Nintendo Switch

Finally got around to watching the Switch presentation. Awkward is putting it nicely (all that finger snapping...). Poor messaging, an anemic launch lineup apart from Zelda, an unclear audience and an insane price point.

I'll get one of these in a year or two, if only to own a piece of history (mark my words: this will be Nintendo's last home console).

Looking back, it's funny how maligned the Wii U's launch lineup was; by comparison, it now seems incredibly robust. There were close to 20 North American retail titles on launch day and another dozen WiiWare titles. Feature Creep: The Console The Switch has...4 (5 if you count the udder-pulling game).

I actually kind of liked how awkward it was...it's such a contrast to the big dollar, carefully orchestrated corporate PPT presentations that Sony and Microsoft do. It was quaint, a little weird, frequently embarrassing, and almost naive. I'll take that all over Snoop Dogg introducing the next Call of Duty, dubstep, and some guy in an Affliction T-shirt and a headset microphone excitedly talking about how the new hardware will render arm hairs.

I agree. Their presentation was like a breathe of fresh air compared to the corporate, polished, typical "gamer" pandering bullshit that Sony and Microsoft spews out. Does anyone expect Nintendo to not do totally weird and out of touch shit at this point? They give zero fucks about being "cool" or "edgy" or anything else that gamers typically aspire and want.

You know what they do look like? They look like a company who's employees actually have fun, believe in what they're doing, and genuinely wish to get people excited about their products. They're also apparently the only company that still has a modicum of sense that videogames are a group activity that should be shared by people IN THE SAME ROOM. I'm all for the advances in online gaming, but fuck, I don't want anything to do with it. Playing COD or some other game online with a bunch of random fucks is not my idea of a good time. Breaking out 1, 2 Switch with a small gathering of friends looks like it will produce some genuinely ridiculous moments of raucous laughter. Yeah, I'm all in on the Switch at this point.

Egg Shen wrote: Yeah, I'm all in on the Switch at this point.

I would be far more so if the pricing wasn't nuts. I don't want to pay more than my PS4 plus a game cost to buy a less powerful piece of hardware without a game. I don't want to spend the local equivalent of $60 to buy a version of Bomberman, a game concept that was cool in the mid-nineties. I find paying £40 for a second PS4 controller a bit nuts, so imagine what I think of the idea of paying £60 for a Switch one?

It's possible I'm just being unrealistic and prices have moved on. But that doesn't change the realities of the market. I can't see this selling well until prices drop.

How much an NES and, say, METROID in real dollars?

Retail was $199 --> equivalent to $462. METROID cost $50 as I recall, so $110.

DANG.

That's a bit of a misleading argument, though. Scaling and demand have brought electronics prices way, way down since back then. There was a thing on Bloomberg a year or two ago about how PCs are 99.9% cheaper (!) than they were in 1980, and software prices are less than 1% of their 1980 costs.

There are a number of reasons why $300 for the Switch is hardly a compelling value proposition: its library consists primarily of Zelda and last-gen ports, its controller & accessory prices are ludicrous, they're slapping a $50 pricetag on what should be a pack-in tech demo, etc. etc. But the most egregious example is its new paid online service. You get one (1) free NES or SNES game a month, except after a month they take it away from you unless you cough up whatever outlandish price they've decided to slap onto, I dunno, Balloon Fight. Contrast that with another paid service, Xbox Live, which is hardly perfect, but nevertheless gives you two (2) free games a month and doesn't take them away from you. I've gotten Dark Souls, Rayman Legends, Super Street Fight IV Arcade, Super Meat Boy, Mirror's Edge, Guacamelee, Sunset Overdrive, The Wolf Among Us, etc. etc. etc. for free. And they weren't held for ransom after 30 days.

Meanwhile, you're going to pay Nintendo for the privilege of temporarily giving you a 30 year old ROM file, except they'll confiscate it unless you pay 5-10 bucks to keep it. I'd call that a brazen display of greed and hubris but it's really so much worse than that.

Xbox live gives you at least five free games s month, just wanted to clarify. Tremendous value.

PS+ does five games a month too, the Nintendo service needs to get realistic or it's a non-starter. Fuck Friend Codes and get a real NES/SNES Classics service going and I will ship them $$$.

It's easy and hella reductive to play the what-if game for a massive corporation, but: what if they'd released this thing Q4 2017 with that awesome-looking new Zelda *and* the new 3D Mario as dual launch titles, priced the console at a more reasonable $250, and also offered a $10-$20 / month flat rate Netflix-style subscription service that let you play whatever game you wanted from a catalog of NES, SNES or N64 games? People would be crawling over each other to get one.

But then there's this:

Fils-Aime’s comments came in response to questions from GameSpot, which quizzed the Nintendo America boss on key features of the app. Fils-Aime said this about the smartphone app:

The smart phone app that we’re creating, that will be part of our online service, we believe is going to be a very compelling part of the overall proposition because that’s how you’ll voice chat, that’s how you’ll do your matchmaking, and create your lobby. We also think it’s a very elegant solution because if you’ve taken your switch on the go, you’ve put yourself in a hotspot, you’re looking at get a quick match of Mario Kart in, to whip out some sort of bulky, gamer headset is a bit of a challenge. So we think we’ve got an elegant solution.

...uh, what? I can't imagine online multiplayer is gonna be a big deal for many of the people who end up buying the Switch, but, still: how is requiring a separate smart device running a separate app for chat, matchmaking and lobby management an "elegant solution?"

Guys, what is wrong with these people. Is there, like, a slow carbon monoxide leak at Nintendo HQ?

Turning virtual console backlog access into the side feature of the online service would have been a huge sell. Instead they settled for this laughably thin month at a time access. Hope they change that.

Well the new Zelda looks fantastic and it sounds like 1-2-Switch has actually got some legs. Snipperclips looks super fun. There's a pretty solid list of games coming out over the next few months too. Quite a few are ports, but I haven't played them all the same so they'd be new to me.

I'm leaning back towards buying a Switch.

I'm leaning back towards men.

Enjoy your friend codes!



Naw, in all seriousness, if you have a lifestyle that this would benefit (lots of on the go gaming), even if it's mainly just indie games that keep coming besides Nintendo stuff, I see a real attraction of this.

The online thing is still a big drag. But I'm going back on pretty much everything I said earlier and going to Toys R Us this morning to try snag a Switch.

I really like the idea of bringing the Switch with a battery pack and stuff like 1-2-Switch and Snipperclips for rainy camping days or visiting the relatives. We got a lot of mileage out of the Wii with our extended families.

Breath of the Wild looks awesome and I want to play it. Eurogamer has a list of announced games coming in the next few months that looks pretty solid too. A lot of it is ports and indies that are on other systems but the only "modern" systems I have are the Vita and 3DS so I haven't played most of them.
My main concern right now is the reported JoyCon desync issues that seems to be hit-and-miss.

If I had a Wii U I'd just get BotW for that, but I don't. So I'm dipping into our sold board games bank again.

Damnit Nintendo.

After spending a weekend with it, the Switch does fit my lifestyle pretty well. I am on the road alot for my primary and secondary jobs. So Saturday I spent most of the day in the middle of no where doing preliminary work for a job next month and played BOTW in the car while my wife drove. Then when I got home, slotted it into the base to charge and started playing on the projector. Right now I am satisfied with my purchase but after Zelda will be the big question.

So far I have played:
- Zelda BOTW - which is what I wanted OOT to be. Ive only completed the main quest to meeting Impa, then explored half of the world very carefully. Having no upgrades armor wise means everything oneshots you, but death in this game is just a delay.
- Super Bomberman R - It has the legs to become a replacement for Saturn Bomberman. The multiplayer is better than blast, but I have not gotten into the story yet.
- Snipperclips Demo - Went from not interested at all, to a must buy at some point. Its cute, its bizarre, it is a lot of fun. Reminds me alot of the works of Jean-François Laguionie (a French animator)
- Puyo X Tetris Demo - Having played the PS3 version, I knew that this was a must buy. But the game doesnt come out until next month and we do not have a demo stateside. The Japanese eshop has one though, and all you need is a Japanese Nintendo Account (aka a secondary email address). You cant buy games with a US credit card, but you can go to playasia and buy a Japanese points card. Some games even have English options - I am Setsuna's cart has one.