topsekret

@mikegamer Actually Nintendo Life asked. From the article:

"Are you happy to hear that the entire FF7 Remake Trilogy will be coming to the Switch 2?"

I'm simply answering the question. I'm sorry my answer triggers you.

Brand new Fire Emblem!!! By far the best announcement of the Direct and it's not even close. Was preparing for disappointment last night with all the speculation and rumors about an Awakening remaster or 3H NS2 Edition. (Great games, but nowhere near as exciting as a brand new game.)

Kinda makes sense for them to revisit the Three Houses universe given how it's the most popular game in the series. Was watching with my bro and he was the first one to notice the Heroes' Relics, then we saw the Gambits, and we both shouted when we saw Sothis!

Looks like there will be some downtime between battles to walk around 3D environments and do social stuff. Just hope they streamline that a bit. I liked using finite points to choose how to develop my units, but looking for lost items and gifts over and over...not so much.

Also, where's that Genealogy remake?! Hope that's still coming at some point.

Holy crap. It's a real physical Nintendo Switch 2 Edition for $50 USD!!! Guess this will be a day-1 buy.

WTF are the AAA publishers doing?!?! This puts Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, etc... to absolute shame!

I dunno about this open world bike stuff, man. The open world desert area looked pretty barren. Doesn't really look like a BotW-tier open world...

I like the idea of a replayable score-chasing mode. I'm curious to see how the roguelike mechanics will blend with the rest of the gameplay.

But charging $20 for it less than 2 months after the release of the base game feels a bit scummy... I'll probably wait for a sale.

@NFrealinkling Yeah, that's the vibe I get from the trailer as well. Seems to be leaning hard into targeting kids with easy gameplay. A shame we can't get platformers like Woolly World anymore from Nintendo.

It's Capcom, so Game-Key Card is a certainty. Easy pass. Will stick with Stories 2 (which now runs at 60 FPS on Switch 2).

Since Nintendo's washed its hand of this series and it's purely a Koei Tecmo thing again, and there's no Switch 1 version, this is 100% going to be on a Game-Key Card (or digital-only). Easy pass.

@Zeebor15 It appears Camelot will be doomed to make the same Mario sports games over and over from now till the end of nice. RIP Golden Sun.

I liked Aces, but I don't really feel like I necessarily need a new version of Mario Tennis each generation. There's only so much you can do to differentiate one Tennis game from another. I'll probably wait to see the reception. If people are saying it's the best competitive Mario Tennis game, I'll give it a shot, but if it's more of the same...probably pass. Or wait for a big sale.

Ehhhh...the new multiplayer stuff looks pretty throwaway. Like the kinda thing you might try once just to see what it is, and then never play again. Definitely won't have the staying power of a proper multiplayer game like Mario Kart or Smash Bros.

Looks like there will be some new single player content with the Koopalings. And it did look like there was a new "world" map. I just hope the new content is challenging.

I was pretty underwhelmed by how easy Wonder was. It felt too focused on flashy Wonder Seed gimmicks and the core platforming gameplay suffered because of it. And then they added so many "filler" course where you just talk to a Toad and mash through dialogue to get a Wonder Seed. Or those super simple "break time" stages. And then they added all these easy mode characters. And if you play online, it turns into turbo easy mode since you turn into a ghost on death and can fly to the respawn flags other players place all over the place.

I wish they'd add time trials so core players have a reason to optimize levels. Or even a rebalanced arcade-style mode with permadeath (like SMB 1 on NES).

Nintendo seems way too focused on appealing to the lowest common denominator now and doesn't really care about adding features to appeal to core players. I guess their view now is Mario Maker is for the core players and the main series is for casuals.

@progx This absolutely does not need fast memory bandwidth. It's an old-school turn-based JRPG with a top-down camera. This is just Square Enix cheaping out on a real physical cartridge to save money.

Oh boy! Now instead of Cloud versions we get Game-Key Card versions! Yaaaay!

Skip.

$70 for 2 upscaled Wii ROMs? C'mon Nintendo. 3D All-Stars was already kinda pushing it at $60.

3D All-Stars was pretty easy to find for $10 off before stock ran out, so it'll probably be the same in this case.

Don't care, they'll all be Game-Key Cards.

Another pathetic Square Enix release on a Game-Key Card on Switch 2. Probably no upgrade path either, like with Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D and Octopath Traveler 0.

I'll stick with the 3DS version. Though I might consider the Switch 1 physical once it hits 50% off. Never gonna buy Square Enix games at full price again unless they change their ways.

Yeah...I think I'm pretty much done with Amiibo at this point. It was fun collecting the Smash ones that I liked for $13 a pop and some of the others here and there. But these are just too expensive now and I'm running out of space for figures.

Wait...so it's only available for expansion pack subscribers? Not base tier? And you have to buy an extra physical accessory to play the games? And then if you stop paying for the subscription, your physical accessory becomes a useless piece of plastic? Who thought this was a good idea?

The games should be bundled with the physical accessory. Nintendo's greed knows no bounds.

@Dman10 I didn't pick up Silksong digitally. I'm waiting for the physical cartridge, just like I did for the original Hollow Knight.

They didn't even bother trying to optimize the memory footprint of this game. It's apparently around 86 GB on PS4.

I would much rather have a little more texture/audio compression to get it under 64 GB to fit it on a cartridge.

But who am I kidding? Square Enix would cheap out and go for a Game-Key Card in that case as well.

Oh well, easy skip for me. No game is worth 90 GB of my internal storage space. I doubt I'd pick this up even at $10. That's just too much damn space.

@shiningpikablu252 Yep, came here to post the exact same thing. Normally day-1 multi-platform games sell better on Switch in Japan. Usually about 50% to 100% better--especially for games with more Nintendo history (which DxM would certainly benefit from given the original game was a Switch console-exclusive).

Full top 30 is out. Looks like DxM Switch 2 GKC version was #13 with 5,485 units sold, which is about 34% less than the PS5 physical version.

The obvious difference here is that the Switch 2 version is a Game-Key Card in Japan. Looks like Japan is rejecting Game-Key Cards.

@StewdaMegaManNerd In addition to the above, take a look at the UK charts, where DxM sold 72% of its physical copies on Switch 2, outselling the PS5 physical version nearly 3:1. In the UK (and US), DxM is on a real physical cartridge. Pretty easy to see the pattern.

General Nintendo
*Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War remake (where is it?!)
*Monolith Soft next project teaser
*Splatoon Raiders gameplay trailer
*Metroid Prime 4 release date announcement (hopefully still this year)
*Some out of the blue new Switch 2 entry in a forgotten franchise (Kid Icarus, Punch-Out!!, Star Fox, Golden Sun, etc...)
*More free Switch 2 performance & resolution boosts (especially for the Xenoblades!)
*Smash Bros. teaser (not gonna happen lol)

Mario 40th Anniversary
*Bring back Super Mario Bros. 35 as Super Mario Bros. 40
*Super Mario Maker 3 (perfect for mouse controls)
*Super Mario Bros. Wonder NS2 Edition, but the added content is a super difficult expansion (a la New Super Luigi U) and they add time trial mode as part of a free update for everyone
*Booster course pass for Mario Kart World (Nintendo also sneaks in an update to make it so you'll always have the option to vote for at least 1 non-intermission track when playing online)

3rd Party
I'm not really looking forward to any 3rd party games on Switch 2 since they're basically all doomed to be key cards at this point, but for Switch 1, I'd like:
*Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising (Arc Sys fighting games port very well to Switch 1, Strive was phenomenal)
*Trails of Cold Steel I & II localization
*Castlevania SotN and Rondo of Blood (Konami, just make your own version not using Sony's emulator or whatever)
*More CAVE shmups (especially Mushihimesama Futari)
*Shadowverse Champion's Battle 2 (the game got an anime adaptation, then the made a sequel to the anime, but there's no corresponding game! Make it happen, Cygames!)
*Jeanne d'Arc (the next Sony multiplatform port from Bandai Namco)
*Obligatory Square Enix PS1 port (how about Xenogears or Valkyrie Profile?)

@Automated_Unit_4937 Nothing can wake me up from my slumber on Game-Key Cards.

Awesome! Hopefully LRG will rescue Square Enix's Switch 2 catalogue from Game-Key Card hell.

@DKG-85 Depends on who you ask.

There was a news story several weeks ago about how Capcom considers key cards as digital sales for their financial reports.

Collectors like me consider them as closer to digital games rather than physical games.

But for this UK sales chart, they are just tracking games sold at retail, and key cards are indeed sold at retail. The sales chart doesn't really care whether or not the game is physically on the cartridge.

I don't see a "physical" PC version on Amazon UK either, and I doubt it was carried in any shops, so it has the same visibility problems as the Switch 2 key card. So it's not impressive that the Switch 2 "physical" is only 1% behind PC "physical." And I'm sure the digital PC version is crushing the Switch 2 digital version in terms of sales.

@AmplifyMJ Yeah, I'm wondering if it's basically a code in a box in a collector's edition or something. I can't imagine any publisher selling a physical PC game on a disc in this day and age.

@DKG-85 This is the chart for physical UK sales. The physical PC version outselling the physical Switch 2 version (even if just by 1%) is pretty pathetic. I didn't even know they still made physical PC games.

Game-Key Cards strike again. When will they learn that people who buy physical don't want Game-Key Cards?

On the flip side, very happy to see Daemon x Machine with 72% of physical sales on the Switch 2. Looks like Marvelous is being justly rewarded for putting the game on a real cartridge.

Because Square chose to screw over consumers by putting this on a Game-Key Card on Switch 2 and not offering an upgrade path for Switch 1 owners, I'll wait to pick up the Switch 1 version physically when it's on sale. Based on the price history on Deku Deals for the remake of III, it should hit $35 in less than a year.

@kmtrain83 I don't really care to get into a semantics debate, so I'll just say the way Sony and Microsoft "handled" this problem is better than the way Nintendo "handled" it.

@vitaminj "digital is the same price as physical because otherwise brick and mortar stores would go nuts and refuse to stock anything. And perhaps local authorities that look at monopoly situations would start raising eyebrows too."

I've seen this claim spouted a lot to defend high digital game prices, but I couldn't help but notice that physical versions of No Sleep for Kaname Date have an MSRP of $50, but digital versions have an MSRP of $40.

So I don't think this myth is actually true. Big companies just want you to think this so they can get away with much higher profit margins from digital sales.

Sony and Microsoft solved this problem a long time ago by allowing you to install physical games to the digital storage of the console.

Too bad Nintendo wasn't smart enough to think of that. That would also allow them to use a cheaper storage medium (like Switch 1 cartridges) for games that require an install. Cause the whole reason Switch 2 cartridge cost so much is the need to support much faster read speeds than Switch 1 cartridges.

Obviously, I'd still prefer running the games directly from the cartridge where possible, but installing games from a slower cartridge would have been a much better compromise than Game-Key Cards.

Best I can do is a 4 with all the Game-Key Cards. I'd probably give it a 7 if all the Game-Key Card games had real physical releases instead.

I like the idea of specializing the shooters a bit more.

Brella rework sounds interesting. Definitely more support-focused with better inking and more reliable chip at max range. Excited to give it a try.

Also hyped for the Douser Dualies buff. One of my favorite weapons. Picked it up again recently, so the timing on the buff is perfect. I think faster shot velocity is exactly what it needs.

@Supervideoman22 I haven't tested this myself cause I don't own the game, but I heard you can set your docked output to 1080p instead of 4k in the Switch 2 system settings to fix the performance issues, as the game renders at whatever resolution the Switch 2 is set to output.

And if you have a TV that supports 1440p, that would also be worth trying as it's possible the game may be able to hit that resolution at 60 FPS.

Good luck trying to sell this $70 Game-Key Card.

Since it's a Game-Key Card on Switch 2 and there's no upgrade path for Switch 1, I'll pick up the Switch 1 physical version on a deep sale. Square Enix needs to do better if they want my full support.

@flighty Yeah, those sorts of things require patches and those generally require dev kits. Though tbh, even without a Switch 2 dev kit, smart devs could do things like add simple resolution and framerate cap options to their games so that Switch 2 players could manually enable those settings.

@Sylamp Welp, there it is. I skimmed over that and assumed it was just specifying that it required a TV that supports that resolution.

I guess maybe 1080p docked is still an improvement over Switch 1? Maybe that was 720p...

@flighty 3rd party dev kits have nothing to do with these sorts of fixes. These fixes are from Nintendo fixing bugs with the Switch 1 to Switch 2 translation layer as part of the more recent system update.

That said, I do agree that fixes are coming at a much slower rate than I expected. It's like they just have 1 guy at Nintendo working on this now.

I'm still waiting on them to fix the issue in Raiden III causing the background music to cut out.

(Though I'm glad this update fixed issues with Melty Blood and Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia.)

@breach187 There's no "physical" release for FFT on Switch 2 anywhere except for in Japan, where it will be a code-in-a-box.

On the bright side, it is getting a real physical release on Switch 1 and a free Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade pack. So this is the most consumer-friendly Switch 2 release from Square Enix so far. I think this is worth supporting over the upcoming Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D and Octopath Traveler 0, which are on Game-Key Cards on Switch 2 and have no upgrade path.

Behold: Nintendo's genius plan to not send out dev kits and to instead tell devs, "just stick with Switch 1 lol."

And knowing Sega, if/when Lizardcube does get Switch 2 dev kits, they'll make a totally separate Switch 2 version on a Game-Key Card with no upgrade path for full price.

@Riku3456 Yeah, i also saw that the website said it's supposed to be 1440p on Switch 2 when docked. What gives, Nintendo? Was this webpage written by the same guy who wrote the page claiming that VRR was supported when docked?!

"Unsure if it'll be at launch, and my guess is it'll be a different version with different tech, sorta' like the 360 / PS3 & Wii / PS2 era, since some features of Requiem like ray tracing are focused on modern platforms."

Uh-oh, I'm getting Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop vibes from this...

@jolteon23 Yep, cancel your Switch 2 pre-order cause it's a crappy code in a box. Instead, get the Switch 1 physical and then download the free Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade pack. 👍

Hope this fixes more backwards compatibility issues like the last system update did. Though if it does, Nintendo should really be more forthcoming with this information instead of just leaving people to figure out what, if anything, was fixed.

@horizonisland I want it to happen eventually, though I think they should prioritize remaking/remastering the games that have never had official English releases first. (Still waiting on that rumored Genealogy of the Holy War remake...)

I would've purchased it at launch if the Switch 2 version got a true physical release. Or even if there was a free Switch 2 upgrade for the Switch 1 version (which is getting a true physical release).

But because of Square Enix's anti-consumer practices, I'm skipping the game for now. Might consider picking up the Switch 1 physical once it hits 50% off.

So bizarre, especially given that for the upcoming FFT remaster, they are offering a free Switch 2 upgrade. I've already pre-ordered the Switch 1 physical because of that.

Hopefully the bean counters at Square Enix get the message that they'll make more money by not actively trying to screw over their customers.

I'll echo what a lot of others are saying that the driving physics feel pretty stiff. Not nearly as good as Mario Kart.

Also, maybe this is just years of Mario Kart muscle memory, but not tapping the drift button to trick feels so wrong to me.

That said, I do really like the ring system. It's fun trying to collect 100 of them to hit max speed, and I feel like in this game getting that 100th ring to reach max speed feels way more impactful than getting that 20th coin in Mario Kart World. I think the visible speedometer also helps with that (Mario Kart should bring this feature back). I also like how you get punished for colliding with walls by losing rings.

Time Trials also have an interesting twist compared to the usual Mario Kart formula. Instead of starting with 3 boost items, you have to collect them on the track as you race. So you also need to incorporate picking those up into your route.

Gonna hold out for the Switch 2 physical. Hopefully they get it running at a solid 60 FPS!

@MysticWangForce Awesome, glad I could help! Video Games Plus is one of the best ways to get hard-to-find games thanks to their reprints, imports, and catalogue of limited print games.

@GrailUK There is a physical release from Limited Run Games, but preorders already closed July 27. Might have a chance to scoop it up later from Video Games Plus or something (they sometimes get LRG releases).

@Sylamp @Arawn93 Third parties are way more consistent about offering free upgrades from PS4 to PS5 than Switch 1 to Switch 2.

For example, Konami offered a free upgrade for Suikoden I & II HD on Playstation, but not on Switch.

Another example is Sega, who offered a free upgrade for Sonic x Shadow Generations on Playstation, but not Switch.

Both of these companies are expecting you to pay full price again for the Switch 2 versions, but are willing to give PS5 upgrades for the same games for free.