As the article alludes to this is in large part due to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Which has a higher than 100% attach rate on the Switch, which is simply amazing.
There are a couple of very nice third-party games available on the switch now too (Snipperclips are great!) and the updated Mario Cart is just a week away. But indeed, Zelda would be the main reason to get one right now.
The Wii and Wii sports was a freakshow level of success. It tapped into a lot of things Nintendo simply is not going to be able to reproduce: aging gamers with few casual gaming outlets, the novelty of motion controls, half the cost of a xbox/ps, etc.
It really had no competitors. PS Move, while a nice technical effort, came too late and didn't have the developer support needed. The Kinect failed also for the same reasons on top of lacking a holdable controller so Kinect-games were ultimately forced to be super simple as waving and moving around can only do so much.
The Wii U had these types of games and they didn't blow up like the original Wii. I think its fair to say no one expected the Wii to take off like it did and unrealistic to expect Nintendo to follow the same formula and to get the same results. If anything, motion control games died fairly quickly as the fad ran itself out and are only coming back now as a much needed accessory for pricey VR systems.
The wii is still really fun and quite different as gaming experience from regular consoles. I booted it up today just for fun and ended up playing mario galaxy for hours with my 5yo cheering me on. Playing my ps4 is also fun, but not as relaxing and definitely not as approachable.
This to me is up there in dumb Nintendo decisions together with calling it "Wii U" and discontinuing the mini NES. Did they really think anybody would pay $50 for that? 1-2 Switch like Wii Sports was a perfect demo of the system and everybody should get it for free to entice them.
This is the boat I'm in. BOTW is the only triple-A game on the platform right now. Even their eshop has a dearth of content available, much of it ridiculously overpriced.
However, I am having a lot of fun with Graceful Explosion Machine and Fast RMX. They don't have the depth of BOTW, but they are good games that are worth the price tag. If there can be more games like those, the Switch could do well in the long run.
A lot of Nintendo fans are early adopters, that's why they're buying a console with one significant game in March. For the general public they need to have more on offer than that.
Here are new AAA games which we are assured will be out by Christmas: Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skylanders, NBA 2K18, Arms, Splatoon 2.
There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform. Meaning people won't be buying a Switch to play those.
No doubt you're moaning about me leaving out Super Mario Odyssey, but at the time of writing SMO has no set release date only a vague "TBD, Holiday 2017." As does Project Sonic 2017. Nintendo games overrun their release date as much as other publishers, therefore one cannot be assured SMO will ship before the big holiday period.
If you look beyond 2017, it remains pretty slim pickings for the Switch. Likely until at least summer 2018 we won't see more than perhaps half a dozen exclusive AAA games on the console. We still have no assurance that the mainstream Pokemon franchise will be developed for the console.
The Wii U also sold fairly well early in its life, but sales dried up and never recovered with publishers avoiding it due its poor sales performance. The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself.
It all remains to be seen. I'll be paying close attention to Christmas 2017 sales figures because it might be the life or death of the Switch.
Zelda is (supposed to be) amazing (haven't played it), Mario Kart 8 was amazing, and Splatoon was amazing (assuming sequel will be).
TONS of gamers didn't get to play any of them because the WiiU sold so poorly, so for a great many people they're 'new' games and worth buying the system for.
Almost all Wii U games don't have a release date for the Switch yet. If they can get the entire Wii U back catalogue released by Christmas 2017 that would definitely help, but that's a big "if" and Nintendo hasn't claimed that they're trying to.
>The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself.
I think the prospect of putting AAA games on a portable system, will draw a lot of AAA studios to take the risk, if their game can be run on the hardware. I think the portability factor is a large factor of why they are selling so fast despite the lack of games right now. I think people want to see what its like to play non-junk/freemium/IAP driven games on the go. At least it was a major factor for me. I can't wait to play Mario Kart with my co-workers at lunch!
I would argue the Switch looks to have the 2nd best true exclusive lineup (edit: coming out this year) at worst (PC + console isn't true exclusive). XBox One doesn't have a whole lot coming out you cannot get elsewhere, PS4 has a decent lineup (Nioh, Persona 5, Horizon off the top of my head), but with Zelda + Mario Odyssey + Splatoon 2 + Xenoblade Chronicles 2 they have a pretty solid first year. The problem being what will they have coming out year 2 to add on to that? Only so many dev teams at Nintendo and they are putting out a LOT of first and second party content this year.
> There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform.
You know, I'm not sure. Those games are out for other home consoles, sure—but the Switch is not, precisely, a home console. Its form-factor makes it not just a substitute good for an XBO or PS4, but also a substitute good for a 3DS or an iPad. You know, a thing you buy for your kid to play with on car-trips.
And that means that those older and Indie titles—which wouldn't see very high attach-rates when ported onto current-gen home consoles—might fare a bit better, because they're reaching a market which didn't have access to them before. You can't play Skyrim on an iPad or a 3DS.
It seems they're having the opposite problem and have already had to double production. If nintendo thinks they could sell massive numbers over Christmas then they might delay mario to push more consoles in the new year.
We just bring the laptops, set up a LAN game and 7-8 of us sit in the same room. It does involve bringing some hardware along, but it isn't a big deal. We used to do it quite often.
Hmm... I can name at least 3 people who don't even have a laptop who were enjoying themselves in the last 8-player Bomberman game I played on the Switch.
I like LAN parties, but the whole concept of them is kinda limited to the nerdy crowd. I'm totally a nerd btw, I go to conventions and play in those LAN rooms and stuff.
But opening up gameplay to my general non-nerd friends only happens through couch gaming. A lot of my friends straight up wouldn't get a chance to play in a LAN-party setup. But they come over and have fun with Mario Kart, Puyo Tetris, Smash, or most recently... Bomberman.
I also heard Psyonix was considering bringing Rocket League to the platform. If they do, that would be another very good reason to get it. But I agree that BotW would be the only reason I'm interested in the console at all -- similar to how cooperative Monster Hunter experiences with friends would be the only reason I would consider one of their traditional handhelds.
This version of Zelda is astonishingly great - very different to others in the franchise.
It's a completely free and open world, no grinding required, with simple gameplay yet with challenging layers that appeal to the folks with wanting more, a beautiful environment with amazing weather and climate differences and so on.
Above all there is no in-app purchases required. It's a reminder of what games on the iPad could have been.
One potential reason for that (apart from the one mentioned in the article): people who went ahead and purchased the game, but can't find a system yet. I know more than one person in that position.
I skipped the WiiU, precisely because the one game that might have motivated me to get one got delayed so long that it was also available on the Switch.
The new Zelda is amazing. Not only the best Zelda game ever made, I think it's just one of the best 3rd person open-world adventure games ever made, for any system, period. Definitely a system seller.
I'm interested in nothing else right now though - the rest of the available games seem like Indie shovel-ware or re-releases. Shovel Knight. Come on, that's like 2 years old by now.
I'll still buy every Nintendo game they make for this, but highly unlikely I'll end up with a sizable 3rd party collection on it. Got a PS4 Pro for that.
Not sure what your friend is doing, since weapons are extremely plentiful and disposable. You're also encouraged to find other ways of killing enemies, usually by using your Sheikah Slate powers to manipulate the environment to kill monsters. Think of the weapons as an analogue to ammo in a shooter.
There is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic. Basically, it's the game's way of making sure you experiment and play around with new weapon types, give you more of an interplay during combat by picking up enemy weapons and using it against them, and giving you overpowered weapons without letting you just find "the best weapon" and keep it forever.
At this stage in my playthrough, I often have to explicitly toss out weapons because I have too many -- very rarely do I run out of weapons and have to farm.
>There is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic
I actually disagree with it being well designed. The weapons are too common and break so frequently I feel like I'm playing a weapon changing simulator. They have never been a limitation and I have never worried about finding a new weapon to use. However I do find myself constantly having to bring up the menu to change weapons. I have 12 weapon slots and pretty much every slot is a knight's claymore or guardian weapon.
Once you get to the point of farming the world minibosses you'll never find yourself wanting of a good weapon. Hinox and Lynel have good weapon drops and they drop pretty frequently.
I feel as though weapons should have been made more rare but more durable so that there were times when you wouldn't have a weapon because they were rare to come across and you'd second guess yourself about using your weapons on lesser mobs like red moblins or keese.
I find myself needing shields more often than weapons - since I like to go Guardian hunting and I kill them exclusively with shield parries. One or two missed parries and my shield is destroyed. While I rarely miss the parry anymore, it does still happen.
Wow, the Master Sword even 'breaks' (if only for 10 minutes)? Is there a BigGoron Sword or something that actually is "the best weapon" and doesn't ever 'break'?
Everything breaks and this is actually a good game mechanic.
In other games you can end up with ridiculously overpowered gear, and then cheese your way through all the areas of the game that are note late game.
If you do this here, you will waste very good weapons on enemies that are not very hard. Then you'll pick up their middle-tier weapons. Or you'll just preserve your good weapons by not wasting them on cheap enemies, which actually makes things more fun.
It also runs the other way. If you go straight for Hyrule Castle you'll actually find precisely the kind of weapons you need for Hyrule Castle there.
You can sneak into Hyrule Castle in the early game to get great weapons, but they won't last forever.
If it's so good a mechanic why does the Master Sword not break permanently? Instead it repairs over time -- which is exactly what other games with item damage usually let you do, repair (over time, with an item, or talking to someone). It's a better mechanic than permanent breakage for everything, but if you really want it you can add in a point-of-no-repair. Having just one item be different here is a smell.
The power issue is separate and can be resolved (or not, it's sometimes fun to immediately feel like a badass while never being invincible) in a lot of ways. I don't really see how permanent weapon damage would make much difference in those tradeoffs, at least compared to a game that has repair.
That isn't true at all. You -can- use sticks to hit things, but they are terrible weapons and I never used them outside of the tutorial zone.
Weapons are dropped off of almost every enemy, and were never a problem to get, though there is a fairly high churn rate- most weapons have like 50 strikes in them (maybe 5 battles) before they break. There are a number of weapons with significantly more than that though (Zora's Diamond spear is like 300 iirc)
Weapons wear out. I guess you might need to farm (for 30 seconds) some sticks very early on just in case.
But now I have 4 or 5 more weapon slots than I started with and 3 additional ones elsewhere. And they are all full of different weapons. Now the hard part is figuring out which ones to keep when I come across new weapons, so I'm usually happy when something breaks because it takes the decision away :p
He's not technically wrong, he's just....basically wrong.
Weapons and shields wear out. But I always have at least 5 on my and you can usually pick up the enemy you just killed's weapon. I've never been short on weapons.
It's a little sad to see that awesome sword you kinda got attached to break, but....there's always something new to try. Two-handed spears, giant hammers - adds nice variety.
I'm 95 hours into BoTW and still going very strong. For me that is unheard of, as I typically get board of adventure/rpg type games (I'm more into arcade style games).
My concern with the Switch though is it's the same problem the Wii U had: Nintendo is likely the only company that will really make AAA games for it, and they can only make so many games. The next game I'm looking forward to comes in December (Mario), and Nintendo have not announced anything else compelling yet.
By making these oddball consoles, Nintendo puts themselves in an impossible position of supporting the console entirely on their own. With how much resources it takes to make AAA games today, they just can't scale up to the challenge. BoTW was in development for what, 5 years?
I could be wrong on this, but my understanding was that several third-party publishers have shown public interest in developing for the Switch (Bethesda comes to mind). I would hope they would have learned from their mistakes with the Wii U.
Moreover, I've also heard that a development license for the Switch is crazy cheap- like $500? I wouldn't be surprised if they're more interested in indie and "pro-indie" titles than AAA. I mean, look at "One-Two Switch"- it's almost more of a tech demo than a party game.
I hope you're right.
But honestly, I played Skyrim for a bit in 2011, I'm not interested in shelling out $60 to play it again....on a small screen. Excuse me if I'm a little skeptical of Bethesda's...."commitment" - I doubt it's anything more than ports of old games.
I actually don't know anyone (that includes me) who bought a Switch as their primary system or as the system to play all games on - everyone I know bought it to play Nintendo games.
Looking at the eShop now, it's Zelda, followed by some shovelware, followed by games I can get on Steam. Or the PS4.
There's gotta be some non-Nintendo Switch exclusives that are actually good and not just ports/re-releases.
You're likely to get over 100 hours out of BoTW. Even if that were the only game you ever got, you are only looking at around $3.50 per hour of fun. That's not terrible.
Gaming is generally one of the cheapest hobbies to have. Even on the hardcore PC side with monster rigs, it still can typically come out way cheaper over a multi-year period than, say, skiing. But $3.50/hr is a lot for gaming, and a lot for BotW when it's on the Wii U too... BotW is probably worth it but I'll wait. :)
(One example, I got Dark Souls for $5 and have 100 hours on it, that's 5 cents per hour. Sure I didn't get it when it first came out (otherwise it would have been more, though not that much more -- but at the same time I may also have put more time into it with more active PvP) but I didn't need to, I had other stuff to play. I've got quite a backlog, or things to buy to add to the backlog when they're on sale, of amazing games to play that I don't need to play the latest thing at full price. Or a more recent example, I spent $15 helping back Yooka-Laylee two years ago, and it took me 23 hours to 100% it, so 65 cents per hour. Suppose it was $60, though, that's still only $2.60/hr.)
But bringing it back to the main point of the thread, which isn't cost, what's Nintendo going to do next? They have a ton of unused/underutilized IP, they can't make AAA content on a similar schedule to the rest of the industry, and it's not because their offerings are just that much better. Additionally when people can have 100+ hours of fun with the launch title, why are they going to buy other games when they come out? The Wii was notorious for having a very low bought-games-per-console figure, even though there were several great games for it. I can't imagine many third parties looking at the Switch as anything but a dumping ground (when the added dev cost is low) for stuff they already put on other platforms. In a few years everyone will have a mobile phone more powerful anyway so maybe it won't be much work at all.
I'd be happy with Mario, Zelda, METROID (cough cough) and a few other Nintendo big-hitters, honestly. For me, the Switch is just the "Nintendo tax" in order to get to the games.
Sony has a lot of developers making exclusives, which is why I own a PS4. But virtually anything else is cross-platform already, except for the MS exclusives. And chances are, I'd get a 3rd-party cross-platform for the PS4 Pro before the Switch.
I don't know how Nintendo can dig themselves out of this predicament.
I'd be happy with that too, but look at the Wii U. It never got Metroid, and in a sense it didn't even get Zelda. Both of its Mario games were reuses of previous game engines. I think it's pretty clear that Nintendo can't deliver as many big games per generation as we'd all like.
The last Zelda game I bought was Skyward Sword for my Wii. Fairly early on I ran into something in one of the dungeons that I simply could not get past. I just could not get the timing right for the necessary move. I think my reflexes have slowed down a little as I've moved firmly past "not a kid anymore" into "middle aged enough to occasionally have some stupid kid at the drive through actually try to give me a senior discount", and that was enough to get me in Skyward Sword.
Since Zelda games before BoTW have generally a linear progression where you must complete various things in order to advance, getting stuck pretty much is game over.
The reviews I've read say BoTW tosses that out and is very "open world", and there is almost no need to finish any particular thing in order to progress.
You must complete the first 4 trials in the opening area - after that you can go directly to Ganon, explore the world, complete one of the 4 main dungeons, do more temples, or whatever you want in basically whatever order you want.
Some things may be easier with prerequisites met but are still 100% possible if they aren't.
What criteria are you using here? Perhaps you are not a long-time fan of the series, but if you are factoring in innovation and engaging gameplay relative to the time period, Link to the Past comes out unequivocally on top.
I ordered BotW on the last day of Amazon's 2 week 20% off thing for prime members thing. Would've liked to ordered w/ a Switch, but unfortunately that wasn't going to pass. Luckily, a few weeks later after searching various stores' stock, I lucked out and was able to get the Switch as well (Amazon as well, actually).
So depending on when these stats were put together, I could be part of the group putting Switch BotW sales above the Switch console and I imagine there are others who ordered similarly.
Even if the headline was "Switch is the fastest produced console in Nintendo's history" it'd still be a headline. As you mentioned, they're notorious for slow production of their systems.
While playing the wii-u titles I don't recall ever saying 'this game would be more fun if only the graphics were better'.
The hit Nintendo took by selling an underpowered console was loosing 3rd party support, as it was reportedly too much effort for folks like EA to support a platform that was so far behind their other supported consoles.
I wonder if history will repeat with the next generation of xbox/ps around the corner. If switch sales continue at this pace, I suspect not.
The Wii U was reportedly also somewhat difficult to develop for (especially compared to the reboxed PCs that are the PS4 and XBox One), and the second screen also didn't help matters in that regard. The Switch will benefit from a fairly standard set of inputs and outputs: the buttons on the Joycons map pretty easily to the XBone and PS4 controllers, and it's just a single display (though the difference in power levels between docked and undocked is a slight hitch there).
The 2nd screen makes a lot of games better, BotW would be much better with the 2nd screen showing inventory, maps etc.. Presumably that was how it was originally designed (Sheikha Slate) and they crippled it to favour the Switch?
Oh, I totally agree that the 2nd screen was awesome when properly used. I had the same theory around the Shiekah Slate/Gamepad parallel. They've done similar things with an item's in-game aesthetic matching the system it's on (most notably the Pokedex in several games matching the hardware it was released for).
Don't worry, I'm sure that the gaming press will still come out with an article that tells us how Nintendo is dying and should just release games for the iPhone.
Good to see Nintendo back in the game. They have been a different breed of gaming company for quite some time now. I really missed the known gaming faces. I mean Zelda, Mario, Kirby, Metroid etc. are like the EPIC franchises and what I was getting on XBOX or PS4 was nothing but alternatives. With switch I can totally see Sony or Microsoft taking up a page in their next console.
I've only gone as far as the Xbox 360, and while I agree that Nintendo remains special (re-playing Metroid Prime and Zero Mission for the umpteenth time on my recently-bought WiiU while the new Zelda is right there and jealous of my lack of attention), there are a number of amazing non-nintendo games that I played on my 360 and laptop:
Shadow Complex (metroidvania style game, and actually pretty good), Metal Gear Solid V, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, Fallout 3, Prison Complex, Device 6... and that's not including PlayStation exclusives that I am almost certain to love, like Ico/Shadow Of The Colossus.
There's plenty of amazing 'different breed' type games outside of Nintendo, is what I'm saying. At the same time I agree that Nintendo remains special: out of all the games I've played in recent years, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Zero Mission, Mario Galaxy, Animal Crossing (GameCube), etc. are equal and often better in my book than all the other great stuff.
I guess my point is that as a gamer dipping in and out of the 'scene' alongside figuring out what React Router decided to break on this update and dealing with adult life stuff, there's been plenty of great stuff outside of Nintendo, but nonetheless Nintendo has remained a consistent source of gaming joy that, in other places, is harder to find.
Nintendo has a real chance of dominating Christmas this year, if they get Mario Odyssey and Zelda DLC right. For that reason, the latter will be pure fan service, I think.
Do we know already what AAA games will be released on PS and Xbox during that period?
I don't think calling it DLC is fair. Back before the DLC craze, this would have simply been an "Expansion".
The core game is so good, so expansive, that it doesn't bother me in the slightest that there's upcoming "DLC". Don't get me wrong - I hate the trend in general, but in this case it's not a bad thing.
Edit: Ok, I realize that they even call it DLC on zelda.com, but my point still stands: these are expansions. The kind gamers used to get excited about.
We barely know anything about it at this point. Unless you've got an uncle at Nintendo, your assertion that it's an "expansion" is unfounded.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm very optimistic, and have already bought/pre-ordered it (it's a gray area which to call it, because it unlocks some things immediately, but the bulk of it isn't available for a few months), but my optimism is mainly based on the Mario Kart 8 DLC, not what they've announced about the BotW DLC itself.
Given how BotW is the most profitable thing for Nintendo since the Wii, I’m sure they’ve got every available developer and their mother working on the holiday DLC. Getting this one DLC right is a make-or-break situation for Nintendo, if they want the Switch to compete with the other consoles in the next few years.
BotW is probably the most critically acclaimed thing to come out of Nintendo in a while, but they've sold maybe 5m copies at this point, compared to over 100m over the lifetime of the Wii, hardly in the same ballpark. Zelda games also tend not to be huge sellers for Nintendo, despite their apparent popularity.
BotW has been a system seller up to this point, but only because the hardware's supplies are fairly limited at this point. I don't expect the DLC's release will be a significant factor in the Switch's continued sales, unless their other first party titles end up having disappointing sales.
> We barely know anything about it at this point. Unless you've got an uncle at Nintendo, your assertion that it's an "expansion" is unfounded.
True, we don't know the specifics, but my point was that the core game doesn't feel like it was intentionally broken just to make way for DLC like we see far too often with games these days. Any new content is an expansion on what is currently a masterpiece.
Sure, we don't know how expansive an expansion it is, but I'd still argue that even a small release is an expansion at this point. I'm also giving them the benefit of the doubt considering how excellent the core game is.
I don't think many modern DLCs are equivalent in scale to old-school expansions. They would generally nearly double the content of the original in a single expanded story. Some modern games collections of DLC (so collect all of the DLC of Skyrim or Witcher 3) would be roughly on-par with an expansion, but even then they tend to be multiple mostly independent pieces of content rather than a large cohesive addition.
In that sense, I think (from what we've heard), BotW's DLC is not really an expansion pack in the old sense.
I understand it's bad when people charge full game prices for something that's actually the first chapter in a series of paid DLC...
But why is DLC fundamentally bad? To me it seems to match the tick-tock-tock nature of engine development: build a game, spend years on an engine and content, price it at full price, then release a series of cheaper content-only products that use the same engine. Use that income to pay for next gen engine development.
The alternative is that developers can only release content if it's feature-length and using a next generation engine? That seems like a pointless demand.
The same reason preorders are bad: it creates perverse incentives for developers and publishers.
The problem people have with DLC isn't that developers are being demanded to release feature-length content, it's that developers are incentivized to lock stuff that's already developed and in the game behind a paywall. Essentially selling you content that you already purchased.
I'm not too worried about Nintendo succumbing to this problem, but there are some other devs out there with no such scruples. EA and Activision come to mind..
I don't understand, you're saying you think a developer who sells a great product at a good price will typically make less revenue than if they broke off part of that product, sold it as DLC, and took the hit in the press?
Sony's on a huge roll so far in 2017 with HZD (2.6M units in first two weeks), Nier, Nioh, Persona 5, etc. Without releasing anything else, those games are strong enough to push PS4 pretty far in late 2017.
However, for the holiday season, they've got a bunch coming up: GT Sport, Hellblade, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Nex Machina, Yakuza Kiwami, etc.
The Switch is a huge hit among Nintendo fans, but it's no surprise they turned out for the best Zelda game in years. The real test of the Switch is if Nintendo can keep it stocked with more first- and third-party games than the Wii U had. If the Switch has a robust library in a year, then it'll be a real contender.
I'm going to get one because ever since my kids have discovered the old Super Mario Brothers Super Show on Netflix they've been completely hooked on all things Mario. Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U was such a great family game that we've been playing it for close to 3 years now.
It had such a good cooperative experience that we could even play with my 4 year old pretty quickly. We even had a big night out for dinner after we finally beat the crown world. :-)
I'm 26 now but I can say that some of my greatest memories as a kid are the times I spent gaming with my brother and dad. I simply cannot think of SNES without thinking about the three of us working our way through all of the old Donkey Kong games. I'm sure your kids will be the same :)
I fondly remember being unable to beat Vargas in FF6 (FF3 in the States I think?) with the Left-Right-Left Sabin command, and my dad trying to do it for me (and failing as well). :)
I had so much fun with Super Mario 3D World that the new Mario is definitely THE reason to buy Switch. I bought the Zelda for my old WiiU just because I had the console and the game is basically the same as it is for Switch.
I watched some trailers from Super Mario Odyssey, where Mario was in a sandbox looking for adventures, like in Mario 64, but the sandbox was an actual real city and that really sold the game for me. The proper Mario games have always been massively fun which I can't always say about the Zelda games; the last Zelda before BotW I truly liked was Wind Waker. And there are rumors for a new Super Mario Galaxy game to the new console.
But all in all, these games are so far away in the future I can surely buy the new console in 2018 when I've finished BotW and its DLC's.
Well, then it's a good reason to play the game again with Switch on 2018. For what I looked comparison videos on Youtube the graphics are not that different and I've really really enjoyed the Wii U version. And gosh the game is beautiful!
And this comes from a guy who enjoyed Witcher 3 with ultra graphics and 60 fps as his last game. :)
Since you own the disk you could extract the ROM and probably before 2018 comes play BotW in much higher quality than the Switch can do, on your PC. ;) Emulation sure has come a long way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg0h-ZgVLAI
I know, I've been following the cemu project now. Waiting for the point where I don't need to spend hours on tweaking to get that steady 30 fps (or, gasp, 60 fps) with my Steam Controller. But Zelda reminded me again, that sometimes slow framerate doesn't really matter that much when the game is this good.
As a father with an infant daughter, I am so looking forward to (carefully) introducing her to video games. My wife couldn't care less about them, but I'm hoping she inherits my love of them.
It seems like a combo: Zelda BotW is part of it, but the hardware is also fun. The build quality and kit is fantastic, it reminds me of an iPad designed by a gamer for gaming.
In my case it's also nostalgia. I've been working on my own apps and games, not to mention a day job, so this is the first console I have owned since the N64. Never got into console titles that seemed to be just as good on the PC.
That's 3 reasons right there... I ended up buying the Special Edition ($100 gets you the game, a music CD, a hard traveling case and a collector's coin) in March before I found a Switch in April.
I prefer the Pro Controller and using it as a standard console, but the mobility is great if needed. Sticker shock hasn't been a factor, since I remember buying 3 extra controllers for the N64.
The hunt for the Switch is as much as the hunt for the Classic was. Of course, now the Classic is going for 4-5 times as much... more than the Switch!
(Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie. You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card... better to spend $60 on a nice XBone controller and play games in a better emulator on your computer. Just my 2 cents.)
It seems like a different set of tradeoffs. RetroPie (if you're running on a Raspberry Pi, and not on a PC) will have fewer game systems that it can support, of course. But it's also cheap enough to just buy one as a dedicated game system that you leave connected to a TV, so the kids aren't grabbing your laptop to play retro games, or something. For a little more money, you could set up an NUC or something, of course.
> You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card
A lot of kits come with NOOBS loaded on them. You can load RetroPie directly into Raspbian by using a setup script that they provide. You could also boot into Raspbian via NOOBS and use a USB adapter to flash a microSD with another OS.
You could even take a blank SD, extract NOOBS onto it with your phone, and boot the Pi off that (NOOBS and Berryboot just need to be unzipped onto the SD; they don't require images to be flashed).
I bought a pretty cheap HDMI extension cable that snakes from one end of my living room (work desk) to the other (tv+consoles) that would argue otherwise!
I'm one of those that bought Zelda without owning a Switch (yet) since Amazon sold it %20 off those who preordered it.
The console itself has been frustratingly difficult to find since I missed the preorders. I'm hoping Nintendo can pull it together before all my friends finish BoTW.
Have you been keeping up with the stock trackers? I had some luck this weekend with istocknow.com: at 10pm on Saturday night, it was reporting that a Walmart about an hour away from me had gotten a shipment about three hours earlier. My girlfriend and I thus went on a late-night trip and managed to snag one. I was thoroughly surprised, but the guy working electronics confirmed that yup, that information was accurate.
I got one in a GameStop bundle - admittedly it came with BoTW and some lego game so I overpaid a bit for it - nevertheless Zelda is an awesome game; I think it's the best Zelda yet.
I got mine from walmart.com fairly easily - just entered my email in the 'alert me when back in stock', got an email a few days later, ordered, and got the switch delivered 5 days later.
The only hitch was I had to order a bundle (switch + zelda). And zelda, strangely, came a few days after the switch.
It's absolutely amazing to me how Nintendo continuously holds such a high bar for themselves in terms of first party content. They've been pushing out the same formula for console releases for 30 years now, and it works every time because the games are just so undeniably great. I don't understand why the other console manufacturers can't replicate this.
>They've been pushing out the same formula for console releases for 30 years now, and it works every time because the games are just so undeniably great. I don't understand why the other console manufacturers can't replicate this.
The Wii U was a massive failure, precisely because of a lack of third party titles. Nintendo has great ip, but they don't push out enough games. No real Metroid in quite some time and Mario won't even hit the switch until end of year. Other console manufacturers have been far more successful than Nintendo recently.
Edit: to clarify, I love Nintendo, have since the 80's. It's not true that they've been killing it for decades though, Sony has been eating their lunch off and on since the PSX.
Meanwhile, the Nintendo [3]DS continues to be the #1 "game console" when you disregard form-factor, and has had nonstop YOY growth since its introduction.
The Wii U was essentially a failure because Nintendo thought there was still a market for a chained-to-a-TV console—and there is, but only in the "hardcore gamer" segment that don't care for Nintendo's games lineup. The segment who are interested in Nintendo games, have shifted to being far more interested in mobile games than TV-console games (even if they would enjoy playing those games on a TV once in a while.) The Switch is an acknowledgement of this, and that's why it's succeeding.
I think a part of it has also been Nintendo's terrible naming scheme the past few years.
I don't follow gaming news closely, so when I heard of the Wii U I thought it was a hardware revision not unlike the Xbox One S to the Xbox One. It took me over a year after launch to learn that the Wii U is an entirely new console.
The same thing happened with the 3DS. When I finally looked into getting one this past holiday season, I was confused by the 3DS vs 3DS XL vs New 3DS vs New 3DS XL. I was hesitant to buy since I wasn't sure if the New 3DS was a hardware revision or an entirely new console like the Wii U.
On top of that, the marketing wasn't there for me. I learn of my gaming news when it hits the front page of Reddit. When the Switch was announced, there was massive hype behind it. I didn't see the same for the Wii U.
> I was confused by the 3DS vs 3DS XL vs New 3DS vs New 3DS XL.
You know, people level the same complaint at the iPhone, but it doesn't seem to have caused Apple any difficulty selling them. Maybe it's just that Best Buy/Toys-R-Us/EB Games employees aren't as good at helping people find the right model as Apple Store employees are?
The iPhone numbering/naming scheme seems pretty simple and organized to me. Minor upgrades to the iPhone 7 are the 7+ and maybe 7s; major upgrade will be the iPhone 8.
On the other hand, the iPad's numbering was eliminated on its 'primary' model around the time of what would have been the iPad 3. That, in conjunction with the four different sizing options, seems moderately confusing and not consumer friendly. Not sure that that's why the tablet market is declining, but it might be contributing.
The generation gaps are hard stops for your game library though. You can get great support for old iOS apps, or still use the last version supported for your phone. With a new console that doesn't offer backwards compatibility, you may have spent 1-2 grand on a big library of games you simply can't play anymore.
The comparison is valid with the 3DS, though, because the "New 3DS" models do play original-3DS games. It's much more like a iPhone revision than it is like a new console.
> I don't follow gaming news closely, so when I heard of the Wii U I thought it was a hardware revision not unlike the Xbox One S to the Xbox One. It took me over a year after launch to learn that the Wii U is an entirely new console.
It took me until about a month ago! I skipped the Wii and never considered the WiiU because I thought it was a Wii expansion, and as such I figured I'd update when the next console was launched (Switch). Once it was, I did my research and realized that the WiiU would've been a fine purchase for my purposes (retro gaming + nintendo first-party games for WiiU and Wii).
If I'd known what I know now, I probably would have bought a WiiU a few years ago.
The Wii U was a failure because of an utter and complete failure at marketing, of the same kind that doomed the Dreamcast back in the day.
* The name is awful, and led to frequent confusion about it being an addon to the Wii.
* It got almost no advertising, especially when compared to the Wii, and especially the Switch (which got a freakin' super bowl ad!)
And then the more technical concerns:
* Poor support all around. A number of first party franchises like Metroid never even had a mainline game on the system, and we know the third parties were absent.
* Dual-screen concept doesn't map well to a TV. Star Fox Zero is a crying shame because of this. The game is a pain in the ass because of the switching between screens, and it could be so much better without it.
* Expensive: $350 at launch.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the console's under-powered-ness was the big problem. Nintendo's been developing consoles that are hardly cutting edge for well over a decade now. I think the problem was the marketing failures and the low attach rates convinced the third parties to not even bother.
Yep, they made a lot of mistakes with the Wii U :). I think yours is really just a more complete rundown than mine (as opposed to an alternative.)
They lost against the PSX as well though (iirc, 3x more PS1's sold an far more games.) They struck gold with the Wii initially, but at the same time, moved further away from the mainstream gaming crowd. Many games were little more than poorly implemented gimicks.
I'm hoping they hit a home run with the switch, but it's too early to tell. I have one and, while BotW is great, I have nothing else to play.
That's weird because I bought the WiiU specifically for third-party Platinum titles - Bayonetta 1&2 and The Wonderful 101. BotW was just the cherry on top.
Bayonetta was a great game, but you have to look at the breadth of the library. Compared to Sony and MS it's laughably small, and the sales numbers are dismal.
The thing that amazes me is that Nintendo has remained true to a single credo: that gaming should be FUN.
I've tried to get into gaming lately but the console stuff is just so contrived and dull. It's so focused on trying to be a movie (a bad one at that) that it has completely killed any idea of fun. The COD series is the absolute worst culprit. I really don't want to sit through a cutscene, then spend 30 minutes figuring out how the game works. I just want to play.
But Mario, Zelda...they're all just pure FUN. This is gaming as I remember when I was a child.
Try Lakka. Better performance (especially on menus) and generally better UX than RetroPie or any other emulation frontend I've seen. Several common controllers, including (what I use) bluetooth PS3 controllers supported out of the box, with sane auto-mapping for all supported emulators (no more manually mapping controls unless you just like that kind of thing).
Only tricky bit is that you have to have blessedly-pure ROMsets for automatic per-system playlist generation to work (it's hash-based), but that's a minor hurdle (and going through it will encourage you to clean up any "messy" sets you have, which isn't really a bad thing). There's a stickied post on their forum that'll give you the names of what you need. And you can always manually create playlists or launch individual ROMs, regardless.
Not affiliated with it, just a big fan of what Retroarch/Lakka and related projects are doing for emulation.
I bought it, and love it. I also bought an xbox 360 and xbox one and never really fell in love with the console. It's hard to pinpoint "Nintendo magic".
And reading all the reactions here, many people feel the same, a strong passion with the brand.
My 11 year old son and I have been playing through Zelda Breath of the Wild, and we both absolutely love it. He thinks it's a great game, and it reminds me a lot of the original Zelda I played as a kid (which dates me).
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 386 ms ] threadIt really had no competitors. PS Move, while a nice technical effort, came too late and didn't have the developer support needed. The Kinect failed also for the same reasons on top of lacking a holdable controller so Kinect-games were ultimately forced to be super simple as waving and moving around can only do so much.
The Wii U had these types of games and they didn't blow up like the original Wii. I think its fair to say no one expected the Wii to take off like it did and unrealistic to expect Nintendo to follow the same formula and to get the same results. If anything, motion control games died fairly quickly as the fad ran itself out and are only coming back now as a much needed accessory for pricey VR systems.
I'm imaging Mario & Co racing around in shopping carts, grabbing and tossing bananas etc..
However, I am having a lot of fun with Graceful Explosion Machine and Fast RMX. They don't have the depth of BOTW, but they are good games that are worth the price tag. If there can be more games like those, the Switch could do well in the long run.
A lot of Nintendo fans are early adopters, that's why they're buying a console with one significant game in March. For the general public they need to have more on offer than that.
Here are new AAA games which we are assured will be out by Christmas: Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skylanders, NBA 2K18, Arms, Splatoon 2.
There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform. Meaning people won't be buying a Switch to play those.
No doubt you're moaning about me leaving out Super Mario Odyssey, but at the time of writing SMO has no set release date only a vague "TBD, Holiday 2017." As does Project Sonic 2017. Nintendo games overrun their release date as much as other publishers, therefore one cannot be assured SMO will ship before the big holiday period.
If you look beyond 2017, it remains pretty slim pickings for the Switch. Likely until at least summer 2018 we won't see more than perhaps half a dozen exclusive AAA games on the console. We still have no assurance that the mainstream Pokemon franchise will be developed for the console.
The Wii U also sold fairly well early in its life, but sales dried up and never recovered with publishers avoiding it due its poor sales performance. The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself.
It all remains to be seen. I'll be paying close attention to Christmas 2017 sales figures because it might be the life or death of the Switch.
TONS of gamers didn't get to play any of them because the WiiU sold so poorly, so for a great many people they're 'new' games and worth buying the system for.
I think the prospect of putting AAA games on a portable system, will draw a lot of AAA studios to take the risk, if their game can be run on the hardware. I think the portability factor is a large factor of why they are selling so fast despite the lack of games right now. I think people want to see what its like to play non-junk/freemium/IAP driven games on the go. At least it was a major factor for me. I can't wait to play Mario Kart with my co-workers at lunch!
You know, I'm not sure. Those games are out for other home consoles, sure—but the Switch is not, precisely, a home console. Its form-factor makes it not just a substitute good for an XBO or PS4, but also a substitute good for a 3DS or an iPad. You know, a thing you buy for your kid to play with on car-trips.
And that means that those older and Indie titles—which wouldn't see very high attach-rates when ported onto current-gen home consoles—might fare a bit better, because they're reaching a market which didn't have access to them before. You can't play Skyrim on an iPad or a 3DS.
Its rare to find 8-player party games with simple controls that anybody can get into.
I like LAN parties, but the whole concept of them is kinda limited to the nerdy crowd. I'm totally a nerd btw, I go to conventions and play in those LAN rooms and stuff.
But opening up gameplay to my general non-nerd friends only happens through couch gaming. A lot of my friends straight up wouldn't get a chance to play in a LAN-party setup. But they come over and have fun with Mario Kart, Puyo Tetris, Smash, or most recently... Bomberman.
It's a completely free and open world, no grinding required, with simple gameplay yet with challenging layers that appeal to the folks with wanting more, a beautiful environment with amazing weather and climate differences and so on. Above all there is no in-app purchases required. It's a reminder of what games on the iPad could have been.
It's pretty amazing that one game, available on a previous-generation console, is able to drive that many sales of a new console.
People are basically spending $360 to play BotW.
I'm interested in nothing else right now though - the rest of the available games seem like Indie shovel-ware or re-releases. Shovel Knight. Come on, that's like 2 years old by now.
I'll still buy every Nintendo game they make for this, but highly unlikely I'll end up with a sizable 3rd party collection on it. Got a PS4 Pro for that.
At this stage in my playthrough, I often have to explicitly toss out weapons because I have too many -- very rarely do I run out of weapons and have to farm.
I actually disagree with it being well designed. The weapons are too common and break so frequently I feel like I'm playing a weapon changing simulator. They have never been a limitation and I have never worried about finding a new weapon to use. However I do find myself constantly having to bring up the menu to change weapons. I have 12 weapon slots and pretty much every slot is a knight's claymore or guardian weapon.
Once you get to the point of farming the world minibosses you'll never find yourself wanting of a good weapon. Hinox and Lynel have good weapon drops and they drop pretty frequently.
I feel as though weapons should have been made more rare but more durable so that there were times when you wouldn't have a weapon because they were rare to come across and you'd second guess yourself about using your weapons on lesser mobs like red moblins or keese.
I find myself needing shields more often than weapons - since I like to go Guardian hunting and I kill them exclusively with shield parries. One or two missed parries and my shield is destroyed. While I rarely miss the parry anymore, it does still happen.
In other games you can end up with ridiculously overpowered gear, and then cheese your way through all the areas of the game that are note late game.
If you do this here, you will waste very good weapons on enemies that are not very hard. Then you'll pick up their middle-tier weapons. Or you'll just preserve your good weapons by not wasting them on cheap enemies, which actually makes things more fun.
It also runs the other way. If you go straight for Hyrule Castle you'll actually find precisely the kind of weapons you need for Hyrule Castle there.
You can sneak into Hyrule Castle in the early game to get great weapons, but they won't last forever.
The power issue is separate and can be resolved (or not, it's sometimes fun to immediately feel like a badass while never being invincible) in a lot of ways. I don't really see how permanent weapon damage would make much difference in those tradeoffs, at least compared to a game that has repair.
Weapons are dropped off of almost every enemy, and were never a problem to get, though there is a fairly high churn rate- most weapons have like 50 strikes in them (maybe 5 battles) before they break. There are a number of weapons with significantly more than that though (Zora's Diamond spear is like 300 iirc)
I never had to farm anything in that game though.
But now I have 4 or 5 more weapon slots than I started with and 3 additional ones elsewhere. And they are all full of different weapons. Now the hard part is figuring out which ones to keep when I come across new weapons, so I'm usually happy when something breaks because it takes the decision away :p
It's a little sad to see that awesome sword you kinda got attached to break, but....there's always something new to try. Two-handed spears, giant hammers - adds nice variety.
I'm yet to farm anything.
My concern with the Switch though is it's the same problem the Wii U had: Nintendo is likely the only company that will really make AAA games for it, and they can only make so many games. The next game I'm looking forward to comes in December (Mario), and Nintendo have not announced anything else compelling yet.
By making these oddball consoles, Nintendo puts themselves in an impossible position of supporting the console entirely on their own. With how much resources it takes to make AAA games today, they just can't scale up to the challenge. BoTW was in development for what, 5 years?
Moreover, I've also heard that a development license for the Switch is crazy cheap- like $500? I wouldn't be surprised if they're more interested in indie and "pro-indie" titles than AAA. I mean, look at "One-Two Switch"- it's almost more of a tech demo than a party game.
I actually don't know anyone (that includes me) who bought a Switch as their primary system or as the system to play all games on - everyone I know bought it to play Nintendo games.
Looking at the eShop now, it's Zelda, followed by some shovelware, followed by games I can get on Steam. Or the PS4.
There's gotta be some non-Nintendo Switch exclusives that are actually good and not just ports/re-releases.
Game is amazing.
(One example, I got Dark Souls for $5 and have 100 hours on it, that's 5 cents per hour. Sure I didn't get it when it first came out (otherwise it would have been more, though not that much more -- but at the same time I may also have put more time into it with more active PvP) but I didn't need to, I had other stuff to play. I've got quite a backlog, or things to buy to add to the backlog when they're on sale, of amazing games to play that I don't need to play the latest thing at full price. Or a more recent example, I spent $15 helping back Yooka-Laylee two years ago, and it took me 23 hours to 100% it, so 65 cents per hour. Suppose it was $60, though, that's still only $2.60/hr.)
But bringing it back to the main point of the thread, which isn't cost, what's Nintendo going to do next? They have a ton of unused/underutilized IP, they can't make AAA content on a similar schedule to the rest of the industry, and it's not because their offerings are just that much better. Additionally when people can have 100+ hours of fun with the launch title, why are they going to buy other games when they come out? The Wii was notorious for having a very low bought-games-per-console figure, even though there were several great games for it. I can't imagine many third parties looking at the Switch as anything but a dumping ground (when the added dev cost is low) for stuff they already put on other platforms. In a few years everyone will have a mobile phone more powerful anyway so maybe it won't be much work at all.
Sony has a lot of developers making exclusives, which is why I own a PS4. But virtually anything else is cross-platform already, except for the MS exclusives. And chances are, I'd get a 3rd-party cross-platform for the PS4 Pro before the Switch.
I don't know how Nintendo can dig themselves out of this predicament.
The last Zelda game I bought was Skyward Sword for my Wii. Fairly early on I ran into something in one of the dungeons that I simply could not get past. I just could not get the timing right for the necessary move. I think my reflexes have slowed down a little as I've moved firmly past "not a kid anymore" into "middle aged enough to occasionally have some stupid kid at the drive through actually try to give me a senior discount", and that was enough to get me in Skyward Sword.
Since Zelda games before BoTW have generally a linear progression where you must complete various things in order to advance, getting stuck pretty much is game over.
The reviews I've read say BoTW tosses that out and is very "open world", and there is almost no need to finish any particular thing in order to progress.
Is that actually accurate?
Some things may be easier with prerequisites met but are still 100% possible if they aren't.
What criteria are you using here? Perhaps you are not a long-time fan of the series, but if you are factoring in innovation and engaging gameplay relative to the time period, Link to the Past comes out unequivocally on top.
So depending on when these stats were put together, I could be part of the group putting Switch BotW sales above the Switch console and I imagine there are others who ordered similarly.
Is it that the Switch is the most immediately desirable system in Nintendo's history, or just that it's the most quickly produced one in history?
The hit Nintendo took by selling an underpowered console was loosing 3rd party support, as it was reportedly too much effort for folks like EA to support a platform that was so far behind their other supported consoles.
I wonder if history will repeat with the next generation of xbox/ps around the corner. If switch sales continue at this pace, I suspect not.
Shadow Complex (metroidvania style game, and actually pretty good), Metal Gear Solid V, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, Fallout 3, Prison Complex, Device 6... and that's not including PlayStation exclusives that I am almost certain to love, like Ico/Shadow Of The Colossus.
There's plenty of amazing 'different breed' type games outside of Nintendo, is what I'm saying. At the same time I agree that Nintendo remains special: out of all the games I've played in recent years, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Zero Mission, Mario Galaxy, Animal Crossing (GameCube), etc. are equal and often better in my book than all the other great stuff.
I guess my point is that as a gamer dipping in and out of the 'scene' alongside figuring out what React Router decided to break on this update and dealing with adult life stuff, there's been plenty of great stuff outside of Nintendo, but nonetheless Nintendo has remained a consistent source of gaming joy that, in other places, is harder to find.
Do we know already what AAA games will be released on PS and Xbox during that period?
The core game is so good, so expansive, that it doesn't bother me in the slightest that there's upcoming "DLC". Don't get me wrong - I hate the trend in general, but in this case it's not a bad thing.
Edit: Ok, I realize that they even call it DLC on zelda.com, but my point still stands: these are expansions. The kind gamers used to get excited about.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm very optimistic, and have already bought/pre-ordered it (it's a gray area which to call it, because it unlocks some things immediately, but the bulk of it isn't available for a few months), but my optimism is mainly based on the Mario Kart 8 DLC, not what they've announced about the BotW DLC itself.
BotW has been a system seller up to this point, but only because the hardware's supplies are fairly limited at this point. I don't expect the DLC's release will be a significant factor in the Switch's continued sales, unless their other first party titles end up having disappointing sales.
True, we don't know the specifics, but my point was that the core game doesn't feel like it was intentionally broken just to make way for DLC like we see far too often with games these days. Any new content is an expansion on what is currently a masterpiece.
Sure, we don't know how expansive an expansion it is, but I'd still argue that even a small release is an expansion at this point. I'm also giving them the benefit of the doubt considering how excellent the core game is.
In that sense, I think (from what we've heard), BotW's DLC is not really an expansion pack in the old sense.
But why is DLC fundamentally bad? To me it seems to match the tick-tock-tock nature of engine development: build a game, spend years on an engine and content, price it at full price, then release a series of cheaper content-only products that use the same engine. Use that income to pay for next gen engine development.
The alternative is that developers can only release content if it's feature-length and using a next generation engine? That seems like a pointless demand.
The same reason preorders are bad: it creates perverse incentives for developers and publishers.
The problem people have with DLC isn't that developers are being demanded to release feature-length content, it's that developers are incentivized to lock stuff that's already developed and in the game behind a paywall. Essentially selling you content that you already purchased.
I'm not too worried about Nintendo succumbing to this problem, but there are some other devs out there with no such scruples. EA and Activision come to mind..
Is that an empirical finding?
However, for the holiday season, they've got a bunch coming up: GT Sport, Hellblade, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Nex Machina, Yakuza Kiwami, etc.
https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/ps4-console-exclusives-conf...
It's almost too much to keep up with...really a golden year for Sony.
It had such a good cooperative experience that we could even play with my 4 year old pretty quickly. We even had a big night out for dinner after we finally beat the crown world. :-)
I watched some trailers from Super Mario Odyssey, where Mario was in a sandbox looking for adventures, like in Mario 64, but the sandbox was an actual real city and that really sold the game for me. The proper Mario games have always been massively fun which I can't always say about the Zelda games; the last Zelda before BotW I truly liked was Wind Waker. And there are rumors for a new Super Mario Galaxy game to the new console.
But all in all, these games are so far away in the future I can surely buy the new console in 2018 when I've finished BotW and its DLC's.
And this comes from a guy who enjoyed Witcher 3 with ultra graphics and 60 fps as his last game. :)
there must be a Mario maker switch on the horizon but it's yet to be discussed from nintendo
(o) https://youtu.be/KKIm3mFk-6U
Mario Maker is great though, yes.
In my case it's also nostalgia. I've been working on my own apps and games, not to mention a day job, so this is the first console I have owned since the N64. Never got into console titles that seemed to be just as good on the PC.
That's 3 reasons right there... I ended up buying the Special Edition ($100 gets you the game, a music CD, a hard traveling case and a collector's coin) in March before I found a Switch in April.
I prefer the Pro Controller and using it as a standard console, but the mobility is great if needed. Sticker shock hasn't been a factor, since I remember buying 3 extra controllers for the N64.
The hunt for the Switch is as much as the hunt for the Classic was. Of course, now the Classic is going for 4-5 times as much... more than the Switch!
(Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie. You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card... better to spend $60 on a nice XBone controller and play games in a better emulator on your computer. Just my 2 cents.)
That's really my biggest complaint with the unit, the difficulty of charging the joycons. Taking off the wrist straps each time is really bad UX.
It seems like a different set of tradeoffs. RetroPie (if you're running on a Raspberry Pi, and not on a PC) will have fewer game systems that it can support, of course. But it's also cheap enough to just buy one as a dedicated game system that you leave connected to a TV, so the kids aren't grabbing your laptop to play retro games, or something. For a little more money, you could set up an NUC or something, of course.
> You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card
A lot of kits come with NOOBS loaded on them. You can load RetroPie directly into Raspbian by using a setup script that they provide. You could also boot into Raspbian via NOOBS and use a USB adapter to flash a microSD with another OS.
You could even take a blank SD, extract NOOBS onto it with your phone, and boot the Pi off that (NOOBS and Berryboot just need to be unzipped onto the SD; they don't require images to be flashed).
The console itself has been frustratingly difficult to find since I missed the preorders. I'm hoping Nintendo can pull it together before all my friends finish BoTW.
The only hitch was I had to order a bundle (switch + zelda). And zelda, strangely, came a few days after the switch.
The Wii U was a massive failure, precisely because of a lack of third party titles. Nintendo has great ip, but they don't push out enough games. No real Metroid in quite some time and Mario won't even hit the switch until end of year. Other console manufacturers have been far more successful than Nintendo recently.
Edit: to clarify, I love Nintendo, have since the 80's. It's not true that they've been killing it for decades though, Sony has been eating their lunch off and on since the PSX.
The Wii U was essentially a failure because Nintendo thought there was still a market for a chained-to-a-TV console—and there is, but only in the "hardcore gamer" segment that don't care for Nintendo's games lineup. The segment who are interested in Nintendo games, have shifted to being far more interested in mobile games than TV-console games (even if they would enjoy playing those games on a TV once in a while.) The Switch is an acknowledgement of this, and that's why it's succeeding.
I don't follow gaming news closely, so when I heard of the Wii U I thought it was a hardware revision not unlike the Xbox One S to the Xbox One. It took me over a year after launch to learn that the Wii U is an entirely new console.
The same thing happened with the 3DS. When I finally looked into getting one this past holiday season, I was confused by the 3DS vs 3DS XL vs New 3DS vs New 3DS XL. I was hesitant to buy since I wasn't sure if the New 3DS was a hardware revision or an entirely new console like the Wii U.
On top of that, the marketing wasn't there for me. I learn of my gaming news when it hits the front page of Reddit. When the Switch was announced, there was massive hype behind it. I didn't see the same for the Wii U.
You know, people level the same complaint at the iPhone, but it doesn't seem to have caused Apple any difficulty selling them. Maybe it's just that Best Buy/Toys-R-Us/EB Games employees aren't as good at helping people find the right model as Apple Store employees are?
On the other hand, the iPad's numbering was eliminated on its 'primary' model around the time of what would have been the iPad 3. That, in conjunction with the four different sizing options, seems moderately confusing and not consumer friendly. Not sure that that's why the tablet market is declining, but it might be contributing.
It took me until about a month ago! I skipped the Wii and never considered the WiiU because I thought it was a Wii expansion, and as such I figured I'd update when the next console was launched (Switch). Once it was, I did my research and realized that the WiiU would've been a fine purchase for my purposes (retro gaming + nintendo first-party games for WiiU and Wii).
If I'd known what I know now, I probably would have bought a WiiU a few years ago.
The Wii U was a failure because of an utter and complete failure at marketing, of the same kind that doomed the Dreamcast back in the day.
* The name is awful, and led to frequent confusion about it being an addon to the Wii.
* It got almost no advertising, especially when compared to the Wii, and especially the Switch (which got a freakin' super bowl ad!)
And then the more technical concerns:
* Poor support all around. A number of first party franchises like Metroid never even had a mainline game on the system, and we know the third parties were absent.
* Dual-screen concept doesn't map well to a TV. Star Fox Zero is a crying shame because of this. The game is a pain in the ass because of the switching between screens, and it could be so much better without it.
* Expensive: $350 at launch.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the console's under-powered-ness was the big problem. Nintendo's been developing consoles that are hardly cutting edge for well over a decade now. I think the problem was the marketing failures and the low attach rates convinced the third parties to not even bother.
They lost against the PSX as well though (iirc, 3x more PS1's sold an far more games.) They struck gold with the Wii initially, but at the same time, moved further away from the mainstream gaming crowd. Many games were little more than poorly implemented gimicks.
I'm hoping they hit a home run with the switch, but it's too early to tell. I have one and, while BotW is great, I have nothing else to play.
I've tried to get into gaming lately but the console stuff is just so contrived and dull. It's so focused on trying to be a movie (a bad one at that) that it has completely killed any idea of fun. The COD series is the absolute worst culprit. I really don't want to sit through a cutscene, then spend 30 minutes figuring out how the game works. I just want to play.
But Mario, Zelda...they're all just pure FUN. This is gaming as I remember when I was a child.
Only tricky bit is that you have to have blessedly-pure ROMsets for automatic per-system playlist generation to work (it's hash-based), but that's a minor hurdle (and going through it will encourage you to clean up any "messy" sets you have, which isn't really a bad thing). There's a stickied post on their forum that'll give you the names of what you need. And you can always manually create playlists or launch individual ROMs, regardless.
Not affiliated with it, just a big fan of what Retroarch/Lakka and related projects are doing for emulation.
And reading all the reactions here, many people feel the same, a strong passion with the brand.
Sadly Konami is dead so no more Castlevania games in the style of the DS ones :-(