The Nintendo Switch

i mean look at this beauty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM

i've preordered one from amazon more out of loyalty to nintendo than anything else - zelda aside tho, the launch lineup is pretty dismal even compared to the wii u's anaemic launch selection

i'd really love to be wrong but, especially post-mario jump, it does kinda feel like the switch might be nintendo's dying gasp of hardware creation :(

well i've had an awesome time with my 3ds, and the girlfriend is an old school nintendo person - so feel like the amount of multiplayer fun we'll get from splatoon/mario kart/arms (which looks really fun) etc will make this is a good investment.
it does seem like a small 1st party lineup, but whats there does look really great.

i've had a huge amount of fun with my wii u and 3ds for sure - i just can't imagine that the switch is going to do anything more than appeal to nintendo diehards. the salad days of wii-mania seem like a long time ago and i think the commercial failure of the wii u has stripped them of a lot of momentum

i am v much looking forward to zelda and mario tho

yep i agree in the long run they're fighting a losing battle, but i'll keep supporting them as long as i can just for the sheer amount of persistent quality that goes into the best of their games.

no Endless Ocean 3 no credibility

i think i understand nintendo's commitment to building their own hardware, and yeah i'll buy their systems for as long as they make them because no-one else makes games as consistently brilliant as they do.

at the same time it does feel like increasingly they're hamstringing themselves by restricting their games to their own, tepidly-received platforms; it'll be interesting to see if the success of super mario run (which i called 'mario jump' earlier for some reason) might persuade them to rethink their strategy in the future.

I just don't see them going quietly out of the hardware business without an even bigger flop than the Wii U. Turning into a studio only would be a tremendous step down.

What might be interesting to see is how long 3rd party support lasts for making cartridge games versus apps (or if online-store-only 3rd party support even becomes a thing of any significance- is it on the Wii U?)

nintendo have always been super-stubborn and obsessive about controlling their output, and i can absolutely see how they would see it as a step down, but they must be missing out on hundreds of millions in sales from xbox and playstation owners who would love to play nintendo games new and old on their systems.

how much longer can they hold out if (or, let's be honest, when) the switch ends up being a commercial disappointment at best and an embarrassing failure at worst?

ehhhhhhh disappointed
it's a handheld that's priced as a console, with console software pricing as well
region free is good but paying for online is not
liked a lot of the software announcements but most of the ones I'm interested in look like they have just begun development
no mention of what will happen with VC etc
get the feeling that this is going to stumble out of the gate like the 3DS and require a quick price cut
definitely considering getting Zelda on WiiU (£40 on Amazon vs £60 switch version wtf) and waiting a year or more

In what sense exactly is it a handheld priced as a console?

It's a handheld console that uses a mobile chip for CPU/GPU, there's a pass through dock so you can hook it up to a tv?

When it launches in the UK it will be less powerful than an Xbone but £60 more expensive?

and a handheld with a battery that might only last two-and-a-half hours, no less :(

it is going to have a tough time competing with xbone and ps4 when, like zappi says, it'll be more expensive and doesn't include a pack-in game either as far as i can tell

Oh plus £75 for an extra pair of joycons.

The new Mario looks stunning but yeah, almost everything else about this feels wrong.

I'm possibly a little out of the loop - is there a handheld game that looks anything like those two videos?

weirdest announcement for me is the port of skyrim - like there's a sizeable community of hardcore rpg fans who have nonetheless been holding out for nearly six years just for the opportunity to play it on a nintendo machine

They're going to sell a shitload of these things

i'd love for that to be true, but i just don't see it - who are they going to be selling these to?

and why the switch and not a ps4/xbone/ios/android?

Let me try to explain that. It feels dumb and indulgent to blow $400 for a console just to play a few AAA RPGs on my TV. I'm not into shooters so everything else on the PS4/Xbone is moot, even after the price drops. But I'll try a AAA RPG I've heard about on the $300 console that seems like my whole family might enjoy.

(This post deliberately constructed to induce maximum "Actually..." in response)

and why the switch and not a ps4/xbone/ios/android?

Two words: Animal Crossing

Two more words: New Zelda

Also honestly if you think this thing is competing with phone / tablet games you're not thinking it through

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I'm possibly a little out of the loop - is there a handheld game that looks anything like those two videos?

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, January 13, 2017 8:22 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark

i think ipad is probably capable of this type of graphic output, hampered by the fact that pure touch is possibly the worst control interface ever created

Also honestly if you think this thing is competing with phone / tablet games you're not thinking it through

maybe, but it is competing with phones / tablets in terms of available, disposable household dollars to spend on digital entertainment and i dunno if the switch is going to be persuasive enough to draw that cash over its competition

i see your argument about the family appeal of the switch and i really hope it's true - i want nintendo to do well but i just don't see the switch being the no-brainer family entertainment system the wii was, at least based on what they've shown so far

3DS came out nearly 6(!) years ago, the games shown are exactly what a handheld system would be able to output in 2017 given the huge advances in mobile tech over the intervening period.
nice to see Bomberman still exists though!

DoA

hampered by the fact that pure touch is possibly the worst control interface ever created

EGGSACLY

The switch has things for your thumbs to do and plugs into a TV and stuff for non-gamers to dabble in; as such, it has little to no competition at this moment.

Before you say "but so did the Wii U" don't forget the Wii U was competing with its predecessor, which everyone already had two of, and also in 2012 tapping a touchscreen to win was still kind of amazing and novel

3DS came out nearly 6(!) years ago, the games shown are exactly what a handheld system would be able to output in 2017 given the huge advances in mobile tech over the intervening period.

I don't get why spec arguments are relevant to Nintendo products. We have been over this material.

ANECDATA WARNING: my niece and nephew are seven and 10 and they've got no issues with playing minecraft and first-person shooters for hours on their ipads using purely touch controls, which seems like total fucking madness to me but there you go

i'd like to have faith that nintendo will be able to successfully convince non-gamers that they can dabble in stuff on the switch, but if the best pitch they can come up with is that it has things for your thumbs to do and it plugs into your TV (exactly like playstations and xboxes do, to the untrained eye) i think they're gonna struggle.

the wii had the unique pitch of motion controls so the gaming-challenged could play tennis on their tv similar to the way the played actual tennis; the switch-pitch is that you can use it like a tablet or on your teevee which isn't far off the double-screen pitch of the wii u, and could easily be misinterpreted as yet another tablet for the kids to lose behind the sofa or drop and smash on their floor at mcdonalds just like they did with that goddamn ipad mini last year.

at least they haven't called it the wii thrii i guess?

xp Not just Nintendo, PS2 was the weakest in its gen iirc. As always it comes to price & software, and that's where Switch going to struggle initially imo. Most unfathomable bit of the presentation was getting Sega & Suda up on stage to say they might make something for it, maybe. Why bother?

Yeah never mind gamepads I am curious about what's going to happen when (if?) my niblings' generation start having to use mice.

The Joy Con is also two motion controllers, mind.

two motion controllers with, currently, no killer motion-based app and facing the prospect of being greeted by a collective shrug from a non-gaming public, some of whom have moved on to other digital novelties like vr on their phones

They're going to sell a shitload of these things

Yep, all the people being like "PROCESSORS" are really misunderstanding how and why the Nintendo brand works.

this is another nintendo console that i basically only want to play the zelda game. have successfully resisted for a couple generations now but but but

there's like maybe 6 games tops on any new machine that i'll ever want to play so at least this thing is likely to have a higher hit to shit ratio

I am reasonably certain that the core non-gamer Nintendo audience is not that bothered about VR on their phones. I agree that software needs to be there. I don't think either of us, at this point really have any reason to imagine that this will or won't be greeted by a collective shrug - how enthusiastic were people about the wii at this point?

Like watch the video of Jimmy Fallon flipping out like a gibbering buffoon over this toy and multiply that by the audience that watches Jimmy Fallon, and all these Kotaku-lite posts about how "people" would rather either play Candy Crush or [some difficult PS4 game, I have no concept of this system] look nuts

given that you couldn't buy a wii for love nor money for months after launch, i'd have to say that people were rather more psyched at this point in the hype cycle xp

but i do concede that there's no way of knowing for sure that this point how the switch will pan out

Like watch the video of Jimmy Fallon flipping out like a gibbering buffoon over this toy and multiply that by the audience that watches Jimmy Fallon, and all these Kotaku-lite posts about how "people" would rather either play Candy Crush or [some difficult PS4 game, I have no concept of this system] look nuts

ahem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzsRHGtEWfI

the fallon factor did jack fucking shit for the wii u

i might be reading the Wikipedia page wrong or it might be lying but it says the WiiU has outsold the XBone by over 4 to 1 so Nintendo must be really hurting

looks like for some reason those wikipedia xbox sales figures stop in 2014 as opposed to sep 2016 for the wii u? here's some golobal total sales figures correct as of june last year

PlayStation 4 Total Sales: 42,183,599

Xbox One Total Sales: 21,679,269

Wii U Total Sales: 13,139,054

Yeah that's the thing, are people underestimating just how much Wii U has bombed? Because there still seems to be a lot of "but it's the nintendo software that'll sell it" thinking here plus some "kids will love it" but a) neither of those saved the Wii U and b) kids aren't a big enough proportion of gaming's audience any more for you to make them your key target and still sell the kind of volumes consoles do these days.

And yeah, one triple A game at launch and it's one which is also being released on a console I already own (in fairness not many people already own that console so that's not the biggest problem).

(xp)

(yep and those total figs include a year of extra sales for the wii u versus xbox one)

Actually it's odd that they didn't show any Pokemon Stars footage given that it's already confirmed? That really does have potential as a system seller and you'd think they'd be able to get it out within the first few months at least, given that it's basically a port of an already finished game.

one triple A game at launch and it's one which is also being released on a console I already own

i'm pretty sure this has never happened before, although i'm open to being corrected, but it doesn't seem like a great omen does it? and it'll be eight or nine months before mario odyssey comes out, assuming of course it manages to hit its launch window. that's a long time to wait between blockbuster releases

The thing with Wii U, is that it was just like a "better" version of the Wii (who cares). Switch is like "Here is the next generation of both our console and our handheld and working in the digital age." Its a complete reboot of everything and is made totally replace your Wii, your Wii U, your DS, your reliance on "disks," and has an IRL social component that doesn't involve people coming to your living room or bedroom. There is no way this thing isn't going to be huge even if it totally sucks ass