swoose

I thought these were a nothing-burger at first, but I'm seeing more and more people misconstrue what Game-Key Cards even are, or how widespread they'll be. Hutchinson in just two sentences here makes two mistakes about them - that they're like XBox One games which required constant internet connection, and that you can't trade them. And I'm STILL seeing takes from people who think all Switch 2 games are Game-Key Cards.

It's clearly a product that needlessly complicates things. Nintendo should have 1) been extremely, explicitly clear and put it front and centre in their Switch 2 Direct, that no Nintendo-published games would come on these cards. Or 2), like many are saying, don't open this can of worms at all. Wait to produce more sizes of game cards for 3rd parties, or let them raise prices or go digital-only. That of course would have its own drawbacks and we could have ended up with pretty empty Switch 2 game shelves, or even higher price tags for physical.

And I disagree with the idea I'm seeing that Nintendo is trying to usher in the all-digital future. They're the one publisher that still makes about half their sales from physical - it's the rest of the industry that wants to abandon physical. This reads to me as a compromise to court more 3rd party games.

I do think the Reshiram and Zekrom look quite nice. But the Victini looks like it’s on Virtual Boy.

I prefer there being any remnant of a physical game market left, vs. digital games having a strict feature advantage like this one.

Here’s hoping Game Share becomes widespread, universal if possible. No physical or digital game should paywall getting your friends into multiplayer.

Nintendo has lost some of its composers recently, from Splatoon, from Pokémon. Maybe it’s related to their stone age approach to credits. Even Nintendo Music doesn’t credit any composers! You’d think if they would put credits anywhere it’s there, the app for enthusiasts of their music.

Sad how it’s newsworthy when a publisher’s games are actually coming on the card.

When I first heard the (misreported) $10 price difference between digital and physical games, I was livid. When I read about game-key cards, I figured they were at least better than codes in boxes, and wouldn’t be that widespread. Now I’m reconsidering. I’d pay a $10 premium on every physical game, if the alternative is this many game-key cards. It’s already the death of physical from those publishers since they’re technically not offering physical versions at all.

If Nintendo had required every 3rd party game to come fully on the card, and their prices went up a further $10 or didn't come out physically at all, we would all complain about that as well.

I don't see a good solution here. Most developers won't take the hit for the added costs of SD Express storage. Nintendo went with that for faster transfer speeds - it's reminding me a lot of the N64 era. At least the Switch 2 library won't be as barebones as the N64, but you'll need to eat the storage costs to play a lot of it.

I’m not surprised demand for the console itself is sky-high. But the GameChat camera?? This must be some kind of hoax.

On the face of things it looks like one of the most unneeded and doomed peripherals Nintendo has ever conceived, a USB webcam at a premium price with the cringiest demonstrations and marketing.

I don’t know how anyone can seriously object to a lottery system. You would rather be in a first nanosecond race with hundreds of scalper bots? That was the status quo of the Switch and PS5 generation.

They produced more Switch 2s for launch than Switches by orders of magnitude, but demand for Switch 2 at launch is outpacing Switch 1 by orders of magnitude. They are carrying forward the preorders that don’t get one. There is nothing to complain about here.

I’ll always recommend FE 7 or 8 to people interested in the series. They get you right into the action and the pixel art is gorgeous - some of the best on the last Nintendo console to mainly use sprites.

Instead of streetpass, now we can paste our faces over Mario Kart gameplay if we purchase a $50 webcam peripheral.

The statement of someone who doesn't know when the next 3D Mario game will be. I'm also "sure it will make its way to the platform", hire me Nintendo

I thought it was surprising when Doug Bowser and Bill Trinen hyped up this single presentation in response to questions about the game’s price. That’s unlike Nintendo and suggested there was a Breath of the Wild style leap in store.

Now in retrospect, it seems outright unhinged. Did they know what would be in the presentation? It was fine, but it was like a routine prerelease overview trailer.

As a consumer and just from paying attention to the world, I understand that $60 games were probably underpriced vs inflation before. But if I were Nintendo, I would not have positioned this Direct as the “wait and see” for the $80 price tag. There wasn’t much new here and it’s not going to convince anyone.

I don’t understand why their mouthpieces don’t just acknowledge inflation or a more generic “market and developmental factors” re: the price question. Maybe there’s not much you can say to make people less mad about prices. But putting the pressure on this little trailer sure wasn’t it.

Giving each of these a separate character slot and having 13 pages on the selection screen is one of those Nintendo decisions that everyone assumes is a placeholder, or surely there will be another display option. But no, I’m starting to think it’s actually that stupid.

Dual mouse controls have a lot of potential, for example the bullet hell game in Welcome Tour has a level where you control two UFOs at once, one with either hand. And it sounds challenging because you’re used to focusing on one character/cursor with one hand mousing. Imagine what the Ikaruga or Touhou devs could do with a control option like this guaranteed by the platform.

This game on the other hand, strikes me as overcomplicating what should be simple actions like moving forward, turning or dunking. I could check it out but it would have to be a really budget title, or a candidate for game sharing.

I feel you either see the appeal of this game right away, or you don’t. It was one of my favorite parts of the direct, and I was relieved to have something interest me on Switch 2 besides Mario Kart and my Switch 1 games. We never see their engineering tricks shown so transparently and Nintendo minigames are always bangers.

I understand the argument this could have been packed in and more people would have enjoyed it, but people gloss right over pre-installed software all the time. Not going to lose sleep that it will set me back $10. My family plan share costs $10 a year, I don’t need any cases protectors or upgrade packs, and I sure as hell didn’t spend $350 on the Switch OLED’s unchanged hardware or the feature-incomplete Switch Lite.

Big GameCube fan here but the ideal setup to me would be a wired connection and a CRT, or at least lots of access to settings to minimize latency. Or I would use this for something more slow paced like Path of Radiance, but there’s no speed up function.

It’s in an awkward spot between official hardware and emulation.

I'm not an organized Splatoon player, but I'm curious how this could change team play. Seeing your teammates' 3 POVs in real time, even at a low frame rate, sounds transformative.

It's rich that I've already seen people call Switch 2 "last-gen tech". Like a knee-jerk response to anything with "Nintendo" in front of it. Pretty sure you couldn't pick up a Playstation 4 and play it in your hands, and it weighed a bit more than 18 ounces.

There will be PC handhelds that outperform this, but they'll cost a fortune.

I'll hold off on throwing a fit about this until we get a proper teardown. I just need confirmation they're not using metal wipers on cheap resistive contact pads again. That design made dust and wear unavoidable. I had both my joy-con and two Pro controllers drift, and people had the issue on Playstation dualsenses as well. Just a rotten generation.

Ludicrous that people are calling 64GB cards "low-capacity". Again, a game as huge as Mario Kart World fits on 10GB, while Tears of the Kingdom is 18GB. Compression technology has never been better. NVIDIA has native upscaling of textures to save space and hit 4k at times. Devs that need more than 64GB are incompetent.

And what exactly is the alternative for SD Express physical media, would you like Switch 2 to have an optical drive? What are we complaining about here?

I’ve seen a number of comments online running with the game-key cards and claiming that ALL physical S2 games will come on them. Nintendo gave a graphic explaining them and even required a giant white bar at the bottom of the few relevant game cases, none of which are Nintendo games.

Which says to me it doesn’t matter how clearly you communicate, people will spread misinformation if it takes Nintendo down a peg. And fair play - there should be pressure on them to keep prices low. I think they also should have revealed pricing during the direct.

But just wait until Switch 2s are in the wild and people can claim their docks scratched their screens again - that will really “take the shine off” what will probably be a really lucrative launch.

The main surprise to me here is some people were actually planning to double-dip on these games if the enhancements were all on the cart, when they could just use their Switch 1 copies. Talk about having money to spare…

Lots of unifying elements along the spine still: the red bar and logo, the publisher logo, the rating, probably the title font also. A bit more color and graphical variety when they're shelved doesn't hurt.

Here's hoping we'll get reversible covers that do away with all the screenshots and technical elements on the back.

I see pros and cons with the mouse. It is not only optical sensing but also tracking gyro, which means you can rotate the “cursor” unlike computer mice. I’ve only seen that functionality on something like a drawing tablet. That has a lot of potential for placing things in something like Mario Maker, menuing, maybe some other creative uses. The bullet hell in Welcome Tour looked fun. Funny enough the start of the Drag x Drive trailer made me think it was a DJing game.

What I’m not sold on is the use in shooting games, over gyro aim. Gyro is already good for this and gives you natural access to the R stick, which mouse mode doesn’t. In Splatoon this means strafing is in the L stick, quickly pivoting is on the R stick, and the gyro is on aim. You don’t want to be dragging your mouse to the edge of the screen to pivot - that is tank controls. Maybe a twisting motion can be used to replace that, but I’m skeptical.

One of the strengths of videogames is moving your character around with the simplest motions - tilting a stick, holding a button. Pressing one button to jump. Their movement becomes second nature, like it’s mapped to your brain.

Games like this overcomplicate the simplest motions for no real reason other than novelty. Watching the treehouse gameplay was brutal.

Having watched some of it, it’s full of charm and polish and I’m looking forward to playing it, there’s more to it than a “manual.” Of course I wish it was bundled in.

I do think Nintendo’s history of pack-in titles is overstated. I’ve seen professional commentators incorrectly call games from 1-2 Switch to Snipperclips “pack-in” games. The Switch didn’t have a pack-in game.

Even examples such as Wii Sports were only pack-ins in certain markets, after lots of internal arguing with regional arms like NoA. In Japan the Wii had no pack-in. One of Nintendo’s most consistent stances is to not devalue their software.

@Gryffin Normally the gym leaders (and wild pokemon and trainers) get higher level as you go along, since most Pokemon games have been linear. Scarlet/Violet let you challenge the areas in any order, which lets you take on harder bosses first… but all that really does is leave lower level gym battles for later, which makes them a joke.

In lore and for gameplay, it would make way more sense for gym leaders to have tougher teams based on how many badges you’ve earned.

Unfortunately the performance was just one small issue with these games for me. I bounced right off its world design, ghost town cities, and lack of gym leader scaling.

@Dazman Not saying you're wrong, but it's crazy to care less about game prices than the console price. The console is a one-time purchase. An $80 game sets that bar for all big first party offerings, you could pay it over and over.

If their goal was to sell a bunch of Switch 2s and have people own only 1 game on it, congrats Nintendo. That was already the case for a lot of Switch 1 owners and BotW/Animal Crossing.

Extra ridiculous when I get the bundled Mario Kart version for only $50 Canadian more.

This is the worst news of the day, especially the price discrepancy of physical and digital. Nintendo has supported the physical games market until now, this feels like a giant FU.

Reminds me of NintendoLand. I'll happily support it, the ambient soundtrack alone will be fire. It's the kind of weird, smaller scale Nintendo software that was missing on Switch.

The market for life sims is a sleeping giant. I know people (mostly women) who still have The Sims expansions installed and play them regularly. And it’ll be 5 years since New Horizons, the people will be ravenous.

What with all the AAA studios shuttering over here, maybe western devs should also stop trying to appeal to the west. They seem to think we want bloated interactive movies or the umpteenth live service shooter.

I’ve already held off on Kirby Star Allies and Forgotten Land this gen, purely out of hope there would be some kind of Switch 2 or emulation solution for their framerate. Putting visuals before performance was such a disservice to that character and series.

Cartridge button. Instead of fiddling with a plastic flap it ejects your game cart out the top like a toaster.

As someone with 1 switch who mostly buys physical, I’m reading things in this comment section I’ve had zero idea about for 8 years. You could use one digital copy to play the same game on 2 switches, online together at the same time? What the hell?

If we want physical games to still exist, digital games should be equivalent to them and not outright superior. That loophole sounds insane. That said, they should do more local wireless play off one copy like they dabbled with on the 3ds.

This sticks so closely to Capcom’s classic MvC animations, I was half expecting to see a Capcom logo at the end. Talk about copying homework.

Looks like an evil lair.

I’m seeing disdain for remakes here and I often agree, but the long-rumored Fire Emblem 4 remake would be great news. Intelligent Systems’ last remake, Shadows of Valentia, was like a brand new game, just building on the plot of the NES original. Even as a series fan I find the pre-GBA titles hard to go back to, as they play much slower with stiffer and less colorful animations. I have a lot of faith an FE4 remake would bring a lot of new creativity with it.

@psyraven76 Yes, there was also a rumor Metroid Prime 4 wouldn’t feature at all in the Switch 2 direct. So it must be in this one if they filled 30mins

Good news, but how on earth did they find a funder with even less of a future than GameStop

When you think about it, maybe the TCG blind pack/box format just had a good run. It was always a suspect business model, a gacha. The scarcity is part of the value. They could just sell you the cards you want, but that would kill the surprise and trading element. Maybe this model was never meant to sustain demand as high as pokemon’s.

You know the Pokémon Company won’t sue this because they have no interest in making games that look good like this anymore.

Really impressive that this many colors and animation frames, and such complex backgrounds are possible on the NES. I wonder how many of the limitations we associate with retro consoles actually had to do with tiny media sizes.

Marketing to Nintendo haters 101: imply your game is too "beefy" for Nintendo platforms

@Dizzard In the real life TCG you can't farm a ton of free packs using multiple email addresses, and then trade the good stuff to yourself to build optimal decks.

Trading wasn't planned as the focus of this app, and I don't think it should be.

Well, that trailer assured me these devs are reputable and classy fellows.

"Unmistakably Xbox", "Xbox design sensibilities"

It's like they're trying to drive people away!

Beef between NoA and Pokemon Company US, two marketing arms and nothing more.