Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@BAMozzy Nope, not using my own data for the internet connection, I often turn it off because I can get WiFi pretty much anywhere. It's not great everywhere, but our public transport has a pretty good WiFi network. I also understand that this option isn't available to everyone, but that's no reason to not support apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Versatility is great, it's the same reason why I would like to see voice chat support through the Switch itself and not exclusive to an app.

According to Nintendo, isn't Zelda the last game being developed for the WiiU? If that is the case, then the Switch is likely to be the only console offering 'new' Nintendo games. I wouldn't be surprised if some/all of WiiU's library comes to switch - maybe not Splatoon with 2 on the way or some of those that 'had' to have the screen controller to work of course.

I have my own concerns about Zelda - not console related - but if I really wanted to play it, not having a WiiU. I would probably buy a Switch. For WiiU owners, I can see why the Switch may not be a day 1 buy as they can pay two thirds of the cost of the game and still play it - maybe not at the same resolution on the big screen but the game isn't as complex or as detailed as something like Horizon or Uncharted for example. If it can hold 30fps - like the Switch version, and its not a game you intend to play on the go, is the £20 difference worth a bit more sharpness? Maybe for some people but some people were happy to play PS3/XB360 versions of games that had far greater differences than just resolution in some games and the costs were not so different either!

@BAMozzy If I already had a Switch, the choice would be easy, but now it's €50 for Zelda on the Wii U or €60 for Zelda on the Switch + the Switch itself (€330). Yeah, better draw distance is great, and so is the more stable framerate, but in the end it's still Zelda and the gameplay will be the same. The only real system seller for me is Super Mario Odyssey, so I'll wait for a holiday bundle (or maybe wait even longer than that). I can wait, but Zelda can't, so I'll get the Wii U version.

Honestly, if I was Nintendo, I'd have cancelled Zelda for Wii U.

@johncalmc Why?

@Octane I guess to force everyone's hands into buying a Switch, so they can play the new Zelda. Would mean higher early sales in theory, but would've made a lot of people VERY angry! In fact, it would've potentially had the opposite effect, if it rubbed enough people the wrong way.

I'm not super duper excited for Breath of the Wild like most, but if I do buy it, it'll be for the Wii U. I'm definitely going to play the waiting game with the Switch. I feel like it could go either way, but the initial signs aren't looking very favourable.

@Quintumply My point exactly. It's one thing to drop the support a year before its successor comes out. Cancelling a highly anticipated game that they have promised, multiple times, is coming to Wii U is another thing entirely. I think the backlash would be a lot bigger than Microsoft's Scalebound affair. If they wanted to force everyone into buying a Switch, they should've developed an actual good exclusive for the Switch at launch instead!

Because then people who are excited about Zelda have no option but to pay up for the Switch.

It would undoubtedly ruffle the feathers of some of the Nintendo faithful, but the fact is, the vast majority of the Nintendo die-hards would buy the Switch if it was a banana with Nintendo scrawled on it in marker pen. Nintendo fanboys don't matter. If they did, the Wii U wouldn't be a failure.

They need to appeal to more of the market, and giving the market any reason not to pick up a Switch - i.e. by putting the only exciting game on the system on another console - could hurt it.

I don't think it'll be a big deal. And I doubt the Switch sales will take too much of a hit. But business wise, I'd probably have cancelled it, and come up with some nonsense excuse about it being too big and too ambitious for the Wii U.

Anecdotally - and I know that doesn't really matter because this isn't a large enough sample - I've seen a lot of people say they're going to play Zelda on Wii U and then pick up a Switch further down the road. That's five people IRL, and many more online, including in this thread.

@johncalmc "come up with some nonsense excuse about it being too big and too ambitious for the Wii U"

They can't really use that excuse. The power of the Switch (undocked) is not significantly greater than than the WiiU - if indeed it is greater. RAM is doubled in the Switch of course but the GPU runs slower undocked than the WiiU's Radeon GPU and in terms of Gflops, the WiiU has the edge. I know that doesn't mean the newer system is less capable - advances in technology can make it more efficient. The CPU too runs slower but does have an extra core. The PS3 CPU is faster per core than the PS4's so that again shows its not always down to speed as the extra cores can make up for that.

In essence though, undocked the Switch isn't more powerful in RAW terms but offsets that with more RAM, an extra CPU core and better efficiency. I doubt you will see a 'great' difference between the handheld and WiiU experience. Of course when docked though, the GPU is given a speed boost which enables the games to run at higher resolutions. Jumping up from 720p is an increase of over 50% in size in terms of pixel count - from 921600 to 1440000 and considering the difference in clock speed is more than 50% undocked to docked, you can see where the extra speed is used to draw more pixels.

People may refer back to the pre-release build on the WiiU and its faltering frame rates and even a few visual differences but that could be 'fixed' and resemble the handheld experience of the Switch now on WiiU.

Point I am making is that Nintendo would have a hard job convincing people that the game wouldn't work on the WiiU - especially from a technical sense let alone the fact its already been demoed and announced. I see no reason that other games coming for the Switch couldn't work on the WiiU but Nintendo are effectively ceasing production on WiiU games or not prepared to port them across. It appears that they are essentially doing what you suggest with its other releases. I am certain that Splatoon 2, Mario Odyssey etc were developed with the WiiU but 'Switched' to the Switch. Its not detrimental to Nintendo (as such) as these games were not promised to WiiU owners like Zelda was but if all these releases were also coming to WiiU - albeit at lower resolution, then Nintendo may have a tougher time selling the Switch. Its not a jump up in performance to the same degree that the PS4 was but they have managed to fit more in to a much smaller and thinner device.

@BAMozzy I did say nonsense excuse. The beauty of different architecture when it comes to hardware is that even people who know struggle to really know how powerful a system will be in comparison to another. N64 was technically more powerful than PSOne in some ways, but because of the ways in which it was more powerful, it often looked less impressive. PS3 was technically more powerful than Xbox 360 in some ways, but because of the complex architecture and whatnot games often ran worse. To the layperson, the Switch is new, and so it stands to reason it's more powerful. I'd straight up fudge the numbers if I was them, and just say Wii U wasn't up to the task - buy it on Switch.

@BAMozzy I'm not sure of those other examples. Mario Odyssey wasn't playable during the event two weeks ago, and rumours said that it was the reason why the original Switch reveal had to be delayed by a couple of weeks, the game wasn't presentable yet, or at least, they weren't satisfied with it. So I don't think they could've released Odyssey sooner than holiday 2017, and let's be honest, that's five years after the Wii U launch, we'd probably be getting a new console by that time anyway. Splatoon looks to be more of an enhanced port than completely new game, so it's probably something that was relatively easy to develop, something to cover the summer months on the Switch. I doubt the Wii U would've gotten a Splatoon 2 even if it was successful. They would probably rely on more DLC to expand the original game like they already were doing. That's not to say that there aren't canned Wii U games that are now planned for the Switch, but I think we haven't seen those yet.

@Octane Maybe my explanation wasn't clear enough. The point I was making is that Zelda was announced for the WiiU so shifting it to the Switch to sell the Switch wasn't an option. Games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey can be switched over and used as a console seller as they were never announced or shown for the WiiU - even if they could run on the system.

What Nintendo appear to be doing is fulfilling that promise by releasing Zelda on the WiiU - giving it one last 'great' game before moving exclusively to developing and releasing games for the Switch only regardless of whether or not they 'could' run on WiiU.

@johncalmc stated that Nintendo should have cancelled Zelda on the WiiU to shift more Switch consoles but in doing that, it would have broken their promise to WiiU owners - especially as the game was demoed and playable on the console a few months ago. Instead of cancelling Zelda, maybe internally, they cancelled games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey and are using these as that reason. We won't know whether or not these were originally planned for WiiU even as a 'dual' release with the Switch. It seems that Nintendo are saying we are giving WiiU owners one last game which will also be the first great game on Switch but if you want 'future' Nintendo games, you will have to upgrade.

It would be like Sony saying Killzone: Shadowfall is coming out on both PS3 and PS4 but unless you upgrade to PS4, we will not be releasing any games for PS3 after this point regardless of whether or not the system is capable of running them. Of course Sony never announced Killzone or made it playable on PS3 but if they had and even had a playable demo a few months prior to PS4 releasing and then cancelled the PS3 version, I think a lot of Sony fans would be rightly angered - feeling blackmailed into buying the PS4 at launch. Of course Killzone doesn't have the following that Zelda does but the principal is the same.

Point I was making is that it would probably do more harm than good for Nintendo's image and something they couldn't do. With games like Splatoon and Mario, its far easier to announce just Switch versions to sell the console. We will never know if these were planned to release on WiiU or not, whether Nintendo decided to make these 'Switch' only to sell the console as releasing on WiiU too gives little incentive to upgrade in the near future. There are people who only upgraded to PS4/XB1s after 3years+ because the majority of games they wanted/played came out on older consoles.

What releasing Zelda on dual platforms does, is not only open up a bigger market - enabling Nintendo to not only sell the Switch but also maybe sell a few more WiiU's before its finally shelved. Not only that, it can sell more copies of Zelda to recoup some of te development costs. It may hurt the Switches opening week sales a bit but then with games like Splatoon and Mario to come, it also has games to give people a reason to upgrade for the long term.

@BAMozzy I honestly don't think it would matter, much. We'll never know, obviously. Perhaps there would have been an uprising among the hardcore Nintendites that bought a Wii U. But I doubt it. Nintendo fanboys apologise for Nintendo on an almost daily basis, across all corners of the Internet. They're nothing if not predictable, and I honestly think Nintendo could have gotten away with it.

I was saying this last year, and if I was Nintendo, I'd have seriously held back Super Mario Maker for Switch too so they could have a better launch.

Wii U has been dead for years. It became clear a long time ago that the console was goosed. Putting games out on it now is a waste of time. Yeah, they run the risk of upsetting people by cancelling Zelda, but I think they could have pulled it off.

I think it's more important, optically, for Switch to be overloaded with games so they can show gamers that the same problems that befell the Wii U no longer apply, than it is to appease the people that still play their Wii U.

@BAMozzy Don't worry, I understood what you meant. It's just that we know that Nintendo has been working on Wii U titles that haven't been officially announced yet (Pikmin 4 for example). And considering they're not coming to Wii anymore, they're probably Switch games now, but we haven't seen them yet.

@Octane Hi, I'll reply here since the other topic is turning in to this one and going OT. I kinda expected Zelda to support all the new technology (HD rumble and so on), it looks like it could have been incorporated pretty easily and showcase that kind of technology to the many players who will choose Breath of the Wild as their first Switch game. When Twilight princess got eventually to launch on both GC and Wii, the Wii version had motion controls...and to achieve that they basically had to mirror the whole game.

I am not saying I want this kind of stuff, just wondering what's Nintendo's angle in not bundling 1,2, switch or implementing this tech (or motion control as an option) into BOTW...is like they are afraid of how that would change the perception of the console.

@Feena Don't ask me about 1-2-Switch, still don't understand that myself, but I'll get back to that in a moment. As for Zelda, Aonuma said he wanted both versions to be equal, meaning that no one would feel left out. They ditched the GamePad support in the Wii U version too, because the Switch can't do two screens at the same time. Motion controls isn't that easy to implement, at least not the Skyward Sword type, and I think that's what most people expect when they hear about motion controls in Zelda. I guess they could've implemented HD Rumble, but I wonder how much it would add to the game, probably not a whole lot.

Don't think they're afraid of showing the motion controls off, but it definitely feels like the Wii U; Don't think even Nintendo knows who they're targeting with this console. A simple answer could be ''everyone'', but you know, that never really works out. To get back to 1-2-Switch; I think they're afraid of another Wii U situation. There's a reason why they're keeping the 3DS on life support, when the Switch effectively replaces both. They only produced 2 million units for launch as well, that's not much. I think that they're just playing the wait and see game when it comes to the Switch. If it's a success, then I expect a 1-2-Switch bundle for the holidays, marketed at the Wii crowd and a Zelda or Mario bundle marketed at the more typical gamer. Selling 1-2-Switch now as a separate game means that they're still recouping dev costs, whether it's going to be bundled with the Switch or not. It it fails to take off, when at least they recouped some of the costs and they can continue with the 3DS or a potential handheld successor next year.

@Octane @KratosMD I didn't know Aonuma's position, thank you for pointing it out. It's interesting even if I don't think anybody would feel cheated by a "superior" version (I still curse myself for purchasing TP on Wii and not on GC). That said, I hope we don't have to wait until 2020 for a "true" Nintendo game showing third parties what can be done with the Switch, but I understand they are being very cautious until they find out who their audience actually is this time.

Either this is an elaborate hoax, or it's a really interesting story. Allegedly Sony patented a Switch-like device back in 2015..

It's coming from a Japanese site http://blog.hokanko-alt.com/archives/50673343.html#more which links to IPforce.jp, but I have no idea whether that's an official patent archive or not.

@Octane Would you be surprised? I wouldn't. For all we know, maybe Sony was trying out new designs and patenting ideas for their own Handheld range.

To be honest, that design looks more like the Linx Vision than the Switch.

@BAMozzy True, the Razor Edge is a thing as well: http://goodereader.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/images/Razer-E...

Keep forgetting about those systems, for a while I thought both companies came up with a similar idea, but it's just copying the tablet devices and repackaging them as consoles essentially. Still, it's an interesting find though. Whether they're going to use it or not, I feel that as hardware upgrades become less important due to diminishing returns, that companies will start looking at portability sooner than later.