Raylax

@Damo Absolutely, but that doesn't make absence from a very specifically retail-only chart notable 😋

Digital-only title absent from retail-only sales chart.

Surprise.

Thanks for continuing to spoil every hidden detail of Sonic Mania, NintendoLife. I'd hate to be surprised by a game, my heart might not take it.

Nice. Never played a Disgaea but picked this one up on recommendation. Still haven't played much of it, but definitely intend to plough through it soon. It's pretty fun!

Arzest strikes again. Bafflingly Average Games, Inc

@PtM One of what guys? I really don't like cheesecake / fanservice stuff, so I'll be completely avoiding this

I like Steins;Gate in spite of its occasional tendancy to be weird with its female characters, because it doesn't happen often and it's primarily a really cool sci-fi story. I prefer the anime to the VN specifically because it cuts out the vast majority of the dodgy content in the VN

Traaaaaaash. Steering well clear of this.

The Switch does seem the most logical platform for visual novels now though, now that the Vita seems to be pretty much dead. I'm personally really hoping the recently announced Steins;Gate remaster makes it to the Switch. A port of Steins;Gate Zero would be very nice indeed too. Those games also definitely have problems with how they treat their female characters at times (something the anime at least largely ditched), but they are otherwise fantastic stories for fans of sci-fi rooted in real-world theories. A cast of superb characters and a gripping plot — this is turning into a review.

Watch Steins;Gate. It's really good.

I did it

Warren Spector seems like a really chill guy

Both gross companies. Hopefully they both go down together.

"Ditching Two Of The Franchise's Most Famous Characters" accompanied by sad Ash & Pikachu thumbnail

(before clicking) hmm I bet it's not ash & pikachu and I bet McFerran penned this one

(after clicking) Checkity-check

GAME's customer service problems run deep. I expect that has had much more impact than stock availability. At this point even if the price were fair, I would not preorder from them with the regular news of them messing that up in some way - mass overcharging, price changing, cancellations, etc etc. It's just not worth the hassle.

Beyond preorders, price for new games is often completely uncompetitive, and preowned similarly usually cost more at GAME than the CEX or Grainger / Trade Nation near by. There are increasingly few reasons to buy from them. These days its the last stop for a preowned game for me if I can't find it at any other store and the GAME price is fair

They can at least tend to get in some interesting merch these days, but I suspect that's hardly making up significant sales

One pair of £369 headphones and three pairs of headsets with mics for a console that does not have mic input or direct voice chat. ...Fascinating choices there, folks.

@memoryman3 I dunno if you can't understand how a game could ever be popular if it happens to star child characters without assuming it must be pedophilia, you might be the one with the problem my dude

The kind of people who'd want Krystal in Smash are 100% the kind of people who'd cheat a completely meaningless internet poll to get her into first place, I genuinely couldn't be less surprised by this

The X-Box One X isn't even a threat to the sales of the X-Box One

Congrats again @thatpixelguy and @ImDiggerDan! I'll def be picking this up on Switch!

(would love to see Miles & Kilo hit Switch too ;P )

That sucks, I'd love some Limited Run editions of Switch eShop games. Hopefully next year!

Physical Disgaea 5 seems to be very understocked. I preordered it on Amazon but it's gone unfulfilled, so currently waiting for Amazon to get more stock in.

14 pieces of Fire Emblem DLC, for just under €32, six days after the game's release

Haha.

Ahahaha.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha excuse me I have to go and be sick.

Wow the guys narrating those trailers are the absolute worst.

The games look fun though. I enjoyed Blaster Master Zero, will probably give these a look

I picked up the Vita lately, and for the games I bought it to play I'm loving it. It's a great little console. What bugs me though is how Sony had basically all the ingredients to make a handheld that did what the Switch does successfully and squandered it.

The total lack of internal memory and massively overpriced propriety memory cards basically killed its PS Store's chances, where Switch eShop is (so far) a remarkable success. Selling the console without memory and then having most retail games require a memory card is a staggeringly bad decision.

The insistence on creating watered-down "portable version" entries of PS's huge franchises - often handled by different studios - made a lot of titles automatically inferior to their PS3 brothers. An expensive new console for less good games. Heck of a sales pitch. Nobody wants Uncharted Golden Abyss, it's a bit toss. Why not just put Uncharted 2 on it? It has the power.

A bunch of other minor but irritating design choices too. I love my Switch, and for what I use it for (not the PS Store...), I love my Vita. But Sony really should have been able to do what the Switch does years before NX was a glitter in Nintendo's eye. A bizarre state of affairs.

Yeah, picked this up yesterday, finished it on easy, played a bit on medium and... don't really want to play any more. The complete inability to predict how fast any given note will come at you makes this pure memorisation-based, not skill-based.

Skip it, pick up VOEZ instead and/or wait for the excellent Thumper next week.

Sonic Extreme (this one, not the Saturn one) has been known about since 2011 😉

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Extreme

Always interesting to see cancelled stuff though

I'm buying a lot of indie eshop stuff with the Switch, so I'm accumulating a fair pile of MyNintendo gold coins.

Most likely I'll be using those to pick up discounted Neo-Geo and VC releases when that happens.

Wow that tagline is brutal.

Excellent work.

neat, I was tempted to buy this on the JP eShop but I guess I'll just wait a week instead

Definitely a game with checking out. Hoping if they do a sequel, the problems with the checkpointing and camera are prioritised to be fixed

This is 99% sure to be Bayonetta 1 finally making it to PC. It tied in with a PC release of 8-Bit Bayonetta for April Fool's. As much as I'd love Bayo 3, what would be the sense in tying news to a free PC minigame, using Bayo 1 promo art, to turn around and tell that audience that actually it's Bayo 3 on other system(s)?

Are we absolutely certain this is Konami. This does not feel like Konami. This is 900% too pro-consumer to be Konami. Where's the "buy life insurance for your bomberman hero" subscription?

Hurrah.

It's sad that WB are exactly the kind of company who I'd believe absolutely would release a port of a 4-year-old game to retail with a 13Gb download required, but hey.

Waiting on a review before picking this up, still sketchy on WB ports in general. Hopefully they've done this one well though.

I mean if Nintendo's happy to pimp out its IP to absolute garbage like Pixels, there shouldn't be any issue getting Mario into a probably actually good movie

Yeah, I was on the fence about picking up LCU for Switch, on the basis that WB ports tend to be a lazy disaster half the time.

That they haven't even bothered to put the game on the cart does not fill me with confidence.

Why did we bother building thousands of easily possessed death robots when we could have just told a few stone talos that Ganon had been saying mean things about their mom and let them take care of it

tbh liam neeson is the best thing about this story

To Ubisoft:

don't saddle switch games with uplay requirements

beyond good and evil 2

less naff ports that nobody wants

beyond good and evil 2

less identikit sandboxes

beyond good and evil 2

more new stuff like rayman and child of light

beyond good and evil 2

Mature.

Y'know, fair play to the devs. The game's pretty bad but at least they're making the effort to improve it with free content updates. I can respect that. A lot of devs would just throw the game up and leave it to rot.

Hiring a professional translator would probably be a good idea though

@norwichred good for you.

Congrats, Alex!

The incentive for stores to continue to stock retail when cheaper digital copies exist is the large audience that will continue to buy retail where possible (along with things like impulse buys, gift purchases, etc), and the second hand market where the majority of their money is actually made.

A digital store selling games for less than RRP would not present much threat to brick 'n mortar stores. The brick 'n mortar stores often already do sell for under RRP (in which case digital would be more likely to offer parity, not an undercut price), and the ability to resell your game is still a huge advantage retail has over download.

Retail copies provide other advantages - the use on multiple systems, not needing expanded system storage, the option to lend it out, the assurance that it's probably still gonna be playable in 20 year's time, etc.

The idea that brick 'n mortar stores would lose out if digital stores began selling cheaper really doesn't hold water. Digital store owners are really just using it as a flimsy excuse to rationalise charging full whack for digital copies.

I'll be glad when they come. I've developed a habit of taking my Switch with me into the kitchen and thinking "man, it'd be really handy if I could watch YouTube on this right now"

@AcridSkull It was, which makes the statement a little confusing - I assume they're including it, or else they're saying "awesome! We sold more than zero copies!" haha

That's a pretty A+ mock-up, tbf. Good job, mystery NL artist

Pre-order price guarantee doesn't apply in case of mis-pricing, but we'll see how this turns out. Worth a punt at least

Hard Mode as DLC never isn't dumb.
Cave of Trials I'm assuming is just a Cave of Ordeals affair (50 flies of increasingly tough enemies).
The pre-purchase stuff... eh, no real opinon on that.
New dungeon / more story is the part of this that actually seems pretty nice. Not being able to buy that by itself is kinda dumb though.

"Kingdom Hearts 3.76: Second Chapter Introduction"

Literally cannot tell if this is an actual name of a KH game or if Thomas is having fun with SE's awful naming style.

The salty comments here are incredible though. Good stuff.

Not a chance in hell. I think it's gonna be successful, don't get me wrong, but the gulf between "successful" (10s of millions to a demographic largely comprised of gamers) and "Wii" (lightning in a bottle miracle moment, sought after by everyone and quite literally their nans) is ridiculous

Regarding the 64Gb memory, how about a third scenario (asides dev devices just have more space (most likely), or this indicating a future higher-capacity SKU): that all Switches internally contain 64Gb storage, but 32Gb is reserved by the system for the operating system, firmware, and system updates. This would mean that the advertised 32Gb is entirely usable to the player, rather than the usual situation where a chunk is taken by the OS etc. Not saying I think this is particularly likely, but it'd be cool if it were the case.

Master Edition? No? Okay then.

please tag this nsfw

*tugs collar