They should take a tip from eBay sellers: sell them separately.
TT and 5th Cell are very different studios to Rocksteady. Potentially they’d have different buyers (sadly likely to be mobile focused).
In general though I’d say that any of the established players would be stupid to pay $4 billion for Warner Interactive. They can just hire talent to their existing studios for a fraction of the price (so Microsoft... how sensible are you these days...)
If I were Amazon or Google though (or even Apple...) I’d be all over this. It’s an established set of successful studios with a diverse range of successful games (even without the Batman license to lean on).
@mystman12 from memory DKR does use adaptive music in the over world. As you get close to an area door you start to hear traces of the music from that area.
There were a few advantages to cartridges even if there weren’t as many as Nintendo probably thought internally. Unfortunately CDs were just so much cheaper (& Sony completely outmarketed Nintendo).
@Heavyarms55 I think @westman98 ‘s analysis is broadly correct. Switch as a budget console will be hitting very different buttons to the brand new and expensive consoles.
Yes - people are attracted to the new but the people who are most attracted already own the Switch. They aren’t “lost sales” (although if they buy fewer Switch games they’ll affect which games find success on the console).
Going forwards a cheaper Switch with a range of high profile budget games is likely to be more appealing to a lot of people worldwide (not just “women who want to play animal crossing). So long as we know that there are still major high profile games like BoTW 2 and Metroid Prime 4 on the horizon the console is still very appealing (even if it’s going to increasingly be the back catalogue that sells it).
@Heavyarms55 I think at this point Wii figures are looking more likely than not.
Yes - PS5 & XBox Series X will take some spotlight away from the console but Switch will be well upwards of 65 million before they launch and Nintendo has a lot of flexibility to reposition Switch as a budget console in the years to come (I’ve still got a budget “Nintendo Selects” range on my list of predictions for this year). In short - I don’t think Nintendo will find themselves in direct competition with Sony & Microsoft (although we might see a shift in the types of games that sell on Switch).
I think they’ll find tremendous success in positioning it like that - more so than they ever have with past consoles - because the library is so fundamentally strong and free from hardware gimmicks. There’s not even anything clearly wrong technologically behind the scenes with the eshop.
@ThanosReXXX I know. It's a bit ridiculous to think that anyone would really fall for that line in 2020 when everyone knows FPS doesn't matter anymore. These days even a 60 FPS game is unplayable unless it's streaming from a giga floppy SSD and can trace every ray...
@ThanosReXXX what do you mean a shame? The FPS count is the most important part of any game. If it isn’t 60 FPS or better it’s unplayable garbage. Literally nothing else about a game matters.
People playing games at 30 FPS in China is what gave us Covid 19...
@SapphireBlaze you joke but... if that video is legit I can see elements of ideas that Nintendo has explored many times since.
The panning back camera to show more of the maze is a use of 3D but it also hints towards the idea of there being more to see than one player normally can at one time - the risk/reward between what can be seen and movement. The genesis of the Wii U.
I can easily imagine Miyomoto playing around in his head with those ideas and eventually coming up with Pac Man Vs.
I think there’s definitely a niche in the market for “meatier realistically themed arcade racing games”. They’re never going to be mega sellers in this day and age (for similar reasons why arcade sports games have died) but they add prestige and appeal very much to an important group of players.
A modern wave race with Nintendo behind it would be amazing.
Nintendo has a broad range of high profile, family friendly, IP in a diverse range of genres.
IP that is massively under exploited - there’s not been a Zelda cartoon series for more than 30 years! People have put hundreds of hours into Splatoon - where is the feature film where are the toy sets and collectables?
They also have a vast back catalogue.
It’s not a 1-1 but they have a basically unique scope to develop.
Apple Arcade is great - but it's addressing a problem that the mobile market has (a race to the bottom in price - freemium & pay-to-win - impacting on consumer trust in games on mobile platforms). Apple could (and should) have headed that problem off a decade ago but they didn't. Arcade is a belated attempt to set things right.
Nintendo doesn't have the same problem. They've consistently maintained high prices for first party games (and to a lesser extent third party games on their platforms) and been successful in doing so. Whilst consumers see that the box on the shelf is a legitimate price (and means you get the full game without locking most of the game behind additional transactions) Nintendo doesn't need to come up with a model to mitigate trust.
A subscription model could one day be the way forwards if their existing model starts to fray but we're a long way off that.
@Caryslan not necessarily. If closures - particularly in China carry on for too long then it’ll seriously hit PS5 and XBox manufacturing. Certainly it seems likely to constrain units available at launch. It could even stall the launch entirely.
In such a scenario Nintendo has the ‘incumbency’. They have consoles in the hands of players and they have a game development pipeline aimed at delivering games to that platform this year and next.
Added to which the economic impact of millions of people being off work (particularly those with school age children) is probably not going to be good for launching a premium luxury games console but might be wonderful for a cheaper console (which most people who really want already have anyway).
In short - we don’t know how this will all shake out (both in a gaming context and more generally).
For my (too young to have owned a Spectrum at its height so having played Jetpac and Lunar Jetman much later) money Lunar Jetman is the weakest of the trilogy. Jetpac holds up great as an arcade experience and Solar Jetman has a wonderful sense of isolation and a hostile alien world(s) (usually the levels themselves would literally crush me - enemies be damned the gravity would kill me!). Lunar Jetman is more complex than Jetpac but that just makes it an overly complex arcade action game.
I'm broadly interested by something that wants to take the Solar Jetman template - it has a lot of untapped potential. Not sure I'll bite on this one though.
It’s always surprising, listening to NVC, how often Peers “what I’d really like to see is...” stabs in the dark actually turn out to be exactly on the money.
It’s almost like he has inside information that he can’t reveal due to NDAs. Reading between the lines of what he says is usually quite a reliable way of knowing what’s happening inside Nintendo.
I’m really surprised NL didn’t hone in on this one. It’s less glamorous than discussing a Switch Pro (for which the timing would be all wrong in 2020 - though I’d buy one) but with Switch Lite out there and Nintendo aiming to sell multiple Switches to families the method of sharing digital games has to improve.
Put simply if you buy a game digitally it should belong to the family account - not your individual account - and everyone in that ‘family’ should all be able to play it (simultaneously if they wish). The whole ‘set one Switch as primary and the other as secondary and then anyone who has an account on the secondary Switch might get access to your games if they’re online and you’re not playing it etc.’ Is terrible. It needs a multi part FAQ to explain and any function that genuinely needs a FAQ of that nature is a marketing disaster.
I’d go so far as to say it’s the number one thing that they should look to solve on a system level because it would directly unlock the ability to sell more Switches.
Starmen.net in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was such a great community. It was so well organised and the way they managed to create almost daily content on an amateur basis around a single cult game was awe inspiring.
Great forums too.
It was one of my top bookmarked sites for a long time.
The thing is with these charts they don’t really tell you very much. It’s such a slow time of year hitting the top of the charts isn’t that hard. It doesn’t necessarily denote a game is a huge success.
But still the overall impression for Nintendo here in the UK is that the Switch is hitting heights they haven’t for many years. You actually see it more clearly with the shelf space given over to Switch in Supermarkets (I suspect that most physical sales at this time of year are dominated by supermarkets so being on those shelves and good relations with the supermarkets is pretty crucial here. Even a niche game like Fire Emblem has a chance if Nintendo can leverage it onto those valuable shelves).
Nintendo burnt serious bridges there in the Wii U era but shops like Asda have come back on board.
@Heavyarms55 the thing is that the people who’re potentially in the market for a budget 4 year old piece of tech at less than £200 that’s (most likely) baited with a game (MK8) that’s twice as old as that are not the same people who are making up the majority of the target audience for a brand new cutting edge £400 piece of tech (without a game included and no budget software lineup).
There’s overlap - sure - and PS5 & XBox Whatever will impact on the games that are released on Switch & the number of new releases Switch owners buy (& the types of games they buy) but they won’t stop Nintendo having a fantastic time of it in 2020 and 2021.
To think of it in another way - Sony and Microsoft will basically be abandoning 100 million plus gamers and catering (for at least 12 months) to less than 20 million.
The Switch is coming into its mature years on the market. Sales are likely to increase. PS5 and XBox Two on the market will simply make it easier for Nintendo to position Switch as a budget option. Expect a “players choice” range late next year and Switch Lite bundles with one or two games (digital).
A £200 Switch Lite with MK8 and NSMBU thrown in for free (with a dozen other games available for less than £20) will be relatively easy to market.
...of course the really valuable Switch owners already own the console.
@SBandy I’m well aware that it sounds selfish. However we live in a world where there are more things to see and do and people to talk do all from the comfort of my sofa and my time is precious to me. If someone wants to engage me in a two way conversation then they have to accept that from the beginning - and that means my rules are prominent. Otherwise I can very easily shrug my shoulders, laugh and go do something else.
Posting here is not a matter of life and death.
Anyway. I think we’re done with reasonable civility. You do add to the site and I’m glad you post here.
For what it’s worth I have no one on my ignore list but I would honestly encourage anyone who finds the site less enjoyable for seeing my posts to add me. I don’t post much, you hardly miss anything by missing me and - as I say - life is too short.
@SBandy if you (or anyone else) want to think I’m a complete tool that’s completely fine. You’re free to think what you like.
If anyone wants to engage with what I’ve actually said then I’m sure they’re grown up enough to do so themselves.
As to the rules of polite public discourse and debate well that’s a discussion for another time and place. But suffice to say - if someone doesn’t want to play by my rules then it’s a big world and there are plenty of other people they can choose to talk to. I don’t have to listen to them.
Which is to say - if you don’t like me then you certainly have the freedom to ignore me. The site even has an option that lets you do that! I post little here but if you don’t like the things I have to say or the way in which I say them then I wouldn’t be at all offended if you add me to your ignore list.
@SBandy Of course they can and at no point have I ever denied anyone's ability to speak for themselves if they so wish to do so. They can save time by just announcing that what I originally posted is pretty much the gist of what they were going to post (regardless of the actual content of the article though). Which was my suggestion.
I do believe that many people have however confused the right of free speech with the right to be heard and the right to dictate the tone and direction of a public debate in their own favour. I don't claim to have that right either but sometimes when you see an opportunity then why not have a go?
@SBandy Of course people can hold and express their own opinions. I've explicitly (in my role of "comment god") given them the opportunity to express their opinions. I've just allowed them to save a bit of time by posting it up there so they don't have to waste their time (or anyone else's).
"Charts" (particularly charts such as these without real numbers attached to them and particularly when we know that they mostly exclude digital sales) tell us very little either way. Even the Japanese charts that do have numbers tell us very little. We simply don't know the true expectations, sales projections and success criteria from the developers and publishers to know whether a game debuting at "number 1 in the charts" is successful or not.
Take FIFA for instance. I am certain that FIFA has sold a lot of copies on Switch - the charts over time and the retail presence would suggest this to be the case. But EA clearly considers it to be a failure. Of course EA makes more money from FUT than it does from sales of FIFA itself so their success criteria aren't necessarily how many boxed copies they sell.
Conversely Fortnite appears to have been successful on Switch. I can certainly see on my friends list play activity that some players have put in hundreds of hours on Switch. But it would never appear on a best sellers list because it's digital only and has a price of £0.
Trying to extrapolate where Nintendo sits in the marketplace from these charts in 2019 is honestly a waste of time. But still we see, week after week, the same one or two names in the comments to sales charts articles on this site sagely informing us that they've sifted through the tea leafs and telling us that they've read "Nintendoomed" in them.
More positively though I’m surprised that Switch is doing so well here.
Even at the height of the Wii and DS it was unusual to see so many games that can be played on a Nintendo platform in the top 10 in the UK. Time of year plays a part in that with it being very quiet from the AAA part of the industry but still...
Also MK8 in the top 10 always indicates that hardware sales are still going well here.
A short public service before someone says “ah another first party Nintendo game selling well. What a surprise, no good support for third party games from Nintendo fans, Wolfenstein a failure.
Still Fire Emblem is a handheld/mobile game and Switch is a handheld/mobile platform not a console so it’s not really a surprise...”
Honestly. If that was going to be the gist of your post then please save time and just @ this comment. Thanks!
@Prizm It may just be good luck but so far I've found that the ratio of good/great levels to complete garbage is dramatically better in SMM2 compared to SMM1.
Auto levels and music levels are - at the very least - tagged and removed.
@Tao Come on - there was never a point in the Wii U's lifespan where great games were released month after month BAM, BAM, BAM. Maybe the odd year when we got 2 great games in quick succession in October/November.
I definitely feel like Switch has delivered high quality games on a much more consistent basis. We've just not yet felt the full force of big first party releases that we were all hoping to see. If nothing else though we do get every big indie game now (and often targeting Switch first) whereas in the Wii U era it was always touch and go if we'd even get games like Axiom Verge.
@bluemujika it would also make sense when you think that tennis games have to be released in a relatively narrow window in the summer to have any chance of commercial success.
@thesilverbrick they’re looking at the long term. The gaming device is ultimately going to be less important than the “platform”. The “platform” is already an abstract thing and Microsoft’s gaming platform is already Xbox live- not Xbox One.
When we reach the end game it’s all about content. Exactly the same as with Netflix and Disney etc.
When that end game is reached then close contact and good relations/joint ventures with Nintendo make a lot of sense for Microsoft (& Nintendo). Eventually 5-10 years down the line we might see Nintendo games streamed to players on Microsoft’s streaming service.
Yeah. As others have noted - getting developers who have a unique and innovative gameplay mechanic to make a Nintendo-ified version of their game is what we should be looking at. Not getting the best tribute band up on stage to play the hits.
Cadence of Hyrule will be an objectively more approachable game than Necrodancer (which is fantastic but brutally difficult). It will weave in Zelda gameplay mechanics in subtle ways to make for something that's very different to Necrodancer. It won't be replayed as much but it'll be "better" for most players.
In terms of suggestions I don't know. There are so many indie games doing interesting things but not many really shout out "this is almost a great game but could be amazing if Nintendo take an active interest and put their characters in it".
@Octane relax. It was a comment about how the media portrays minority’s. Black man: baskballer or rapper = welcome aboard it’s clearly because you’re black. Black man: successful intelligent businessman = downplay the blackness.
@TheFanatic When compared against the first 2 years of the PS4 Switch sales are ahead.
This doesn't actually mean very much however - as you'd noted (but for very different reasons). Now that we're beyond the point of debating whether Switch is successful and viable or not (we're just debating the magnitude of its success) hardware sales are no longer a particularly important metric.
Does someone who buys a PS4 at this point really have an impact on the succcess of the PS4 as a format? No. They're probably not buying very many full price games, they're buying the consoles at knock down prices, big publishers are already moving their big money franchises forwards to the PS5/XBox One 2. The important adopters were those who bought one in the first 2 years.
The same goes for the Switch. The people who will amass a collection of 20+ games and account for 75%+ of the gaming spend (outside of a handful of big one off games) already own the Switch.
@Zuljaras Hard? They're already either at or around 35 million Switch units sold LTD. Even if they have a relatively poor year they'll sell 15 million units to hit 50 million LTD over the next 12 months.
XBox One is somewhere in the 40-50 million units bracket. Switch will overtake that figure this year.
Comments 652
Re: A New Pokémon Snap Game Is In Development For Nintendo Switch
All of the Pokemon will gurn towards the camera when the music goes “wah wah”.
Re: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Is Reportedly Up For Sale
They should take a tip from eBay sellers: sell them separately.
TT and 5th Cell are very different studios to Rocksteady. Potentially they’d have different buyers (sadly likely to be mobile focused).
In general though I’d say that any of the established players would be stupid to pay $4 billion for Warner Interactive. They can just hire talent to their existing studios for a fraction of the price (so Microsoft... how sensible are you these days...)
If I were Amazon or Google though (or even Apple...) I’d be all over this. It’s an established set of successful studios with a diverse range of successful games (even without the Batman license to lean on).
Re: The Emulation Experts At M2 Developed The Namcot Collection
M2 are porting inferior NES conversions of arcade classics?
Isn’t that a bit like hiring the Beatles and saying “what we’d like you to play today is a few songs from Robbie Williams’ latest album”.
Re: Random: Poor Old Sakurai Can't Even Reveal What Games He's Playing Anymore
@PBandSmelly it’s not just toxic 12 year olds on Twitter - Donald Trump is on there too and he’s way older than that.
Re: Legendary Composer David Wise Explains Why He Wouldn't Have Swapped The N64 For A CD-Based Console
@mystman12 from memory DKR does use adaptive music in the over world. As you get close to an area door you start to hear traces of the music from that area.
There were a few advantages to cartridges even if there weren’t as many as Nintendo probably thought internally. Unfortunately CDs were just so much cheaper (& Sony completely outmarketed Nintendo).
Re: Nintendo Expands The Switch Online SNES And NES Service With Four More Titles
Panel de pon on Switch! My life may finally be complete! I will spend hours and hours playing that.
It’d still be great if they could do a rom hack of Tetris Attack and call it “Yoshi Attack” or something though.
Re: Nintendo Switch Has Now Sold 55.77 Million Units Worldwide
@Heavyarms55 I think @westman98 ‘s analysis is broadly correct. Switch as a budget console will be hitting very different buttons to the brand new and expensive consoles.
Yes - people are attracted to the new but the people who are most attracted already own the Switch. They aren’t “lost sales” (although if they buy fewer Switch games they’ll affect which games find success on the console).
Going forwards a cheaper Switch with a range of high profile budget games is likely to be more appealing to a lot of people worldwide (not just “women who want to play animal crossing). So long as we know that there are still major high profile games like BoTW 2 and Metroid Prime 4 on the horizon the console is still very appealing (even if it’s going to increasingly be the back catalogue that sells it).
Re: Here Are The Top Ten Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games As Of March 2020
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2014/5/15/5718168/mario-kart-series-sales
Journalism 👍
Re: Nintendo Switch Has Now Sold 55.77 Million Units Worldwide
@Heavyarms55 I think at this point Wii figures are looking more likely than not.
Yes - PS5 & XBox Series X will take some spotlight away from the console but Switch will be well upwards of 65 million before they launch and Nintendo has a lot of flexibility to reposition Switch as a budget console in the years to come (I’ve still got a budget “Nintendo Selects” range on my list of predictions for this year). In short - I don’t think Nintendo will find themselves in direct competition with Sony & Microsoft (although we might see a shift in the types of games that sell on Switch).
I think they’ll find tremendous success in positioning it like that - more so than they ever have with past consoles - because the library is so fundamentally strong and free from hardware gimmicks. There’s not even anything clearly wrong technologically behind the scenes with the eshop.
Re: Super Mario 64 PC Port Shows The Game Running At 4K And With Ultra Widescreen Support
@ThanosReXXX I know. It's a bit ridiculous to think that anyone would really fall for that line in 2020 when everyone knows FPS doesn't matter anymore. These days even a 60 FPS game is unplayable unless it's streaming from a giga floppy SSD and can trace every ray...
Re: Super Mario 64 PC Port Shows The Game Running At 4K And With Ultra Widescreen Support
@ThanosReXXX what do you mean a shame? The FPS count is the most important part of any game. If it isn’t 60 FPS or better it’s unplayable garbage. Literally nothing else about a game matters.
People playing games at 30 FPS in China is what gave us Covid 19...
Re: "Massive" Nintendo Leak Reveals All About The Wii Generation - Source Code, Design Files And Much More
@SapphireBlaze you joke but... if that video is legit I can see elements of ideas that Nintendo has explored many times since.
The panning back camera to show more of the maze is a use of 3D but it also hints towards the idea of there being more to see than one player normally can at one time - the risk/reward between what can be seen and movement. The genesis of the Wii U.
I can easily imagine Miyomoto playing around in his head with those ideas and eventually coming up with Pac Man Vs.
Re: Soapbox: Switch Really Needs Games Like Excitebike 64, Wave Race, 1080° Snowboarding And, Yes, F-Zero
I think there’s definitely a niche in the market for “meatier realistically themed arcade racing games”. They’re never going to be mega sellers in this day and age (for similar reasons why arcade sports games have died) but they add prestige and appeal very much to an important group of players.
A modern wave race with Nintendo behind it would be amazing.
Re: Nintendo Is The Next Disney+, Says Activist Investor Which Now Has A $1.1 Billion Stake
I think the Disney comparison is apt.
Nintendo has a broad range of high profile, family friendly, IP in a diverse range of genres.
IP that is massively under exploited - there’s not been a Zelda cartoon series for more than 30 years! People have put hundreds of hours into Splatoon - where is the feature film where are the toy sets and collectables?
They also have a vast back catalogue.
It’s not a 1-1 but they have a basically unique scope to develop.
Re: Nintendo Should Create An Apple Arcade-Style Subscription Service, Claims Analyst
I can see the logic but it's flawed.
Apple Arcade is great - but it's addressing a problem that the mobile market has (a race to the bottom in price - freemium & pay-to-win - impacting on consumer trust in games on mobile platforms). Apple could (and should) have headed that problem off a decade ago but they didn't. Arcade is a belated attempt to set things right.
Nintendo doesn't have the same problem. They've consistently maintained high prices for first party games (and to a lesser extent third party games on their platforms) and been successful in doing so. Whilst consumers see that the box on the shelf is a legitimate price (and means you get the full game without locking most of the game behind additional transactions) Nintendo doesn't need to come up with a model to mitigate trust.
A subscription model could one day be the way forwards if their existing model starts to fray but we're a long way off that.
Re: Switch Is Still The Best-Selling Console Of 2020 In The US, Tops February Charts
@Caryslan not necessarily. If closures - particularly in China carry on for too long then it’ll seriously hit PS5 and XBox manufacturing. Certainly it seems likely to constrain units available at launch. It could even stall the launch entirely.
In such a scenario Nintendo has the ‘incumbency’. They have consoles in the hands of players and they have a game development pipeline aimed at delivering games to that platform this year and next.
Added to which the economic impact of millions of people being off work (particularly those with school age children) is probably not going to be good for launching a premium luxury games console but might be wonderful for a cheaper console (which most people who really want already have anyway).
In short - we don’t know how this will all shake out (both in a gaming context and more generally).
Re: Super Mario Lego Is A Thing That Is Happening
@Aaron09 I’ve always wanted this as an adult!
Zelda lego (assuming it follows) might possibly be what causes bankruptcy.
Re: Mini Review: Willy Jetman: Astromonkey's Revenge - A Fun Homage To The Classics Of Yore
@SolarJetman Very different games though.
For my (too young to have owned a Spectrum at its height so having played Jetpac and Lunar Jetman much later) money Lunar Jetman is the weakest of the trilogy. Jetpac holds up great as an arcade experience and Solar Jetman has a wonderful sense of isolation and a hostile alien world(s) (usually the levels themselves would literally crush me - enemies be damned the gravity would kill me!). Lunar Jetman is more complex than Jetpac but that just makes it an overly complex arcade action game.
I'm broadly interested by something that wants to take the Solar Jetman template - it has a lot of untapped potential. Not sure I'll bite on this one though.
Re: Nintendo Expands The Switch Online SNES And NES Library With Four More Games
Why’s everyone upset?
Smash Tennis is the sporting precursor to Smash Bros right?
Re: IGN Founder Offers Hint At One Of The Rumoured Wii U Ports Coming To Switch
It’s always surprising, listening to NVC, how often Peers “what I’d really like to see is...” stabs in the dark actually turn out to be exactly on the money.
It’s almost like he has inside information that he can’t reveal due to NDAs. Reading between the lines of what he says is usually quite a reliable way of knowing what’s happening inside Nintendo.
Re: Feature: New Year Resolutions For Nintendo In 2020
#6 Sort out sharing of digital purchases
I’m really surprised NL didn’t hone in on this one. It’s less glamorous than discussing a Switch Pro (for which the timing would be all wrong in 2020 - though I’d buy one) but with Switch Lite out there and Nintendo aiming to sell multiple Switches to families the method of sharing digital games has to improve.
Put simply if you buy a game digitally it should belong to the family account - not your individual account - and everyone in that ‘family’ should all be able to play it (simultaneously if they wish). The whole ‘set one Switch as primary and the other as secondary and then anyone who has an account on the secondary Switch might get access to your games if they’re online and you’re not playing it etc.’ Is terrible. It needs a multi part FAQ to explain and any function that genuinely needs a FAQ of that nature is a marketing disaster.
I’d go so far as to say it’s the number one thing that they should look to solve on a system level because it would directly unlock the ability to sell more Switches.
Re: Feature: How Fangamer Changed The World Of Video Game Merchandise Forever
Starmen.net in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was such a great community. It was so well organised and the way they managed to create almost daily content on an amateur basis around a single cult game was awe inspiring.
Great forums too.
It was one of my top bookmarked sites for a long time.
Re: Who Needs A Game Boy Classic Edition When You've Got The Analogue Pocket?
Compatibility with the GC-GBA adaptor? Let’s get the important questions answered NL!
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem's Reign Is Over As Crash Team Racing Speeds Into First Place
The thing is with these charts they don’t really tell you very much. It’s such a slow time of year hitting the top of the charts isn’t that hard. It doesn’t necessarily denote a game is a huge success.
But still the overall impression for Nintendo here in the UK is that the Switch is hitting heights they haven’t for many years. You actually see it more clearly with the shelf space given over to Switch in Supermarkets (I suspect that most physical sales at this time of year are dominated by supermarkets so being on those shelves and good relations with the supermarkets is pretty crucial here. Even a niche game like Fire Emblem has a chance if Nintendo can leverage it onto those valuable shelves).
Nintendo burnt serious bridges there in the Wii U era but shops like Asda have come back on board.
Re: Nintendo Switch Has Now Sold 36.87 Million Units, Could Pass SNES Total By Christmas
@Heavyarms55 the thing is that the people who’re potentially in the market for a budget 4 year old piece of tech at less than £200 that’s (most likely) baited with a game (MK8) that’s twice as old as that are not the same people who are making up the majority of the target audience for a brand new cutting edge £400 piece of tech (without a game included and no budget software lineup).
There’s overlap - sure - and PS5 & XBox Whatever will impact on the games that are released on Switch & the number of new releases Switch owners buy (& the types of games they buy) but they won’t stop Nintendo having a fantastic time of it in 2020 and 2021.
To think of it in another way - Sony and Microsoft will basically be abandoning 100 million plus gamers and catering (for at least 12 months) to less than 20 million.
Re: Nintendo Switch Has Now Sold 36.87 Million Units, Could Pass SNES Total By Christmas
@Heavyarms55 not a chance.
The Switch is coming into its mature years on the market. Sales are likely to increase. PS5 and XBox Two on the market will simply make it easier for Nintendo to position Switch as a budget option. Expect a “players choice” range late next year and Switch Lite bundles with one or two games (digital).
A £200 Switch Lite with MK8 and NSMBU thrown in for free (with a dozen other games available for less than £20) will be relatively easy to market.
...of course the really valuable Switch owners already own the console.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
@SBandy I’m well aware that it sounds selfish. However we live in a world where there are more things to see and do and people to talk do all from the comfort of my sofa and my time is precious to me. If someone wants to engage me in a two way conversation then they have to accept that from the beginning - and that means my rules are prominent. Otherwise I can very easily shrug my shoulders, laugh and go do something else.
Posting here is not a matter of life and death.
Anyway. I think we’re done with reasonable civility. You do add to the site and I’m glad you post here.
For what it’s worth I have no one on my ignore list but I would honestly encourage anyone who finds the site less enjoyable for seeing my posts to add me. I don’t post much, you hardly miss anything by missing me and - as I say - life is too short.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
@SBandy if you (or anyone else) want to think I’m a complete tool that’s completely fine. You’re free to think what you like.
If anyone wants to engage with what I’ve actually said then I’m sure they’re grown up enough to do so themselves.
As to the rules of polite public discourse and debate well that’s a discussion for another time and place. But suffice to say - if someone doesn’t want to play by my rules then it’s a big world and there are plenty of other people they can choose to talk to. I don’t have to listen to them.
Which is to say - if you don’t like me then you certainly have the freedom to ignore me. The site even has an option that lets you do that! I post little here but if you don’t like the things I have to say or the way in which I say them then I wouldn’t be at all offended if you add me to your ignore list.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
@SBandy I’m sorry am I supposed to “feel the burn” at this point?
Because when people start chucking out insults instead of addressing points in a civil fashion I think we’re finished aside from deciding who’s “won”.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
@SBandy Of course they can and at no point have I ever denied anyone's ability to speak for themselves if they so wish to do so. They can save time by just announcing that what I originally posted is pretty much the gist of what they were going to post (regardless of the actual content of the article though). Which was my suggestion.
I do believe that many people have however confused the right of free speech with the right to be heard and the right to dictate the tone and direction of a public debate in their own favour. I don't claim to have that right either but sometimes when you see an opportunity then why not have a go?
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
@SBandy Of course people can hold and express their own opinions. I've explicitly (in my role of "comment god") given them the opportunity to express their opinions. I've just allowed them to save a bit of time by posting it up there so they don't have to waste their time (or anyone else's).
"Charts" (particularly charts such as these without real numbers attached to them and particularly when we know that they mostly exclude digital sales) tell us very little either way. Even the Japanese charts that do have numbers tell us very little. We simply don't know the true expectations, sales projections and success criteria from the developers and publishers to know whether a game debuting at "number 1 in the charts" is successful or not.
Take FIFA for instance. I am certain that FIFA has sold a lot of copies on Switch - the charts over time and the retail presence would suggest this to be the case. But EA clearly considers it to be a failure. Of course EA makes more money from FUT than it does from sales of FIFA itself so their success criteria aren't necessarily how many boxed copies they sell.
Conversely Fortnite appears to have been successful on Switch. I can certainly see on my friends list play activity that some players have put in hundreds of hours on Switch. But it would never appear on a best sellers list because it's digital only and has a price of £0.
Trying to extrapolate where Nintendo sits in the marketplace from these charts in 2019 is honestly a waste of time. But still we see, week after week, the same one or two names in the comments to sales charts articles on this site sagely informing us that they've sifted through the tea leafs and telling us that they've read "Nintendoomed" in them.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
More positively though I’m surprised that Switch is doing so well here.
Even at the height of the Wii and DS it was unusual to see so many games that can be played on a Nintendo platform in the top 10 in the UK. Time of year plays a part in that with it being very quiet from the AAA part of the industry but still...
Also MK8 in the top 10 always indicates that hardware sales are still going well here.
Re: UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Gets Number One, Almost Doubles Awakening's Launch Sales
A short public service before someone says “ah another first party Nintendo game selling well. What a surprise, no good support for third party games from Nintendo fans, Wolfenstein a failure.
Still Fire Emblem is a handheld/mobile game and Switch is a handheld/mobile platform not a console so it’s not really a surprise...”
Honestly. If that was going to be the gist of your post then please save time and just @ this comment. Thanks!
Re: Random: This Game Boy-Themed Nintendo Switch Lite Would Be Perfect For Zelda: Link's Awakening
Yes. This is desirable.
Re: Super Mario Maker 2 Players Have Already Uploaded More Than Two Million Courses
@Prizm It may just be good luck but so far I've found that the ratio of good/great levels to complete garbage is dramatically better in SMM2 compared to SMM1.
Auto levels and music levels are - at the very least - tagged and removed.
Re: The Next DLC Fighter For Smash Ultimate Will Be Revealed At Nintendo's E3 Direct
@Rafke True. I just think he deserves 2 slots.
Re: The Next DLC Fighter For Smash Ultimate Will Be Revealed At Nintendo's E3 Direct
Shrek.
Taunts can be conversations between Shrek and Donkey about the other fighters.
Human Shrek can be an echo fighter.
Re: A 3DS eShop Title Just Launched For An Eye-Watering $100
@Panopticon I see what you did there...
Re: Sonic Movie Director Promises To Change Controversial Design
They just need to change the title card: "Sanic the Hedgehog: The Movie".
Everything would then make sense and we'd be talking about it as a postmodern cinematic masterpiece - the film for the meme era!
Re: Don’t Expect A Skies Of Arcadia Port Or Sequel Anytime Soon
@Nomad I suspect the problem is that they don't sell and anything with the Sonic name attached does :/.
Skies is an all time favourite RPG. It's just so positive and well put together. It completely nails that sense of adventure.
Re: Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers Officially Confirmed For Switch
Stole your hope
Re: Mario Tennis Aces Version 3.0 Adds New Opening Movie, Ring Shot Mode And More
@Tao Come on - there was never a point in the Wii U's lifespan where great games were released month after month BAM, BAM, BAM. Maybe the odd year when we got 2 great games in quick succession in October/November.
I definitely feel like Switch has delivered high quality games on a much more consistent basis. We've just not yet felt the full force of big first party releases that we were all hoping to see. If nothing else though we do get every big indie game now (and often targeting Switch first) whereas in the Wii U era it was always touch and go if we'd even get games like Axiom Verge.
Re: Mario Tennis Aces Version 3.0 Adds New Opening Movie, Ring Shot Mode And More
@KingdomHeartsFan Mario Maker 2 followed by Fire Emblem.
This has reminded me though that Mario Golf is a good bet for an E3 reveal. Not inspiring to me but it’s a Nintendo mainstay that’s still absent.
Re: Mario Tennis Aces Version 3.0 Adds New Opening Movie, Ring Shot Mode And More
@bluemujika it would also make sense when you think that tennis games have to be released in a relatively narrow window in the summer to have any chance of commercial success.
Re: Microsoft Asked The Studio Behind Cuphead To Bring The Game To Switch
@thesilverbrick they’re looking at the long term. The gaming device is ultimately going to be less important than the “platform”. The “platform” is already an abstract thing and Microsoft’s gaming platform is already Xbox live- not Xbox One.
When we reach the end game it’s all about content. Exactly the same as with Netflix and Disney etc.
When that end game is reached then close contact and good relations/joint ventures with Nintendo make a lot of sense for Microsoft (& Nintendo). Eventually 5-10 years down the line we might see Nintendo games streamed to players on Microsoft’s streaming service.
Re: Feature: Nintendo Indie Collaborations And Crossovers We’d Like To See
Yeah. As others have noted - getting developers who have a unique and innovative gameplay mechanic to make a Nintendo-ified version of their game is what we should be looking at. Not getting the best tribute band up on stage to play the hits.
Cadence of Hyrule will be an objectively more approachable game than Necrodancer (which is fantastic but brutally difficult). It will weave in Zelda gameplay mechanics in subtle ways to make for something that's very different to Necrodancer. It won't be replayed as much but it'll be "better" for most players.
In terms of suggestions I don't know. There are so many indie games doing interesting things but not many really shout out "this is almost a great game but could be amazing if Nintendo take an active interest and put their characters in it".
Re: Feature: What Reggie-Fils-Aimé Meant To Nintendo, The Games Industry, And All Of Us
@Octane relax. It was a comment about how the media portrays minority’s. Black man: baskballer or rapper = welcome aboard it’s clearly because you’re black. Black man: successful intelligent businessman = downplay the blackness.
Re: Early NPD Figures Suggest Nintendo Outperformed The Competition In January
@TheFanatic When compared against the first 2 years of the PS4 Switch sales are ahead.
This doesn't actually mean very much however - as you'd noted (but for very different reasons). Now that we're beyond the point of debating whether Switch is successful and viable or not (we're just debating the magnitude of its success) hardware sales are no longer a particularly important metric.
Does someone who buys a PS4 at this point really have an impact on the succcess of the PS4 as a format? No. They're probably not buying very many full price games, they're buying the consoles at knock down prices, big publishers are already moving their big money franchises forwards to the PS5/XBox One 2. The important adopters were those who bought one in the first 2 years.
The same goes for the Switch. The people who will amass a collection of 20+ games and account for 75%+ of the gaming spend (outside of a handful of big one off games) already own the Switch.
Re: Early NPD Figures Suggest Nintendo Outperformed The Competition In January
@Zuljaras Hard? They're already either at or around 35 million Switch units sold LTD. Even if they have a relatively poor year they'll sell 15 million units to hit 50 million LTD over the next 12 months.
XBox One is somewhere in the 40-50 million units bracket. Switch will overtake that figure this year.
Re: Damon Baker Joins The Xbox Team
@retro_player_22 not true. Microsoft gave all their employees a free Zune and a free Surface RT.