I think people are discounting it a bit too quickly for the "4K support" part. Assuming the reports are accurate, and I would expect a revision at some point, I don't think that means running games at 4K or a 4K display.
More likely it would be 4K output over HDMI, or specifically HDMI 2.0/2.1 support. Which for games would more likely just mean HDR and possibly VRR. But it could open the door for some content being at a resolution higher than 1080p. Think the UI, Menus, possibly streaming, maybe some basic games, maybe some NVidia AI upscaling
@JR150 It also has a new graphical engine.... which only "casuals" like myself will care about because anyone who takes the game even remotely seriously plays the game on low at 1080p for max fps. But yeah, the only really meaty new stuff exclusive to 2 is the non-competitive stuff. Everything else, other than the new engine, is also coming to the original.
@Agramonte I don't see cross save as an issue. They drop so many loot boxes since they introduced reputation and role queue... assuming you occasionally queue for tank/heals and are a a nice enough player
@sixrings Well technically they were right that there was a cheaper SKU and a more powerful model. It's just that the powerful one had it's extra "power" used to extend battery life and it has almost silently replaced the existing model.
If you buy a Switch now you're not buying the same Tegra chip you did at launch.
@Deege There's a bit of difference between using a figure of speech like train wreck to say something is bad and casually dropping "autism" to say someone is a bit obsessive or has a bit of a grasp of computer science. One is fine, the other is a bit of a dick move....
Very happy to see a backlash in this comment section. Too often people just let it slide.
@Nagi
From a "player perspective" what does it being in stores matter? We're talking sales and retail availability here not how attached to it some fans of the system still are. And from those perspectives it's pretty damn flat and has been for a while.
So yeah, it's pretty dead for lack of a better term and has been heading in that direction for a while
@Maxz
Not that suprising when you think about it. 10% is pretty similar to what the DS was doing compared to the 3DS a couple of years post launch. I've kinda been saying this since before the Switch even launched but the Switch really is the 3DS successor. The death of the Wii U was a side show to what was really happening.
@Nagi
Except that stores don't really stock it anymore. Not like they used to anyway. Just out of curiosity I had a look at a few local retailer sites just now to see how easy it would be for me to buy a 3DS.
As of right now? One retailer has both the New 3DS and New 2DS available although the 2DS is only available online and the 3DS is only available as some left over stock at one store about an hours drive away. A second retailer has removed the link to the 3DS category but, when you do a text search, they have a 2DS available at my closest store. Just the New 2DS XL though, nothing else 3DS outside of used hardware. The third retailer has taken everything 3DS from their site entirely.
Also they're charging $200AU for the 2DS while also having the Switch Lite available for pre-order at $330AU. I don't get why people can't accept the fact that the console is pretty dead now, at least from a retailer perspective. It just is.
"Some routers will use the same name for their 5GHz signal as their 2.4GHz signal, and these can die in a fire"
Yeah, nah. You should have the same SSID on all radios and let your device decide which band to connect to. Giving each radio a different ssid is a hack and should only be done if you're having issues. And in any case 2.4Ghz is still better in some scenarios, if you are at the edge of your WiFi footprint you should be connected at 2.4Ghz
Been saying it since launch. As prices drop the cartridge capacity issues will slowly disappear. 32GB will start appearing, then become common, then 64GB will start appearing.
For anyone reading into this. This is literally the same length and "focus" as it is every year. The good and bad E3s aren't determined by length of show. If you think they are you don't remember how long the truly contentless shows have sometimes run for. Or how compact some of the best ones have been
When I got AC3 on Wii U it was pretty much entirely because it was "portable" so this is definitely an upgrade on that. Didn't play this or Black Flag on the TV much at all. And even on the Wii U it was kinda impressive at the time. So if you haven't played it then give it a spin I guess.
Honestly my hesitation, other than having played it already, would be that it's not a particularly great game anyway. If it was Black Flag and the same things were being said? Easy sell. 3? Not so much.
@Kainbrightside
As someone who went through UNI at a point where things were just starting to transition online? I don't agree. I think a VoD stream of a lecture is about as good as it's going to get in all but very edge case scenarios.
What I found was that a VoD stream of a lecture is about as good as attending the lecture in person, for me at least. I don't see how VR would improve that any further. To be blunt the reason the VoD stream was better is entirely because you could pause whenever you want, go back on something you missed AND there were zero distractions. The only thing VR would do is add back in the distractions.
I still think there's value in having contact hours on campus though. Especially for people who are in first year. But I don't see VR as being the solution to that either anymore than, for example, a regular video conference call or forum might be.
@link422007 In an ideal world of course, the issue is we don't live in an ideal world. There are biases, some more blatantly obvious than others. Quotas are an attempt to address these biases. I mean you only need to look at the quality of some of the people in senior positions to know that it's not purely about merit.
Of course there are other factors at play. For example a large part of the reason why there aren't many women in development roles is because of the culture around science and tech in general. I can tell you now when I went through school and UNI the number of girls sitting in my class shrank year by year. In early High School in the top stream Maths & Science classes it was about 50:50. By year 11 & 12 in Calc & Physics it was closer to 30:70. When I was doing Computer Science it was more like 5:95.
And I can tell you now, the people who fell off that track didn't lack merit. There were other factors at play. Namely the general culture around Science and Tech being "for boys". And a LARGE part of that is driven by what kinds of games are being made.
So yeah, in short? Quotas are not anti-merit, it's the culture in general that is anti women which in turn is anti-merit. Change the culture? You'll not turn away the women of merit. And you change the culture by getting women in positions where they start to shape our cultures. How do you do this? .... quotas, probably
@SmaggTheSmug @Charlie_Girl
Technically The Venus Fly Trap is a flowering plant so it has both male and female parts. Although the trap is not the flower so Piranha Plant is both neither and both genders in a sense.
With that said the Venus Fly Trap is literally named after Venus, the goddess of love and fertility. So if anything it probably makes sense to call Piranha Plant a girl. Which also fits with the general convention of plant names being a bit more feminine. Think about it... Ivy, Rose, Lilly and Violet aren't masculine names
@SmaggTheSmug Maybe not a "must download" but I definitely have fond memories of this on the Wii ten years ago. And yes, it was originally being developed as a flash game but it was pretty solid regardless.
@Moroboshi876
Every DVD or Blu-ray I have ever brought I have ripped and copied to my NAS. I do this so I can play these movies from tablet devices via, you guessed it, vlc. I also have my old home movies copied from tapes and so on stored in the same way. Not all video files are pirated....
I saw this earlier and thought it seemed both credible and inevitable. I didn't notice Stunt Race FX is on the list but, that alone has me pretty excited about it.
@Cobalt And? Did you want them to half the video going into the differences between the Switch and Wii U's OS on a video about the graphics on two games? All they were saying was that the Switch has quite a bit more RAM to play with for textures. They cited, correctly, that it has 4GB of RAM rather than the 2GB on Wii U. That's it.
Same with the people being critical of them saying the developer was HAL. Someone slipped up writing the script, it happens. But in a video talking about image quality? It doesn't really matter that much to what they're saying.
@Majora101 If you actually look at the video they link to talking about input lag they have the Pro Controller at ~6.3 frames and the GC at ~6. Most of the lag, as you'd expect, is in the actual rendering not the input device. I'm not sure what your source is I don't think DF was wrong on this point either.
@Cobalt
"they talk about the 4Gb Ram of the Switch compare to the 2Gb of the Wii U to handle textures... The problem is that the Wii U use 1 entire Gb just to run the system"
And the Switch doesn't have any memory taken up by the OS? Sorry, but they're right to say this. The Wii U has 2GB of RAM, the Switch has 4GB, the PS4 has 8GB. To say anything else would be misleading
To the people mocking celebrities asking twitter questions. If you had millions of people hanging off your every word on twitter you'd ask twitter rather than google. Especially for more technical questions in areas you're not an expert on.
I don't see what the issue is. Unless you're super unlucky and have your switch die on the day your sub expires it doesn't really matter. If they did like Sony does and retain them for 6 months? Well who cares about 6 month old game data? If I haven't done anything meaningful on a game in 6 months I've moved on from the game. If I have played the game recently a months old save isn't much good.
Cloud saves are a security blanket, a protection in the event of system failure. But they're no good if they're not recent. I have no issues with all or nothing.
@zool I got your point I just don't get how you came to that conclusion. A 50% attach rate for a game is incredibly high. If you can read anything from these figures it would be that people buying the Switch are, more often than not, buying one or both of Mario & BotW.
@Nincompoop If you want to frame it that way. The fact is that the Wii U version sold less than every other Mario Kart outside of Double Dash & Super Circuit. It was huge for a Wii U game but everything on Wii U under-performed. So Nintendo would look at this as their ROI coming back to normal again not some kind of unprecedented profitability.
@zool
Not everyone buying a Switch is going to get Mario & Zelda. Some will get one and not the other, a lot will get neither. I know of someone who got a Switch for Mario Kart and has also brought Tetris and a bunch of indie games. I see people on public transport playing Skyrim or Doom, these people might not be interested in Mario.
In any case, a 50% attach rate is insanely high for a game. The only other game I can remember coming even close to 50% was Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. If anything specific games having a huge attach is a bad sign for the system because it means there's not a deep enough library for people not to get that game.
@Nincompoop
That's assuming you look at it as an individual release and don't combine it with the Wii U version. Because the Wii U version while it did perform well for a Wii U game is still one of the worst selling versions of Mario Kart. If you combine the sales of Mario Kart 8 across Wii U & Switch? It's currently third behind DS/Wii. It'll need to move another ~20mill units to take the top spot.
Speaking of, another interesting observation. Just about every game on this list has sold more than the Wii U equivalent. In every sense the Switch is already well beyond the Wii U. It's kinda crazy how quick it managed to do that. Says something both about how average the Wii U performed but also how well the Switch is doing.
This is PR spin, it's his job. It doesn't change the fact that the 3DS is slowing down. Note that he's specifically talking about 3DS hardware sales in NA. From Nintendo's own financial report here's the change in sales year on year for 3DS:
Adding the the chorus of people in the software development industry correcting the uninformed comments section. Just because something looks simple doesn't mean one guy could build it in a weekend.
Cool except it's only ~5% for digital content and ~1% for retail purchases. Remember the Wii U digital deluxe promotion? Sure it wasn't on retail purchases but for digital purchases you effectively got 10%.
Though with that said something I think some people are not realising. You'll earn ~5x as many gold coins for purchases now. So I'm sitting here thinking it's utterly ridiculous that I only have what is effectively $2.50AU of gold coins. But then I realise that my last purchase under this new system would have been 100 points rather than 20.
Either way, hopefully there are also gold-reward discounts on eShop games also coming soon. Because those will inevitably save you more at the cost of being "less flexible". Who cares though if it was something you were interested in anyways.
To put that last point about HDTVs in the Wii era into perspective. If you look up the stats at this stage in the Wii's life about 1 in 5 US households had at least one HDTV. The newest stats I can find have UHD TVs sitting at ~ 1 in 6. So it's very much the same story. In theory it should matter as much for Switch as it (eventually) did for the Wii except it won't because the jump to 4K isn't as impactfull.
For VR I'm personally yet to be convinced that it's much more than an expensive gimmick. A gimmick that is fundamentally just a different kind of display. And when you look at it in those terms? It has a significantly smaller penetration rate than even UHD.
@YummyHappyPills "A 256gb SD card suddenly isnt cheaper because the 400gb card arrived. Its the same price"
Because the higher capacity card existing isn't what causes the price to drop. It's the other way around. It's a drop in price that makes the higher capacity card feasible. The same would be true for cartridges as it's more or less the same tech.
~2 years is the typical cycle of doubling for tech in general. So by the time this 64GB card is available for publishers the 32GB card will be as cheap as the 16GB card. The 64GB card will then become the new largest card at the premium price.
Which isn't too shabby given the PS4 and XBOne are locked into 50GB discs. Very unlikely there will be many games on Switch that'll go much above 32GB given it's running at a lower overall resolution. Currently the biggest game is a 22GB download. Nintendo would be wise to focus on 16GB and 32GB cards.
@Octane @Akropolon First year sales don't mean much for sure. But selling at a rate 20%+ above the Wii does mean a lot even if it is one year. Sales at that rate put it on track to have outsold the Wii U and Gamecube in its first full calendar year.
Of the ones on this list I think Super Tennis and Chrono Triggers are the two I agree with the most. I would happily replace some of the games included with either of those two. They would have both not only made sense but they would have added something
Beyond that I think DKC 2 and Unirally make a lot of sense in isolation. However DKC is already on there and Unirally would have been a legal nightmare. So I don't see how either could have worked.
I've said it before on the forums but I think the Switch form factor is an inevitability across the board. Of course Sony has no interest in it right this second. But with diminishing returns for hardware upgrades and with mobile hardware improving at the rate it is? When the PS4 is done they'd be stupid not to move to something more like the Switch
@SLIGEACH_EIRE "People need to stop defending the indefensible. It's come out later than the competition, yet it costs more, for less spec, games will potentially cost more for weaker experiences."
This has been a factor for every portable system ever made. You've always got less value for money in exchange for the advantage of having it portable. The only difference with the Switch is that the gap in spec/quality of games is significantly less.
Also while I'm commenting on this article I think people need to consider what the options were. If Nintendo had put a Blu-Ray generation equivalent to a UMD we would have been talking about either 10GB for dual-layer or 20GB for quad-layer. Smaller disk hold less. Additionally because of the poor performance of optical media games like BotW would have needed data packs like they did on Wii U.
Instead what we've got are cartridges upto 32GB. Potential for larger cartridges than even full sized optical disks as prices inevitably go down. Load times fast enough that data does not need to be saved to internal storage. And additionally lower power consumption and noise which is kinda essential for a portable system.
I'm more than happy to pay this early adopters tax if it means optical media for games will die. I really hope that by the time the next generation of Sony/MS consoles come around, portable or not, they go this route also. Cartridges are just so much better.
@TheBigK To be fair the Wii U didn't do anywhere near as well at the start as the Switch has. 20 weeks after launch (and ignoring the Christmas factor for Wii U, PS4, XBOne):
"I thought that in the age of the smartphone, no one would carry out a game console" - CEO of a company which has control of a franchise that has consistently sold ~15mill copies per major release on portables since the 90s
@Grumblevolcano I highly doubt that Sony could release anything that's takes momentum away from the Switch. Traditionally the way portables went Nintendo would push the exclusives angle, Sony would win on indies and horsepower. This time the Switch is insanely powerful as a portable and they have a head start on the indies.
@Tsurii Not only that but the event itself wasn't cancelled. Everything they listed on the page promoting Go-Fest still happened. More than that it was extended both beyond the footprint of the park and beyond the end of the event.
Niantic gave people who attended the event as much as you'd usually expect if it was a cancelled event. This for an event that wasn't actually cancelled
@yerkiddinme Legally speaking I don't think there's much of a difference between a sports event being rained out, a concert being cancelled because of illness and a mobile focused event hitting a brick wall because of mobile network congestion.
I'm not entirely sure what the issue people had with Go Fest was. It was sold as an event where you'd be able to mingle with other players, catch rare/exclusive Pokemon and be one of the first to get legendaries. Did it all go to plan? Well no. But at the end of the day the people who went did get what was advertised in addition to being compensated.
The guy has zero credibility commenting on what Nintendo should be doing if he thinks cartridges were a bad move. Frankly for a device designed to be portable it's the only sensible move. Whatever other side benefits for Nintendo might come from it are irrelevant.
Optical media is garbage, the only reason it exists at all is because its considerably cheaper. Or at least it was. It's an advantage that due to Moore's Law it's losing ground on rapidly.
I'll complain when my next batch of Gold coins expires. Which is 20 coins at the end of July. Until then I couldn't care less about there not being much on offer. Platinum coins are given away so it doesn't bother me they don't give you much.
Comments 694
Re: Rumour: New Switch Model Launching Early 2021, According To Taiwanese Newspaper
I'll just leave this here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/support/shield-tv/ai-upscaling/
Re: Rumour: New Switch Model Launching Early 2021, According To Taiwanese Newspaper
I think people are discounting it a bit too quickly for the "4K support" part. Assuming the reports are accurate, and I would expect a revision at some point, I don't think that means running games at 4K or a 4K display.
More likely it would be 4K output over HDMI, or specifically HDMI 2.0/2.1 support. Which for games would more likely just mean HDR and possibly VRR. But it could open the door for some content being at a resolution higher than 1080p. Think the UI, Menus, possibly streaming, maybe some basic games, maybe some NVidia AI upscaling
Re: Mario's One-Time Rival Alex Kidd Is Getting A Timely Revival
I really hope there's an option for 50Hz musics.....
Re: Overwatch Players Will Have Access To All Of The Sequel's PvP Multiplayer Content
@JR150
It also has a new graphical engine.... which only "casuals" like myself will care about because anyone who takes the game even remotely seriously plays the game on low at 1080p for max fps. But yeah, the only really meaty new stuff exclusive to 2 is the non-competitive stuff. Everything else, other than the new engine, is also coming to the original.
Re: Random: Hmm, This New Kanye West Song Sure Sounds Familiar
meh, I always hear Slowdive's "Crazy for You" in the Fire Temple theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85JXX5DMlvo
Re: Blizzard Had Its Sights On A Switch Port Of Overwatch From Day One
@Agramonte I don't see cross save as an issue. They drop so many loot boxes since they introduced reputation and role queue... assuming you occasionally queue for tank/heals and are a a nice enough player
Re: Wall Street Journal Report Says Nintendo Tried To "Aggressively" Cut Costs Of The Switch Lite
@sixrings
Well technically they were right that there was a cheaper SKU and a more powerful model. It's just that the powerful one had it's extra "power" used to extend battery life and it has almost silently replaced the existing model.
If you buy a Switch now you're not buying the same Tegra chip you did at launch.
Re: This Fully-Functioning Calculator Course In Super Mario Maker 2 Is Utter Genius
@Deege
There's a bit of difference between using a figure of speech like train wreck to say something is bad and casually dropping "autism" to say someone is a bit obsessive or has a bit of a grasp of computer science. One is fine, the other is a bit of a dick move....
Very happy to see a backlash in this comment section. Too often people just let it slide.
Re: Sorry Nintendo, But The 3DS Really Is Dead Now
@Nagi
"I think seeing Software Sales during this period could be more interesting, but sadly they're not included in this article."
3DS:
Hardware: 360k -> 200k, Forecast 1mill FY
Software: 2.9mill -> 1.4mill , Forecast 5mill FY
Down 45-50%
Switch:
Hardware: 1.9mill -> 2.1mill, Forecast 18mill FY
Software: 18mill -> 23mill, Forecast 210mill FY
Up 10-20%
Re: Sorry Nintendo, But The 3DS Really Is Dead Now
@Nagi
From a "player perspective" what does it being in stores matter? We're talking sales and retail availability here not how attached to it some fans of the system still are. And from those perspectives it's pretty damn flat and has been for a while.
So yeah, it's pretty dead for lack of a better term and has been heading in that direction for a while
@Maxz
Not that suprising when you think about it. 10% is pretty similar to what the DS was doing compared to the 3DS a couple of years post launch. I've kinda been saying this since before the Switch even launched but the Switch really is the 3DS successor. The death of the Wii U was a side show to what was really happening.
Re: Sorry Nintendo, But The 3DS Really Is Dead Now
@Nagi
Except that stores don't really stock it anymore. Not like they used to anyway. Just out of curiosity I had a look at a few local retailer sites just now to see how easy it would be for me to buy a 3DS.
As of right now? One retailer has both the New 3DS and New 2DS available although the 2DS is only available online and the 3DS is only available as some left over stock at one store about an hours drive away. A second retailer has removed the link to the 3DS category but, when you do a text search, they have a 2DS available at my closest store. Just the New 2DS XL though, nothing else 3DS outside of used hardware. The third retailer has taken everything 3DS from their site entirely.
Also they're charging $200AU for the 2DS while also having the Switch Lite available for pre-order at $330AU. I don't get why people can't accept the fact that the console is pretty dead now, at least from a retailer perspective. It just is.
Re: Guide: How To Improve Your Switch's Internet Connection
"Some routers will use the same name for their 5GHz signal as their 2.4GHz signal, and these can die in a fire"
Yeah, nah. You should have the same SSID on all radios and let your device decide which band to connect to. Giving each radio a different ssid is a hack and should only be done if you're having issues. And in any case 2.4Ghz is still better in some scenarios, if you are at the edge of your WiFi footprint you should be connected at 2.4Ghz
Re: Nintendo Is Actively Investigating 5G Technology
Jesus Christ these comments. People REALLY don't have even the slightest clue do they.....
Re: The Entirety Of Witcher III Will Be Squeezed Onto A Single Switch Cartridge
Been saying it since launch. As prices drop the cartridge capacity issues will slowly disappear. 32GB will start appearing, then become common, then 64GB will start appearing.
Re: The Nintendo Direct Presentation For E3 2019 Will Be About 40 Minutes
For anyone reading into this. This is literally the same length and "focus" as it is every year. The good and bad E3s aren't determined by length of show. If you think they are you don't remember how long the truly contentless shows have sometimes run for. Or how compact some of the best ones have been
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Finds Assassin's Creed III Remastered On Switch "Hard To Recommend"
When I got AC3 on Wii U it was pretty much entirely because it was "portable" so this is definitely an upgrade on that. Didn't play this or Black Flag on the TV much at all. And even on the Wii U it was kinda impressive at the time. So if you haven't played it then give it a spin I guess.
Honestly my hesitation, other than having played it already, would be that it's not a particularly great game anyway. If it was Black Flag and the same things were being said? Easy sell. 3? Not so much.
Re: Nintendo Brings Educational Labo Program To Classrooms Across Australia
@Kainbrightside
As someone who went through UNI at a point where things were just starting to transition online? I don't agree. I think a VoD stream of a lecture is about as good as it's going to get in all but very edge case scenarios.
What I found was that a VoD stream of a lecture is about as good as attending the lecture in person, for me at least. I don't see how VR would improve that any further. To be blunt the reason the VoD stream was better is entirely because you could pause whenever you want, go back on something you missed AND there were zero distractions. The only thing VR would do is add back in the distractions.
I still think there's value in having contact hours on campus though. Especially for people who are in first year. But I don't see VR as being the solution to that either anymore than, for example, a regular video conference call or forum might be.
Re: Random: Nintendo Stock Rises By 4% An Hour Before Reggie Announces Retirement
I think it means Nintendo Life post too many articles on fluctuations in the share price assuming a correlation that often isn't there
Re: Takahashi, Miyamoto And Shiota Discuss Proportion Of Female Employees In Nintendo’s Development Departments
@link422007
In an ideal world of course, the issue is we don't live in an ideal world. There are biases, some more blatantly obvious than others. Quotas are an attempt to address these biases. I mean you only need to look at the quality of some of the people in senior positions to know that it's not purely about merit.
Of course there are other factors at play. For example a large part of the reason why there aren't many women in development roles is because of the culture around science and tech in general. I can tell you now when I went through school and UNI the number of girls sitting in my class shrank year by year. In early High School in the top stream Maths & Science classes it was about 50:50. By year 11 & 12 in Calc & Physics it was closer to 30:70. When I was doing Computer Science it was more like 5:95.
And I can tell you now, the people who fell off that track didn't lack merit. There were other factors at play. Namely the general culture around Science and Tech being "for boys". And a LARGE part of that is driven by what kinds of games are being made.
So yeah, in short? Quotas are not anti-merit, it's the culture in general that is anti women which in turn is anti-merit. Change the culture? You'll not turn away the women of merit. And you change the culture by getting women in positions where they start to shape our cultures. How do you do this? .... quotas, probably
Re: Piranha Plant Was Silently Nerfed In Day One Smash Ultimate Update
@NoxAeturnus
Except piranha plant is a flower not a tree or a fish.....
Re: Piranha Plant Was Silently Nerfed In Day One Smash Ultimate Update
@SmaggTheSmug @Charlie_Girl
Technically The Venus Fly Trap is a flowering plant so it has both male and female parts. Although the trap is not the flower so Piranha Plant is both neither and both genders in a sense.
With that said the Venus Fly Trap is literally named after Venus, the goddess of love and fertility. So if anything it probably makes sense to call Piranha Plant a girl. Which also fits with the general convention of plant names being a bit more feminine. Think about it... Ivy, Rose, Lilly and Violet aren't masculine names
Re: Real-Time Strategy Hit Swords & Soldiers Has Just Surprise-Launched On Nintendo Switch
@SmaggTheSmug
Maybe not a "must download" but I definitely have fond memories of this on the Wii ten years ago. And yes, it was originally being developed as a flash game but it was pretty solid regardless.
Re: VLC Media Player Being Considered For Nintendo Switch
@klingki DLNA, look it up
@Moroboshi876
Every DVD or Blu-ray I have ever brought I have ripped and copied to my NAS. I do this so I can play these movies from tablet devices via, you guessed it, vlc. I also have my old home movies copied from tapes and so on stored in the same way. Not all video files are pirated....
Re: Rumour: Dataminer Uncovers SNES Games For Nintendo Switch Online Service
I saw this earlier and thought it seemed both credible and inevitable. I didn't notice Stunt Race FX is on the list but, that alone has me pretty excited about it.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry's Technical Analysis Of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
@Cobalt
And? Did you want them to half the video going into the differences between the Switch and Wii U's OS on a video about the graphics on two games? All they were saying was that the Switch has quite a bit more RAM to play with for textures. They cited, correctly, that it has 4GB of RAM rather than the 2GB on Wii U. That's it.
Same with the people being critical of them saying the developer was HAL. Someone slipped up writing the script, it happens. But in a video talking about image quality? It doesn't really matter that much to what they're saying.
@Majora101
If you actually look at the video they link to talking about input lag they have the Pro Controller at ~6.3 frames and the GC at ~6. Most of the lag, as you'd expect, is in the actual rendering not the input device. I'm not sure what your source is I don't think DF was wrong on this point either.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry's Technical Analysis Of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
@Cobalt
"they talk about the 4Gb Ram of the Switch compare to the 2Gb of the Wii U to handle textures... The problem is that the Wii U use 1 entire Gb just to run the system"
And the Switch doesn't have any memory taken up by the OS? Sorry, but they're right to say this. The Wii U has 2GB of RAM, the Switch has 4GB, the PS4 has 8GB. To say anything else would be misleading
Re: Random: Singer Ariana Grande Has Online Troubles With Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
To the people mocking celebrities asking twitter questions. If you had millions of people hanging off your every word on twitter you'd ask twitter rather than google. Especially for more technical questions in areas you're not an expert on.
Re: Nintendo Secures More Smartphone Trademarks, This Time For Zelda: Twilight Princess And Wii Sports Resort
Aren't these kind of trademarks also so that they can have a bit more weight behind them when random people put out stuff on iOS/Android?
Re: Nintendo Switch Now Supports Digital Game Sharing, But There's A Catch
Well that's a nice bonus. Something new worth subscribing for that's not new games or access to services that already existed!
Re: Your Nintendo Switch Cloud Save Files Will Be Lost If Your Online Subscription Expires
I don't see what the issue is. Unless you're super unlucky and have your switch die on the day your sub expires it doesn't really matter. If they did like Sony does and retain them for 6 months? Well who cares about 6 month old game data? If I haven't done anything meaningful on a game in 6 months I've moved on from the game. If I have played the game recently a months old save isn't much good.
Cloud saves are a security blanket, a protection in the event of system failure. But they're no good if they're not recent. I have no issues with all or nothing.
Re: Eiji Aonuma Says There’s A Possibility The Next Zelda Title Will Be On Switch
@Darlinfan
If you want to be pedantic the Wii U didn't have it's own Zelda either. BotW was also on Switch.
Re: Nintendo Releases Complete Sales Figures For Its Million-Selling Switch Games
@zool
I got your point I just don't get how you came to that conclusion. A 50% attach rate for a game is incredibly high. If you can read anything from these figures it would be that people buying the Switch are, more often than not, buying one or both of Mario & BotW.
@Nincompoop
If you want to frame it that way. The fact is that the Wii U version sold less than every other Mario Kart outside of Double Dash & Super Circuit. It was huge for a Wii U game but everything on Wii U under-performed. So Nintendo would look at this as their ROI coming back to normal again not some kind of unprecedented profitability.
Re: Nintendo Releases Complete Sales Figures For Its Million-Selling Switch Games
@zool
Not everyone buying a Switch is going to get Mario & Zelda. Some will get one and not the other, a lot will get neither. I know of someone who got a Switch for Mario Kart and has also brought Tetris and a bunch of indie games. I see people on public transport playing Skyrim or Doom, these people might not be interested in Mario.
In any case, a 50% attach rate is insanely high for a game. The only other game I can remember coming even close to 50% was Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. If anything specific games having a huge attach is a bad sign for the system because it means there's not a deep enough library for people not to get that game.
Re: Nintendo Releases Complete Sales Figures For Its Million-Selling Switch Games
@Nincompoop
That's assuming you look at it as an individual release and don't combine it with the Wii U version. Because the Wii U version while it did perform well for a Wii U game is still one of the worst selling versions of Mario Kart. If you combine the sales of Mario Kart 8 across Wii U & Switch? It's currently third behind DS/Wii. It'll need to move another ~20mill units to take the top spot.
Speaking of, another interesting observation. Just about every game on this list has sold more than the Wii U equivalent. In every sense the Switch is already well beyond the Wii U. It's kinda crazy how quick it managed to do that. Says something both about how average the Wii U performed but also how well the Switch is doing.
Re: Dedicated Handheld Systems Are Still A Key Business Driver For Nintendo
This is PR spin, it's his job. It doesn't change the fact that the 3DS is slowing down. Note that he's specifically talking about 3DS hardware sales in NA. From Nintendo's own financial report here's the change in sales year on year for 3DS:
Hardware:
NA: +12%
Japan: -30%
Other: -21%
Total: -12%
2018/19 projected: -38%
Software:
NA: -36%
Japan: -37%
Other: -32%
Total: -35%
2018/19 projected: -55%
This is why the 3DS didn't feature at E3
Re: The Nintendo Switch News Channel Took Almost A Year To Create
Adding the the chorus of people in the software development industry correcting the uninformed comments section. Just because something looks simple doesn't mean one guy could build it in a weekend.
Re: Rejoice, Soon You'll Be Able To Use Your My Nintendo Gold Points On The Switch eShop
Cool except it's only ~5% for digital content and ~1% for retail purchases. Remember the Wii U digital deluxe promotion? Sure it wasn't on retail purchases but for digital purchases you effectively got 10%.
Though with that said something I think some people are not realising. You'll earn ~5x as many gold coins for purchases now. So I'm sitting here thinking it's utterly ridiculous that I only have what is effectively $2.50AU of gold coins. But then I realise that my last purchase under this new system would have been 100 points rather than 20.
Either way, hopefully there are also gold-reward discounts on eShop games also coming soon. Because those will inevitably save you more at the cost of being "less flexible". Who cares though if it was something you were interested in anyways.
Re: Nintendo Reiterates That It's Not Interested In Virtual Reality Or 4K Support
To put that last point about HDTVs in the Wii era into perspective. If you look up the stats at this stage in the Wii's life about 1 in 5 US households had at least one HDTV. The newest stats I can find have UHD TVs sitting at ~ 1 in 6. So it's very much the same story. In theory it should matter as much for Switch as it (eventually) did for the Wii except it won't because the jump to 4K isn't as impactfull.
For VR I'm personally yet to be convinced that it's much more than an expensive gimmick. A gimmick that is fundamentally just a different kind of display. And when you look at it in those terms? It has a significantly smaller penetration rate than even UHD.
Re: Nintendo Has Reportedly Delayed the Roll-Out of 64GB Switch Game Cartridges
@YummyHappyPills
"A 256gb SD card suddenly isnt cheaper because the 400gb card arrived. Its the same price"
Because the higher capacity card existing isn't what causes the price to drop. It's the other way around. It's a drop in price that makes the higher capacity card feasible. The same would be true for cartridges as it's more or less the same tech.
~2 years is the typical cycle of doubling for tech in general. So by the time this 64GB card is available for publishers the 32GB card will be as cheap as the 16GB card. The 64GB card will then become the new largest card at the premium price.
Which isn't too shabby given the PS4 and XBOne are locked into 50GB discs. Very unlikely there will be many games on Switch that'll go much above 32GB given it's running at a lower overall resolution. Currently the biggest game is a 22GB download. Nintendo would be wise to focus on 16GB and 32GB cards.
Re: Switch On Track To Exceed 10 Month Wii Sales By 20 Percent, Says NPD Analyst
@Octane @Akropolon
First year sales don't mean much for sure. But selling at a rate 20%+ above the Wii does mean a lot even if it is one year. Sales at that rate put it on track to have outsold the Wii U and Gamecube in its first full calendar year.
Re: Feature: 20 Games That Aren't On The SNES Classic Mini, But Really Should Be
Of the ones on this list I think Super Tennis and Chrono Triggers are the two I agree with the most. I would happily replace some of the games included with either of those two. They would have both not only made sense but they would have added something
Beyond that I think DKC 2 and Unirally make a lot of sense in isolation. However DKC is already on there and Unirally would have been a legal nightmare. So I don't see how either could have worked.
Re: Sony Doesn't Consider Switch To Be A "Huge Market Opportunity"
I've said it before on the forums but I think the Switch form factor is an inevitability across the board. Of course Sony has no interest in it right this second. But with diminishing returns for hardware upgrades and with mobile hardware improving at the rate it is? When the PS4 is done they'd be stupid not to move to something more like the Switch
Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards
@SLIGEACH_EIRE
"People need to stop defending the indefensible. It's come out later than the competition, yet it costs more, for less spec, games will potentially cost more for weaker experiences."
This has been a factor for every portable system ever made. You've always got less value for money in exchange for the advantage of having it portable. The only difference with the Switch is that the gap in spec/quality of games is significantly less.
Also while I'm commenting on this article I think people need to consider what the options were. If Nintendo had put a Blu-Ray generation equivalent to a UMD we would have been talking about either 10GB for dual-layer or 20GB for quad-layer. Smaller disk hold less. Additionally because of the poor performance of optical media games like BotW would have needed data packs like they did on Wii U.
Instead what we've got are cartridges upto 32GB. Potential for larger cartridges than even full sized optical disks as prices inevitably go down. Load times fast enough that data does not need to be saved to internal storage. And additionally lower power consumption and noise which is kinda essential for a portable system.
I'm more than happy to pay this early adopters tax if it means optical media for games will die. I really hope that by the time the next generation of Sony/MS consoles come around, portable or not, they go this route also. Cartridges are just so much better.
Re: Pokémon Boss Didn't Think Switch Would Be A Success In The Age Of The Smartphone
@TheBigK
To be fair the Wii U didn't do anywhere near as well at the start as the Switch has. 20 weeks after launch (and ignoring the Christmas factor for Wii U, PS4, XBOne):
PS4: 7mill
Switch: 4.9mill
XBOne: 3.9mill
3DS: 3.2mill
Wii U: 2.7mill
Vita: 2.4mill
Re: Pokémon Boss Didn't Think Switch Would Be A Success In The Age Of The Smartphone
"I thought that in the age of the smartphone, no one would carry out a game console" - CEO of a company which has control of a franchise that has consistently sold ~15mill copies per major release on portables since the 90s
@Grumblevolcano
I highly doubt that Sony could release anything that's takes momentum away from the Switch. Traditionally the way portables went Nintendo would push the exclusives angle, Sony would win on indies and horsepower. This time the Switch is insanely powerful as a portable and they have a head start on the indies.
Re: Niantic Is Facing a Class-Action Lawsuit Over Pokémon GO Fest
@Tsurii
Not only that but the event itself wasn't cancelled. Everything they listed on the page promoting Go-Fest still happened. More than that it was extended both beyond the footprint of the park and beyond the end of the event.
Niantic gave people who attended the event as much as you'd usually expect if it was a cancelled event. This for an event that wasn't actually cancelled
Re: Niantic Is Facing a Class-Action Lawsuit Over Pokémon GO Fest
@yerkiddinme
Legally speaking I don't think there's much of a difference between a sports event being rained out, a concert being cancelled because of illness and a mobile focused event hitting a brick wall because of mobile network congestion.
Re: Niantic Is Facing a Class-Action Lawsuit Over Pokémon GO Fest
I'm not entirely sure what the issue people had with Go Fest was. It was sold as an event where you'd be able to mingle with other players, catch rare/exclusive Pokemon and be one of the first to get legendaries. Did it all go to plan? Well no. But at the end of the day the people who went did get what was advertised in addition to being compensated.
Re: Oddworld Creator Lorne Lanning "Has No Faith" In Switch
The guy has zero credibility commenting on what Nintendo should be doing if he thinks cartridges were a bad move. Frankly for a device designed to be portable it's the only sensible move. Whatever other side benefits for Nintendo might come from it are irrelevant.
Optical media is garbage, the only reason it exists at all is because its considerably cheaper. Or at least it was. It's an advantage that due to Moore's Law it's losing ground on rapidly.
Re: Legend of Zelda and Mario Kart Feature in Updated European My Nintendo Rewards
I'll complain when my next batch of Gold coins expires. Which is 20 coins at the end of July. Until then I couldn't care less about there not being much on offer. Platinum coins are given away so it doesn't bother me they don't give you much.