RatlankAA3

A smart move by Nintendo. Now the focus will be on the low price compared to the competition as opposed to it shaping up to be greatly inferior to the competition.

I have nothing against paying for online in principle. Xbox Live and PSN are both good services. My concerns are that Nintendo have proved themselves incompetent at anything that requires an internet connection. The joke that was Friend Codes, the lack of basic features, no real account system, etc. Their online services have been archaic, inferior in everyway to what the competition has offered for over a decade.

Now, we don't know a great deal about the Switch's online services. Maybe it'll be great. But what we do know doesn't fill me with optimism. A free 25 year old ROM that gets taken back off you after a month is so laughably abysmal compared to what Sony and Microsoft offer. Hiding a feature as basic and voice chat behind a smartphone app (if I'm understanding it correctly) is a joke. From what we know, I see no reason to think that Nintendo, despite now charging for online, have bothered to get with the times and offer a more modern service that I, as an owner of both an Xbox One and PS4, have gotten used to.

I'll pay for a good online service, but I'm not paying for one that doesn't even come close to what has become the norm nowadays. A paid service = automatically better is not how it works. It CAN work like that - I think PSN is much better than it was on the PS3, but that theory only works if the company in question (Nintendo) knows what it's doing when it comes to online services. It doesn't seem that they do.

While it's true that the launch line ups for both the Xbox One and PS4 were not great, I feel using that to deflect from the Switch's line up is missing the point. With those two consoles, you knew what you were buying into. You knew what kind of games would be available eventually. It wasn't a matter of IF the big hitting third party titles would arrive, it was a matter of WHEN. With the Switch, you don't know what you're getting into. Beyond Nintendo's first party titles, you have no idea what kind of games this thing will get. The extent of third party support is unknown, and whether those third parties will stick around if it doesn't meet expectations is a genuine worry. Nintendo haven't proved themselves capable of supporting a console to the end either - the final years of both the Wii and Wii U were dire. While it's true that the Switch's launch line up isn't much worse than what the other two got, buying the Switch at launch is a much higher risk proposition than buying the other two consoles at launch was.

I enjoyed it, but was a little disappointed with it. The story never really interested me. I thought it was pretty poorly paced with many chapters not really doing anything. There were too many party members with so few of them fleshed out. You had the recruitment mission and then two pretty short affinity missions and that was it. Not enough time for most to get much development. I can't even remember the names of most of them.

Then there was a bunch of little stuff that started to bug me more and more the longer I played. The awful sound mixing during some cutscenes (loud music with English lyrics blaring over English voice acting was a horrendous idea), recruiting party members being so inconvenient (having to go and find them in NLA every time), the collectopedia and beastiary not showing you the locations of collectables/items once you've already found them meaning I always played the game with the wiki open next to me.

Still, the combat and exploration was great. Xenoblade is one of my favourite games ever. X is nowhere near, but is still a very good game.

A completely pointless and needless article. Market goes down after big unexpected event and then rebounds. That's not newsworthy, it happens all the time. The only reason this article exists is for the easy clicks and guaranteed large number of off-topic political comments. Garbage clickbait.

I need to see more. The battery life and price are two obvious factors that we still don't know.

I would never commit to buying something without knowing everything about it. I'm going to wait and see.

A good start but even the Wii U had OK third party support at the beginning. Holding onto them will be the real challenge.

It's disappointing and a step back from Club Nintendo.

Discounts on overpriced digital games that, even with the discount, still cost more than buying the physical version? Woohoo.

I know these emulators (this one and the NES one from a little while back) are viewed as some big deal on this website, but I think it's been blown out of proportion. Emulators are available on just about everything nowadays; if someone can't emulate the N64 on their Xbox One, they'll just do it on one of the billion other devices they own that can do it, probably for free (unlike this one).

Take them down, don't take them down, it really doesn't make much of a difference either way. It's a symbolic action at best - it will stop nobody who wants to emulate the NES/N64 from doing so.

I struggle to care about this. Emulators are on just about everything nowadays. If someone can't emulate the N64 on their Xbox One they'll just do it on one of the billion other devices they have. Remove it, don't remove, it'll make no difference.

I see no issue with that review. Different reviewers prioritise different things in games. For that particular reviewer and no doubt some of their audience, the design of the demons impacted their enjoyment of the game. For others it will be a non-issue. Having reviews from a variety of perspectives is a good thing. A reviewer is under no obligation to review a game from the same perspective that you review games. If the design of female demons is not relevant to you, then the review is not from a perspective you're interested in; it may make it worthless to you, but it will be useful to others. Providing the perspective and priorities of the reviewer are made clear (which has happened in this case), this is a complete non-problem.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing this. I wanted to like IV, but gave up because of the abysmal map. Navigating it was a horrid experience. As soon as I heard it had been improved in this game I knew I would buy it.

Given that emulators are available on just about every device nowadays, I'm struggling to see this as a particularly big deal.

Asset flippers deserve to be exposed. Well done, Nintendo Life.

Steam is full of this type of immoral, lazy trash. I suppose consoles can't stay away from it forever.

@mr12calvin "Instead of uploading courses online, courses you make can be shared via local wireless and StreetPass." That was exactly what was said in the Direct.

The 'instead' makes it read pretty clear to me that there's no online course sharing.

Super Mario Maker without online sharing. Vintage Nintendo.