The Nintendo Switch

Will be revealed at 7am PT/10am ET through Nintendo's official channels.

It's only a preview trailer. Substanstive reveal expected next week.

Remind me what this thing is again?

Nobody knows yet.

Hybdrid console/handheld. Good news is you don't have to choose between what Ninty platform you get, all games come to one place.

Bad news.. well, maybe it looks like a a Frankenstein monster. Expect to see the concept today and software lineup next week.

Gettin' ready for thread title change!

Seriously though the one positive thing (maybe) coming out from this is that it seems like it's been known about, in development for long enough where we might actually get to see something substantial in terms of info and real games tomorrow. The rumors have been for a March 2017 release date for ages.

The March 2017 date is official, from Nintendo.

I don't think we'll see much of games tomorrow since this is labelled as a 3 minute preview. The solid word on the street is a bigger thing next week.

But yeah, the March date was, in the words of Nintendo execs, partially to ensure a strong (1st party) lineup for the first year of this thing. Unlike the Wii U which relied on 3rd party ports.

Yeah that's a good thing unless it means "we're not expecting any 3rd party support at all this time around", which is probably does.

feel like at this point if you're still a Nintendo fan you just accept it :(
that said I skipped both Wiis so I might jump back in with this system

I don't really care about western 3rd party support on a nintendo console. And I don't think Nintendo's got much riding on it either. It's irrelevant. The DS and 3DS thrived without it. Nintendo needs to offer an alternative.

My PC already makes whatever MS / Sony console I reluctantly end up buying redundant in terms of your Call of Dutys and sports games.

Well actually sports games is the one genre still better on PSXbox than PC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI

lol Nintendo Switch is a terrible name
Looks kinda dope tho

Name isn't so bad. Does look cool. But maybe that's just Zelda.

I'm totally on board, despite the pretty terrible name

trailer is v weird, thing itself looks p cool

Switch is a little dumb but leagues better than Wii or WiiU or GameCube

Terrible trailer o_O

Like the thing tho.

the first time the dude walked over and put the little controllers on and picked it up I whispered "what is this devilry?!?"

haha

i am into this!

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/

so, hardware-wise it's a really neat nvidia shield?

what does the core system come with tho? How much extra shit are they requiring me to buy?

agreed on dumb name, cool looking device. not sure about the detachable controller nubs but i like the rest

also why make a trailer where people are doing more fun things they would probably rather be doing than playing video games

also the DS had awesome 3rd party support, what you smoking. Even the 3DS's third-party support is way better than their consoles

I would guess it comes with the display/dock/controller wings and the standalone controller is extra?

DS and 3DS have great Japanese 3rd party support yes, not western. Because this is also a portable I believe they'll be able to retain Japanese 3rd party support, further differentiating their lineup from the competition.

Vanagon cameo

xp yeah I think the standalone controller is basically the Pro controller like on the Wii/U

Just consolidating 1st party output to one device is pretty huge, hopefully this means more variety as they don't need to work on 2 Mario Kart games at once for example

pending further information, i am into this. third party support is good from an adoption/longevity pov, Nintendo standards on a powerful handheld is cool (especially if it's more comfortably designed than the wii u tablet)

Cautious optimism

Has it been confirmed that there's no touch? People are surprised there's no use of that in the trailer...

is this likely to be region locked?

i skipped both wiis but i think it may be time to get back into this crap

xp

@ArcadeGirl64 53s53 seconds ago
As I previously reported in my September 2nd post, Nintendo Switch is 100% region free.

The people whose leaks have been most accurate e.g. Emily Rogers have been saying that it will be region free, and Iwata said on a few occasions that they were thinking about it. This console has got to have some big dumb thing wrong with it tho so it could be that :/

holding out for the big mario party announcement

I'm going to end up having to buy two of these.

i was also surprised that apparently there's no touch-capability.

i haven't had a nintendo console since the wii (which i attempted to mod and ended up bricking within 2 years), but i'm not sure this is going to be the one.

the whole gimmick where you can transform it into a handheld and go off to the williamsburg party and play videogames on the rooftop at the bbq - that's kinda cool in theory but i know i would never do something like that. when i walk my dog in the early morning, i like to just sit on the bench and pay attention to her, i don't want to resume my dragon quest at that moment. and after getting beaten down IRL 2v2 basketball underneath a bustling highway, i know my bros aren't going to want to play nba 2k18 with me. they'll probably be mad at me for being bad at basketball irl, 15 minutes earlier. i don't play games on public transport either. i'm just not a handheld person, so i feel like the main purpose of the system design isn't aimed toward me.

kind of raisin' an eyebrow at the cartridge thing, although maybe these days cartridges can handle resource-intensive games? either way, i guess it has to be a cartridge so that you can Switch(tm) your game into mobile mode so you can level up while you're eating brunch and windsurfing in the afternoon.

whoooa, that came out way more negative than i meant it to be, sorry. i'm sure this will be a cool system and i will be jealous of all people getting to play the nintendo 1st party franchise sequels, for real.

solid state storage is fast in a way optical media will never be, and I get the impression that the Japanese market wouldn't be about a download-only platform. Also yeah carrying around an optical drive would work about as well as a discman.

(a discman that needed to stream textures to the GPU without skipping.)

idk i think the portability is actually pretty interesting/compelling. the best thing about the Xbox one right now is how it integrates into the windows 10 ecosystem. i can play it on my pc in my office, on my laptop in bed, or on the TV directly from the Xbox in the usual way. this limited portability is pretty awesome, and extending the possibility to take the game with you anywhere is a logical extension and seems pretty cool. Xps

yeh I play handhelds mostly at home, in bed etc. playing an Atlus game while cycling is on TV is my jam!

Kind of funny that there were no kids in that video, unless I missed something.

I think the average age of someone playing video games is now around 30

goin' for chill hipster demo?

going for that disposable income demo for sure

I would like to see all the cables involved for connectivity ie power/recharging etc

The WiiU is a monster for too many cables, I don't want to go through that again.

i can play it on my pc in my office,

oh is that a thing? like, via remote desktop or something? this makes me pretty glad i don't have an xbox.

But I need two hands to hold the Switch!

you can store the notes in your mind palace

i just assumed the rest of you were also taking "mental notes" with google glass the past several years. ok glass, take a note: the guy to the left of the blurry face with the pipe was also in the captain's cabin, the guy in the upper-left corner of the set of pictures, i mean. end note.

ok: the pipe was in the cabin, in the upper left corner to the left of the guy with the blurry face

ok glass

that game rules, though. i need to return resume, i never even finished.

Heh, you all spend so much time teasing me for *not* starting games that it's a red flag when you concede there's one you never even finished.

https://i.imgur.com/dLoPiuF.jpg

it's rare for me to finish games - probably end up ditching games more often than not. but i find it difficult to struggle on when my enjoyment has ended and the end isn't in sight.

Something nice happened in Ori today, when I hit some point in the game/story and iirc it actually told me I was at the halfway point, which was nice.

nice

if you like 16bit RPGs at all you it to yourself to buy Cosmic Star Heroine as it's currently 70% off at £3.29/$4.49

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Monday, October 14, 2019 3:47 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this game is sweet! hadn't heard of it before, it's like if they fixed absolutely everything wrong with old rpgs. really digging it. thx for the tip!

one more thing, RE: obra dinn

any screenshot won't do it justice. it is really a beautiful game when seen in motion - check out a video or twitch

"Bloodstained" was years in the making. Began as a Kickstarter in 2015, released four years later this past June, was a mess on Switch. The developers promised patches and fixes, which a) was pretty ridiculous, given the long wait in the first place and b) those fixes have yet to show up. I don't know if the Switch poses its own particular set of programming problems, but this seems to happen a lot - game or port gets announced for Switch, people get excited, game arrives in less than ideal state, developers take forever to fix it, if they bother at all. "Sexy Brutale," for example, was unplayable on Switch, by all accounts, but it's been two years and despite promises I don't think the developers ever bothered.

"Blasphemous," on the other hand, began with a Kickstarter in 2017, showed up around two years later this past September, and just got a massive slate of fixes and patches a little over a month later. That's the way you do it. Even PS4 games get patches super fast, it seems. And a AAA game like "Doom" on Switch got some major patches relatively quickly, including the addition of Gyro, which was awesome (people seem to love Panic Button). But a lot of these indies? The lack of attention on Switch accounts for my frequently reluctance to buy games. I've been burned too many times and have little faith fixes will arrive in a timely fashion.

This is why they don’t take audience Q&A during Nintendo Directs.

games that weren't built to run on hardware weaker than PS4 and then added a switch version due to insane demand for everything to be on switch have a spotty track record with switch performance, i agree with that much. it's pretty easy to just, not buy ports day 1 and wait for performance impressions though

I think if a game like Doom or Witcher can be made to run at all on Switch, let alone much better than expected, then a game like Bloodstained has no excuse.

I think you’re forgetting the “kickstsrter” aspect and what that implies

You mean small studios, limited staff? I guess. But if a skeleton crew can divise something as gorgeous and perfectly calibrated as Hollow Knight, retro pixel games don't have much of an excuse.

My approach to complaining about patches and updates is to wait until I have worked on a game that tons of people are playing before weighing in on how easy it is to fix

ok, that's a tad disingenuous - obv i complain about all sorts of shit that i've never directly had any experience working on.

but...do you have any idea what goes into making a patch and deploying it? i don't.

I assume it's a lot of work! That's not in question. What's in question is releasing a game with issues so significant they take months and months to fix, assuming they bother at all. Like, a lot of these games that people complain about, people complain on or close to *day one*, which means that the developers *must* know. I can only speak for myself, but I'd rather a game get delayed and run right than a game get released prematurely and take forever to get fixed after they've already got my money. Releasing games early (for the cash? to get the max out of releasing on all platforms at once?) is like distilleries that release "white whiskey" and pretend that it is some sort of special thing, or even premium, when everyone knows it's really a quick way to make a buck while the good stuff ages in barrels.

I did, btw, recently find at least a personal drawback to the Switch's biggest pro: I don't need reading glasses, but as someone in my 40s I'm more liable to miss little details in handheld mode than I am when the Switch is docked and on the big screen. I hit a wall (more or less literally) in Ori and had to look up what to do, and it turns out there was a lever right there that I just couldn't see in that particular environment on the small screen. Obviously ymmv, and I'm usually OK with it, but it's a potential strike for some against playing in portable mode. I want to say I've read reviews of Switch games in the recent past that made people complain about things like font size? Maybe Darkest Dungeon (until it was patched)? Octopath Traveler? Something like that.

octopath font was fine, fire emblem was the one that people rightfully complained about

I still have only used the switch in portable mode like, once. I use it docked pretty much daily.

I'm about 40 hours into Dragon Quest XI now. What a lovely game. I can't help but compare it to Breath of the Wild, and while I think it's a worse game than BOTW, I think maybe I enjoy it more? like, playing BOTW was sublime, like ~~~art~~~ in a way I'd never experienced in a video game until then---but that made it, like, harrowing to play: to be too brute was to break the sublimity, to make its lost world recede, whereas its magic was in making that lost world present. You tell its story, you are part of it. But that was work! By contrast the linearity of DQXI is easy and comfortable: nothing is left unsaid, unless you choose not to talk to anyone in the game, I suppose. There have been cataclysms in this world too, and the game too is to unravel it, but it is done more overtly: yes, monsters have destroyed this world before, and will do it again, and you are the light and they are the dark, and you will master the dark; but the ache of this eternal recurrence is absent, whereas it was everywhere in BOTW. And I guess I don't always want to ache when I'm playing a game.

DQXI is the video game equivalent of dad rock

otm

good post euler

agreed, nice Euler

and lol ciderpress. maybe that's why I keep thinking about getting it...

and josh - that's one of the reasons I try to stick to indies on PC (then, PS4) in general

Finished "Ori!" What an absolutely lovely game, start to finish. Maybe a little short, but other than that I can't think of anything that could make this game better.

sequel is out in a few months though i think its xbox exclusive at launch

Yeah, trailer looks nice. Ori was one of those games I just figured I'd never get to play, so the fact that the first one came to Switch was a wonderful surprise (same with Cuphead).

I’m early on with Return of Obra Dinn but I think I’ll be obsessed with this thing.

Sweet didn’t realise that was out yet

Do tell more

it's a very good game if you enjoy actually playing the detective rather than assisting the detective like in most mystery games

I noticed that What Remains of Edith Finch is on Switch. That got a great response, right? I'm wondering whether to get it for the Nintendo or just wait for another PS4 sale.

I played many hours of Obra Dinn yesterday, it’s uh quite good

I beat Obra Dinn! It’s good.

nice

i've been playing it too. it's definitely cool but it's kind of repetitive and i feel like it keeps rushing me along and not giving me space to figure things out.

you can't really figure out too many until you've seen all the scenes. once it starts raining on the boat that's the cue that you've seen everything and it's time to review and solve

“Repetitive” is not a valid complaint about a video game

if i were to buy Obra Dinn is there any reason to buy PC vs Switch or is it good on both?

No technical complaints about the Switch version either TV or handheld. I had to crank the look speed way down to not get nauseous but I was grateful to have the option.

the game is first person view so if you prefer to look with a mouse and not the right stick then it'd be better on PC. i know i prefer that

there's no action though so it's not like an fps where that's actually a gameplay difference

Speaking of which, I bought Doom way back when on Switch, and while I'm not sure how far along I am and it's been months since I played it, I think it's pretty far. From the start, gyro was absolutely essential to my gameplay on regular (which is still pretty tough) difficulty. Still, it was on deep discount on PS4, so I picked it up, curious, knowing the presentation and gameplay would be significantly better, and they are, but because I've gone from Gyro to twin-sticks I had to dial down the difficulty to "what a wimp" or whatever, and it's still pretty tricky to aim (even with aim assist, whatever subtle thing that feature actually does). I'm sure my thumbs will get used to it eventually.

uh oh. am i gonna get this dumb thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIW8g92H-mA

I am one drunken night of sadness away from ordering it

I ordered it after reviews and early impressions were that it was Pretty Good, will report back

basically if one of you guys are like, yeah this is fun, my dumb ass is gonna be doing squats in the living room in boxer briefs to vanquish the hamstring monster
i am a man without will

theres some good twitch clips of it taking out peoples nuts because they didnt follow the directions right