Electric-Dreams

Great game design will never go out of fashion!

I think we're coming into the final years of the DS line now. The casual adult market evaporated with the advent of smartphones, and I can see the Switch being miniaturised into a whole line of new handheld options in the near future which will cater to the mainstream gamer demographic.

That really only leaves the cost conscious and child markets left. Do either of those really want or need a 3D effect? Just look at Nintendo's two new models if you need any proof of their strategy - both 2D!

Sounds eggcellent!

Being of the 16 bit generation growing up I can still remember when Nintendo was a go to option for many older and/or male players. Sadly once Sony arrived, they screwed up the storage format on the N64, and they lost that part of the market, they've never attempted to regain it since.

It's a real shame as I know there are a lot of teenage boys who'll never develop that depth of appreciation for Nintendo's game design skills that I got to.

It's never too late to change though. If enough new exclusive IPs with mature themes were established, but which worked in that Nintendo magic, there's no reason they couldn't get back to their old no1 spot.

@RainbowGazelle In what way did Nintendo turn of their fans?
They made some business mistakes, but I never saw any evidence they deliberately did anything malicious.

I remember trying turn based combat in one of the Final Fantasy games that the critics were raving about decades ago. It was tedious beyond words, with me endlessly forced to repeat the same moves every time I bumped into a bad guy. The whole experience was enough to put me off the idea forever.

Turn based gameplay on a proper map with proper strategy is fine. Launching 'attacks' on a figure in front of you though is mindnumbing in the extreme.

@Paddle1 The second paragraph says it won't be available on the Wii U. Unless as you say they're only talking about the version you can still access if you've ported your Wii content across.

I can maybe understand this move on the Wii as the system is a decade old, but shutting down the Wii U one as well I think is going too far. Even if us owners want a Switch, not everyone has so much money that we'll all have been able to upgrade by the end of Jan next year.

Yes the Wii U wasn't that successful, even so though, this is a console barely 5 years old. Therefore this announcement is way too soon.

The arrogance of Sony. I hope Nintendo wipe them out someday.

Great news. Nintendo hardware will never fit with the conventional technology of Sony and Microsoft, but if a company can get past that, there is much that is good about them: Great games, unique innovative systems and a keen eye for always trying to expand the market beyond core gamers.

So long as they've managed to ditch their old baggage of seeming to be indifferent to 3rd party support, and now embrace and care for them properly, there's no reason this couldn't be the start of the genuine re-ascendance of the Big N.

I was always down in WHSmiths on the day of Superplay's release every month to pick up a copy. It had the same irreverent tone as 80s classic mags like Your Sinclair — lots of great game insights, but also lots of humour too. You felt like you were catching up with a gang of your mates when you read it. The UK Official Nintendo Magazine kept some aspects of that vibe going in the recent past, but now it is gone too.

I had the whole set of Superplay more or less in mint condition, in those plush binders they used sell to store them in. Oh how I wish now the foolishness of youth had not made me bin them all when my interests got diverted from videogames for a while in my late teens.

Other than the retro charm and memories you might get from plugging in the old cartridges, who would seriously choose one of these clone consoles, when things like a Homebrewed Wii can give you access to the entire NES, SNES and N64 library?

Nintendo may play more on their lineage of gaming from the period this time is game is copying - and hence the age of who more of their customers are likely to be. Charging double what other platforms are though is ridiculous.

Flog is a British slang term for selling something. If Nintendo want to monetise their NES content a codename like this makes sense.

24 years of releasing the same game over and over again. With a record of churning out trash like this, Nintendo don't need EA's laughable look warm comittment to Switch.

Nintendo will charge whatever they think the market will withstand. I can't blame them for trying it on with the high price (they're a private company after all), but they're going to have to wake up to reality and cut the price substantially at some point though, if they want to shift these things in bulk.

EA just rehash the same half a dozen concepts endlessly. It'd be no biggy to me if they didn't show up on the Switch.

That ad looks epileptotastic!