larryisaman

@Medic_alert I’m keeping hold of my Steam Deck for sure but yes, very different experience to Switch/2. Even downloading games and patches while in sleep mode isn’t possible on Deck. Even though it gets closer to being a console like experience than PCs have ever gotten before it’s still nowhere near as streamlined as a dedicated console.

I still go back to that video of Jeff Gerstmann discovering how bad Switch cartridges taste when I need a laugh. Nobody even knew they were made to taste bad at that time haha

Still think it’s very weird they went backwards from Wii U but honestly, who cares. It’s literally a one time thing for each friend and I question how many times people are adding friends in general anyway. Not a big deal. It was a bigger issue on DS in 2005 back when I was a kid and text messages were pay per text; not so much of a problem nowadays.

@Phenzy Agreed. Having those notifications on a newsfeed style area on Steam is great for discovering new games too, especially if a friend has gone for every achievement. I’ve messaged friends multiple times after seeing them go for all achievements in certain games to see how they felt about them and those conversations have often convinced me to buy the game myself. It’s really a very cool way of expanding the reach of games that might not have been given the marketing they deserve for whatever reason.

I know there’s plenty of people who don’t care at all for achievements and that’s fine but honestly I think not doing them on a system level is such a missed opportunity, especially when they’re as keen as ever to include them on a game by game basis which makes absolutely no sense to me.

The fun of them is being notified of friends’ progress in games on top of just the meta list of extra things to do once you’ve exhausted a game of its content. Nintendo has so many ways of making the concept more worthwhile and beneficial to the user (just having exclusive profile icons for those who’ve 100%’d certain games would be a tangible enough reward to separate their system from others) but they refuse to explore it. I suspect it’s just because they weren’t there first and don’t want to be seen as “copying” when they’re known for forging paths themselves.

Ultimately I don’t see the harm in including them, both from Nintendo’s perspective and from fans who could just as easily turn off achievement notifications and ignore them completely just as you can on every other platform.

@Ulysses That would be great!

Honestly there’s a lot of things they could do. Tying achievement collections into other games would be fun, like getting special Mii costumes in Mario Kart for 100%ing other games (get a Link costume for getting all achievements in BotW for example)

@jetsetradion That’s the thing though, if anyone had a right to charge for their console introduction it was Sony. Playroom is so much more robust than anything we’ve seen from Welcome Tour.

I don’t think anybody expects anything grand to be included with a console (it’s still surprising that Playroom was bundled to be honest given the production value of it) but something like this really should be. Especially when you think of how even Nintendo themselves had Face Raiders, Streetpass Plaza and AR games all included with the 3DS. I don’t think free content should be expected to come with the console but if you’re going to make something like this then it really should be part of the package.

@Abrammchi I think that’s exactly it honestly. It’s not like they’re against the concept of it, like even SSB Melee had challenges which were pretty much achievements before they became a big thing and they continue to have them in specific games (even BotW and TotK are getting them in their upgrades). But they just won’t implement a proper achievement system and I can only imagine it’s because they didn’t get to it first.

If they want to be different with it they could actually give you tangible rewards, like even getting platinum coins or exclusive profile pictures for getting 100% achievements would be more than you get on other platforms. Just feels like an easy thing to do but they have no interest in doing it

@Quarbit Exactly. Really the kind of thing that should pop up as a prompt when you’ve finished setting up the device like “Hey, want to take the welcome tour and learn all about the new features?”. Not something you should have to go out of your way to find and pay for.

In fact I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what the PS Vita did with its Welcome Park software.

Charging for this is so insanely out of touch. Especially frustrating when you look back at the 3DS and see how much free tech demo stuff they packed in there on day one.

I get their aversion to packing in full games and why NoA had to fight for Wii Sports to be bundled but this literally is a tech demo.

Shame it wasn’t Bandai Namco Singapore’s Prime 4 that got leaked. Dying to see what that was shaping up to be like and why Nintendo pulled the plug on it.

I’m not so bothered about Mario Kart itself costing £80 because the bundle exists and makes it £35. Worth sacrificing having it physically and to be honest MK is the kind of game I’d rather have digitally- I’d have probably played MK8D a hell of a lot more if a quick race didn’t mean having to swap cartridges.

But yeah, in general these prices are insane especially when it comes to Nintendo games. Sure, Sony have been charging £70 for games but those games can and will drop in price significantly over time. Nintendo games don’t. At best we can expect to see them drop to what, £50? The current price of a new game? That sucks. And I don’t care that games have stayed around the same price for so long while other things have gotten more expensive. £40-50 is still a lot of money for most people.

It really is just greed. You can’t tell me that they wouldn’t still make an absolute killing selling Mario Kart World for £50 a pop.

Those upgrade pack ones are awful with that text bar. Could have had all that info on the back or on a sticker.

Probably repurposing unsold carts. Not the biggest deal IMO, but the resale value won’t be what it should be since you’d just be selling on the Switch version once you’ve used the code.

Generally it’s just irksome they’re charging for some of these upgrades. Mario Party and Kirby I get since they’re full DLC expansions on top of performance updates but they could have had an easy slam dunk by offering a bunch of them for free on day one, especially when the games and console are so expensive in general (not that I think the console itself is overpriced but still it is a lot of money). At the very least they could have offered them to early adopters for nothing.

I have to imagine third parties are working on mouse shaped joy cons already. Surprised nobody has announced one for launch honestly.

@-wc- I can’t see an optical sensor adding much cost to these controllers at all, it’s ancient tech at this point

@Abrammchi What are you on about? Metroid Prime 4 and Civilization VII showing how FPS and RTS games can be played with it are the best use cases you could ask for.

This’ll be the last generation with physical games of any kind I reckon. Sad.

@the_beaver I agree.

Same with Fast Fusion…launch day is suicide for that game when both Mario Kart and F-Zero GX are there day one.

I never once had an issue with the original Switch screen. I only upgraded to an OLED because the battery in my launch model had kicked it, and while the OLED screen is night and day to compared to the original I don’t mind going back to LCD, especially if it’s improved anyway and if it keeps the price down.

@rjejr I agree, I’m shocked it never happened with the original Switch especially after the lite released. Though if I had to guess, a TV only model of the original Switch will happen long before it happens for the Switch 2. Feels like the ideal thing to do with unsold chipsets once Switch sales really nosedive.

It has always made sense as to why digital should be cheaper than physical (much cheaper, for that matter) but having parity makes sense when you have retailer partnerships.

This more than anything feels like they want to hike the price as much as possible but make digital the better deal to get people to buy there instead. They’ll make so much more money that way than dealing with the logistics of manufacturing and shipping of cartridges and with retail shrinking they have less incentive to have a significant visible space in stores. Whole thing sucks.

They’re trying to set a very dangerous precedent here. £75 is absolutely nuts.

It’s also incredibly short sighted of Nintendo in regards to third parties. OK, their own big hitters might do just fine. People will want Mario Kart, Pokémon etc. and will likely pay over the odds for them. But it’s no secret that people who buy Nintendo consoles buy them mainly for their exclusives, so where does that leave third parties when Nintendo’s games are costing so much? I’m planning to get the MK bundle but then probably won’t buy another retail game until Donkey Kong. Then who knows what else? I doubt I’ll be supplementing them with the odd third party game when I’m looking at around £70 per Nintendo title.

Then again, maybe third parties could undercut Nintendo significantly on prices of their games and stick out that way? Depends on the prices of carts etc. I guess.

Plus I could get most of these third party titles on Steam Deck for much cheaper, which is another problem- people may just look to handheld PCs as an alternative. I never considered them a threat to what Nintendo are doing before but with the prices they’ve set…yeah. I can see them being more viable to the crowd who wants games like Cyberpunk and Elden Ring etc. as a result of the costs associated with Switch 2.

Super Switch would have been a lot more fun but I think it’s for the best they went with Switch 2. Super Switch wouldn’t have made it immediately clear what it is and in a world of PlayStation Pros and such it would have sounded more like that kind of machine than a full on successor. Sequential numbers work, might be boring compared to Nintendo’s old naming conventions but ultimately all that matters is that it’s clear.

You can use your old Pro controller for Switch 2 games right? Because £75 is nuts.

Incredible Direct. Probably the best ever; gave me so much of what I was hoping for and then some.

The disappointments only came afterwards…console price is what I expected but game prices are mental. Code on a cartridge is horrible news for myself as somebody who prefers to buy physically- I just can’t see most third parties opting to have full games on a cartridge when they have that option. Also a bit gutted that Switch 1 game upgrades will be paid, but I was anticipating the possibility of that and it’s better than not having them at all I guess.

Overall very happy with what I saw of the system and games; less so with some of the things I learnt afterwards. Still, I’ll be there at launch if I can manage to get ahold of one.

Got a Nintendo UK store invite- very happy they’re doing this. Should help stop at least some scalping by offering it to people who actively play their systems and are likely to actually want a Switch 2 on day one to play and not just sell for profit.

Anyway, I’ll let everyone know if I get one at launch. Bidding starts at £1000

To be fair, a lot of games were pretty much already like this on Switch 😅 So much data on the card and a required install for the rest.

But seriously, this sucks. I’ve gone from thinking this was the most incredible Direct ever to pure disappointment between this news and the price of games.

@LXP8 Even worse!!!

Loved this game as a kid. Definitely want to buy this if only for nostalgia’s sake but £25 for the download is mental to be honest. Will get it when it’s sub £15 in a few months!

@progx 100%. Steam Deck is awesome but I would not recommend it to anyone looking for a system without hassle, even though it does get close to the console experience. That “console experience” is just a veneer though…when the cracks that it’s a PC under the hood start to show, they really show. For some people having the flexibility to do what you want with it is a great thing, but for the majority of people who will buy a Switch 2 it’s definitely not.

@Serpenterror Honestly a touch pad would have been ideal to have for games that use the mouse feature. Would still let you use the mouse in handheld mode, just in a less optimal way. The trackpads on Steam Deck are great, I just played through World of Goo entirely with the right pad and it worked well so it would have been nice to see them include one here, even if it would have been much smaller than what’s on Deck

@BlueMonk Xenoblade as a series more than likely wouldn’t exist without Nintendo to begin with. First game was no doubt expensive to develop even on the Wii, and I can’t imagine any other publisher at the time funding a game of that scope from Monolith especially after the Xenosaga series was considered a commercial disappointment. Ultimately it’s amazing the series got off the ground to begin with, let alone three further games getting greenlit.

Anyway, Pokémon Scarlet/Violet launched with (and continues to suffer from) far worse technical issues and Nintendo were suitably criticized universally for publishing them in such a state. Nintendo definitely don’t get a free pass for everything, it’s just that XBX is generally solid for the most part and not worth making a big deal of the odd frame drops etc.

Not being animated killed most of my interest in a Zelda film. I’ll watch it because it’s Zelda but I’m not optimistic it’ll be good.

@OzMikey What?

Got a good look at Prime 4, new Rhythm Heaven, Patapon Remasters. For a Direct nobody even expected to happen I can’t fault it!

@progx I agree, and it most likely will be Switch 2 exclusive. I would definitely hope so, but knowing just how ridiculously MK8D sold and that they want to sell more than each previous game sold…if they had been developing it for Switch for years, would they ignore the potential sales an OG version could bring?

Nintendo have historically made a clean cut with their new consoles and effectively said that if you want their newest games you need the new system (save for the odd low profile game like we saw in today’s Direct like Rhythm Heaven/Tomodachi Life) but that’s also true of Microsoft and Sony and look how they handled the first few years of their latest consoles- cross gen games abound. Even 2 years into the PS5’s life they put their biggest game of the year on PS4 with GoW: Ragnarok. Nintendo could feasibly do the same thing and still bring big games to Switch for a few years while using it to make a case for buying a Switch 2 with how vastly improved the experience of said games is on there. I’m not expecting this to happen (definitely not hoping it does either), but with this being maybe the most direct successor to a Nintendo console ever it is possible.

Like the iPhone model…new iPhones don’t mean older ones are automatically defunct, but they’re less capable and have less features and eventually they will stop being supported entirely. Not what I want whatsoever, but stranger things have happened.

This game has had a long time in the oven surely…I would even go so far to say that it was likely planned for Switch 1 but MK8D did so ridiculously well that they saved it for Switch 2 and kept working on making it better. I’m sure there’s some big things going on with it that will make it a must have.

Saying that, please don’t tell me MK9 is going to be a Switch 1 game too. I could see the temptation to make it cross-gen which is something I really really don’t want to see Nintendo indulge in. If they do it with Prime 4- fine. Great even. But I really just want to see a slew of new games that can only be done with new hardware.

@MSaturn I’d argue that the Switch was the successor to both the 3DS and Wii U since it merged both “divisions” into one.

Regardless, I think having both high profile exclusive games and the ability to not only play OG games on it but with improved performance (praying that’s what they’re planning anyway) makes for a good case to upgrade, on top of whatever else they have planned to entice people. The only thing that could put a wrench into that would be if they’re planning to keep supporting the Switch with big games like Sony did for a while with PS4 and PS5, making it a lot less compelling to upgrade. I just can’t see Nintendo taking the same route here though- I would bet games like Mario Kart 9, the new 3D Mario etc. will only come to Switch 2. I expect Switch will live on ports and remasters- good things to have and throws a bone to those who are happy with the old system but not enough for the core Nintendo audience to be happy without upgrading.

@Asantos Agreed 100%, I want new stuff too, but as far as this one goes it makes sense since remasters are probably what we can expect on Switch going forwards. In general for other Directs I guess it’s people just hoping for revivals of things they know they already love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want new things too

@MSaturn They continued to release 3DS games for years after the Switch launched…

Plus since the Switch 2 is backwards compatible and will hopefully be able to run OG Switch games with better performance it lets them bolster their lineup and market them for the new console while still being able to sell to the massive Switch install base. They won’t want to turn their back on all those still buying games for Switch but they have to release new hardware so it makes sense they’ll continue to support the old one (presumably with lower priority games).

@Asantos Because it’s realistic…they’re more than likely not going to be making much new for the Switch going forwards besides remasters. Unless they’re going to go the Sony route and make cross gen games for years which I don’t want to see them do at all.

Big Prime 4 trailer at the end. Follow it up at the Switch 2 Direct with a focus on how it’ll look and run better on the new console (hopefully).

Pie in the sky dream for it is a Silksong shadow drop…with the Steam page updates and Microsoft’s odd mention/singling out of it last week there is a tiny bit of hope that it’s finally going to happen but I’m not expecting it.

Other than those, surely it’s time for Wind Waker/Twilight Princess HD to make it over. No chance at all they’ll be bundled together if so though, one this year and one next year would be my guess

@BaldB3lper78 Who says MP4 is a Switch 2 game anyway, let alone the “flagship” game for it? Not to mention it’s already been shown on Switch 1?

The general consensus anyway is that it’s at best a cross gen title or is upgraded when played on Switch 2 but at this moment anything regarding the new system and Prime 4 having anything to do with each other is complete conjecture. Besides, even if it is cross gen or whatever it makes sense to give it the full spotlight in this Direct and then focus on the upgrades in the next one rather than have it compete for attention with whatever else Nintendo is showing next week.

@Dazman lol

@Willo567 Not really surprising that third parties weren’t clamoring to be on Switch on day one after the disaster that was Wii U

Third parties only getting dev kits in June? That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. Not happening at all. “Preparing for games in October”? Games don’t get developed in a few months, and even ports don’t happen that quick.

The only plausible way to read this would be that they’ll open the floodgates for any developer to get a dev kit from June onwards but big publishers/select indies will have gotten them ages ago. I can see that, but to think there’ll be no significant third party presence in the first few months is absurd.

As for the Jeff Minter thing, do we seriously believe he would be allowed to say he has a dev kit if he has one? No chance. Not saying he does have one but he wouldn’t be able to say regardless.

@Wisestfool I would be willing to bet that a significant amount of people who’ve played Chrono Trigger did so through an emulator. I have a few friends who are huge fans of the game but only played it on an emulator on PC back in the day long after it released on SNES (partly because it didn’t even come out in Europe originally).

Plus with that in mind most people still recommend just emulating the original versus playing the only available versions being sold (Steam and mobile). The only other releases were the DS one (which seemed to have limited availability), the PS1 version that isn’t great and the VC release of the original so if anything SE haven’t given it much of a chance to sell better. A Switch release of even the original version would have done great numbers I’d imagine so why they haven’t even done that is beyond me

@abbyhitter Yeah, I’ve got the gist of it (as I said, finished XC3 and put dozens of hours into 1 and 2) but it’s just never fully clicked with me. I lament the lack of an easy mode to be honest, I enjoyed XC3 so much as a result because I didn’t really have to think too much about the battles and could just enjoy the stuff that I really like about the series, namely the story and exploration.

Actually kind of baffling that a casual mode isn’t included after the last few games had one…maybe the online play is the reason?

Like many, Xenoblade X. I’m really loving the exploration but like the other games, I’m not over the moon with the combat. I’m putting up with it like I did with XC3 (the only one I’ve finished) because I’m so enamored with the world, music and art but the combat is just a confusing jumble to me and always has been with these games. Add on the complexity of the skills and different classes etc…man. Hope it doesn’t get too much for me to the point that I put it down especially considering there’s no difficulty settings (that I’m aware of anyway?).

What I’d do for a game like this with a more straightforward combat system. Big part of why I love BotW/TotK is that they don’t bog down the gameplay with a million different systems and mostly emphasize exploring the world without things getting in the way. I know there’s people who relish the complexity of games like XBX and that’s fine, it’s just personally the biggest knock against it for me. Still enjoying it so far!

I’d be very surprised if 3 Reload (and Metaphor for that matter) don’t come to Switch 2.

Really hoping Nintendo are going to go all out on Switch 1 game updates. Such an easy win and would make the new console so much more appealing to people who have huge Switch libraries from day one. I don’t want to pay for the upgrades like Sony is known to do but if that’s the only way they’ll do it then whatever

@AmplifyMJ Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a big part of why it’s taken so long to make. All eyes on them and the huge expectations from fans can’t be easy to deal with