over here. I'll focus on the 1 step forward, not the 2 back.
@rjejr Just my two cents on the Wii part/price point part of your discussion with @NEStalgia:
Nothing personal, but in general, I find it completely baffling that people expect a console that is easily 20 to 30 times more powerful than the Wii and offers MUCH more technology and possibilities to sell for the exact same price.
That's just not realistic by any logical standard, and no matter what people "expected" (based upon literally nothing substantial, so why people went with that in the first place is completely beyond me. I certainly never expected it to be below $300), you should go by facts and official statements, not by internet rumblings and uninformed opinions of bloggers, or people in comments sections that think they know how to manage a company...
I do agree with the sentiment that there should have been a pack-in game, though.
@ThanosReXXX "I find it completely baffling that people expect a console that is easily 20 to 30 times more powerful than the Wii and offers MUCH more technology and possibilities to sell for the exact same price."
PS3 $500 20GB or $600 60GB 2007
PS4 $400 500GB 2013
@rjejr VERY bad comparison. Nowhere NEAR the difference in power, and in essence just a similar box, only more powerful. At most, the PS4 is 4 to 5 times more powerful than the PS3. (raw numbers are 400 Gflops vs 1.84 Tflops)
Wii vs Switch is a difference of brightest day and darkest night...
@rjejr @ThanosReXXX
"But seriously: I agree with you on the current state here, and that it used to be better, especially when compared to a couple of years ago."
From the perspective of a lurker since around the time of the 3DS launch or the WiiU reveal, I don't really think this place is notably better or worse. Feels par for the course to me. I don't notice a particularly different vibe to the negative/balance discussion vs. the WiiU average. In fact Peach64 and Yorumi have been more positive recently than at any time in the past 4 and a half years I can remember! That was my go-to standard for negative reactions for years!
@rjejr Oh, yeah from that angle, for sure. I didn't actually mean most successful launch though, I meant "best" in terms of how the launch lineup and bright future looked. Few consoles launched with as deep a lineup as WiiU and the promise of more great things to come than WiiU. And then January happened and it went downhill from there.
Wii...that launch was unbelievable. Nobody, certainly not Nintendo, saw that coming. Even with the whole lightening in a bottle angle, it's still just difficult to understand how it managed to capture such a large audience and build a fad so fast. Obviously it wasn't the Z:TP with Waggle that did it. Hardcore deep net PC master race gamers were talking about Metroid Prime with aiming. Casuals were all about Wii Sports. It was a bizarre moment of unity. To me Wii Sports didn't even seem that groundbreaking, but I'm guessing the mass market that was still unaffiliated with tech in their daily lives beyond a work PC on their desk found it novel. It was a truly weird and surprising thing for all involved!
Price points, though. you're right people (meaning mass market, not gamers) bout "Wii Sports for $249". But that was the thing, they wanted that "thing you play sports in front of your TV with". The very concept was new and people wanted in. But consumers tend to have a disconnect with real pricing. They saw "the sports machine was $250" but didn't know that it was just a GameCube clocked a little higher boxed with a motion controller. R&D costs were minimized. And when you got done buying the effectively required additional controllers, connectors, and accessories, the Wii was easily the most expensive console of the 7th gen (at least after the PS3 came down from the $600 ivory tower.)
WiiU....$300 wasn't bad for it, it's just that what it was selling, nobody cared about. No new tech sports fad for the masses, and not what gamers wanted. Nintendo kept saying the price point hurt it, but I never thought the price was the issue. Heck, launch was good. The fact that they launched a console, told no one, and then appeared to abandon it a month after launch...that certainly hurt it. Missing the shift to X86 slaughtered it with 3rd parties. We'd still be happily talking about our $300 WiiU were it not for those failures.
3DS has to be put in historical context too. They were still selling the DS at the time which had an enormous library and remains the second best selling console of all time behind the GameBoy. Games were cheaper on the DS. A new Pokemon was still pending on the DS. And the early game lineup was pretty awful. And mobile was still in it's rapid growth phase and dipping into the DS/3DS market as people were still adopting their first smartphones at large expense and trying the free games. The price cut was probably less a part of the turnaround than was the introduction of good games and the axing of the DS, but the price adjustment was needed to make it appear more proportional to its predecessor. People were looking at the 3DS from the simple angle that "it was not selling until they cut the price" without looking at the factors going on at the time.
The one feather in the cap of the "lower price" crowd was that Miyamoto said many times that the price was too high on WiiU and it hurt sales and that they'll learn from that, but they really had two options: Another low tech machine at a budget price (Wii), or a super high tech machine at a high tech price. They managed to create a super high tech machine at a medium market price. That's remarkable. $250 maybe sounded more reasonable thinking "it's a souped up 3DS with a dock" but the thing is more powerful than a wiiU in a "tablet" body, with dual Wiimote Plus's mounted into it, with an NFC reader, new rumble features, two analog sticks, triggers, bumpers, face buttons.
Remember, the Wii (a Gamecube redux) came with only ONE Wiimote, and it was NOT the Plus version with the gyro, it only had the accelerometer, you had to buy the gyro later, along with a second whole wiimote+ for the second player, and it only had one analog stick, and another nunchuk to get 2 analog sticks. Imagine if Wii launched with two Wiimote Plus's and nunchuks in the box? Let alone minaturized ones.
So you don't get a game, but you get a second controller in the box that you didn't get with Wii. And the controllers even come with rechargeable batteries! Wii didn't have that
I'm just always amazed that so many people compare the tech to Wii. Accelerometer aside wii was absurdly low tech and didn't include in the box an important accessory you needed to make the most of the pack-in game. It was like Day-1 hardware DLC! But the image of the price sure convinced people.
I dunno, my phone came with 32GB storage and cost $650 afer a year on shelves. The 64GB one cost $800. The GPU sucks, and it doesn't even let me use SD cards. Switch is a steal. I wanted to upgrade to the newer model that took SD cards, but those turned out to be portable incendiary devices. Welcome to mobile tech
Interesting to note if those leaked dev specs are true, that the display is indeed IPS. Nintendo really went all out on the tech this time. Just be glad it's not "$500 w/ 2-yr contract for eligible buyers (+appl. taxes & service fees, see store for details.)".
Nintendo certainly did learn from their mistakes, but while everyone assumed that meant lowering the price points, they went the other way and increased the tech. It might not be the most powerful console on the market, but there's no question it's the most high tech console on the market. PSXBox hardware brute forces the power, but the tech is pretty darn crude.
@ThanosReXXX
I honestly find it hard to believe the PS4 is even 4x more powerful than the PS3, and I can't imagine how they baked those numbers. Especially comparing a custom PPC/RISC processor to a Jaguar and a switch to GPGPU architecture, meaninful metrics would only be possible by bench testing a standardized rendering test, not measuring computational output of the silicon....their numbers are made of 100% pure, organic, fair-trade unicorn dust.
@rjejr
PS3's launch price was the result, not of the cost to market the performance of the machine, but of Sony's bloated corporate culture and extravagant excess in that era. There was zero need for them to develop that ridiculous Cell processor, but because they were Sony they did so anyway. Then they designed two of them, one to be the GPU. Then decided the result was an utter disaster, scrapped that, and contracted with nVidia for the RSX GPU that turned out to be basically an off-the-shelf NV47. The result? SOMEONE had to pay for their failed hardware development, so why not the adoring, PS2 loving consumer?
That didn't work out, so they had to eat the cost
@NEStalgia What made me anti-Sony was them severely screwing me over on two separate accounts of devices needing to be repaired (an expensive Walkman and a high-end VCR) which cost me a lot of money, and in the end, the VCR broke down a second time, after which I simply decided to never buy a Sony VCR again, so I just moved to other brands.
Then, many years later, they screwed me over again by forcefully shutting down Lik-sang, which was known back then as one of the world's best, if not THE best import site for gamers and collectors.
They were harassed by all three game companies at first, but reinvented themselves, and lived on, until Sony decided to go on a holy war against them all by themselves, to shut them down, primarily because of the possibility of being able to buy import PSP's.
The most infuriating thing is that even Sony's own employees all around the world, and also developers working for and with Sony, made use of that, mainly for play- and bug testing purposes.
But that didn't stop Sony, and in the end, all the threats and legal costs finally made Lik-Sang give up, and they completely dismantled their company and their web shop.
Here's the complete story, if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lik_Sang
You might wonder what all that has to do with me, besides them shutting down one of my favorite web shops. Well, at the time, I had an outstanding order for well over $300 that was still in progress but because of all the legal costs and goings-on, the order was never fulfilled and the outcome of the case was that none of the customers ever got their money back because of the company being disbanded.
Me and a small group of others have certainly tried, but to no avail, so that for me was the third strike for Sony, and since then, I haven't bought any of their devices anymore.
As for the internet thing, I can understand your point of wanting to go wireless, but to give that the same bandwidth as glass fiber isn't quite possible yet, and we haven't even tapped into the full strength of glass fiber to begin with. Pumping that amount of data through the open air may very well cause those bubbles in our head that smart phones were previously accused of...
"Was that 8MB/s or 8Mb/s?"
Sorry, being a yank living in Europe gets me confused in the usage of capital letters sometimes, since over here, it's Mb, and that stands for Megabytes, so 8 of those...
Agreed on the whole mobile package deal thing with blocks and the like, but it is what it is, there's hardly anything else available, so I guess we'll have to make do with that for now.
The thing with the computer power debate is that we look at the same thing, except from a slightly different point of view. Maybe I have to post that picture again with 3 beams on one side and 4 on the other...
And you actually proved my point: the gap will always be there. You mentioned examples of consoles being more powerful than your old PC, but I'm only talking about the difference between current consoles and current PC's. A good gaming rig completely destroys the Xbox One and the PS4 without ever overheating a single degree, and because consoles are closed-off boxes, they'll never catch up to PC's, also due to the nature of their life cycle.
And quantum computing is still in its infancy, will need to take off, and will do so on (high end) PC, not on consoles, and only long after that will it slowly trickle down into mainstream. It might bring about that reboot you talked about, but maybe not in the way that you seem to think.
And your view on streaming is rather pessimistic or limited, don't know exactly which, but at the risk of repeating myself ad infinitum, Steam and GeForceNow are already well-established and also prove that there is a market. And the service is rock-solid, as long as your internet capacity is of the acceptable kind, which is the case for most of us, and will DEFINITELY improve over the next few years to come. So no, since the examples are already there, in place and working like a charm, I don't agree AT ALL that it's an impossibility.
And you are also grossly mistaken in the development cost/R&D of hardware: that takes many years and many billions of dollars, games only tend to hit millions, not billions.
So, not having to go through a R&D cycle, manufacturing process, and supply chain would literally save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.
Having only a small, TV-connected box that offers connectivity to a custom server park would be a rather streamlined solution, costing only the same as you would pay now for an online subscription and maybe $100 - $150 for the box and its controller.
And if you don't see Xbox going cloud, then just consider how their actions speak for themselves: integrating Xbox One and Windows 10 gaming, integrating multiplayer, integrating the shops and online experience and so on.
All signs that the two are moving ever closer together, so you might want to think again...
Let's just say that I will most definitely be in the group of people that WON'T be surprised if this is actually what is going to happen.
@ThanosReXXX "Well, I could say IGN, GameSpot, YouTube game channels "
I'd like to buy an argument...
@NEStalgia Yeah, not EXACTLY 4 to 5 times more powerful, but those ARE the numbers from a tech site that opened both devices up. And of course there's also the HUGE difference in amount of RAM between the two. (PS4's 8GB vs 512MB on the PS3)
Graphically, that difference is nowhere near as big as the cold, hard numbers, but like the guy on the tech site so eloquently said:
"it won't be so much about putting more pixels on screen as putting more physics into each pixel."
@NEStalgia and I can't do anything BUT agree with @rjejr on the state of the community here. Back then, we didn't have so many idiots/numbskulls/opinionated b'stards as we have now.
Some people posting negative comments in almost every article by default, and some bemoaning every little move that Nintendo makes. It's annoying, harrowing at times, and sometimes also quite disheartening if all you want to do after a hard day's work is to relax on a website of your choice and exchange pleasantries with the handful of people that you DO like.
Some people just seem to use the internet in its entirety to complain, curse, and insult others, and I certainly don't want to be a part of that school of thought...
@ThanosReXXX Hmm, I can't say you're wrong, but I don't recall it being much different in terms of negativity as the WiiU spiraled into the abyss. The post-E3 2015 commentaries kind of speak for themselves. Back at WiiU launch...maybe it was better, sure. All the complainers were biding their time
I wasn't aware that the internet had a use other than complaining. It's been that way ever since AOL's message boards joined the internet at large
@NEStalgia I think that we mean the overall change in community, not just in comparison to the Wii U complaints. I've been here for longer than that and it really used to be different, and actually felt like a kind of quiet oasis to me personally, compared to a lot of other, more scream-and-shout type of sites.
@ThanosReXXX I try to be a responsible text waller and pare down the size as the discussion grows, and there you go inflating it again
Sony: Yikes, that's awful. Ok, Sony VCRs were ALWAYS bad. Probably their attempt to sabotage the format in favor of Beta. But the sabotage of other companies, yeah, that sounds like the Sony I used to know. At least in the pre-Hirai days. I think he's been cleaning house and turning the company around a good deal, but yeah, the sleezy business practices....between them and MS there's not one I like much. And Sony was brutal when they were king.
Internet: I don't think wireless needs to offer what current fiber offers. I'm not sure current fiber needs to offer what current fiber offers. That's just future proofing so they don't have to re-run it again for another hundred years like the old copper. But there's no reason wireless can't provide what current cable companies are providing, or even better. As for the bubbles in our heads...with or without data buckets, they're doing that to us anyway, so I WANT MY MOBILE STREAMING! Wimax 2 wasn't doing anything that the wifi routers on our desks are doing. It was all about efficiency in the radio band, the antenna tech for simultaneous channels and handoffs, and backhaul. They just need to move to many short range repeaters instead of WKRP sized towers. And fix their bleedin' backhaul bottlenecks. That's something all that glass fiber can be put to use for.
Tech has gone irreparably mobile. Laptops outsell desktops, tablets and phones outsell laptops. Switch is here. We want increased connectivity and increased portability. It's only a matter of time before internet has to go truly mobile too. Remember when SatRad was supposed to be obsolete about 5 years ago because universal Wifi would replace it? Yeah...
Just as you're convinced streaming will get there, and VR will get there, I'm convinced proper mobile internet will get there and we'll all laugh at the days when we plugged into the walls.
Reminds me about the crazy idea I heard 20-something years ago that people would stop plugging their telephones into the walls and it would just be "in the air". LOL, AS IF!
Streaming: Well, I'm not going to worry about that. If I had a dollar for every time I've been told "Streaming is going to replace local starting NOW!" and "digital distribution is the future everything will be download only starting NOW!" I could buy enough mobile data buckets to use it all. Microsoft thought we were there 3 years ago and got heckled off the stage. I'm sure one day the predictions will be right. Even Miss Cleo gets it right now and again.
Hardware: I think we're talking about different things with crossing similar threads. Of course hardware R&D is expensive but that doesn't mean hardware platform companies want to leave their profitable market in hardware and start competing with Apple and Google in thin client services. I know existing services exist, even from Sony, but that doesn't mean they want to stop selling incremental computing power to people. The point of consoles isn't to compete with PC, it's to offer a cheaper, simplified solution, which is by design less powerful than current. That's turning into a PC vs console debate more than a software dev costs issue. I was really talking about the dev realities of software and the diminishing returns there. They're spending more and more on producing content that has no hope at all of making that money back. Like Hollywood. Speaking of which, Kaz Hirai is the perfect union of both failed models, former president of Playstation, current president & CEO of Sony Corp., perennial voice of Riiiiiiidge Raaaacerrrr, is going to be spending 50% of his time at the Sony-Columbia Pictures studio in CA (the other 50% at Sony HQ in Tokyo), to personally work on bailing out the failing picture business. Two industries, one company, same problem. They're fine on hardware. They sold underpowered PC hardware like gangbusters without having any games for it. It's dev costs on software that will never sell enough copies at the needed price point to pay for the development. All this talk about even MORE powerful render farms and streaming services (bundling unlimited gameplay per month with pennies of royalties to the studios?) expressly to create even higher powered gaming rigs, makes the development expense burden even worse. We WOULD see a complete collapse of the AAAs in that doomsday scenario!
So stepping away from hardware (that's a different discussion, we can get into that when PSwitch is announced), back to software, what needs to be fixed is to reign in production costs (not expand them.)
That's why I'm hoping Switch can kind of reset those expenses and expectations a bit. DS saved gaming in many ways due to crushing dev costs back to the 16 bit era. It was designed for developers more than consumers which in turn expanded the games available to consumers.
@ThanosReXXX In a sense maybe that's a good thing (the community.) It might mean NIntendo actually has been reaching more gamers than the casual market recently. The gamers are generally the insufferable brats
@NEStalgia Just a few quick replies to your wall of text, so you don't have to give me one back again:
Never contested that there's not going to be good wireless internet/mobile internet, but just saying that the yield for wired hasn't even reached its full capacity yet, so there's still so much more room for improvement there.
The hardware debate/confusion is because of your examples. You mentioned current consoles being more powerful than your old PC and so on, and I just responded to that.
But besides that, the disparity will always be there, and what I said is that IF companies want to remove that disparity, that in that case, streaming would be the most obvious solution, because then consoles can stream PC quality games without needing PC quality hardware, and that isn't even an opinion...
I know and have witnessed Sony improving, but you can't come back into the game as far as I'm concerned if I've already given you three strikes. I'm a burning bridges kind of guy...
All that being said, I think we both agree on hoping the Switch will be a success, and also being able to see that happen, provided that Nintendo does better in quite a few areas, some of which are already up for debate due to having only partial information or no information at all, so communication is DEFINITELY still on their "we have to do better" list...
As for your community comment: how is it a good thing? I don't want or need these people here. I have no understanding or patience for them, and they ruin what is supposed to be an enjoyable time on one of my favorite websites for me, so I would love to go back to 2011, when I was like you, already reading comments but not yet subscribed. Did that a year later...
@ThanosReXXX
Hardware Confusion: TL;DR: We need a bloody quote button! Yeah I was giving that example as an response to something you had said about the disparity, but I think without a quote you matched it up as a reply to something else and we ended up on different topics.
But yeah I don't see companies wanting or needing to remove that disparity unless sales change dramatically. I can see software companies NEEDING the disparity. "PC Quality Games" are the root of the problem in the AAA's and that's what needs to slow down from an expenses standpoint. (believe it or not this conversation was about software development costs at 3rd parties and the diminishing returns therein at some point )
Community: Well it's not a good thing for us in the community, but I mean a good sign maybe that Nintendo is making inroads into the "gamer" community that it allegedly lost.
@NEStalgia Well, personally, I wouldn't mind if that part of the community was lost to the world forever.
But good on you for seeing the positive side. Me and @rjejr just want people to get the hell off our lawn and stfu...
@NEStalgia P.S. Agreed on the whole PC quality games being the root of all evil, but that's also why I said "IF" in the previous comment/text wall. And seeing as they are still on the "ever prettier graphics" road, it certainly seems like that they're at least considering their options in that respect...
And I also didn't lose sight of what the discussion was about, just responded to your PC/console comparison and went from there. Should have clarified, maybe. Oh, well...
@ThanosReXXX You're so funny sometimes. The crux of your argument was that people must be stupid to expect newer more powerful videgame harder to be the same price as older less powerful hardware. I then give you an actual example with prices of newer more powerful video game hardware that is actually cheaper than older less powerful video game hardware, and your first reaction is - VERY bad comparison.
Not only is it not a VERY bad comparison, it's not a bad comparison at all, it's a PERFECT comparison. You wanted to know where these idiots got the idea in their stupid heads that newer more powerful video game hardware could be the same price as older less powerful hardwareer, and I gave you a perfect 1 to 1 comparison of video game hardware to video game hardware, and you tell me it's VERY bad b/c you said 30x more powerful and my example is only 4x? Thats your rebuttal? Do you realize how petty that makes you sound? there is a precendent, there is a very recent perfect comparison basis for why people might think that newer hardware could be the same price as older. It doesn't make them stupid, it makes them aware of their surroundings and the way technology markets work. Go look at the prices of big flat screen TV over the past 10 years, or laptops PCs and tvs. Technology improves, prices come down, that's the way technology works and consumers know that. Nothing baffling about it.
Now if consumers understood Nintendo, they wouldn't expect them to do anything they said or anything that might make sense, but the expectations of a $250 Switch were in fact grounded in our technological reality. Just not Nintendo's reality.
VERY bad comparison. Please.
@ThanosReXXX LOL, Oh, I'm a crabby pessimist to match the worst of 'em! I just have moments of clarity here and there
PC graphics....I see the big studios either being saved by disruptive technology like Switch that forces them to refocus from pretty graphics (or more to the point forces consumers to look at it differently), or they'll eventually spend themselves into bankruptcy, or just turn into some kind of MMO microtransaction beast and sink or swim on that. It's possible that things like Switch, mobile, etc bring a lot of the small studios (that everyone falsely labels indies but aren't, just independent commercial studios) into more prominence...watch the AAAs capsize, and more normal mid-tier games move back into the center as they once were. Not sure how likely, it's just a dream I have
@NEStalgia Well, a man can dream, so hold on to that if that is what floats your boat. And who knows what happens, but honestly, I wouldn't really enjoy a new video gaming industry crash, so I'll pass on that one...
@rjejr I'm always funny, or dead serious and dangerous, all in equal measures, I've chosen my avatar for good reason...
And no offense, but I honestly do believe that your comparison really wasn't completely comparable. Maybe not that bad, so I could have been less harsh in my response, since I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers, so sorry for that, but what I was trying to get across to you is that going from PS3 to PS4 is essentially just going from samey pretty graphics box 3 to samey pretty graphics box 4 with practically all the same functionalities, whereas the Switch, although certainly incorporating certain traits of the Wii and Wii U is something else entirely, so it's considerably different tech made with distinctively different hardware.
And you took the old, SD graphics Wii as a comparison, don't know if you actually meant Wii U or not, but either way, the Wii was only a small step up from the GameCube, and was more of a devolution of graphics in comparison to the competition than a revolution, except for the motion controls.
The Wii U probably was what the Wii should have been, but we all know how that went, so that is probably also why they gave that GamePad functionality and the motion controls another go this time.
The thing that stuck with me in the whole outrage over the price point is that it was NEVER confirmed, ONLY rumored and the sources were highly debatable, so in general I couldn't understand why people latched onto that so ferociously with not even a shred of evidence, so they were only setting themselves up for disappointment.
And although it could have been true, the fact that there was no official proof of it or anything like that, should have meant that people should have been a bit less certain of that $249 price point, and a bit more careful in their assumptions.
In fact, some were already preparing their outrage by exclaiming what they would do if it was going to be $300, or how wrong that would be from Nintendo, when we all know full well that Nintendo wasn't going to sell at a loss. Kimishima has said as much in several interviews, so that was something we could take into account.
But no, rumors persisted, so those must "surely" have been true. And when the actual reveal finally came, a lot of people were needlessly disappointed, and I was just thinking: "okay, that's quite a few dollars, but still a logical and decent price for all the tech we're getting..."
Meanwhile, over half of the community here were gathering up their torches and pitchforks to go and lynch Nintendo for "lying" to us, which they obviously never did, in relation to any price point. In fact, they never said anything about it except for not selling at a loss, oh and something about Switch being decently priced, which only fanned the flames of the rumors again. But there were still no official numbers, so what's fair in Nintendo's eyes did not match with the dreamy expectations of all the "fans"...
And you wonder why all that "righteous" outrage surprised me?
I can honestly tell you that I'm STILL surprised as we speak, because people continue to fill all kinds of gaps with their baseless assumptions concerning the Switch and its games and it's just silly and sad.
But in part, it's also Nintendo's own fault: I already said to @NEStalgia that better communication should still be a point on their to do list, and maybe even replace Reggie as a spokesperson. (He can keep his job, but he must stop talking useless marketing blurb. Even I can't stand it, and I'm a positive guy and a marketing man, but too much of anything isn't good either) They need someone that can answer questions without dodging them which causes only more questions...
But Nintendo gonna Nintendo, so I have little hope of that ever happening, unless the Switch is going to fail massively, and THAT is something that I certainly don't want to see happening...
@ThanosReXXX Oh I don't want an industry crash at all. But the AAAs just can't keep doing what they're doing without capsizing. Their business model is "spend more money than we can hope to take in selling what we make, then find some other way to monetize it" That works until exactly the time that the "other way to monetize it" fails. It's like an inverse Ponzi scheme. They're scheming themselves instead of the customers
I think they're going to collapse one way or another, my dream is just that hardware like Switch acts as an industry release valve for directing other types of studios to the forefront to quickly plug the hole those guys will leave behind.
Ubi is all but dead the moment Vivendi makes their move, and they will. HUGE props to Activision and their management team after Vivendi skewered and gutted them. I remember the ugly fallout from that within the industry at the time. I'm stunned Activision exists at all right now. If not for Guitar Hero going viral when it did raking in cheap cash, they probably wouldn't.
That said, flip a coin as to whether Hollywood or AAA game studios go overboard first. Theaters are down to making most of their money on booze while the films don't even reach break-even until home video release. I, for one, won't be investing in either industry, that's for darn sure
"maybe even replace Reggie as a spokesperson. (He can keep his job, but he must stop talking useless marketing blurb. Even I can't stand it, and I'm a positive guy and a marketing man, but too much of anything isn't good either) They need someone that can answer questions without dodging them which causes only more questions..."
Oh wow, I'm nearly doubled over reading that. I've said so many times that although I like reggie, his endless marketing speak and PR protoprompt garbage is the definition of everything wrong with marketeers....thought for sure you'd be a super pro-Reggie-PR-machine guy. Hysterical to hear you echo my own thoughts on him!
I actually have a pretty good impersonation of Reggie down pat these days. I can wow people by coming up, on the spot, with his almost exact robotic delivery and inflections of word-for-word marketing copy and avoidance of questions that would make a politician wince.
I can't imagine how that guy survived the VH1 corporate culture all those years. He's been too well trained by the Pepsico/PizzaHut culture.
Switch Treehouse is the first time in ages I've seen him act like an actual human not reading a teleprompter and actually be enjoyable to watch. He even cracked jokes about the Zelda Master Edition. Maybe we've only been seeing Fils a Mech the past 4 years.
@NEStalgia Not the greatest RPG fan...liked the Grandia and Dragon Quest titles, but other than that, can't really get myself into them. I love simulation games, which I do own on consoles and we play enough party games (like The Bible Game on PS2, all of the Mario Party titles up to number 8, Pac-Man Fever and the ones that are trivia). I honestly don't know why I didn't care for the 3DS that much, maybe due to much more in the way of Puzzles and adventures on the original gameboy (Rolan's Curse, Heianky Alien and more)...I own one, and played Mario titles, Kirby, Monkey Ball and Animal Crossing to death on it, just never felt as much love as I did with the gameboy...maybe it's getting older or what. Other than that, with consoles, besides party titles, my favorite genres are Platform (why I choose nintendo over sony for), party titles (again nintendo over sony), simulation (where at the moment, sony is thriving on over nintendo, but that could change), puzzles (both have multiple) and, the thing that many people don't like, is trophies, which I do enjoy earning...which gives my wife and I more chances on actually playing the same game over and over again. Other than that, I just remember Link's Awakening being one of my favorite gameboy titles...didn't care for the DS versions but loved the newest Link Between Worlds for 3DS. I was thinking it was due to getting a lot older, as I loved NES when I was in school, got excited for the Genesis, N64, Gamecube, PS2 and Dreamcast...got excited for the PS3 and was really excited for the PS4. I even had the excitement for the Wii, but it ended after a few years in. Wii U I wouldn't have even known about if it wasn't for Nintendo Power ( a magazine I truly miss), but even after seeing it, I still wasn't too excited for it. Switch got my attention with Mario Odyssey, but then I saw it wasn't coming out until the end of this year (and that could even change), then my excitement ended. I still want the switch, I'm just worried it will be like the Wii, Wii U and 3DS to me...play a lot for a while, and then it collects dust and gets lost to where I end up getting rid of them (which I got rid of the Wii and Wii U...kept the 3DS for my kids in the future). Gamecube will never leave, not with a collection of 185 games on it. PS3 I'd get rid of if the PS4 would allow you to download the movies and tv episodes you buy onto it, but the PS4 will never go. Hopefully the Switch becomes a console that I love and brings back the love for nintendo consoles again...still own everything nintendo that comes out (including old cereal boxes from nintendo, cassette music tapes with their logo on it, various collectibles from over the decades and every single Nintendo Power issue and special issues that came out)...yup, I am a nintendo fan!!!!
@JLPick Yeah, 3DS was certainly an RPG haven (I personally hope Switch is as well.) Not that 3DS didn't have a lot of varied content, but I admit I spent probably half my play time on it with RPGs. I suppose that would lower the 3DS appeal a good margin if one of its biggest genres didn't appeal.
Puzzle games. I don't tend to think about that genre often (they tend to frustrate me ), but now that you mention it I suppose it cut back a great deal on those from the GB and even DS era. I've always attributed this to the fact that the genre is pretty heavily saturated by indies and mobile developers so Nintendo's trying to avoid the saturated markets short of Pushmo and the like. There's TONS of them in the eShop though. Of course on Switch we launch with Bomberman and Puyo Tetris shortly after, both of which are technically a puzzle game...maybe that will be a good omen for you!
I also wish for a resurgence in adventure games. There's a dearth of them overall, I suppose being replaced by sandboxes and such. And some of the puzzles in adventures were getting so obtuse that it was a genre that you had to have a walkthrough by your side. But I still have a soft spot for it.
If you're looking for something for your 3DS that's a really fun adventure with great characters (and supports co-op with 2 3DS's) and don't mind a "light" action-RPG, I'd highly recommend Fantasy Life. It's one of the most memorable games I've ever played. It's technically an RPG (aRPG) but it's not particularly challenging, and requires just enough grinding to obtain materials for the crafting mechanic. It can get monotonous if you want to play ALL the side stories for ALL the job types, but if you like escapist worlds and grand adventures, it's a charming game. It's from Level 5, but before they went mobile-happy and was based on a collab project with Nintendo for the DS.
Link's Awakening was great because it was basically Link to the Past II....it's impossible for that not to be great I also really wanted to try to like the DS Zelda's and ultimately don't find them very fun or playable. And Link Between Worlds is now my favorite Zelda of all time. Everything I loved about Link to the Past, but modernized without some of the very out of date mechanics and design decisions (that's actually one of the things that cemented 3DS as my all time favorite console!)
I don't think Switch will be like Wii and WiiU at all...BUT, I imagine it will be very much like 3DS (but with more)...I wonder how it'll appeal to you over a few years. I guess it depends on what exactly didn't click with 3DS.
Wow, 185 games on GCN? I didn't know there were even that many games published for it! It never seemed like it That's probably the total number of games I've owned on all consoles combined (maybe a bit under if we include PC back in the 90's.)
I miss Nintendo Power. I scarfed up the remaining final issues when I heard they were closing. They cancelled my backorder for the final copy. But I did get the WiiU and NSMBU ones which are probably valuable on their own long term considering how short lived WiiU was.
The Switch HARDWARE actually appeals to me. I love my 3DS and have a backlog (DQ7, 8, SMT4:A, Sun&Moon...might get that upcoming sidescroll Pikmin) and keep thinking "when will I play them once I have switch?" My poor PS4. I still need it for Persona 5, Mass Effect 4, and Horizon which I didn't like at E3 2015 then kind of liked at E3 2016. But I'll always wish I could pick it up and play it on the go now.
I guess it's time to unplug the Vita....
@SLIGEACH_EIRE I am a cancer survivor and trust me chemo was better than dealing with you at times. You are brash you don't take others opinions well. The problem is you don't see it. That is why you need to be banned. You are so harsh and the site would be better without you.
^^^ So much rubbish in your post. ^^^
@SLIGEACH_EIRE Which post are you referring to? There are 295 which aren't yours.
@ThanosReXXX Not entirely on topic, but I'd ask you to let me pick your brain for a moment with something that's been on my mind. I was talking on another website I frequent about how Bethesda can't feasibly expect large sales numbers from Skyrim, considering that, even if it's based on the remaster, it's still Skyrim, and people have probably already played it on other machines, so why pay for the same experience? Plus, even on the go, it's still the same experience.
This led me to wondering how much on-the-go truly means to people, as personally I do not see the value in it, since my Switch will be used as a home-console. (excuse my going through the thought process, but I feel it's necessary for explanatory purposes)
And that in turn brought me to this: What's your take, on a possible rupture of people, all owning a Switch, but one camp being home-console, and the other handheld, basically having different needs and getting annoyed at each other/Nintendo? If they manage to keep it camp hybrid, it'll be a feat in and of itself. But as a home-console type Switch to-be owner (again, for the latest Nintendo + third-party offering, I've got no choice but to buy one) I already have a sour feeling, knowing there's been sacrifices to get it it's handheld component, even though I realise what good it brings as well (having both camps together is great for Nintendo, more third-party support etc). Apologies for the scramble-up at the end.
@UmniKnight Well, I honestly don't expect that big divide that you are imagining is going to happen. The Switch will be the Switch, regardless of what you, I or others will use it for, so that's highly unlikely to impact how it's seen, used or sold.
And even if you're strictly home console, you could still play a bit of online Mario Kart with someone. You could also do that with a player that is only using the Switch in handheld mode.
That's the nice thing about it: regardless of the mode of play, it's still the same games that you'll be playing.
As for Skyrim, and it WILL be the special edition, which by the way has only been around since October 2016, so that really isn't that old.
And even though you have your own preferences, I think you highly underestimated the attraction of being able to play home console games on the go. Maybe you are thinking about Sony and their efforts, which never truly took off like Nintendo's did, but that's just it: this is Nintendo's strength, and if anyone can push that and pull it off, it's them.
And don't worry about those sacrifices: the Switch does a native 1080p/60fps in home console mode, and the Xbox One still does many games in 900p. What the others DO have, is more RAM and a slightly better processor, but programming is done differently, and both of the others are using quite a bit of their RAM for their OS and other tasks, so in general, almost half of the Xbox One's and PS4's RAM is used by that, leaving only 4GB.
The Switch "only" has 4GB of RAM in total, but it only needs 1GB to use for it's highly optimized (and sleek, if I may say so, looking at those leaked videos in that article on the front page) OS, so it has more RAM left in comparison (percentage-wise) and the most sacrifices will therefore not so much be in the graphics, but in effects, size of game worlds, AI, number of things happening/objects on screen at the same time, or smaller lobbies when playing online (for example: like 24 players instead of 32 or something).
Another possibility I've been thinking about lately, is that with some very smart optimizing and programming, and Nvidia can be of great help there, differences can even be made so small that we won't even notice. Bigger games might have some longer loading times, but they ARE on cartridges, so in comparison to discs or installed games, they will still be fast.
But for now, we'll just have to wait and see, since not a whole lot of third party offerings are known or shown yet, so if we want to do an actual comparison, we need to get some of those.
The latest footage of Dragon Quest and Fifa was more than likely also edited in after the video was shot, so all people in it were playing with dummy consoles, not actually "switched on" ones, just like they did in that reveal trailer of the Switch...
@ThanosReXXX You've a point in multiplayer being across everyone, even if they're doing it handheld, which is a very big point not to be underestimated. It has people play during hours they otherwise wouldn't and thus, makes a very vibrant online player-base.
And as for the divide, it's something I wouldn't want to see happening, but people have different reasons and expectations of the product they buy, and that gets muddier with a hybrid, since it's half of 2 different things. But, perhaps I'm just seeing ghosts on the road, since it is a hybrid device, and it's impossible what to expect of it, or how features will develop.
And last but not least, I really hope Nintendo ups their game when it comes to relaying information to the consumer, I'm getting very tired of not knowing all the details of important things concerning Switch/games etc.
Last bit on Skyrim: I wasn't talking about old, hence why I didn't mention the word. Rather, it's the same experience, as obviously it's Skyrim, and what incentive will people have, save for portability, to buy it again on Switch? I have it on PC, and I honestly see no reason to buy on Switch, unless it has some really good, Nintendo related mods that would be unavailable otherwise.
@UmniKnight That's exactly my point on that divide: I think you missed what I meant there: it's exactly BECAUSE it's a hybrid that it won't matter which way people will lean or view it. It's the same console, the same games, so use it any way you like, there will be no difference or divide between the two preferences, or camps as you said. And to think that there is going to be some kind of hostility between the two is also overthinking it a bit too much in my opinion.
I had to laugh a bit at "ghost on the road". Not to make fun of you, but you mixed a Dutch and an American/English saying. (I also speak Dutch, remember? )
One is "spoken zien" and the other one is "bears on the road" but I won't hold it against you...
Agreed on there needing to be more information and in previous threads, I already expressed my opinion on Nintendo having to communicate better, so that should still be a point on their to do list.
As for Skyrim, I mistakenly thought you also meant old because you mentioned people having already played that, so that was my interpretation of that.
But regardless of some people, like you, not seeing the benefit in either playing or buying it again, there will be millions of people that WILL want to play a console game on the go, and we don't even know what will be done multiplayer-wise, which brings us back to the point we agree on: lack of information and Nintendo's lack of communication skills or whatever the hell their problem is in that respect.
On a side note: I have read on multiple sites that there are mentions of Nintendo allowing mods in Skyrim, so that could certainly also be a BIG draw for people to buy this game (again)...
@ThanosReXXX I understand that I am but a part of a group, but it's not unreasonable, considering Skyrim's overall age, to assume that those who had/have interest in it (Steam sales, price cuts on Xbox/PS what have you) have already played/tried it.
And again, I duly do wonder how much portability is a selling point. You live in the Netherlands atm, you tell me how many people you see, over there, with anything but a phone. In my village, I'd be shocked to see someone with a dedicated gaming device out in the open. It just doesn't happen. Which has me think the portability aspect, is primarily meant to please Japan, and it's seemingly endless hunger for portability in gaming. Those that love handhelds are included as well, of course, and I do own a new 3DS XL, but that's the machine I'll use on the go, the Switch won't replace that. Might be that other countries have more of a handheld scene going on, I don't have the knowledge to speak on that.
@Mii_duck
And now a list of the good games.
@UmniKnight You mention the game's age, but when I interpreted that as you thinking it was old, you said that was not the case, but now you mention it again, so apparently, the age of the game IS a problem in your eyes. And yet, that age is arguable, since the special edition, that has more changes than just graphical ones, is only 5 months old...
As for portable gaming: I live and work in Amsterdam, and I see people gaming on 3DS, PS Vita/PSP or even tablet or laptop in public transport on a daily basis, so I guess it depends on where you live.
In Japan, portable gaming is WAY bigger than home console gaming, and over in my native country the US, it's also pretty big.
In general, there's a pretty big and confirmed audience for portable gaming all over the world, and the numbers in which portables are sold, should tell you as much. The 3DS currently sits comfortably at well over 65 million, 65.3 million to be exact.
But I think it's not the separate features that are the selling point, but the total package. So you shouldn't separate the portability from the rest.
I believe you should see it as the hybrid that it is, and not as anything else. And see it as a device that can offer any setup that the user wishes it to have: home console, handheld, instant two player machine and possibly also some tablet functions, if they are going to merge in their mobile games.
It's like a menu in a restaurant: there's a lot of food to choose from, but you don't have to choose everything or eat things that you don't like, so if handheld is not your taste, then that's perfectly fine, but for other people, home console will not be the most interesting part of it and so on...
The most important thing is that YOU get what you want out of the Switch, and it doesn't matter how many other features it has that don't interest you, as long as it also has the features that you DO like, and that should be all you ought to worry about.
Well, not worry of course: just enjoy it...
Off topic, but here's some more good news about the Switch:
http://gonintendo.com/stories/274279-capcom-talks-about-switch-dev-kit-costs-tech-details-working-on
I've also sent it to NLife, so you might be seeing an article about it on the front page as well...
@UmniKnight Small addition to the whole Skyrim thing:
all the people that have already tried/played the game, are mostly Playstation, Xbox or PC gamers. Most Nintendo-only gamers have never even played a Skyrim game, so there are more than enough potential customers for it in that target audience.
But having said that, I have more than enough friends that still play Skyrim because of the mods, but when they aren't at home, they have to bring their laptop along to be able to play it, so if Nintendo would indeed support mods, then that will almost certainly be an interesting option for some of these players to consider buying the game again...
@ThanosReXXX I've red about that, and am hoping Monster Hunter comes soon. But there's an interesting discussion: 3DS is still alive, which is the current home of MH. Would it "Switch" platforms? Or will it remain on 3DS? I'd love it to go to the Switch, as it would allow me and my friends to play it home-console mode, with a good controller and a big screen, but again, the 3DS still lives, so what will happen in that regard?
As for the part of the features, as is the case with everything that's supported by a minority (I've got a feeling that home-console users of the Switch will be a minority) their features/wants etc are at potential risk of being scrapped, in favour of what the majority wants. Look no further than how Fire Emblem has marriage in it now, as a large amount of people enjoyed this, and it's part of what saved the series, so it's now a part of it. A minority probably hated this, but again, they are a minority and are hence overruled.
Yes I may be unnecessarily worried, and I hope so, but I am not ignorant to the possibilities. Say that Switch becomes extremely successful on it's handheld part alone, and the home-console parts to it (could not happen, but again it's a scenario) become cumbersome in their efforts to develop it on what sells, then why would they keep that part around? Has Nintendo gone this route, because home-console is on the way out, and because they're building it off with a hybrid, then handheld only after that?
My apologies if it sounds ranty/overly worried, but with a hybrid system, and as much as I try to forget, my Wii-U collecting dust in the corner, reminding me of the recent past, I can't help but worry about these things.
@UmniKnight Yeah, I can see where you're coming from, but Nintendo is taking all the right steps this time, also evident in how cheap the dev kit is, how they listened and reacted to Capcom and so on and so on, so I think your worries, although somewhat understandable, are a bit premature and probably completely unnecessary.
I'd say just enjoy the ride and let it take you wherever it will go. I promise you it's not going to be a short one, and you can hold me to that, so archive this comment...
P.S.
No apologies needed, but those bears on the road REALLY need to go back into the forest...
Tap here to load 293 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...