topsekret

If there's no upgrade path and the Switch 2 version is a GKC, best I can do is Switch 1 physical at 50% off. I hate Square Enix.

@sixrings While I agree most of Nintendo's NS2 Editions feel kinda overpriced for what they are, at least they do consistently offer upgrade paths. (I do feel like the only reason they added the lame Zelda Notes feature to BotW and TotK was to have something that they could bill as "new content" to justify charging $10 for an upgrade.)

But with Square Enix, they largely don't do upgrade paths, outside of some rare exceptions (like FFT). This sucks for people who like physical games since you have to choose between a true physical release on Switch 1 with worse visuals/performance, or a fake physical GKC release on Switch 2 with better visuals/performance.

@jsty3105 Might wanna go read Nintendo's website regarding the shutdown of the Wii Shop Channel:

"In the future we will close all services related to the Wii Shop Channel, including the ability to redownload WiiWare and Virtual Console games, as well as the Wii System Transfer Tool, which transfers data from Wii to the Wii U system. We will announce specific details as that time approaches."

Nintendo does not care about maintaining your access to digital games. When they fully shut down all Wii services, you'll only be able to continue playing your digital Wii games till your Wii fails or your SD card fails.

Note, this is worse than physical because:
1) If your Wii fails, you can just buy another Wii second-hand and you can play your physical Wii games on it. Your digital games have DRM to only allow the Wii that originally purchased them to play them.

2) If an individual Wii disc breaks, you can buy another copy of that disc second-hand. If your SD card with digital games fails, you lose all of the games on that card and since the Wii Shop Channel was shut down, you can't replace them.

Question: "Will you be picking up FF7 Remake on Switch 2? Are you planning on activating any of these options? Let us know."

Answer: No, I will not be purchasing this since it's Game-Key Card garbage. And if I were to play it, I would not use this baby mode.

@h3s Smaller print runs would be fine. The people that care will buy at full price to avoid missing out. And the people that care less about owning true physical could still buy the digital version whenever.

And after the initial run sells out, you could still have retailers like VGP order more batches.

@h3s Well, yeah, it's $20 more for the physical than the digital version, but I'm fine with that. On the Switch 1, it was pretty standard for indie games to cost $10-$20 more for the physical version compared to the digital version.

This is the approach AAA companies should be taking. I think a $70-$80 physical version of Persona 3 Reload with all the data on a cartridge is significantly more appealing than a $60 GKC.

@kuu_nousee If Ubisoft can reduce the file size of Star Wars Outlaws by more than 50% for their Switch 2 port, Square Enix could have done the same thing for FFVII.

It's absolutely not an engine issue. Most file size bloat comes from textures and audio. They simply just have to compress these assets more.

Square Enix themselves used to do this in their Switch ports. FFXII was around 40 GB on PS4 and is only around 13 GB on Switch. They could have reduced the size of FFVII if they wanted to.

My guess is because they were already committed to using a Game-Key Card, they just didn't see the point in optimizing. But now this decision has also screwed the game out of a potential LRG physical release in the future. (Unless Nintendo comes up with 128 GB cartridges in the future.) And it wastes nearly 40% of your internal storage should you decide to download the game.

The new Fire Emblem was the only thing that got me genuinely excited. That one game alone bumped the show up from like a 3 to a 6 for me. But man, without that, it was mostly cozy games, Game-Key Cards, some kinda safe/bland-looking Mario games, and games we already knew about.

I'm also really disappointed with the output of Switch 2 enhancement patches. I figured Nintendo would at least drop these for their own games at a fairly regular cadence, but we've got nothing since the Splatoon 3 patch on June 12.

And this selection of Switch 2 Editions feels pretty random. I'd much rather just get simple patches for 60 FPS and 1080p handheld for free for most games than pay $10 for whatever else these are offering.

I feel like I'm gonna be saving a lot of money this generation compared to last.

@jsty3105 They didn't even try to optimize it. The game is 81 GB on PS5. We've seen countless games get their file size reduced by more than 50% when ported to Switch. For example, FFXII is 40 GB on PS4, but only around 12 GB on Switch.

I would much rather have slightly more compressed textures and audio to have the game on a real cartridge. Extremely large file sizes are not a good fit for a portable console. This one game will take up nearly 40% of your Switch 2's built-in storage.

@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?!