ElkinFencer10

Nintendo needs to start going through and forcing the bloatware off of the eShop. The "Nintendo Seal of Quality" was always a bit of a joke, but it's like they'd tried to mock the very concept of quality these days. No game should be allowed on the eShop until it's been vetted by a real live person. It's obvious they're using some automated algorithm because surely no flesh and blood human would allow this much garbage on the eShop.

@JohnnyMind Nice, I envy your literacy in Japanese. The OG is one of my favorite GBC games, so I try to let people know about the sequel's translation patch whenever it comes up in conversation.

@JohnnyMind Obviously not as good as NSO, but there's a translation patch if you have an Everdrive or emulator (and, of course, own the cartridge and thus can legally possess and use a ROM).

I do not like the look of these at all.

I think both look good. But it runs like dog piss, so focus on improving that, not the color scheme.

I'm not thrilled about it, but it was inevitable. Think about all the Switch games with required downloads. This really isn't much different in effect. Even if it's a full download that the card just unlocks, I can still resell it. I can't do that with digital purchases. Beyond that...I just enjoy collecting physical media. This scratches that itch for me. Eventually all of our discs will rot, our cartridges will corrode, and our hard drives will fail. Just enjoy the stuff you enjoy while you can, and if that's an empty cartridge that just unlocks a download, enjoy it to the fullest.

@Serpenterror Xbox is designed in the United States; not one scrap of it is made in the United States just like how Playstation 5 and Switch is made is China and Vietnam, not Japan.

That's just the times we live in.

Is this ideal? No. Are 90% of the people in these comments making a mountain out of a molehill? Yes. As has been mentioned, it will be DECADES before you stop being able to redownload games you've bought. The Wii came out 19 years ago, and you can still redownload games you bought there. These game key cards will be no different.

As for "Limited Run is built on a mountain of lies" or whatever...This isn't one of their games. They're just the distributors. The games they publish are always fully playable on the cartridge or disc. They're not publishing these games, though, so they don't control what is and isn't on the game cartridge. There's plenty of things to criticize LRG for legitimately without inventing reasons that aren't grounded in reality.

A better solution would be to stop allowing the eslop in the first place.

@beltmenot This. It's not really any different than the Switch games that required mandatory downloads or the PS5 and XSX games that require you download the rest of the game in order to play. It doesn't matter if 0% of the game is on the card or 95% of the game is; if you have to download any part of it in order to play, it's not different than these game keys. I'm certainly not happy about the game key cards, but it's better than just buying it digitally; at least with a key card, you can lend it to a friend to resell it later. Plus collectors can put it on a shelf for the aesthetic.

Pro controller, camera, GCN controller, and micro SD card for me

@DwaynesGames I hadn't realized Path of Radiance had been announced yet. The fool here, I am.

@DjinnFighter ooo yea that would do it lol. I must have missed that announcement. Oops

How on earth did Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance not make this list?

EDIT: I hadn't realized it had already been announced. Shame on me.

I'm not expecting a Switch 2 release, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. A remaster of an old game is gonna be less taxing on weaker hardware than a new game built from scratch, so I think it's possible we'll see one in the coming months.

@killercerial I interpreted most of what they've reported thus far as "The games we're seeing are on par with PS4" more than "The system hardware is on par with PS4's" because launch window games are ALWAYS rougher in visuals and performance than mid-life and end-life games.

@jwfurness Exactly. Don't get me wrong, I love UHD with high res textures, advanced shadow and particle effects, ray tracing, blast processing, whatever other buzz word we want to throw in. But if you give me at least a solid 1080p or 1440p image and an unbroken 60 fps, I'm gonna be a happy camper no matter what platform I'm using.

@Stegiand Handhelds, especially with Nintendo, traditionally lag about a gen behind in terms of hardware power. The Game Boy was weaker than the NES and Master System. The Game Boy Color was about on par with. GBA was about on par with SNES and Genesis. DS was roughly on par with N64 and PS1. 3DS was roughly on par with Gamecube and PS2. Switch was was a little stronger than Wii U and PS3. So it makes sense that Switch 2 will be somewhere in the PS4/XB1 neighborhood.

The mistake, in my view, is holding Switch to home console standards because, at the end of the day, it's a handheld with an HDMI-out cradle.

I am super hyped for this console. It sounds like first party games are around PS4 Pro levels (which isn't terribly surprising given that Nintendo is always better at squeezing power out of its hardware than other devs) with third party games around PS4 levels, and that's totally fine in my book. I have a lot of friends who haven't even made the jump to PS5/Series X yet because they're still content with the games and visuals on PS4/XB1, so I really don't consider "only PS4 visuals" to be that big of a ding.

I'm fine with waiting for a restock as long as I'm assured that there will be a restock.

@Jimmy_G_Buckets I'll be happy if it even looks on par. The fact that it's looking a little better makes me extremely optimistic.

That was the most amazing commercial I've seen in a loooooooong time

Just the concept of Cyberpunk 2077 on a handheld is exciting to me. Yes, I know, Steam Deck blah blah blah, whatever. Even if it's not, this feels categorically different to me.

Not often I prefer Western box art over the Japanese counterpart, but this is definitely one of those rare instances.

Disappointing but not surprised. The tariffs have really screwed us gamers over big time.

I thought $80 was fair before the Direct (as a reminder, $80 in 2025 has the same purchasing power as $60 in 2017), but I'm absolutely positive it will be a reasonable price that's worth it.

Switch is the perfect console for indie games. I just pray they crack down on the garbage shovelware with Switch 2.

@Dhaladog Same, but by the same token, I said the same thing about Wii motion controls for shooters, and it ended up being my preferred control scheme, so I'm going in with an open mind.

I'm gonna try both control schemes to see what I like better, but I reckon I'll stick with the standard pro controller.

Even if they're not Nintendo made games, I'm at least glad that four of the top 10 games are on Switch.

@Spider-Kev The realest gamer

Real gamers played it on Wii U

Idk what y'all are talking about, Wheelchair Basketball Simulator 2025 looks awesome

The UI is clean af. The UI is also boring af. I pray to god they give us at least different color theme options even if not legitimate themes like 3DS had.

But how does it compare to a triple Whopper with cheese?

I am SO stoked for this. It looks amazing, both in terms of visuals as well as gameplay.

@sixrings Normally I would whole heartedly agree with you - open world is overdone - but the Forza Horizon games on Xbox have me more open to it in racing games than most other genres.

@HeadPirate I would absolutely pay an extra $150 for access to first party games. That's why people buy Nintendo platforms. PS5 and XSX have dozens of exclusives, but they'll also been on the market for nearly five years, so I'd argue that that's a little apples-and-oranges a comparison for exclusives for a five year old system vs a system that hasn't even released yet.

@mikejs78 Excellent points made here. Also worth noting that the games we have seen are either launch games or cross gen games, and those always look the worst relative to games later in the life cycle. If all you saw was Resistance: Fall of Man and Red Steel, you'd be grossly underestimating the potential capabilities of the PS3 and Wii, respectively, because those early launch games weren't showcasing the system's full range of abilities.

@HeadPirate If what you want is to play Mario Kart, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros, and Fire Emblem, I'd say it's a fair price even exclusively playing on TV. You can't play those games on Xbox or Playstation, so other systems' prices cease to be particularly relevant.

@HeadPirate Options. On the rare occasions I'm on a plane or stuck in a doctor's office waiting room, I have the option of playing handheld. Beyond that, it offers Nintendo games. Short of criminal piracy, where else am I going to play Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Fire Emblem, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, etc?

@HammerGalladeBro Here you go! It's not my website, so I should be good by community rules for posting this link.

https://www.vooks.net/nintendo-confirms-no-download-codes-needed-for-physical-switch-2-edition-games/

@HeadPirate I play exclusively docked on TV, and I'm still arguing it's a completely fair price ¯(ツ)/¯

@Overzeal All really good points. Nintendo's generations are weird with the Wii U's short lifespan, so I would personally call the Switch a second 8th gen console and the Switch 2 their actual 9th gen console (Wikipedia has them labeled the same way, for whatever that may be worth), but that's really splitting hairs; generations haven't meant what they used to since the PS4/Wii U/XB1 days with the bizarrely long lifespans the Switch, PS4, and Xbox One had. Either way, the console's price is completely reasonable even if the upper end (I personally guessed $400 with $450 as my back-up guess), but as @goldgriffin360 said, people forget what games used to cost. This standardized thing has only been since the 6th gen consoles. It used to be the wild west. And as I've stated ad nauseum in other comments sections, $60 in 2017 is literally the same thing as $80 in 2025 once you realize inflation is a thing that exists; even with the few $80 games, you're still getting games for the same value or cheaper than Switch games were when it launched.

@Darthmoogle So apparently they're NOT the Switch 1 game and a code. Nintendo explicitly said in a Vooks interview that the Switch 2 editions will have the full Switch 2 version of the game and all content on the game card. But still, at the price I paid, it was cheaper to get the Switch version and buy the upgrade pack. I may still do that with Legends ZA and Metroid Prime 4 just to have them on my Switch shelf instead of the markedly less attractive Switch 2 boxart.

I'm not in Japan, but I did just buy a copy of Mario Party Jamboree specifically in anticipation of the Switch 2.

@MSaturn That a retailer's jurisdiction, not the manufacturer.

I think the console price is completely reasonable. For that matter, I think the games' prices are fairly reasonable, although I teach economics and therefore understand concepts like inflation and overhead. As for the debate about the power, as has been mentioned above, the Series S maybe a bit more powerful than the Switch 2 in some areas, but it's also lacking a physical drive to allow for backwards compatibility like Switch 2 has, it's not a handheld form factor (miniaturizing technology is always expensive; look at gaming laptops vs equivalent gaming desktops), and the Series S doesn't have a screen. The screen is also 1080p and 120 hz. That is NOT cheap for a screen that size. Additionally, the Switch 2 can play games in 4K; the Series S can't do that. Roughly equivalent (even if slightly lower) hardware power, the small form factor, the impressive screen, AND the stellar lineup of exclusive games all make an aggregate that makes the $450 price tag extremely reasonable once you factor in a profit margin. Sony and Microsoft may sell their consoles for a loss, but that's no reason to expect Nintendo to do the same. Those companies sell things other than video games; Nintendo doesn't. Beyond that, it's ridiculous to demand any company sell any product at a loss regardless of context. Corporations - including Nintendo - literally exist to make a profit.

So I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, vote with your dollar. I see their point. On the other hand, the digital-only future is inevitable. Collectors like me are pushing to hold it off as long as possible, but there will inevitably come a day in the next ten to twenty years when all video games are released exclusively as digital downloads. It's inevitable. To that end, let's say you boycott these key cards. More power to you, that's your prerogative. But what's the alternative? Never playing these or buying them digitally. For the games I really want to play, I'm not just gonna not buy them. And the collector in me says "If I'm going to pay for the game as it is, I might as well have something to put on my shelf." There are a fair number of Switch games that don't have the entire game on the cartridge and require a download, and this is effectively no different; if you can't play the game with just the cartridge, it doesn't really matter if the cartridge has 3/4 of the game or none of the game on it. You still can't play it. This at least lets me trade, give away, or sell as used the games since the cards aren't going to tie to a specific account.

tl;dr the outrage over this is ridiculous, and the belief that boycotting or resisting it will change literally anything is naive.

The price is fair. It's not fun - I hate paying $70 let alone $80 - but I'm not going to sit here and pretend it isn't fair. $80 in 2025 is literally the same value as $60 in 2017. All they're doing is not eating a drop in profit margin on their biggest system sellers, and they'll still be bringing in less for each "regularly" priced game at $70 today than they did at $60 in 2017. The laws of market economics don't stop existing just because gamers don't understand or refuse to acknowledge them, and Nintendo doesn't stop existing first and foremost to make a profit for its investors - not to make cheap for the sake of gamers' expectations - just because we adore the company's products.