The Nintendo Switch

They had a sales dud in the Wii U but the 3DS ended up doing okay.

the only time they've been anywhere near the ropes was the gamecube era. Wii U was a failure but Wii and the entire DS/3DS line were such incredible successes that it'll take multiple failures of that magnitude to undo them

The Switch is likely to be a sustained success with consumers and with developers, and I’m willing to bet that iterations on the Switch will be the center of Nintendo’s console and handheld business for many years to come.

It seems like a generally winning combination of their best ideas

It does! But vital they keep putting out exclusives and the occasional AAA. Right now eShop is full of garbage.

they're doing that

every gaming platform has a sea of mediocre indie games on its eshop

the eshop is a discovery mess but so is every online storefront there ever was. I own at least a dozen indie games from the eshop ranging from diverting and cute to all-time-great-videogame-experience, and there's many more well-regarded indies on there already that I haven't tried, many of which have disclosed that they're doing really well on the Switch, even a year in when head-scratching stuff like terrible untranslated Japanese cosplay dating "games" has started hitting the NA eshop.

The exlusives are mostly sequels and previous system ports. Nothing that expands the audience. But yeah, plenty of games I love, just talking hype and business.

The Nintendo Switch

Labo is Nintendo's big bet this year on expanding their audience, and nobody will know if it's really working until holiday.

i think making a pokemon game designed to onboard pokemon go players is a bigger bet towards that than labo

Yeah true

xpost tbf, I did buy a PS4!

Josh in Chicago have you played Zelda yet

Been on vacation, will get into it after more time with Hollow Night.

Switch hardware sales in the quarter ending June 30 down a little bit YoY but software growth was substantial. I tried to buy NTDOY but I need to call vanguard to confirm that I want to make over the counter trades for fraud prevention reasons and that seems annoying.

just for the fun of having an actual stake in Nintendo doing well? I enjoy following this stuff but I wouldn't actually put my own money in this rather than any sort of fund

Yeah I mean just for funsies mostly. I don’t fuck around with individual stocks otherwise.

I did do well for my dad once when I told him to buy AAPL at a low point a few years ago, before the 7:1 split.

Hold on isn't even a slight drop in hardware sales within your first year a massive red flag? That's not how console sales curves are meant to work, even xbox one sold more going into its second year than in its first and MS still ended up refusing to share their sales figures.

(our switch unit sales are up year on year tbf, but that makes a decline for nintendo themselves even more odd-sounding).

(just checked and even wii u sold better in year 2 than year 1)

It could be, but this particular quarter was not destined to light the world on fire hardware-wise. All the software launched seems to have done well (Kirby on track to be the best-selling Kirby, Tropical Freeze port has outsold the Wii U version, etc) but none of it is going to trigger new hardware purchases. On the other hand everyone who bought a Switch this quarter probably got it with at least one of Kart, Odyssey, Zelda, or Splatoon 2. Nintendo hitting their 20 million unit projection for FY19 is gonna depend a lot on the holiday quarter and Pókemon. Holiday will probably see bundle deals.

it was an extremely slow quarter for new games, and it's being compared to the launch window there

it would be really weird if this console failed bc it's such a dazzling piece of hardware

I really hope they come out with a smaller, handheld-only one.

it's called the Nintendo Switch because there's no way to switch it

i think different form factors are a ways off

switch will pass gamecube in lifetime sales shortly, and might pass n64 with a good enough holiday season

All my comparisons were against launch windows.

Man, Hollow Knight might just be perfect, or at least perfect for me. It's hard, but easy on the eyes, with so many cool little secrets and details and stuff to discover and explore. I'm maybe 25 hours in, and I know some serious gamers have probably finished it in less time but I'm doing the best that I can and it doesn't feel that frustrating. Unlike Celeste, which is brilliant designed but still sometimes feels more like a test than a game.

I'm a little over 30 hours into Hollow Knight and it still feels like there's a ton more to explore & do. I think that may be partly owing to the fact that I've been pretty bad at finding my way "forward" and have spent a lot of time backtracking. It never feels like a chore though, because the world is so gorgeous and aesthetically rich. And I love how open it feels, not in the contemporary sense of an "open world" game but in the more old-school sense of leaving you to find your way without too much handholding.

If there's a downside to Hollow Knight that I've discovered so far, it's that the map is so huge and ever expanding and there are so many places to explore and re-explore that if you take a break for too long it's really easy to lose track of where is where and what is what and which places are newly open to you. Even with the little markers they give you to use it's a little overwhelming.

I feel bad for saying this, but I'm giving up on Celeste because it hurts my fingers and I fuckin suck at it

Is the new Donkey Kong game this button-mashy? It looks fine but I prefer platform games at the sedate Braid/Super Mario World end of things

It looks FUN, I meant

Haven't played it but DKC games are generally on the harder side

loving Book 2 of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

have you played the SNES donkey kong country games Chuck? it's basically a modernization of those. plays pretty similar, is similarly pretty and overproduced. it's hard but not Celeste hard, and you can play as Funky if you want it to be easier.

it's not any more button mashy than a Mario game if that's what concerns you

I don't understand why I score either 6 goals or none in rocket league. Wonder how the podcast ads are working out for them.

Captain Toad demo is very relaxing. Feels like a better version of the puzzles between battles in mario+rabbids.

If there's a downside to Hollow Knight that I've discovered so far, it's that the map is so huge and ever expanding and there are so many places to explore and re-explore that if you take a break for too long it's really easy to lose track of where is where and what is what and which places are newly open to you. Even with the little markers they give you to use it's a little overwhelming.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, August 2, 2018 9:25 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All modern Videogames IIRC.

gotta have maximum Content

I bought one of these the other day because I’m going on a “family vacation” soon and I’ll need something to keep me sane outside of books and the internet. Got Zelda of course and it rules. That said I can’t say there are many other Nintendo properties that get me too psyched outside of Metroid. Think indie-er e-store stuff like Hollow Knight will likely keep me pretty busy.

Anyway, I like this thing! Feels good and novel (but not gimmicky) and satisfyingly fills this between-console-and-mobile space I didn’t really know was there.

Tune in 8/8 at 7am PT for a Super #SmashBrosUltimate Direct livestream, featuring new game information delivered by director Masahiro Sakurai! pic.twitter.com/Df3xxTCTGR

— Nintendo Versus (@NintendoVS) August 5, 2018

Ah fuck yeah

Walugi, here we go!

Waluigi is not gonna be playable he’s already confirmed to be back as an assist trophy

wa

smash direct in 3 mins

Cool. Castlevania people! I hope this is not just a 20 minute direct on their design and abilities.