NintendoWife

It's good. 7.

So far my most played games have been Odyssey and Galaxy 2 (both in 4K). Mario Kart World and DK Bananza both didn't live up to their promise imo. Now playing the Kirby Star Crossed expansion, which is really nice.

Love the visual quality and general user experience. There has not been a killer game yet, which inevitably makes this a slightly subdued first year, compared to (all?) previous Nintendo consoles. But I wouldn't say they screwed up in any way, it seems to be a deliberate pacing decision. We all know Zelda and Mario are coming, Nintendo simply won't waste the impact now. Even Mario Kart World is by no means bad and totally works for them as a system seller.

If I had more time for gaming I'd probably be disappointed, but I don't 🤷‍♂️

@countzero Still waiting for my copy to be delivered; so, is that the case? You're getting directions from NPC's? That's a plus in my book. Getting lost was one of the aspects of Metroid that I was wary of. If this game is more directed, good.

@wishmylove It does seem that Nintendo is having a harder time winning over the critics. At the same time their games are selling better than ever, which is interesting. Maybe they have decoupled further from the mainstream trends than they used to.

Ultimately people should decide for themselves. Someone commented that they cancelled their preorder after waiting 18 years for a new Metroid Prime once they saw the Metacritic score. That's pathetic. If I'm a fan I don't refuse playing the game just because some Bruce from Gamerdoodle didn't like it.

Well - it’s 1 point better than Other M, which I liked! So I’m good

@SuntannedDuck2 No absolutely, it’s good that they are distinct games for different tastes. I’m just very much a Zelda person, old-school Zelda to be precise - I like the handcrafted odd worlds more than the “procedural” open worlds of BOTW and TOTK.
Back to Metroid, I’ll go into it open minded, if there’s NPC’s and story sequences that’s something I like, cause shooting into the screen for hours is not my favourite thing. Or scanning artifacts.

@MCHuddle You are joking, right?

@Froid12 Yeah I feel the same - having a hard time going back to non-optimized games since getting a Switch 2.

Sadly it has become quite unlikely now that they've released an all-new entry.

Still feeling bad for barely playing OT 2, so it will be a while before I'll get this, but glad to hear that it's good!

Do you think S-E will offer a Switch 2 resultion upgrade for OT 2 at some point?

@hcfwesker 15 minutes was an estimate, maybe I played for longer, but I kinda knew it wasn't for me. Not sure why I sometimes buy games that I know are not my thing. I don't like shooters, I don't enjoy first person perspective, I have a poor sense of direction, I found the loneliness depressing, too impatient for all that scanning and reading the largely inconsequential text bits.

I guess why I try it anyway is because I am looking for large single player adventure games to immerse yourself in, and those are rare. Basically I want a new Zelda is what I'm saying.

☑️ Supported - Game behaviour is consistently meh.

(Joking, I was disappointed when reviews of that remaster came in and it was judged a lazy job. I haven't played it.)

I am really curious. Metroid Prime is not my type of game (I never FPS, and sold Prime 1 Remastered after playing it for 15 minutes). So, I wouldn't have bought it at full price, but I found a deal for 46€ for the Switch 2 version, just like @SuperEndriu wrote.

Now as for the reviews... I wonder if I'll agree on their points or if the changes to the formula might actually work for me. Less lonely? That's a plus for me. Somewhat oldschool design? That too, cause I'm old-ish.

Regardless I am looking forward to checking out the graphics! And yeah if it's not for me I can always sell it. Take that, digital.

@OldGamer999 I haven't seen anybody fudging, rather people (who were going to play the game anyway) holding out to make their own judgment.

"Drab x Trite"

j/k, I haven't tried it

Hey I'm gonna opt for the spartan 'East Germany' style European design.

This reminds me of how I bought the "Collection of Mana", realized they won't let you remove the picture borders, and never played it as a result. I wrote to S-E with a request, goes without saying they never implemented this trivial change.

Why is it that S-E so frequently chooses to annoy their customers? Ugly AI-upscaled Chrono Cross port, no Chrono Trigger remake ever, cloud-based games, and and and.

Somehow I missed this, but hooooly what is wrong with Nintendo. Their strategy must have changed. No longer interested in selling a lot of these, but rather a few at a high price. Thought amiibo was about advertising and brand loyalty and visibility and low barrier gifts. Who is going to pick up a 40€ figurine from their business trip, for the kids? No one.

Myles "Jar Jar" MacKenzie

@Jack_Goetz Huh why? Switch 2 games have 4K output, and it looks like 4K too. Way more detailed than HD. What DF is talking about is the internal resolution of the game before all kinds of (machine learning) upscaling processes.

It looks very unappealing.

@IronMan30 I don't have data to back this claim, but more people than usual might be holding out for deals because of Nintendo's recent all-round price hike.

Normally I would, love to see Nintendo do something like this. And my kids love picture books. But knowing them they wouldn't take the story too well. It's too heavy and sad for very young children. In my opinion.

@GoombaJMR That’s good to hear, but it’s probably not for me. This here reminded me of the dungeons of Persona 5, which turned me off of that game. I can stomach a little oldschool RPG battling, but that was too messy for me.

An old horse needs a stable too!

Impressive soundtrack, from the first few songs I heard! Wow. The game does not look as promising as I was hoping - love the concept, but the dungeon crawl RPG portion looks quite unappealing.

Curious to see some game sales data down the line. So the system is selling at a record pace, but I wonder if game sales are equally strong. My feeling is that the attachment rate so far is quite a bit (s)lower than for Switch 1. Don't think I'm the only person put off by Nintendo's circa 30% price hike. Games that aren't absolute blockbusters are feeling it.

Will they react, if most of their games return slightly disappointing numbers for a long enough time?

If there’s a case to be made against an ALttP remake it’s rather that Nintendo have included it prominently in every retro format (always one of the first Virtual Console releases, central to SNES Mini). To the point that it can - still - feel too familiar.

But that’s a biased perspective of us old people. Nintendo would be right to update one of their most influential classics for new generations.

That Japanese box is such a beauty.

Wow, looking at the poll results that's the most even distribution I've seen. Could suggest that none of the most recent releases is a real hit.

I had bought the Kirby Star-Crossed World expansion a while ago, only started playing it now, while I'm waiting for Hyrule Warriors to come down in price. I think that's a good tactic going forward: When new first party stuff drops (that I don't have to play day one like a Zelda or Mario) I'll grab something from my back catalog instead.

Kirby is great! Substantial new stages, the game was a pleasant surprise anyway.

Very interesting! I wouldn’t have thought it’s effective to outsource that kind of work.

And yeah now I’m afraid that was it from Nintendo :/ Was hoping for a steady stream of updates.

@Old-Red @BenAV @turnmebackwards Sadly I have to agree, the jump in first party game prices was too big and sudden. In Europe they went from 60€ to 80€, MKW even 90€.

As a result: Same as what you all said, instead of preordering not only games from my personal A-list but also a lot of B-listers like I used to I've become hesitant / patient.

Somehow I think it would be really cool if this game took off and became a powerhouse like Smash Bros - I don't care about either, but it's always nice when another Nintendo IP elevates to that status. It would have to do well as an online match / competition title I guess.

Curious if it can do that or will remain a niche thing.

@the_beaver Yeah just noticed Chrono Cross is listed as unsupported. Was gonna get it because it's discounted to a few € currently. Wonder what's the issue... wasn't it quite a dirty conversion in the first place, AI upscaled and looking not great?

Was gonna buy it in the current eShop sale, but turns out this is one of the remaining few games that is unsupported on Switch 2!

@Exerion76
I am not a programmer. But I did educate myself on the topic through said DF videos, which went into detail on Switch 2 upgrades. It does not usually work like you describe.

Take something like Mario Odyssey, which Nintendo even provided free of charge. That’s not an “automatic” upgrade. Do watch the Digital Foundry video, they’ve manually fine tuned every level for higher fidelity.

That’s the kind of upgrade I’d love to see, and if they wanna charge for it, fine. I’d rather have the best version for a fee than the bare minimum for free.

@sixrings Xbox is not a good example for anything! They made a big mistake shifting everything to subscriptions, hurting their traditional sales numbers big time. The numbers don’t add up and now they more or less exit the console market.

I keep reading that Nintendo should do this and that like Microsoft did - crazy talk when Nintendo is the last traditional console maker whose business model still works.

@sixrings But why is that insane? So not only are you not willing to pay for an upgrade (that actual paid work went into making), you’re not even taking it when it comes with new content? That’s the most extreme position in this discussion so far.

Reading all this I wonder how Nintendo is supposed to please anyone. Luckily their recent sales figures indicate that outside of these forums people are a bit less picky. I have my own points of criticism with Nintendo - not happy about the price hike - but those Switch 2 upgrades are not one of them.

@KociolekDoSyta In this specific case (physical Switch 1 cartridge available, and they want to avoid releasing a physical Switch 2 cartridge) yes. Because it will win them a few buyers that want to avoid the Game-Key Card. Does the latter make a lot of sense if most of your actual Switch 2 game will be downloaded anyway? Dunno. I don’t want / like GKC’s either btw.

Generally though I disagree with the angry entitlement of those who demand free Switch 2 upgrades. Of my Switch 1 catalog there are maybe 20 games that I’d love to see Switch 2 upgrades for - I’d much rather pay a bit than for them to never receive an update.

@Exerion76 That is simply false. Spoken like a true programming expert (not). Listen to some Digital Foundry episodes for example, and you’ll learn about the hurdles and individual situations depending how each game was originally created. It’s not “no effort”.

@Dang_69 Why not: offer a full price Switch 2 Edition, and also offer a modestly priced upgrade from an equally full price Switch 1 game (that might or might not have been released much earlier)?

@KociolekDoSyta That’s not logical. How does giving away the update generate Switch 2 sales for them in the future?

As for the rest, I can only repeat myself. You bought the game as it was when you bought it. You don’t have a claim for future improvements - that, again, cost real world money to develop. New textures, new code, implementation of new technologies, new testing and bug fixing. That’s a lot of paid hours of work.

For context: of course I too like free stuff. My concern is in the bigger picture. I’d love to see most games see dedicated Switch 2 upgrades. But I understand there needs to be a business case, otherwise why should they bother. Let them make some money.

@KociolekDoSyta
„This is how it should've been, always. Nice job!“

Well I’m not sure this is “how it should’ve been, always” - developing those upgrades costs money, so I understand developers charging for it. Some 10-15€ for a Switch 2 patch are perfectly reasonable imo.

I mean, you can't fault them for analyzing what might have kept Metroid from selling better in the past. It's a critically acclaimed series with very mediocre sales.

So.. they might have tried to learn via survey what turned people off. And it's quite possible (I'm extrapolating from myself here) that several people answered: "These games feel super dead and depressing, like you're the last human in existence".

So maybe as a reaction they put a human touch / interaction onto the agenda. In my case it sparks my interest, even.

@SynapticFlow "I HATE THIS! Nintendo are stupid idiots to make this drastic change to a beloved franchise that did not need this change."

Metroid Prime does need some kind of change if it is supposed to finally sell more than 2.8m (MP1) / 1.1m (MP2) / 1.4m (MP3) copies. I wonder if those three even recouped their development budget. You could almost call it a vanity project up to this point, and with eight years of development and the whole restart drama you bet they need to make a lot of money back on this one.

I applaud them for this game. Lot of love and detail work clearly went into it. Beautiful stages, fantastic art overall. Technically great, flow is great too. Still I went away from the demo with the feeling that I'd pass... it's too messy for me. So much happening that you barely control. My impression was "if Mario Kart was Smash Bros."

Don't mind that they're including other games' elements of course. That said, this trailer wasn't what I was expecting from The Mario Galaxy movie. Not the feeling of a grand space adventure, rather a bit of everything (and in that regard not much different from the first movie).

I'm finding it puzzling that they chose to focus so much on the pair of Bowser Jr. and "shrunk Bowser" (I didn't even remember him being shrunk at the end of Movie 1, is continuity really important with this type of movie?). I was confused even. If I am confused, I wonder what someone who barely knows the franchise is supposed to make of it.

Huh, that change in atmosphere might actually be a plus in my book. I hadn’t previously enjoyed Metroid Prime, but I liked Other M. Oh and Dread was fantastic.

So if this one feels less bleak than usual I might give it a try after all.

@johnedwin Right, I wasn't aware of that

Was anybody else surprised that this series got a new entry so quickly? OT2 came out only two years ago. Whereas there was five years between part 1 and 2.

I haven’t played much of OT2 yet :/ And still half of Live a Live to finish… guess I shouldn’t buy this one here.

Well, they could be assuming that these games don’t particularly resonate with Nintendo customers, and in my case that would be spot on 😶 I don’t care for dudebro titles. Gears of Duty, Call of Halo.. pew pew pew

Is it also possible that this simply happened because of how the trailer came together? It probably was a Japanese production first (using Pokopia, which like you said is not a first party published game in Japan). Then for the translation they kept the same examples. They swapped the artwork for the western version, but it might still be the case that this isn't actually an example of a game-key card outside of Japan. I mean, they said they wouldn't.

Huh so no resolution upgrade for Switch 2, while they were at it?! That does not bode well for other first party titles :/