ramu-chan

It will be very interesting to see how this runs. Doom is a 60fps game, that much is non negotiable, so the visuals will need to be seriously cut back to make it run.

And as an aside, why is a British writer using the term "holiday season"?

Any port of FF15 to the Switch would be massively compromised. Better to produce something completely original and designed for the platform.

Look at what Square achieved with Bravely Default on the 3DS.

In some ways I agree, but it's telling that devs such as Housemarque get so much attention. They do so, because they make games from a genre which barely exists these days - arcade games.

Games which have basically no story, and are instead focused on reflexes and pure, undiluted, gameplay. No cut scenes, no padding, no fetch quests. Just pure old school gameplay, usually paired with beautiful, colourful 2D visuals and great music.

That's what we're lacking these days, and it's what indie devs very rarely manage to get right. It's also why retro gaming is bigger than ever. Nobody working today can touch the magic created by Konami an Capcom back in the late 80s and early 90s.

@MegaVel91

Charming. Welcome to my ignore list.

@MegaVel91

Over 20 years of AAA dev. Is that enough for you?

I suggest you do some technical reading before you pen another ill informed rant.

@ClassSonicSatAm
You're clearly not a dev. I am.

If Kingdom Hearts 3 ever does come to the Switch (it won't), then it will be a hugely diminished experience due to graphical cuts. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Just buy a PS4.

@ClassSonicSatAm This is a 30fps game on a 1.8 tFlop GPU. How well do you think it would run on a .05 tFlop GPU? You do the maths.

@Alucard83

Sorry, but you are technically completely illiterate. Memory is the least of any dev's worries when trying to port a PS4 game to a Switch. The Switch has a Tegra X1 GPU, running at 0.5 tFlops when docked, and half that when undocked. By comparison a stock PS4's GPU runs at 1.8 tFlops and at 4.2tFlops on a PS4 Pro. CPU and memory speeds are much higher on the PS4 as well.

A Switch is at best, somewhere in the region of Xbox 360 performance, and often lower.

AAA ports from the PS4 and XO to the Switch are a waste of everyone's time. The difference in power levels are so gigantic that the Switch version would be hugely inferior to the originals.

Just buy the PS4 version.

The blue shell represents the very worst aspects of MarioKart. I appreciate the game is random to a degree, even the vastly more skillful original required an element of luck to win. But the blue shell is just downright unfair, it's a punishment for playing well, which is indefensible.

I've only seen Episode 1 so far, but my initial impressions aren't good. The writing is laughably bad and the animation is very, very cheap.

Why would anyone want this on the Switch? The game has been developed to target XO/PS4 performance targets, and to run at 60fps. To get it running on what is, let's face it, vastly less powerful hardware, huge compromises would have to be made.

It would be a completely pointless exercise.

What on earth happened to Cave Story in the UK? It came out in the US this month but it's still nowhere to be seen in Britain. The Switch store lists it as release TBA.

Odd.

"Players who are behind in online matches will receive items geared toward catching up more frequently."

This kind of stuff really irritates me. If you aren't winning then get better, don't rely on the game giving you an unfair advantage. It undermines the entire point of multiplayer competitive gaming.

Frankly I'd sooner have the FF12 HD port on the Switch.

The sad thing is Sega were in discussion with Retroarch to handle the emulation duties, but due to Sega making some unreasonable demands the talks failed.

What we have now is an utter joke.

@Yasaal Very few XO/PS4 games are 1080/60. The most common scenario by far is for PS4 games to be 1080/30, and XO games to be 900/30.

I love that Nintendo are putting frame rate at the top of the list of priorities. That said, I expect Mario 2ill see a bump to at least 900p when docked, as there's really no technical reason not to use the huge increase in GPU speed the Switch gets when in docked mode.

Nice but I'd sooner see all the SNES Goemon games translated. They're gorgeous looking games but sadly as yet untranslated, aside from the first one.

I'm concerned about the lack of third party support. Nintendo's first party games, great though they often are, aren't enough to support an entire platform. (as the Wii U proved)

We got Rabbids from Ubi and... well, that's pretty much it. Nothing from Square, Konami, Activision, EA, Platinum, or Capcom (outside of a port of an old 3DS Monster Hunter game for Japan). It just isn't enough.

Imagine if Capcom had brought their A game, and delivered some new IPs? Something creative and unique, along the lines of Okami, Viewtiful Joe, or Zak and Wiki. Or if Konami had a new Castlevania game, or Square a new Final Fantasy Tactics or Chrono Trigger.

The trailer was a lovely piece of high end CG, but if the game is aiming for that type of art style and that level of detail, I just can't see the Switch getting a version. If it does somehow come to the Switch, expect massively downgraded visuals.

Capcom's Switch support is seriously unimpressive so far. When you think back to the glory days of the NES and SNES, Capcom was one of Nintendo's best partners.

What have we had so far? A comically over priced port of an Xbox Live Arcade Street Fighter 2 update, a port of an old 3DS Monster Hunter game, and that's it. Why wasn't the Disney collection on the Switch? Or the Megaman collections? And where are the new, original AAA Capcom games for the Switch?

I just hope that the failure of the Wii U made third parties cautious, and now that the Switch is a hit there's a lot going on behind the scenes which we haven't seen yet. Same applies to Konami, although at least they gave us an overpriced mediocre Bomberman game.

Of course performance should be the highest priority, but the GPU in the Switch is 60% faster when docked. So Psyonix is just wasting all that potential because... well, I can't think of a reason.

Baffling.

@cmk8 Timesplitters 4? That's long dead. The IP now resides with Crytek in Germany and they're barely keeping their head above water.

Whilst the internet would go nuts over a new Metroid, I very much doubt it will happen. Nintendo has for a long time now been focused very much on what makes them the most money. Metroid simply isn't a big seller.

I think we'll see a new Animal Crossing and that's about it. The rest will be Mario Odyssey, Arms, and Splatoon 2. Bit boring, but there you go. It will be enough for this year to keep the Switch momentum going, especially if the likes of Ubi throw them a few bones.

Next year will be Pokemon Switch and a real Fire Emblem for Switch.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE It's the fastest selling Nintendo console in history. It's a success.

Selected Wii U ports are a no brainer. The PS4 had plenty of PS3 ports in its early years. Mario 3D World would be an obvious one to do next.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE There is one gigantic difference between the Switch and the Wii U. The Switch is a success.

That's really all that matters, and it's what will bring in third party development.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE You're wrong. I played the Test Punch split screen and it works absolutely fine. The game also works fine with a single joycon. You only need both if you want to use the motion controls (which are vague anyway, so I stick to real controls).

I played this a fair bit on iOS, and to be frank, it's rubbish. At a glance it looks pleasant enough, if incredibly repetitive, but there's so little to the game itself that it quickly becomes boring. You pretty much just drop boxes on switches and fight the same couple of enemies for the entire game. It's incredibly dull.

This is far, far worse than any Zelda game ever made (well, except the CDI version). It's at best a 3/10 game. I wanted to like it, and gave it a really good shot, but it's simply a bad game. Do yourself a favour and steer well clear. This is a stinker.

@Blizzia The game has vsync enabled but can't maintain 60, so the frame skipping is extremely noticeable. It obviously doesn't break the game, but it's unsightly. 720p docked is just nuts given the incredibly simplistic visuals. I'm starting to suspect there is some issue with changing resolutions when docked as this isn't the first game to have problems. Rime and Minecraft have the same issue .

The game is still great (I've played almost every Disgaea game, including the spin offs ("Prinny Can I be the hero?" was great)), but from a technical standpoint it's unimpressive.

I'd still absolutely recommend it, but if you have a PS4 (and it's really cheap on the PS4 now), then go for that version.

Really good game, like all the Disgaea games. (they're all very, very similar to each other).

The Switch port is kind of weak though. 720p when docked and it's far from a solid 60fps. Also oddly expensive given what it costs now on the PS4.

Looks like a very slightly enhanced 3DS port. Lazy stuff as ever from Capcom. Weak stuff.

@FineLerv To me, technical performance DOES matter. An unstable frame rate can seriously hinder gameplay (see SkyRim on PS3). If such things don't bother you, that's great, I'm happy for you.

Mostly though I find Digital Foundry interesting because I like learning about rendering techniques.

As for the 1080p thing, again, if you don't think it matters, then just ignore it. Same goes for everything on the internet, you cherry pick the things you like and ignore the rest.

@FineLerv I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

Do you want Digital Foundry to close down? If so, I think you're wrong. Personally I'm interested in game tech, and am intelligent enough to know that engine performance and game design are two separate things.

@FineLerv The purpose of Digital Foundry is to analyse game tech. They're not there to evaluate how good a game is, merely to discuss its implementation of screen space ambient occlusion, it's temporal anti aliasing, deferred rending, etc, and of course, how stable the frame rate is, and the size of the render buffer.

Digital Foundry articles are exclusively targeted at industry insiders and those with a keen interest inengine tech. You have completely misunderstood why the site exists. You should ignore it and stick to metacritic.

@ikki5 You be more wrong. Frame skipping is highly noticeable, as the missing frame is a clear pause is an otherwise smooth sequence of images.

@FineLerv If you have no interest in the tech behind games, then don't read Digital Foundry. If you like knowing how the sausages are made, then it's an excellent resource.

@6ch6ris6 Very easily actually. TVs update at 60 frames per second, so 60fps game will give a flawlessly smooth update. At 59fps, you will get a very regular skip or judder in the motion on screen. It will be especially noticeable on something that is cleanly scrolling horizontally or vertically.

Erratic frame rates are less bothersome as they tend to go through longer patches of even frame rates, be that 30 or 60fps, with occasional bout of slowdown. The regular frame skipping in MarioKart will be worse.

At least it still plays like a Castlevania game. The Lords of Shadow games are just mindless God of War/Devil May Cry clones, and about as interesting as smashing your head against a wall for half an hour.

It will be interesting to see how this sells. MarioKart Wii sold a astounding 38 million copies, but that was on a platform with a huge install base. Things are wildly different on the Wii U, so this may well be the worst selling MarioKart ever, despite it being by far the biggest budget.

@DiscoGentleman The quality of the AC games is still very high. AC4 has over 80% on Metacritic, which is pretty damn good.

Ubi can do an AC game every year because they have three of them in staggered, parallel development. We've just had AC5 announced, but AC6 and AC7 are also in development.

There's always the risk of making games which feel too similar, but AC4 was essentially a pirate game, not an assassin game, so Ubi clearly haven't run out of ideas yet.

@Mommar Sinply because the arcade originals always have better audio and visuals. Ports were mostly awful through the 8 and 16 bit era. Pale imitations of the originals. Would you want to see the Mona Lisa, or some copy a child knocked up from memory?

It's interesting how SEGA have been porting the original arcade versions of their games to the 3DS, but others just dump the old NES ROM on the virtual console. Nobody should buy Life Force, as it's the far inferior NES version. Instead, we should have been getting Salamander from the coin-op original, and it's amazing sequel for good measure.

@AdanVC That simply isn't true. The Wii U is on many crucial ways considerably weaker than the 360 and ps3, and of course when compared to the XO and ps4, the difference is astounding.

Read the first post here for some figures - http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/an-analysis-the-gap-between-wii-u-and-ps4-is-large-29356929/

@chess227 Installing games to the hard drive is mandatory on both the XO and the PS4, and the reason is simple - optical drives are not quick enough to stream data for current gen visuals. They could barely keep up last gen.

Installation is largely done in the background however, so you play while it installs.

To be blunt, the Wii U is doomed at this point. Without a successful gimmick to draw in the mainstream non-gamer crowd, Nintendo are left with their much reduced and rather alienated core audience. If the Wii U had been a current-gen system, and have similar specs to the PS4 and Xbox One, then that would have been fine, as the Wii U would have widespread third party dev support. With the Wii U hardware barely able to match last gen, once devs move completely to current gen, then the Wii U will be left with little but Nintendo first party efforts.

For the super hardcore Nintendo fans. that will be enough (although many will no doubt also own a PS4 or Xbox One), but it certainly doom the Wii U to a very distant third place.

I predict the WIi U will be casually taken away and culled within a couple of years. What Nintendo do after that, I don't know, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it involved iOS and Android support.

Astounding how behind Nintendo are on this type of thing. The notion that you still won't be able to simply sign in to any system and re-download content you own is indefensible, illogical, anti-consumer, and frankly idiotic.

It's perhaps for the best that it's one of those things which people take for granted and don't look into before making a purchase, as if they did, Nintendo would look extremely foolish and incredibly amateurish, and sales would suffer.

The Sun isn't a newspaper. It's just a rag which prints a mix of porn and sports gossip. They don't have any news, other than whenever there is an election coming and they have to tell their brainless "readers" to vote for the conservatives - as dictated by The Sun's ultra right wing owner, Rupert Murdoch.

@OptometristLime I would say the 3DS' success is more to do with it's game line-up, than it's gimmicky screen.

I assume all 3DS' phone home regularly wish usage stats, including how many people play with the 3D off. Those numbers would be very interesting to have, but the mere existence of the 2DS, implies something, wouldn't you say?

I would hope, given the simplistic visuals, that this is a solid 60fps. Then again, this is not the SEGA of old any more, so it may end up at a spluttery 25-30fps as Sonic Generations did on the PS3/360.