Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Pizzamorg Oh, I know. Just saying: more often than not, those sort of features tend to detract for me. On PC, I've found using tools like Rivatuner to limit the framerate often work better to eliminate issues with screen-tearing than turning on Vsync in games.

Glad you found your culprit!

@RogerRoger Agreed. The gorgeous lighting and strong use of color are going to help this punch above its weight on the hardware.

Actually, in general, those elements tend to be far more important to me than how many triangles are on the screen when it comes to finding a game attractive or not. Take the most impressive tech demo in the world, but give it bland colors and lighting, and you've lost me on that aspect of the experience.

@HallowMoonshadow It probably will. Kodaka addressed this in an interview recently:

"We talked about potentially making it multiplatform before, but this (Nintendo Direct) announcement made me realize the effect of narrowing it down to one platform. It would be a different story with an AAA title, but there are so many AA and A titles that it would get buried if it were multiplatform. It was Spike Chunsoft who made the decision to make it Switch-only, and I think it was a wise one. …if we made it multiplatform, it would certainly be buried and lost."

Source: https://nintendoeverything.com/master-detective-archives-rain...

Switch exclusives get more attention by default, and Nintendo's powerful marketing can help to sell the games faster, as seen recently with (initially) Switch-exclusive Triangle Strategy versus the multi-platform Octopath Traveler 2 in terms of sales.

But once the window of time has passed where the game is new, there's no value in keeping the game exclusive. At that point, a second launch on other platforms makes sense.

Third-party exclusives are broadly a thing of the past in a more permanent sense.

@RogerRoger It is pretty amazing to think that Nintendo is still hanging onto Wii U-levels of hardware grunt in 2023 and is only now starting to slip in terms of being the runaway winner of the generation. Shows you just how far a good concept and a strong slate of games will carry you (sort of the opposite of Microsoft right now, I think; they have really strong hardware, but very little to show off with it)

Thankfully, leaked specs suggest the successor will be a device whose output grunt will be somewhere between a PS4 and Xbox Series S. Probably closer to the bottom end when undocked, I imagine, in order to control thermals and battery life. Still, more than enough for the majority of modern games.

@RogerRoger What multi-platform games the Switch can run depends on the game and also how much effort the developer/publisher is willing to put in. I can understand why some have completely skipped the Switch as it is likely a very expensive and time consuming undertaking that hopefully will no longer be an issue.

@RogerRoger I tried the Sonic Frontiers demo out of interest, since I heard so many bad things about it, and thought it looked... fine. Undocked on an OLED, at least. I imagine it looks bad on a 4KTV. Also helps that I don't have another version of the game to compare it to. I could play this version and be happy with it.

Yeah, while Nintendo has played to its own corner of the market for a long time to varying degrees of success, the Switch has inherited the legacy of and consolidated multiple sub-communities that were alienated when Sony fully embraced the push to make Playstation a Western-oriented, blockbuster-driven gaming brand. It also consolidated the existing fanbase that had fractured between their own home console and handheld hardware lines. Even once Nintendo is 'playing with power' again, I don't think a ton of Western multiplats will make the jump, since the engaged player base will largely spurn those experiences in favor of third party experiences that are increasingly being ignored on Xbox and Playstation.

With this third-party advantage in terms of Japanese games and indies, Nintendo platforms can maintain their distinctiveness without becoming mere ghettos you visit when you want to play a first-party title, which is how a lot of their post-SNES home consoles were.

We have a new Zelda coming out real soon. I honestly need to finish the first one. It's a great game.
Does anyone else feel like their switch games don't get played as much just because you turn your Playstation by instinct and then search for a game to play? Not a criticism of the Switch, just a note on habits.

I freely admit I'll frequently play games I'm less excited for on my Switch just because I don't feel like playing on other devices.

I really do need to resurrect my PS4, though. I'm sitting on a lot of stuff I want to play: Gravity Rush Remastered, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Sakura Wars, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Ghost of Tsushima - Director's Cut, Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition, Rez Infinite, etc.

Also need to get back to Yakuza 0, keep chipping away at the trophies for Tetris Effect, and so on.

Amazing how out of all of these Sakura Wars is the only one stranded on the PS4 at this point.

I really need to get back to that game. I do wonder, had it come out a couple of years later, if it would have made it to the Switch as well.

Edit: oh wait, I guess Ghost of Tsushima isn't on PC just yet! It's very easy to assume at this point...

@Buizel I wonder. From a graphical and animation standpoint, I wonder if could have proven any trouble on the Switch or hard to port. To me it set the high standard for anime game and hasn’t been challenged since. Maybe not, but I do wonder.
I would love a sequel though. It was a great and underrated game.

@Buizel Yeah, its continued exclusivity on PS4 has always seemed weird to me. Nothing about it seems like it should be particularly demanding, either. It's possible they just didn't think a port would make enough money to justify the expense.

I'm betting GoT is gonna be on PC before too long. Seems like an obvious choice for 2024 or sooner.

@RogerRoger I think it was said somewhere Witcher 3 did 1 million units on Switch. Can't recall where.

DOOM 2016 wasn't obligation, it was a launch year game which makes me think it was in development long before, and must have done well to warrant the effort in porting Eternal.

Sonic games historically sell best on Nintendo platforms, so that makes sense. Just Dance as well, obviously, though in that case any version not on Switch is simply obligation.

I also think the Crash and Spyro games did well, given they weren't even planned until an engineer got the first level running over a weekend. Hilarious in hindsight and all that.

Obviously Nintendo isn't at liberty to disclose other companies sale numbers, but they have in past mentioned how many 1m and above sellers they've had total, including third parties.

Just checked, as of May 2021 there were 14 third party games over 1m.

@RogerRoger Yeah, it seems wild to think that handheld versions of games used to be entirely different, because there was no way you could squeeze the console versions onto them.

In the case of Sonic Frontiers, it's hard to say what level of interest I had, since the demo was so short in general (SEGA was particularly stingy when it came to this game). I'm not sure if I'm a fan of how they approached combat, though.

TW3 sold not terribly (1mil+ copies) on Switch for such a late port, but the primary reason Nintendo wanted both it and stuff like DOOM, Skyrim, etc. on the system, I'm sure, was to send the message that the device could run meaty multi-platform games. And also, I'm sure, to show off that companies which have historically ignored Nintendo were being won over to the platform.

It worked. Pretty much everyone is in on the hardware, to one degree or another.

@Ralizah Do you ever miss that? There was something kind of neat about getting the different version of games, and it really produced some great games sometimes on the handhelds and to me, gave handhelds something different to look forward to playing and more reason to get them.

@Jaz007 It was kind of cool to see action-heavy games re-contextualized in a handheld format. What if Daikatana played like a 2D Zelda? What if Resident Evil played more like an RPG? etc. Sometimes they ended up being more entertaining than their big-budget brethren.

That sort of thing largely disappeared with the Vita, though. And, to be honest, I'm glad console games aren't trapped on the TV anymore. Between Switch and Steam Deck, almost everything can be played in handheld form now.

@Ralizah If you like playing games on the go a lot, I can see why that would be a good thing, but for me, who's main place to play handheld devices is at home, it's kind of a shame actually. Sure, the rare occasion I use my Switch outside of my house it's nice and is something of a cool feature, but even then, the handheld games served that odd occasion more than well enough and I didn't miss regular console games while on the go.

For the purposes of at home, I'd much rather use my PS5 to play games with more power, and then have alternative experiences on the handheld. If you gave me the option between a Switch Pro that is a TV only console, and the double function switch, I would choose the Switch Pro only on the TV.

I think VR helps fill that alternative gap in for me a bit though, and also why I find it to be infinitely more exciting than the Switch's portability.

@Jaz007 I don't really use my Switch out and about either, but it's wonderful having hardware that can be played on or off the TV. Power outage? No issue. Grinding? Play it while watching TV. When I'm in a situation that doesn't allow for a lot of consistent TV time, I can grab the device and quickly squeeze in gameplay here and there. And some games... I dunno, they just feel right on a smaller screen, whereas some do better with the TV.

It still feels like the future to me, and I'm not particularly hung up about game performances issues as long as they're not too egregious.

In terms of what Sony does better, I'll admit they currently have the only achievements system I care about. Collecting platinum trophies for games is a lot of fun, and it's what is keeping the ecosystem alive for me currently.

We actually just received two Meta Quest 2 units in the mail today! Although they're proving a bit finnicky to set up, and my glasses are making it difficult to easily take the headsets off, so we'll see how I end up feeling about VR.

@RogerRoger Third-party support was initially pretty good on the Wii U. Just... nobody wanted to buy it, and the few that did generally only wanted to play the standard first-party stuff, so the support dried up quickly. It was the opposite on Switch: that system started with a much more diverse audience eager to snatch up various third-party titles, but third-parties were initially reluctant to buy in, and the few that came were primarily due to Nintendo's outreach efforts.

Probably the greatest boon of this generation for Nintendo is that they went a LONG way rebuilding the bridges they've burnt with the rest of the industry over the years. They sought out AAA holdouts like Bethesda, developers of more "adult"-oriented titles to demonstrate the lack of content control and censorship on their system, and tried to make a system that could be more easily developed for than their previous efforts.

But a receptive audience willing to buy non-Nintendo stuff was the big thing.

We'll see. Sonic combat always feels very clunky to me, but if I can get into a good rhythm with the game, I might enjoy it. The insane demo length meant I was rushing to see as much as I could, and it didn't give me a lot of time to just chill with the game, unfortunately.

Mario movie is at 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Looks like the definitive adaptation of the property is still the Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

@RogerRoger Agreed. And I think the continued popularity of Switch versions of games, along with the success of other products inspired by it like Valve's Steam Deck, demonstrate that the hybrid revolution isn't going anywhere.

Nintendo has historically struggled to transition one wildly successful platform to another. With the Wii and NDS, the success largely came from attracting people outside of the gamer bubble. But those innovations don't hold their appeal indefinitely. The novelty of touch-screen controls definitely evaporated after the smart device boom started in the late 00s, and motion controls were eventually adopted by everyone to some extent. While the Switch arguably also attracted a larger than normal audience with an innovative concept, this one crucially seems to have resonated deeply with the gamer demographic, which can be seen in the sort of games that tend to hit the console, as well as the number of niche titles that enjoy success on the platform.

The only way forward for Nintendo that makes sense is going to be relying on a more iterative model, like Sony and Microsoft tend to rely on. But I'm not sure if the company is going to be fully comfortable with such a dramatic shift in approach, and I just hope they don't flub the next one by putting focus on some irrelevant gimmick that nobody cares about (hello, Wii U!).

It's a high wire act, because with Nintendo, it's always dramatic. Dramatic success stories, but also dramatic failures.

@Ralizah I unironically love the credits music for the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. His enthusiasm is rather infectious.

As for the movie, it definitely seems to have quite a mix of opinions. Some loved it, whereas others think it's mediocre. It's up to 55% now on Rotten Tomatoes, and for what it's worth the audience score is currently at 95%. Personally I tend to agree with the audience score more than the critics score, but that remains to be seen with this movie.

@crimsontadpoles It's so charming that it actually overrides the considerable cringe factor. Lou Albano was giving it his all, and I'm here for it.

I'm sure the movie will be fine. As usual, critics are too harsh, fans are too eager to love it, and the truth of the movie's true quality will be somewhere in the middle.

@Kidfried I mean, that's how you appeal to the widest possible demographic. Taking Barbie as an example, we know what Barbie movies intended purely to appeal to small girls look like: there's a million animated Barbie movies in that vein already.

Toy Story. The Lego Movie, and Wreck-It Ralph had humor that wasn't intended for the tots, but they also appealed because of the way they approached universal themes that anyone could relate to. It's the reason they're all pretty beloved. I wouldn't expect something like that from Mario.

@Kidfried Aiming for a wide demographic is a necessity if you're making a movie based on a toy and don't want it to end up having niche appeal. So it really just depends on the sort of film you're making.

I tend to align with critics more when they diverge on mass consumption films, but I've seen plenty of critical darlings that were boorish and clearly just catering to the whims of that category of moviegoers, who tend to have their own preferences in terms of content.