Dr_Lugae

@Dev-N tbf Mario Kart World has already sold to about 90% of Switch 2 owners.

It probably won't stop selling for the rest of the generation and probably even into the next. It's already outsold every Mario Kart from before the Nintendo DS lol.

@Samalik I see, I've never really played any of the handheld ones. So aren't aware how they changed things.

I think the problem with Sonic Superstars (and Sonic 4) is Sonic Adventure was both Sonic's transition to 3D and home-console style experience.

Whereas Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles were very "arcade game in your home" and Mania because that's what SEGA were going for in the 90s and are great.

But I think part of why both 2D and 3D Mario can do so well is while SMB is like Sonic, 2D Mario changed and by Super Mario World you had a game with secrets to explore and something you could keep coming back to and discovering more level exits, routes through the game, etc..

Even in the modern generation hit singleplayer games that aren't' cinematic basically work the same way Super Mario World did. But 2D Sonic never had that transition, you can explore the levels to discover routes through that level and powerups and bonus stages, but the bonus stages are all interchangeable and not unique secrets, and other than the Sonic 2 mobile adding the Hidden Palace secret, there aren't unique routes through the game.

I think the next time they try a 2D Sonic they need to treat it as important as 3D Sonic and try and to figure a way to modernise 2D Sonic without losing the appeal.

@The_Top_Loader The regular pattern is doom and gloom followed by finger pointing and trying to shame people for buying the system and games once they're successful, lol.

So we can look forward to getting faulted for the Switch 2 selling well.

@Adnanilyas21 Pokemon sold almost 6million, though this is only for sales up to the end of September so stuff like Mario Galaxy 1 + 2 and Pokemon Legends aren't being counted yet.

@UltimateOtaku91 Also Re: Gamepass. I'd argue the Nintendo Switch Online classics are a better model.

Because its their own back catalogue and not new games it can be offered cheap and it's curated to appeal to fans of Nintendo games and create new fans of their games.

Gamepass is a ridiculous business model because it requires charging the customer monthly for loads of games they were never interested in. It's why Microsoft have to keep increasing the price of it even if they're not adding games that are to the
taste of the person subscribing to it.

Typically a forecast for the 1st year is something a company expects a product to smash to look good for investors.

So if they increased it from 15m to 19m then they probably expect to sell over 20million. So it might be reaching or beating the Gamecube by the end of next March.

@UltimateOtaku91 It's why its at 90% but considering its Mario Kart it's probably going to end up selling to at least 1/3rd of every console sold like Mario Kart Wii, 7 and 8 did.

@LightSpirit The audience for EA treats/buys the gams as football merchandise rather than games.

Probably very little overlap with those who discuss games online.

I think it shows complacency of people online. You get idiots like this because they hear "Nintendo cant stop piracy".

They think it means Nintendo cant stop them. When it just means they can't totally weed piracy out, they can very easily stop individual pirates distributing links and software.

I think this will continue to happen as people show a cavalier attitude towards piracy and try to make a business out of it.

@Tyranexx 366 days after the game is started day based events like berries growing get a 366 day delay.

Which meant without the fix planted berries would effectively stop growing and some other day based events wouldn't refresh properly.

Though ZA doesn't have day 1 DLC, you can pre-order the DLC but the content isnt in the game. (Not that I have, I'm waiting until its out to gauge if I want it)

@Tyranexx To be fair in the past if a game had a gamebreaking bug or oversight you had to put up with it or companies would have to issue a reprint with the fix or some crazy workarounds.

Like the European PAL version of Super Paper Mario has glitch that crashes the game if you talk to a character in the 2nd chapter which would have been fixed if the games could be patched back then.

In Final Fantasy 7 the Magic Defense stat just didn't work until the re-release. In Final Fantasy 6 the Evasion stat was useless and both magic and physical hit rates was all calculated from magic evade, which also made the blind status not actually do anything.

Or Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire having a bug with berry trees that they managed to patched by updating your cartridge with the fix if it interacted with Pokemon Colloseum or Fire Red/Leaf Green.

@Dom_31 Probably the same people who do stuff like level up to level 99/100 in the opening of Final Fantasy games.

When a game has millions of players there's going to be some who do mind-bendingly unexpected things. Though I suppose now the battling/catching is seamless you can machine gun out dozens of pokeballs in less than a minute if you just threw balls indiscriminately at every mon in the wild zones.

It'd probably wouldn't be too tough to fill the boxes with hundreds of Weedles or Fletchlings from the start of the game.

@ZeldaEnthusiast1711 I think the difference is that the Switch 2's current owners were probably some of the Switch 1's most active users who'd buy games first week.

Casual players are more likely to wait for it, or be younger people who couldn't buy it first week if they wanted, need to wait for pocket money, birthdays or christmas presents to get the game. So ZA probably will get respectable sales long term on Switch 1, just not maybe as quickly as Switch 2 will.

But as the Switch 2 sells, the Switch 1 launches are going to get smaller and smaller even if the games can still end up selling really well.

Ok why aren't the actual numbers in the article? How hard is it to compare 5.8 million first week against the other games numbers?

@Ralek85 That's true, Palworld wouldn't exist if it failed in fact the only reason it released into early access when it did was because Pocketpair couldn't afford to develop it any longer without any income from it. Hogwarts Legacy is a generic open world game so I don't know why you'd name drop it.

In this industry of constant studio shut downs even by its biggest publishers, chaos and layoffs at places like Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, Activison, I don't know why you would doubt me saying the AAA games are risky.

@Bats1234 Agree like take the "smallest retail launch since Pokemon Lets go Pikachu Eevee".

1st weeks:
LGPE: 3million
Sw/Sh: 6million
BD/SP: 6million
Legends LA: 6.5million
SV: 10million
Legends ZA: 5.8million

The shear gulf between ZA and LGPE is so wide that the comparison would just do more to mislead than pointing out the titles its actually sold within a few hundred thousands of.

Like it's sold only 200k below Sw/Sh and BD/SP. But the fact it's slightly below them is being used an an excuse to compare it to a game that Legends ZA sold 2.8million more than.

@Ralek85 tbf in the current games industry uncommercially viable games rarely get second chances, they die and often take out the development studio with them.

It's likely only through the case that Pokemon is low-risk high-reward that they'd experiment like this. Give Pokemon a AAA budget and they'd probably be solidly iterating the same old formula because even one failure would become costly.

@Striker21 That's all just semantics. I already explained why you can't just add the audiences together or treat the active Switch base like its actually has more buying power than in 2022. As someone as owns both a Switch and a Switch 2 you'd be counting me as two potential customers for the game but I'm not.

If you expect Legends ZA to eventually sell in the ballpark of Legends Arceus, LGPE, etc. You can't possibly believe anyone is sending a message through sales. I mean what if it does outsell Legends Arceus in the end? What does that say?

I also want to see the series improve, but I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Nintendo surveys for the game to say what I like or don't. I'm not going to read or push fluctuations in launch week sales that are negative in some regions and positive in others, as a message from the fanbase about the state of the games.

@Striker21 I updated my post but God of War Ragnarok went on to sell 35% less than GoW 2018. I don't recall any statements by the Playstation fanbase hating on Ragnarok nor do you seem to believe this bigger sales gap was a statement on the poor state of God of War.

I never said Switch 1 owners won't buy the game I do expect they will, and I explained why think the Switch 1 will skew away from 1st week sales. The more active game buyers will be on Switch 2 hence how with possibly 1/15th of the audience size the Switch 2 bought more copies of Legends ZA.

I don't even think the sales are poor. Pokemon Sword/Shield sold 6million first week and they went on to sell 26million. Pokemon LGPE sold 3million first week and they went on to sell 15million. Pokemon Legends Arceus sold 6.5million first week and they sold 15million too.

Pokemon Legends ZA sold 5.8million and you think it's some grand statement on the series. Hell it's only bloody 10% lower than Legends Arceus worldwide 1st week which means in some countries Legends ZA will have had to have matched or outsold Legends Arceus 1st week for the numbers to work out. (and at the very least its known in Japan ZA sold more)

@Striker21 God of War Ragnarok only sold 5.1million in its first week which is lower than Legends ZA's 5.8million.

The PS5 wasn't new when it launched, the PS5 was 2 years old and the PS4 was 8 years.

Also Ragnarok only ended up at 15million to GoW 2018's 23million despite being on two platforms. 35% less, what do you read from that? What were the Playstation audience punishing Sony for?

@TheBigK The Digital sales might, but I think the bigger factor is that the Switch 2 is only estimated to have sold 10million.

It's probably just not big enough yet to offset the decline of the active userbase of the Switch 1. But the Switch 2 took more than 50% of the sales despite having 10% of the userbase suggests that Legends ZA's sales will probably increase a lot over the holiday season in a way previous Pokemon games would not.

@Dylansuxx Half the people complaining about the game didn't even play it.

That's why you get results like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet getting loads of "backlash" yet ending up selling better than Sword/Shield when other Nintendo franchises like Zelda had Tears of the Kingdom sell much less than BOTW despite the fact both games were critically acclaimed.

The silent majority like the Pokemon games. A loud minority who don't even play the games, complain loudly about games they were never interested in.

Fans of the games don't care if these people buy the games or not, but the complainers and whiners seem to care way too much over what fans want to buy and enjoy. They can vote with their wallet, but they can't vote with ours.

@Striker21 There's a big difference between launching at the peak of a systems lifecycle and the end of one and start of another.

Final Fantasy IX (2000) sold about half of Final Fantasy VII (1997) and that isn't because of backlash against the franchise, it got even higher critical reception. It just that the PS1 was 6 years old and the active userbase was dwindling. The Switch is almost 9 years old. The fact it still supporting multi-million launch weeks is exceptional, previous Nintendo systems couldn't do that.

If you look at LGPE it launched smaller than Legends Arceus too, but it endedup selling 15million too because it benefitted from the growth of the Switch. Legends ZA will benefit from launching even earlier in the Switch 2's lifecycle because its sales will ride on the growth of the Switch 2 while the Switch 1 declines.

I would not be surprised if Legends ZA ends up outselling Legends Arceus.

@FishyS Probably differ in whether they've actually played the games.

I'll call it out here but if anyone has bombed the review score of Legends ZA without playing it, then they're pathetic.

If they've played it and rate it negatively that's fair enough it's their opinion.

@Jarodlaraus Yeah I think when someone points to Pokemon (or any game) and goes "Hey Look at this! I think it sucks!".

If the game is appealing and doesn't actually suck it might as well be a free advertisement.

@UpsideDownRowlet I think they should mind their own business lol. Its up to the players who play the game to provide feedback on what's good or bad to the developers.

Not some random who watched some YouTube videos and didnt play the game.

@Jeronan And yeah its kind of telling instead of engaging with your comments, the first port of call is for them to remove it.

Like is this a discussion or a one way broadcast?

@Jeronan I read what you said before it got removed, and yeah agree.

I even think there's a horrible slant in this article because for all they're saying the NPCs and Pokemon on lumiose and the sidequests show a lot of character and personality like its probably one of Pokemon's most believeable settings. Especially compared to the original Pokemon XY which was rather barebones, but I don't recall complaining then.

The idea the setting is creepy is absurd.

Nintendolife really hate this game.

I personally think SEGA have bungled the DLC out of the gate.

If Spongebob is supposed to be an incentive for non-fans to buy the game why is he paid DLC?

Ten year old Little Timmy who likes Spongebob more than Sonic isn't going to spend $70 on the a Sonic game where he has to pay a further $30 Season Pass to play as Spongebob. He'd probably just buy one of those cheapo Nick Racing games for $20.

They should have put fully voiced SEGA/Sonic characters as paid DLC because the biggest fans are also going to be the biggest spenders.

Spongebob and the Nicktoons should have been free and the licensing fees would get made up by the extra sales on account of having those characters. It defeats the purpose of having those character to draw in new players if all the non-Sega characters are behind a fairly big pay wall.

That would be like if all of the third party characters in Smash Bros were paid DLC and all of the Nintendo characters (including post-launch) were free. It'd just be stupid and make non-Nintendo fans less likely to buy the game.

@Yosher Sorry but Legends ZA has no performance issues or bugs even on Switch. It runs solid 60FPS on Switch 2 and 30FPS on Switch 1.

Stop reading through what kind of pre-written platitude-laden script you have you numpty, and actually acknowledge what each game does or doesn't do.

What kind of fan faults a game for issues it doesn't even have? How can you even pretend you want the series to be better if you wouldn't even acknowledge it anyway and will just rant about what happened in a 6 year old game?

@Yosher Well you didn't even say what you meant. The new battle system works well. The game's performance is spot-on. The story and characters are a big step up from what tbe original story for the setting in XY.

You can't just say a vague "settling for less" and be baffled when someone tries to fill in the gaps in what you're talking about.

@Willo567 It came out in peak Switch years where games like it, Animal Crossing, Pokemon SV, LoZ TOTK and Super Mario Wonder we'll doing 10-20million in their launch quarter

Like we were seeing games launch with numbers as big as or even bigger than many of Nintendo's biggest games in those series would take years to sell in the past.

@Yosher 25 years ago you could argue the same about Pokemon Gold/Silver. I do remember gaming magazines reader older gamers pissed off over Pokemon being as big as it was.

G/S recycled a great amount of Red/Blue's overworld graphics even in the Johto sections even though they could have easily afforded to re-do everything. Though obviously the game was still good, production values be damned.

Voting with your wallet can include buying the game after all.

@horizonisland tbf regarding monster numbers. A lot of Pokemon's ZA roster get mega evolutions which are effectively new models arent counted. Galatians Slowpoke and its evolutions and Alolan Raichu are in but they don't count towards the roster.

A lot of Digimon Time Stranger's roster is pumped up by recolours. Having Goblimon/Sharmamon/SnowGoblimon, Gotsumon/Icemon/Meteormon as separate monsters even though they're just recolours or minor model edits. It' be a bit like saying Pokemon has 460 monsters on the basis of the Shinys.

Between Pokemon not counting Megas and Digimons recolours being counted the number of unique monsters is probably quite close.

However Pokemon Legend ZAs biggest edge has more impressive animations and dynamic battles this time as the monsters move around, make contact with their physical attacks. Whereas in Time Stranger monsters are just animated attacking the camera and not actually moving w/ physical attacks which makes them look like they're striking the air.

Noticed the streams have crossed for Sonic Racing Crossworlds. With Switch version now in the lead over PS5.

Like all these PS centric advertising and stuff Sonic is getting seems to be getting just seems like a waste if in the long run it's just going to do best on Switch.

That's a pretty good split for Switch 2 it kinda suggests that if the Switch 2 had 2x the userbase Legends ZA probably would be close to Legends Arceus. (Even ignoring Digital) or if it had 3x the base the Switch 2 would have matched Arceus by itself without Switch 1 sales.

I think with how much room the Switch 2 has to grow this holiday and the bundles it'll probably make up for the decline in Switch 1 game sales.

@PeterTomlan86 I think because ZA is using a whole new battle system they're using these as an incentive to get people to try it out.

I'd imagine if it was just the standard Pokemon battle system they'd just expect people would play it.

I'd say I can't believe Nintendo life doesn't like Pokemon but I'm not convinced they even like Nintendo anymore lol.

@Mythra Yeah supposedly Galaxy dropping two spaces from #3 to #5 is "all the way down".

Yet Yotei dropping the same number from #1 to #3 is just "pushed down".

Like why does Galaxy deserve the exaggerated language?

@mikegamer And you're the reason Digimon Hadn't changed in 20 years. Enjoy your reheated slop from the millennium.

I'll Enjoy the actual new Pokemon, with new gameplay. Maybe someday you'll get something new but I doubt it, enjoy yet again the same old Digimon Story game in 2035 I guess.

@mikegamer You call your load of lazy platitudes "criticism". Then immediately roll over and give up in the face of actual critique backed up with examples.

You're the one coping lol. Skulk off now, maybe next time you can come back with a real argument. These comments are supposed to be a discussion, not a one way broadcast.

@mikegamer As they say those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

@mikegamer Digimon Story Time Stranger locks the best grinding spots behind paid DLC though like they're purposely hamstringing your ability to level and selling you the cure for money.

Not to mention Time Stranger plays like the same halfbaked Digimon World/Story DS game from 2006 though with spruced up graphics. No explorable overworld, just hub town and linear dungeons selected from a list. Endless filler sidequests. Boring grindfest gameplay as content. A "new" Digiride mechanic that is just purely cosmetic and serves no real purpose, how exciting lol.
(I'll point out when Pokemon lets you ride a monster it actually means something in gameplay)

20 years of stagnant Digimon Story paired with cash grab DLC the only thing Bandai is passionate about is shaking the last few pennies out your wallet with a game series they've never innovated. What's different this time? Just the models look slightly better, good to know lol.

Pokemon Legends ZA is actually innovating on its gameplay systems and doing new things with the genre. It's actually bringing interesting ideas because they actually have passion about advancing the genre. I suppose you don't care because you seem to care about the graphics more than the actual gameplay.

@mikegamer Enjoy your "Superior" game filled with over $100 of DLC ontop of the $70 base price.

@Clammy The Switch 2 has launched with what is practically guaranteed to be its best seller (Mario Kart World) and something that was a big 3D Mario in all but name (Donkey Kong Bananza).

I think just dismissing them is flimsy because as shown by Mario Kart 8D last gen. Once Mario Kart releases it's in the charts for the rest of the generation and usually into the next gen.

You're saying it lacks a must-have or system seller to explain the sales, but it literally had one the day it released. I don't get how lightly people dismiss Mario Kart when it's pretty much Nintendo's Grand Theft Auto or Minecraft.

@WiltonRoots Yeah the cycle of complaints.

"It's going to flop" turns into "Nintendo's scamming it's audience" turns into "it's only fanboys buying it, it will stop selling soon" turns into "it was always going to sell".

@OwenGamer22 Because they can be against IP theft by both Humans and AI and that would just be Nintendo being consistent.

The key point is they don't want others using their IP without permission, why would it matter who or what was doing it?