PikaPhantom

I had two very contradictory takeaways from this article:

• We really need to get over this idea of constantly calling back to past titles or other things. What would a Luigi's Mansion set in Super Nintendo World really offer? They have like 5 areas to pull from. Why wouldn't they just do a unique amusement park? Why would we need an Isle Delfino setting for Luigi's Mansion? What would New Donk City really bring to the table outside of "woah, it's that place I recognize!" If they wanted to do an urban setting, they don't need to use both Mario Odyssey and Ghostbusters as a crutch to lean on.
• Setting a Luigi's Mansion game in Bowser's Castle would actually be awesome, especially if they take the same kind of liberties they did with The Last Resort to create a really varied take on that setting unlike anything we've seen before. It feels genuinely inspired, whereas most of the other suggestions here feel a bit too reliant on other Mario media, are a bit too similar to The Last Resort, or are odd fits for the series. (Though the village idea is also one I like a lot!)

Given what basically every other social media platform has become...yeah, they really shouldn't bring Miiverse back. I don't imagine it would have any better of a platform culture, and the in-game integration would make things more off-putting. I'd probably turn it off across the board

@Ogbert The division of Sumo that worked on Team Sonic Racing isn't the same as the one that's working on Stampede

@coolioam Nothing's been confirmed about who's developing CrossWorlds. The "elite SEGA racing team" thing is almost certainly marketing speak, because when was the last time Sega made a racing game in-house? It doesn't seem to be Hardlight, either, since The Game Awards pulled their Tweet for the game that tagged them very quickly, and any confusion would make sense because they are the team behind the Apple Arcade Sonic Racing game. So that leaves Sumo as the most likely candidate, especially because from what little we do know about the game (from Sega's East Asian social media accounts), it is being billed as a followup to Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed with the water and sky racing returning.

@mattesdude What was Sony trying to do?

@MikeP Considering that they inherently can't have as much output as what we saw from them across both console and handheld on a combined HD system, they've been doing pretty well overall. Nintendo is one of the last big developers out there that recognizes the importance of AA releases; the majority of their Switch games arguably fall into that camp. There has been a lull of new IPs as of late, but they've kind of been more focused on reviving dormant series, and I imagine COVID is a big part of why (adjusting to a remote work environment undoubtedly would've hurt being able to experiment with wholly new ideas). We do at least know they have a very ambitious and experimental new IP in the works through the Switch Online Playtest, and they always bring out new concepts with new systems. I would say my main issue with their current output is that outside of Mario (and Zelda, which didn't really receive any spinoffs prior to the 2010s outside of Link's Crossbow Training), spinoffs have been relatively lacking. Kirby stuff has been pushed to the eShop. The Pokemon Company is concentrating on mobile over console for sidegames. Series ripe with potential for spinoffs, like Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and Pikmin haven't seen any. Nintendo's done a good job at giving us handheld-esque games overall, but I do think the more truly small-scale stuff has fallen by the wayside.

Considering Nintendo's very high employee retention rate and how much emphasis they seem to place on making sure their games are in the right hands, I think we're gonna be okay

I think it's going to be a "Crash" button. Pressing it shorts out the system and forces a reboot. Glad to see Nintendo taking inspiration from my brother's botched New 2DS ZL button!

In all seriousness, I think people are extremely offbase on what the C button will be used for. I think the most likely thing is for it tying to a new social feature, but I'm not sure if it'll be chat since Nintendo tends to have restrained social features. Any other prominent, serious suggestion I've seen has something that just doesn't make sense about it:

• I participated in the Playtest Program, and I can tell you right now that it will not be integrated into the C button in any way. It's very much its own thing, and it was often a very solitary experience as well. Even when I was accompanied by other players, though, there was no spoken or text communication.
• It doesn't make any sense for the C to stand for cursor and tie into Mouse Mode. The optical sensors aren't going to do anything if they're not pressed into a surface, and that means that no input should be registered when the Joy-Con are inserted into the Switch itself, the straps, or the grip unless the straps are held against a surface. If, for some reason, they did tie this to a button, it would be on the side of the Joy-Con and not the front because it's only relevant to having them detached, whereas placing the button on the front suggests it is a prominent system-level feature.
• It's not another screenshot button. Even if it drops the C for whatever reason - I imagine it was just hidden so they can reveal it properly in April - it's flat in these renders.
• I've seen people speculate it's just going to be a C button, akin to something like the Nunchuk. It's placed too far from the main buttons to be something they expect you to use regularly; it's telling that it's below the Home button.

@DK_Dude333 The vast majority of indie games on Switch come out on Steam first. If they launch day-and-date, they've usually been picked up by a more notable publisher, which tends to mean they're worthwhile more often than not

I think this is just them trying to frame themselves as a developer of a very specific kind of action game. Does kinda go against their original philosophy of doing different, unconventional games, but all of these supposedly lost pages that you need Internet Archive for still exist and can be accessed on their company profile page, which no one seems to be mentioning. Except Project G.G. So the real story here is basically "Project G.G. is seemingly cancelled, and Platinum has trimmed down its portfolio while leaving pages to their other games on its company history."

@Rainz @Bydlak
https://x.com/devolverdigital/status/1874153883708383594?t=snZphYbZi66qhOKfI69klw&s=19
It may finally be coming this year?

@Overzeal Go look at the screenshots and tell me this is a pixel game lol

Thinking I'll grab this one on PC. Was curious if they'd be able to push it to 60fps on Switch, and it's at 30fps; will probably end up doubledipping if it can be pushed up to 60fps on Switch 2?

I feel like every February for the past few years, people say "this is the year Nintendo skips out," and every year they always have something to show, even if last year it was just Endless Ocean Luminous (granted, the 2 games they had pending dates for were Mario games and they were saved for Mario Day anyways). We have way less on the calendar right now, and it seems like Legends Z-A and Metroid Prime 4 aren't coming out in the first half of the year, so I think we're looking at a full Direct, likely with a shadowdrop from Nintendo and announcements to pad out April-June. However, I expect to see it lean more into indie announcements, since Directs tend to have at least a few of them from bigger publishers now and most games at this point are likely Switch 2-bound.

Wasn't this already proven to be a placeholder set of dimensions this retailer used for all games

...Has everyone just forgetten how backwards compatibility/Virtual Console didn't stop them from adding retro courses in the past? If there aren't retros, it's not going to be because of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - it's going to be because of 24 players necessitating wider, less dense tracks. They could easily put together a selection of 16-24 great old tracks that missed out on 8 Deluxe.

Ubisoft Leamington, as FreeStyleGames, worked with Nintendo on Sing Party. Surprised that didn't come up in the article

Considering we know for a fact that Nintendo approached Next Level Games because they were made up of developers from Black Box Games, who made Sega Soccer Slam, as well as Good-Feel because Nintendo employee Takahiro Harada was impressed with a game Etsunobu Ebisu had worked on when at Konami - not to mention that similar relationships likely existed for Velan, given that their founders pushed to do a DK game at Vicarious Visions, and Grezzo, given that Nintendo subsidiary Brownie Brown worked on a Mana game alongside Koichi Ishii - something tells me we're likely to see Nintendo work with Eel before long.

@TotalHenshin I think the highlights just follow what Nintendo puts at the top of the list instead of alphabetizing.

@Jokerwolf Oh, for sure! Maybe they'll have a proper Mario Paint sequel year one instead? That could more readily be handed off to another team, though the Art Academy dev isn't available anymore

@Jokerwolf There also wasn't a brand-new 2D Mario between those games. Just Super Mario Run, which happened to release in 2016 anyways, and a very simple port of New Super Mario Bros. U (the 3DS port of Mario Maker was handled by NST). Pikmin was also not active at this time. Mario Maker 3 is likely coming next from the team, but it's unlikely to be a first-year release.

@Jokerwolf I'm sure it's in development now, but I believe the exact same team handles Mario Maker and 2D Mario, and that division of Nintendo also handles Pikmin (though they've been working with Eighting from 3 Deluxe onwards). I wouldn't expect it until 2026 at the earliest

Absolutely, especially because Moon has proven they're exceptionally talented with porting games to Switch. I have no doubt that this game could look and run great on Switch 2

I'm cautiously optimistic, but given how...wide and
drawn out Mario Bros. Circuit appears to be, I do have my concerns about how track design will need to accommodate for the increased player count. Also a bit worried about retro tracks unless they lock them to a 12-player mode. Maybe what we're looking at is a Rally mode, and other modes reduce the player count?

@LikelySatan Makes sense. Do you think that build was targeting 60fps?

@TrixieSparkle Leaks have confirmed the screen is 8 inches, making it a full inch larger than the OLED's

@LikelySatan @PepperMintRex How does that version run?

Prepurchased Blade Chimera after playing its demo, and will probably be getting DK for my birthday next week

@Zeebor15 I looked through the credits for Tropical Freeze the other day on MobyGames and it does look like many Returns/Tropical Freeze staff remain at Retro, showing up in Prime Remastered's credits as well. And I just skimmed through Days of Ruin and found that a lot of people who worked on that game still appear to be employed at Intelligent Systems, with credits on Fire Emblem Engage, TTYD, or WarioWare: Move It!. So I kinda doubt that's part of the issue

@PinderSchloss Heh. Would not mind if they move away from that. Indie Worlds are especially hard to watch.

It is definitely strange to not emphasize the mice more since the reveal mostly just felt like a very blatant way of showing that the Switch 2 is a new system (look, the original Switch transformed into the successor! Now here's Mario Kart). Unlike anything else the Switch 2 is likely bringing to the table, it's a hardware feature and not something we're getting through the OS, which I'm not surprised is being saved for later like with the original Switch. But I'm glad it seems more likely than not. It's not the most radical shakeup in the world since games have been played with a mouse for most of their existence, but it feels inspired and on-brand for Nintendo, especially because they do have a sporadic history with mice (mostly just the SNES Mouse and then supporting one in Game Builder Garage - EPD4 has some sway over what goes into a console, so I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of turning Joy-Con into mice originated with them). No console has catered to that much.

@Diowine Nintendo of America at least offers free drift repair, and with the US being their biggest market, they absolutely lost money over Joy-Con drift. I'm sorry that you lost out on that, but it's more likely than not that they'll address it given the intense controversy. Pretty sure Hall Effect joysticks are only different under the hood, anyways. You look at options for modding them for use on Switch and they're not really any different visually.

@PinderSchloss It was pretty clear to me what they were hinting at when they showed the Joy-Con on their sides scurrying around like mice with the straps serving as tails, but I can't blame people for overlooking it

@Xbox_Dashboard Ports don't usually change up a game's artstyle, double the amount of players in a given race, redesign key visual elements, introduce drastically different mechanics, or take other features away (there's a distinct lack of Double Item Boxes in the shot at the end of the trailer). Mario Kart's a new entry, full stop.

If you think a 24 player Mario Kart with much smoother models and extremely large environments is coming anywhere near Switch 1, let alone at a decent framerate and resolution, I have a bridge I can sell you

I feel like everyone here's forgotten how Nintendo has always done iterative successors. The only time they haven't was with the N64 and GameCube, and even then, it's not like the GameCube was a radical departure from the N64 era (plus, the Nintendo 128 just doesn't hit the same). This feels very much in the spirit of the 3DS in particular, since the form factor is extremely similar. And sure - on a surface level, it doesn't seem like a big step forward. It is a generational leap for Nintendo, though, in terms of power. The mouse functionality flew over a lot of people's heads (the Joy-Con acted like actual mice in the trailer, with the straps serving as their tails), but I think it's going to be far more than a simple gimmick most games ignore. It can allow touchscreen games to be repurposed more for docked, opens up possibilities for PC ports, gives Nintendo potential for series like Pikmin, Mario Maker/Paint, and Kid Icarus, and is probably the best way of replicating pointer controls with the Switch concept. And that's not to mention we've seen nothing of what the system experience is like. If the jump from DSi to 3DS is any indication, we could have a far more substantial user experience on our hands despite the original Switch foundation remaining intact. The C button still has an ambiguous use. There may be other features that haven't been detailed yet that leaks have glossed over - it took a long time for mouse functionality to be figured out, so for all we know they'll have a bit more up their sleeves.

It's fine to be disappointed with how little was shown today, but to assume that there's nothing more to the Switch 2 is definitely underestimating Nintendo. They just put out an alarm clock of all things - they're still experimenting and doing things differently. For all we know, they're going to create specialized controllers for different games with the Switch 2 that warrant some difference in tech - something that wouldn't be on any leaker's radar. It's just hard to imagine what could reinvent the wheel these days given every new idea Nintendo's gone through, but if nothing else, there is promising stuff here.

Sure would be nice to get analogue triggers again, though...

@SillyG You're in luck with the microphone, as it's been leaked for a while now a built-in one is returning. It does seem to be on the tablet and not one of the Joy-Cons, for whatever reason (I think it's to the right of the cartridge slot, which they conveniently never showed in the teaser, but it can be glimpsed on the official website), but it appears to be there. As for a camera, there's nothing concrete backing the idea, but it is commonly theorized that the USB-C port on the top of the system was implemented for accessories like a camera. It'd be nice if it pans out - unlike other things they've done in the past, such as the News and Weather channels on Wii, smartphones don't effectively render cameras obsolete as long as they can leverage them in games and take advantage of the options provided by a controller.

@beartown
...Go look at some footage for Mario Kart Wii again and tell me it's even remotely like this. Wii was not a looker even for a SD game

Sure am glad this is out right before my birthday, because I'd otherwise wait for a price drop (which are more common than people think for Nintendo games - Woot! in particular's been pretty decent, bringing Luigi's Mansion 2 HD down to $45 for weeks now). I do think Nintendo's current pricing strategy is going to backfire on them more and more, though - the value proposition is just lacking with a release like this. $40 at most would've been acceptable. But the 30fps in Returns 3D was frustrating enough by the end to make me drop the game compared to the buttery smooth Tropical Freeze, and I don't want to play the Wii version and deal with waggle, so I've had this at the top of my birthday list.

I do get the feeling that Nintendo's deal with Forever Entertainment, if it doesn't fall through, is going to just lead to them being put on late Switch ports of games that generally aren't that cared about (even if they are well-liked). Stuff like, say, Excitebots, Battalion Wars, and FlingSmash. And once whatever their contract is wraps up, I hope they take their business elsewhere. It takes talent to be a go-to Nintendo partner, and they could easily find other studios that can do much better jobs akin to Tantalus and Grezzo

@Jeronan @msvt "Releasing simultaneously worldwide" just means it's releasing at the same time in all regions. The Game Freak gigaleak actually indicated that Z-A is only planned for Switch 1, though it's possible that plans have changed

@N00BiSH It's not bad, and I have a particular soft spot for Automatic Action, but it is the one game in the series he's never touched and they already used his return to Tropical Freeze as a selling point. Just think it would've been the most obvious thing they could've changed to better justify HD beyond finally getting 60fps with button controls and the 3DS stages. They could even have a soundtrack toggle.

I think it was a huge missed opportunity to not get David Wise to provide a revised soundtrack for Returns HD. I'm not asking for a total replacement like what we saw with DKC3 on GBA, but it would've been a great selling point that wouldn't have required much on Nintendo or Forever's end

@coolioam Indiana Jones is probably a given even if the most conservative estimates of the Switch 2's performance are what pan out. My understanding is that it runs on id Tech 7, and that engine is one of the best optimized out there now. Ray tracing apparently shouldn't even be an issue, either, since it sounds like the Switch 2 will be capable of it thanks to some of the Nvidia tech inside. Only real question is if they'll cap it at 30fps, which the Steam Deck version runs at, or if DLSS and potential unknowns about the hardware (5nm vs. 8nm?) can push it up to 60fps (maybe for a dedicated performance mode, if nothing else?)

Why do people think the Switch 2 isn't going to improve physical game storage when it's pretty consistently been what they've done for successor systems? The 3DS cartridge can store more than the DS. A Wii U disc is superior to a Wii disc. I expect Switch 2 cartridges will make a similar leap

Hmm. I wonder how Game Freak feels about all this. Can't imagine they're too happy - they signed on with Private Division, the label with the backing of Take-Two with ample resources, not Private Division, the company owned by a no-name private equity firm. I wonder if they'll take Project Bloom elsewhere...if that's even an option

Correction: Abebe Tinari's the name, not Adebe

@Axelay71
[monkey's paw curls]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_and_Donkey_Kong:_Minis_on_the_Move

@Lord I don't think we have any evidence companies were asking for 16GB of RAM? 12GB is more than what the Xbox Series S has, anyways. It'll be fine for most games

...Considering the fact that Punch-Out characters were considered for ARMS at one point, pretty sure that's an indication of Nintendo maintaining interest in the series. They also seem willing to revive virtually any IP - if anything's off-limits, it's going to be stuff like Time Twist, not Punch-Out.

If it was called Wonder, I imagine the name would've only stuck in Japan. Brothership was retained outside of Japan because it was punny like basically every other Western subtitle for the series, according to the interviews.

My first attempt didn't log for some reason, but I got everything right and only really had to guess on the Nintendo Museum and 10/10 review score questions. I need help