Gaming Smack My Switch Up: The Nintendo Switch Discussion Thread (was: NX)

Well, as I understand it, the Switch is supposed to be fairly easy to port games to. More so than previous generations from Nintendo. The power of the Switch will definitely be an issue, but it is possible that Nintendo will develop an upgrade that will at least add more memory that could help things along.

But when it comes to third party support, Nintendo players have always wanted said support for the Nintendo consoles compared Sony, Microsoft and even going back to Sega. The successes of "Final Fantasy", "Mega Man", "Street Fighter", "Castlevania", "Mortal Kombat", "Bases Loaded", "RBI Baseball", "Super Ghouls N Ghosts", "Spy Hunter", "Star Wars" and more, back in the 80's and 90's proves that point. Third party developers weren't weary because of lack of success in their games being sold, but because Nintendo hardware wasn't capable of supporting those games for one reason or another. The use of cartridges, smaller discs and under powered hardware is what hurt third party support for the consoles. Look at the XBox One. It was under powered and lacking in memory and it affected sales. Microsoft ditches the Kinect, adds more memory and improves the hardware in order to compete with Sony again.

 

The hardware limitations are of course a factor, and Nintendo can mitigate some of the developers' costs in how they design their consoles. But at the end of the day, profitability is what dictates everything. To my knowledge, all PlayStation consoles have been difficult to develop for until the PS4, culminating in the particularly egregious PS3. Developers are willing to jump any hurdle, given enough profit on the other side of the tunnel. A problem third party publishers have had since the Nintendo 64 is that they have great difficulty competing with Nintendo's own titles for the install base's attention.

 

Doesn't help that Nintendo's is often going for its own niche. Like the other consoles, the Playstations and Xboxes are usually about on par with each other in terms of raw power (or close anyway), but usually the really fancy graphics won't work on Nintendo's hardware. So you've got big games that are multiplatform (Playstation, Xbox and PC) but not Nintendo. Which is probably partially responsible for the Wii U's somewhat empty library.

They've come up with a much stronger launch line-up for the Switch fortunately, and I hope they can keep the momentum going (a Mario and Zelda game do wonders). And with that momentum hopefully the third-party people will join up. I'm looking forward to E3.

 

I think the people criticizing the Switch for being a port/remaster machine are forgetting what the first couple of years looked like for the PS4 and Xbox One.

 

Even ignoring the early life of the PS4 and Xbone, the Switch is a perfect console for porting things to because of the handheld factor. I spent my evening yesterday playing Bayonetta and Dragon Quest Builders in the pub. While the 3DS and Vita saw PS2 and PS3 games ported to them, they were often very rough, with terrible frame rates, watered down art assets and poor control schemes. Yet the Switch version of Bayonetta runs at an almost solid 60fps, with slightly improved art assets. The quality of ports that the Switch is getting is something that we haven't seen in handheld gaming before.

I'd happily settle for all third party Switch games being ports of titles from the last few console generations.

 

The Switch version of Doom just got a stealthily released patch. It fixes a few bugs, reduces the number of frame drops and adds frickin' 1:1 motion control aiming.

I hereby declare that everything else in my backlog is now on hold until I complete my seventh playthrough.

 

As in the same kind of motion control aiming I turned off as quickly as possible in Splatoon 2?

 

Really the switch bread and butter is indi games right now.
And the fact that a lot of us will buy games we already own to play again but be able to walk around and play them.
Especially quest.

 

I'm the same way. The most I used my Switch in handheld mode was when the MLB playoffs were happening last October, and I'd play Picross S during the commercial breaks. One particular cool time was when I went to the Super Mario Odyssey midnight release with a friend of mine. We were sitting in my truck waiting for Best Buy to open their doors, and my Switch fit perfectly in the little cubby where the vehicle's display is nestled. We played Puyo Puyo Tetris and it was a pretty cool moment, like we'd just warped into a Switch commercial or something.

 

I don't know if that's always been true. That's only been true since the fifth generation, when Nintendo started to lose a lot of their third party support for console games and had to rely first party games. Before, I think it had really been a mixture of both that got people into Nintendo. Specially in the fourth generation.

I dunno if I'll buy "Mario Kart 8" again when I get a Switch. I admit that I've got the GBA and DS versions of FFIV and the GBA version of FFVI, but I've bought those more for the content than because it's portable. But with MK8, I just don't see a need after spending the money buying the DLC's and all the time unlocking almost all the content on the Wii U version.

 

Lots of news from the Nintendo Direct today. They saved the probable biggest for last, with the announcement of Smash for Switch, and its coming sometime in 2018. Probably another Wii U port, but portable Switch Smash will be a big step up on the 3DS version. No detailed date yet, I expect they'll save that announcement for E3, maybe as this holiday's big game.

I didn't expect Crash Bandicoot to get ported to Switch, I always thought that was a Sony exclusive. Lot of 3DS news too, looks like another good year for both consoles.

 

The Crash rights are shockingly complicated but the tl;dr is something like only the first four games were Sony exclusive per the original agreement, and that probably got renegotiated into a timed thing for the remaster to happen. There were Crash games for the Wii, for instance. You should never look them up, play them, or acknowledge their existence, mind you, but they were made.

 

But seriously, how good does Octopath Traveler look?

 

Can’t wait for SUPER SMASH BROS. It’s my most anticipated game for this year.

 

Beware of third party Switch docks. They will brick your console.

https://kotaku.com/switch-owners-say-third-party-docks-are-bricking-their-1824122777

 

The online service is cheap, but kinda dull. My feelings may become more positive if they add some awesome free games (Super Metroid plz)!

 

$20 for a whole year?! That's not bad at all!

 

Huh, $20 for a year is cheap compared to the competition. Of course the question is if the value is there too. Sad that there's no Virtual Console, but its not a dealbreaker (for me at least), I wasn't really planning to rebuy some old games for the second (or third) time. Although the capability is there considering they have NES games included in that online package, but still, guess they don't need to bother with it as much as they used to (not that it helped the Wii U much, but it was better than nothing).

At least they got this news out before E3, now to see what they've saved for next month.