Feature: A Nintendo Switch Launch Day Report from Tokyo, Japan

Almost time!

The hype is insane, I feel like a young kid again

I'd run down and pick up my Switch at midnight, but something tells me the Post Office won't make a special midnight delivery of Zelda, so I'm just going to wait.

When I was in Tokyo, I went with a friend to an opening of a Dunkin Donuts. I was both amazed by ow long the line was, and more amazed by how calm they queued up. People were talking and smiling and playing games. No one pushing or doing the "scoot so close to you, because leaving more than 6 inches between people would obviously invite people to skip 😒" that happens in lines in America.

Any who, I'm excited for everyone to get their Switch and excited to hear about everyone's experiences.

I'm at a midnight event right now at Best Buy Puerto Rico (11:46pm) and there is a really long line. I'm relax since I preorder and I'm at no rush to get the Pro Controller but damn the line is really long.

Interesting video. Not sure I agree with everything said, particularly about never getting a price cut- I do actually think later on, maybe 2-3 years down the line, we'll see a $249 price to really carry momentum forward.

The whole "conceded the home console market" thing seems a matter of perspective. To me, if it's running console games, and connects to the TV out of the box, and has a separate controller that's not just buttons built into the unit, and it's equal to or greater than the power of their last home console... then it's a home console. The only thing they've conceded is that the old way wasn't working (and it wasn't- this, however, is very exciting).

I preordered 2 but on line for a third. Got two bros. Wouldn't do this of not for Zelda.

@JaxonH
I'm with you, This is not Nintendo leaving the home console business. And you made some great points, The switch plays home console quality games on a TV screen, I mean come on! Obviously this is still a home console. It just so happens that you can also take it anywhere and play it as a portable. I personally plan on enjoying Zelda on my 60 inch TV in all its glory.

Also, I believe a price cut is definitely possible in the future. Why, well most of the tech in the switch isn't cutting edge stuff now and it will be even less so in a few years meaning it will become cheaper for nintendo to produce so stomaching a price cut won't be that hard

Pretty bold statements. Who is this person?

Standing in line with about 50 people, I hope they have enough to get one tonight

@Jessica286 I walked by gamestop at 4 pm in san francisco and there was already a line of maybe 15 people

Wooohoo!!!! I got my switch. Now for 48 hours of Zelda before I have to work again

Nintendo Switch sold with US$300, right ?
Because in my country Indonesia, there is a seller in Jakarta that giving an insane price for Nintendo Switch. It cost 6,700,000 IDR or US$480 BUT with 2 games included (we can choose the games). I'm afraid Nintendo Switch will be priced with that price on Indonesia for this year, more expensive than ps4 slim and newbies will think twice before buy Switch.

Just got my copy of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild for my Wii U!!!

Enjoy your switch guys but for me I have to go to work in a hour.. Oh well never mind

I think I'll wait a year to see how NS pans out. For this year, I would prefer to build a new PC based around Ryzen R5, instead.

I agree that Nintendo has essentially conceded the home console space, as evidenced by the mobile hardware of the NS. They can market it however they like, but it's technologically a "mobile console."

It's not getting a price drop in Japan, it's already the equivalent of US$261 there. Maybe elsewhere in the world, but that's only if non-Nintendo fan enthusiasts and the mainstream shun the NS like they did for the 3DS. That might happen in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2017, but by the end of 4th quarter 2017, the heavy hitters like Mario Oddysey will start releasing, and probably change the tides.

For Japan, on the other hand, this may be the single most potentially paradigm shifting mobile device since the first smartphones. So it will constantly encounter shortages for the rest of the year over there. (And possibly elsewhere, considering region free means all markets are fair game for the starved customer...)

WOOT!!! I got my game on. thank the gods they had extra

Well. Seeing as this will get Pokémon and everything else on it, I can't see it selling less than 20 million at all. Probably much more. It will have every single Nintendo game on it, that's never happened before, they always had to split it between home and handheld systems. I mean, I honestly can't fathom a scenario where Switch is not a grandiose success. People like to boast about the incredible library of 3DS games, but Switch will logically be far superior because Nintendo won't have to spread themselves so thin across 2 separate devices anymore.

@Anti-Matter
We have the same problem in Denmark.. I just checked the prices to compare. The Switch is only available i one physical shop, Gamestop, and there it sells for 2999kr (=400€/425$). I have preordered online for 2500kr (335€/353$). BotW costs 600kr(80€/85$), but for in webshop 450dkkr/60€/63$..
We have a huge tax on electronics so everyobe buys from amazon or other shops.
I hope the supermarkets will start selling Nintendo again, bu they will def need the pricecut I got in the webshop to make it work...

I'm also waiting.. should be delivered today by carrier, so I'm doing/ (trying to concentrate on assignments at home.
In Denmark I have seen no commercials and only seen the switch in one physical store, and I do not think they had midnight open..
I am quite sad that Nintendo seems 'dead' in Denmark. I know three people in total who knows the Switch even exists, and they are not buying at launch...

@Donutman don't lie to us, man. You're never going back, are you?

Couldn't agree more with this entire video.

Except... Nintendo has to sell this thing, and sell as many as they sold 3ds's - even if they drop the price by $50 in a year or two to do so. But you are right, they will bundle in a couple fo games before they consider a price cut. It has to be a hit or they will exit the hardware market. I really hope that doesn't happen.

Big W in Australia was "bundling" Zelda in with the switch for $519 AUD. and 1,2, Switch with the Switch for $499 AUD.

@Equinox I turned up at 11.40pm at Smyth's to collect my pre-order, I was third in line. A guy came out at 11.50 to tell us that there was only a handful of non pre-order consoles available. I didn't keep an eye on the cue behind me but when I came out at 12.05 there must have been at least 20 people there...

I'm one of THOSE people from the Switch trailer already. I get the train with my wife every morning and we played some SnipperClips together, much to the bemusement of the rest of the carriage. It was awesome!

So hyped!
Same feeling i had whem i first saw the N64.
Now a Home console i can take with me on the go.

Gonna collect mine in a couple of minutes. Would've liked to include Bomberman R, but for some weird reason, Dutch retailers have not received that game at all, which sucks. Hopefully they'll hurry up, I want a good local co-op game, and nobody in this household cares for 1,2, Switch or Snipperclips as it stands.

Edit: And that's when a literal of 30 seconds before this post, I get an E-mail saying Bomberman R can be picked up. I..... don't even.

@PlywoodStick I don't agree that they've conceded the home console business. Yes the hardware components have come from mobile developments but conceding is the same as handing over entirely which they clearly haven't done (have you seen how gorgeous Zelda is on a big TV?!!). They're still in the home console gaming business with a family friendly and fun machine but not with the most powerful, and certainly without a lot of Third party power hungry AAA games. The ever innovative Ninty have shifted their focus to forge a new market of unparalleled gaming access, home and portable, single, local and internet co-op play anywhere. Without any faffing around, just undock and carry on, just unclip JCs and hand them out. It's brave, clever and could well bring gaming into many more people's live and accepted back into the mainstream conscience. I hope to see more gamers on commutes, hear many more people chatting about games than ever before. It's exciting times. This is good for all gaming without doubt.

@beazlen1 BotW is only 900p on NS, I think I'll wait until Wii U version gets Cemu support before diving into it with 1080p output, internal 4K rendering.

I don't think it's a bad thing for Nintendo to give up the strictly home console sector. If anything, I think they're tapping into the beginning of the future for consoles in general. Even the PS4Pro and XBScorpio are obsolete upon release compared to modern PC rigs worth $600+, especially now with the release of Ryzen breaking the Intel monopoly, and Vega soon to provide competition for NVIDIA. Consoles no longer have the price/performance advantage upon release over PC that they did for the better part of 30 years, so efficiency and utility is key for consoles now. With some reservations about the depth of utility at launch, that's what Nintendo is focusing on.

@Kid_Sickarus priorities, need job so that I can walk in and drop almost $600 in a day on a console and accessories.
And Zelda is freaking awesome!

@PlywoodStick Err, Ryzen's just another AMD chip, like gamers have been choosing over Intel for 20 years, just marketed and with a feature set oriented toward gaming. It's not going to make any dent in Intel's overall PC monopoly which is rooted in productivity, laptops, and enterprise. AMD already had most of the gaming market locked up, it's just solidifying it and growing the market with price points.

Much as I hate the Intel tax, no way I'm trusting my mission critical productivity machines to AMD ever again...

But yeah, the rest, I agree, I think this is the beginning of the future for consoles, and I really, really like that future. It's a pretty big SWITCH (giggity.)

@Anti-Matter the Switch is $500 in Thailand... Don't feel bad.

@PlywoodStick

Opposite of you, got my Switch and Zelda and will be upgrading my 6 year old i5 2500k to a Ryzen R5 (R7 1700 if they take too long with a summer release) 1400X/1600X. I've purchased every single Nintendo system on launch since the Virtual Boy though.

I've always been a PC and Nintendo fanboy with a little sprinkle of Sony sometimes.

@NEStalgia I don't know about that... The R7 1800x has nearly as much performance in workstation and heavily multithreaded applications as the (now) $1000 i7-6900K and $1700 i7-6950K, at half and one third the price, respectively. As it turns out, the R7 1700 has nearly the same performance as the R7-1800x, due to early teething issues with the "x" model's variety of automated clocking. For example, overclocking is still locked at around 4.1 GHz. So we now see a $330 CPU with nearly on par performance with CPU's that are three and five times it's price. Many people are not going to be able to resist that, it makes the highest priced Intel offerings look like a total ripoff.

Additionally, the R7 line is not really meant for gaming, due to those 8 physical cores forcing clocks to stay low to prevent further heat buildup on an already toasty CPU. The R5 line will be more meant to compete with the likes of the i7-7700K and such, since overclocking 6 physical cores draws much less heat. I suspect that at $220-260, the R5 1500-1600x will begin to draw the era of strictly 4 core procs specializing in lightly threaded games to a close, as newer, more heavily threaded games become the norm. Star Citizen in particular should be turn out to be an exemplary showcase of this. Though, it will still be interesting to see how well the $200 R5 1400 stacks up against the i5-7600K and the like... However, Intel will likely remain on top for lightly threaded applications.

Suffice to say, AMD is back in the game. They haven't been this competitive since the Athlon series- the R3 line in particular seems set to completely obsolete the dual core i3 line for mainstream $100-150 CPU's, leaving only the Pentium dual cores at the sub $100 range. Seeing how well Ryzen is handling cryptography features, it may become big in the security sector as well. There's little comparison between the efficacy and utility of Ryzen versus current gaming console CPU's.

@TurboTEF I'll be going from an i7-970 (got it though workplace, didn't buy it ) to an R5-1600x. It's gotta be hexa cores for me, I prefer the extra utility combined with good gaming performance over quad core any day.

Same on the Nintendo/PC emphasis, except this will be the first time I wait on a Nintendo console to build up it's library before jumping in...

How can the Switch be considered "long delayed" though?

@16bitdave well I went to Best Buy (arrive at 11pm) and left the store at 4am. Crazy as hell!

@Jessica286 It's been a wild month I am looking forward to being able to purchase a Switch. I've been cranky not having one.

@16bitdave all that crankiness is going away when u get the console.

@Jessica286 I know but I want it now!