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.

I'm not that far in, but it's really good. Most reviews have liked it, but Kotaku said it was all a bit cold and by the book, despite the EMMI stealth aspects. I definitely get classic Metroid vibes from it but the last one I played was on SNES.

Yeah I didn’t feel coldness at all, but I wasn’t a fan of the Prime series really

I think I’ve acquired all the upgrades and now it’s just how much loot I wanna collect before final boss time. The sparkly technique that keeps a lot of that loot locked up is appealingly finicky to execute

looks like disco elysium is out on switch tomorrow

I would be okay with the metroid controls if i could work off the d-pad and not the stick.

^ yes. I never used stick on either Hades or Dead Cells, always D-pad, it's more precise

I allowed myself 30 minutes of Metroid over lunch and it turned into 60 minutes of trying and failing to get "that one nearly impossible shinespark missile in Ferenia". I guess it's only a series of nine precisely executed commands (boost run, jump, wall jump, slide, bomb, unslide, press-down-to-charge, return and slide, execute shinespark, eat your lunch) but I couldn't get it. I have a headache

looks like disco elysium is out on switch tomorrow

I relented and bought it a while back for the PS4 but haven't played yet. I heard that a lot of it is text driven so doesn't really benefit portable mode. Plus, even the PS4 apparently had lots of issues at first, and I figured the Switch is even more prone to that sort of stuff when it comes to ports. Curious how it's received, though.

Tell me about Disco Elysium. If I’m not into dialogue-only games like Kentucky route zero, is this a bad idea? It Looks like the gameplay is a bit more varied.

Yeah, I'm super intrigued. I've heard so many good things about it for so long, from the start, that I've mostly kept myself in the dark and bought it blind. The only thing I've heard is that there's a lot of text involved, but I don't think it's a text driven game, not as I understand it. (It also has its own thread iirc.)

i dont think it has gameplay other than point+click and choosing text options? theres no combat if thats what you're looking for

i finished metroid dread today. it's a fear-based game, and i learned that at the end of the day, the greatest fear of all is "how far is this game going to send me back after this 'game over' screen?"

incredible game. highly recommended even if you're not a huge metroid fan.

ive not finished it but i would agree that it is a very good and serious game

Yeah Dread rules and I'm trying to not just blow threw it.

Not that this guy is consequential, but I came across this and lol what a dumbass.

https://www.denofgeek.com/games/metroid-dread-david-jaffe-difficulty-rant-controversy-reactions/

I've found the puzzle/exploration in this to be fairly straightforward and well designed so far. I remember getting stuck in Super Metroid for hours at a time.

Dread's difficulty is very finely tuned wrt boss fights. My first (and only) win was maybe my 20th attempt at the fight, and I'd gone from "dying within the first twenty seconds" to "progressing through to the final stage of the battle without taking damage" very quickly

What is stunningly difficult in Dread is the shinespark stuff. I'm about seven collectibles away from 100% completion, but those seven collectibles are Herculean feats of timing and precision... the last such flagship title that I grudgingly abandoned before 100% because it was just too hard for me was Yoshi's Island

Also, what David Jaffe is citing as "bad design" is a long-standing feature of Metroid's style.

I mean...

https://www.nintendocastle.com/images/guides/metroid-nes_brinstar_energy-tank01.png

There is also a big pop-up on the bottom of the screen early on that literally says "if you come to a dead end, try shooting your surroundings"

Obv a David Jaffe problem and not a game design problem.

It's odd because as much as Metroid has come to mean "big unlockable map and upgrades," the series is absolutely also infamous for impenetrable secrets and such. A la:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQA0vgKF_A

yeah i did not read the piece but i have some sympathy for the idea that weird randomly hidden stuff is "bad design" but its also a metroid trademark at this point which is cool

It was obviously the straw that broke the camels back regarding is frustration for current game design, so much so that he couldn’t see that this specific example was not as good as he thought it was to make that point.

His*

Secrets are essentially marked on the maps in this one too! Plus that ability later that scans the area for breakable blocks.

I think this has a well tuned level of difficulty so far. Occasionally challenging but hardly anything approaching maddening, unless you’re going for one of the more involved (totally optional) secrets. I haven’t gotten that one skill mentioned above though.

it's important to not take jaffe seriously, he aspires to be the ben shapiro of games

idk the 'bomb every unmarked wall randomly to figure out how to progress' design in older metroid games is pretty obnoxious. i played through fusion for the first time recently & it was pretty terrible about it. dread tones it down significantly, there's usually decent contextual clues & it happens nowhere near as much. i still had to look up which wall to shoot once or twice though but it was more "why didn't i think to check there" than the "why would i ever expect i would need to check there" of fusion.

Still wish Fusion/Zero Mission were actually playable somewhere! Skipped those on release.

loved zero mission back in the day, basically another super metroid in style and quality. fusion was fine but i never finished it

I went back and 100%’d it. Oddly enough I figured out two much-easier ways to shine spark two of those last assets than any video demos describe! Had a “maybe I’ll start a Twitch channel” moment but that passed

It's odd because as much as Metroid has come to mean "big unlockable map and upgrades," the series is absolutely also infamous for impenetrable secrets and such. A la:

📹

Sorry I have to post his resident evil review. I haven’t laughed this hard in a while

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GduwxBZAxs4

*taps the 'do not encourage dunkey' sign*

Oh he has a bad rep?

nah i think everyones just tired of his stuff getting linked constantly. especially as some sort of referendum on the quality of a game when he's often specifically seeking out janky bits to make his vids funny

especially as some sort of referendum on the quality of a game when he's often specifically seeking out janky bits to make his vids funny

I have a suspicion he seeks out or emphasizes janky bits because ... yeah, it's funny! Certainly encouraged by the way people customize or hack so many games. And certainly no worse than not funny folks ripping on a game for, like, inconsistent frame rates. Besides, he can be just as funny playing with a game's built in mechanics, like his Dark Souls videos or Breath of the Wild, where esp. in the latter he's hilariously riffing on or reveling in the game's possibilities.

Regardless, I don't think he seriously offers "referendums" on anything, or if he does, it's infrequent. It's almost always with a wink.

I have a suspicion he seeks out or emphasizes janky bits because ... yeah, it's funny! Certainly encouraged by the way people customize or hack so many games. And certainly no worse than not funny folks ripping on a game for, like, inconsistent frame rates. Besides, he can be just as funny playing with a game's built in mechanics, like his Dark Souls videos or Breath of the Wild, where esp. in the latter he's hilariously riffing on or reveling in the game's possibilities.

Regardless, I don't think he seriously offers "referendums" on anything, or if he does, it's infrequent. It's almost always with a wink.

his dark souls vids are hilarious

i do like dunkey fwiw but he's been doing the same shtick for a long time now and i don't need or want to see every single one of his vids/takes

Yeah I dont take his actual "reviews" seriously, he definitely misrepresents the games for entertainment value same as his normal videos. They always come down to "here's another funny video where I go out of my way to make a game look silly and broken, but this time I'm gonna use my serious voice and act like you can expect the entire game to be like this and everyone on social media is gonna take my word for it"

And I only really value his opinions on platformers because that seems to be the only genre he actually likes

Guy has his own school of criticism huh

you should feel bad for liking him calstars

jk he's very popular here and i like his videos

Aw, as someone who tries hard to play games without interacting with gamer culture, I enjoy his stuff as it’s so freaking basic, and he doesn’t do that whole nihilist fake adult swim vibe that seems to be in most games “humour” videos

But I get that he could be too much of a so-so thing.

He's always in character to some extent so I know to not really take any of his criticisms too seriously.

The funniest thing I've seen involving him recently was when he was watching the last big direct and they announced the Mario Movie cast... it was as if the universe made its own Dunkey video without his involvement and then showed it to him for him to approve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFdkZNVtS5Q

Omg I didn’t know about any of that casting outside of Chris Pratt. I kinda love it tbh.

Dunkey enunciates like he's delivering a monologue at the Stratford Festival but with a vape shop cashier's accent

He also has a video about "illogical" game pricing which JiC must love.

Heh, I think I posted it.

finally got one of these, primarily for BOTW. really slick, impressive piece of technology

congrats! worth it for BOTW alone tbh

the oled one looks even more slick but i dont think i can justify buying another, will hope the switch 2 has oled from day 1

since i went in cold, i thought i'd save 50 bucks and go for the medium tier one. now i am left wishing i had a bigger screen, but eh. i also don't think i felt like hunting around for the OLED (just let me think the supply chain has wrecked distribution for that model, thanks)

the base switch screen is still a good quality panel, they didn't cheap out there, oled is just very deluxe