Nintendo Switch Topic; #byebyenx

[AuraLancer]

They couldn't have tried harder to market this to me. I carry my whatever I'm currently playing with me in a messenger bag (3DS, PSP, Vita) and I fell in love with remote play on the Vita a while back. I honestly don't care about those little micro controllers. The d pad looks to be similar to the Playstation and overall it's like playing with the WiiU gamepad and that feels perfect in my hands.

[Zero Kirby]

With the exception of Star Fox Zero and Amiibo Festival I think most of the games Nintendo made were great on the Wii U.

Okay.

I still think it's a disappointing lineup compared to consoles past. I hope the Switch does better.

[Jermungandr]

I'm kind of wondering if we wait long enough if they'll release a cheaper home-only version of the console. You know, without the portable screen part in order to save costs; just a box that hooks up to the TV like a standard console. In addition to waiting until they have a proven lineup of games, it might be worth waiting a year just for that.

[TomGuycott]

That sounds like a sort of 2DS kind of idea, and honestly I wouldn't be that opposed to seeing that done. It might encourage more people to get it who aren't as invested in the idea of the portable screen.

I just want the system to do well so it can have a larger library of good games.

[Zero Kirby]

Yeah a standalone tablet-free console would be a pretty good idea. It sounds like something that should be available as a "from the get-go" option, though I understand if Nintendo doesn't do that because it would seem like they didn't have faith in their console concept.

Later down the line for late-adopters though? With some kind of eShop sale or a group of Nintendo Selects to go with it? That'd be an excellent little thing.

[Kriven]

The Wii U is home to some of my favorite Nintendo games in years... Pikmin 3 is probably my favorite game of all-time. I've dumped hundreds of hours into that thing.

But Nintendo's games have taken a serious hit in terms of appeal. Mario Kart 8 is breathtakingly gorgeous and polished to a blinding sheen, but it lacks any real content beyond traditional racing and watered-down Battle Mode... I mean, Balloon Battles have been an important part of the franchise since the very first game, and seeing them cast to the side is disheartening. Battle isn't even fun in MK8. That's not even getting into all of the bizarre character omissions (Bowser Jr. and Diddy), the fact that previous Mario Kart entries not only had Balloon Battle but a variety of other Battle modes (Shine Battle, Bomb Battle, Mario Kart DS had that awesome Mission Mode). Mario Kart 8, by comparison, feels entirely empty.

The same thing happened to Super Smash Bros., especially being split up across two different devices. Mario Tennis (both the 3DS game and the new Wii U one) are shadows of what Mario Power Tennis and Mario Tennis 64 were (hell, they've completely ditched the idea that the portable counterpart is an academy RPG, which I always loved). We've got only one single Mario Party game to think of, and where are the rest of the Mario sports titles? Where's Sluggers U? Strikers Ultra Charged? Where's our Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Battle Revolution? The recent Star Fox game was yet another retelling of Star Fox 64, entirely abandoning the rich cast of characters developed in the previous franchise entries (arguably during the series hey-day) and providing a divided game environment with abysmal controls. We've seen more remakes and ports than ever before, most of them hardly different enough to really justify. Animal Crossing, a franchise which hasn't missed a beat since it showed up on the GameCube, has been relegated to the 3DS for the past four years, and seen only two very poor obvious cash-grab spin-offs since. WarioWare got some weird pseudo successor that doesn't really play right, Metroid is MIA, F-Zero has been replaced by the efforts of an indie team, Fire Emblem lost its soul somewhere along the way and decided to become Final Fantasy Tactics, Paper Mario continues to disappoint its fans by knowingly avoiding being what they want it to be, Mario & Luigi is falling into the same vortex of vapid bullshit as its predecessor series, and our only Super Mario games have been "Get to the Flag Pole!" games, with the coveted Mario Adventure Platformer nowhere to be found.

Most of Nintendo's franchises have been given more polish than they've ever had, and that really shows! When you play the game modes that they do have, they're great and a lot of fun. But they also have a lot less substance than previous entries in the same series, long-running series with franchise staples. The Super Mario spin-offs have dried up into the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics games, which cuts away close to ten games when compared to previous platforms, a number of their franchises are just completely ignored, and a number more are just not at all what they should be. And now you've got Nintendo tossing their hat into the Full-Priced Port ring with Mario Maker, Woolly World, and Hryule Warriors--cheapening the value of the Wii U's few genuinely appealing titles. There's a dirth of quality third-parties that, even during the Wii era, we have never seen before. You used to be able to count on something good from Namco at least once in a Nintendo cycle... Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube and Wii, the GameCube had Pac-Man world, the Wii got the awesome remake of Klonoa, the GameCube edition of Soul Calibur II... I think the Wii U really only gave us Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventure, a glitchy game that wants so badly to be Pac-Man World 2.

The good third-party titles are all Indie games... Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Shantae, Armillo.... and three of those are multiplatform. The majority of the Wii U eshop bears a striking resemblance to the Google PlayStore, with its Spiky Walls and Angry Bunnies. How are people supposed to find the games that aren't broken memefests?

Nah man, I love my Wii U. I love Pikmin 3 and Tropical Freeze and Hyrule Warriors and 3D World and Runbow. But Nintendo's position for this console generation really isn't defensible. It's come to a point where people are more excited about Virtual Console releases than anything else.

[DioShiba]

But Nintendo's games have taken a serious hit in terms of appeal. Mario Kart 8 is breathtakingly gorgeous and polished to a blinding sheen, but it lacks any real content beyond traditional racing and watered-down Battle Mode... I mean, Balloon Battles have been an important part of the franchise since the very first game, and seeing them cast to the side is disheartening. Battle isn't even fun in MK8. That's not even getting into all of the bizarre character omissions (Bowser Jr. and Diddy), the fact that previous Mario Kart entries not only had Balloon Battle but a variety of other Battle modes (Shine Battle, Bomb Battle, Mario Kart DS had that awesome Mission Mode). Mario Kart 8, by comparison, feels entirely empty.

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with this sentiment. (I'm going to use Mario Kart 8 with your points taken into consideration)

Mario Kart 8 is one of the titles that had a lot of potential in terms of what it could do. And there were a couple of nice changes that were made to the general gameplay when you compare it to mario kart wii. And I'm not going to even get into why I think Mario Kart Wii, besides the wonderful roster just has relatively shitty gameplay in general. For one the addition of the speaker box item opened a hell of alot of doors for the series to go in because it adds some level of competitive play and I would have loved to see that in a balloon battle.

But as you said, with the lack of other modes in Mario Kart 8 made it lose so much replay value. I mean shit Mario Kart 8 could have had all those things and Nintendo didn't really deliver on that. I would ahve loved for Missions to make some kind of comeback and more variety in battles and not "oh hey lets battle on a fucking race track for no good reason and wait 20 minutes to hit an oppenent"

I could go into what I feel went wrong in smash bros. But right now I don't really have enough brain power to type out that long of an essay on what I think. So that could come another time.

[Koopaul]

I feel like Nintendo's newest strategies is to focus on polishing and perfecting the main aspects of their series (like racing in Mario Kart, or fighting in Smash) while other modes are an afterthought. This can be good and bad. I'm surprised Mario Kart 8 didn't fix their Battle Mode in DLC or add the missing veterans after they perfacted the main mechanics. I can understand why an Adventure Mode wasn't added as DLC in Smash because it would be too much.

But yeah, I think developing the game on two systems really hurt Smash 4. I was bitching about it on this very forum when the two games were first announced years ago. I said having seperate modes and stages for each system is going to be a problem and they should just focus on making one complete game. Then some of you guys said "SHUT AND BE HAPPY WE'RE GETTING TWO SMASH BROS!"

Ahem. Anyway. Back to what I was saying about the Switch. I hope they re-release a lot of Wii U games as remakes, ports, or semi-sequels. It's a shame that there are a few great games on the Wii U that didn't get as great attention as they could have for simply being on the Wii U or simply didn't reach its full potential. It looks like they are doing that with Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon but I hope they do more.

I want a remastered, The Wonderful 101 (without the camera switch gamepad gimmicks), Tropical Freeze (with a whole new world), Bayonetta 2 (don't know what to change here), Pokken Tournament (with all the arcade additions put in), and Star Fox Zero (actually I don't know if that game is salvageable)...

If the screen turns out to be a touch screen they could easily port things like Kirby Rainbow Curse or Super Mario Maker. If not, then I don't see those games happening.

[BullockDS]

But Nintendo's games have taken a serious hit in terms of appeal. Mario Kart 8 is breathtakingly gorgeous and polished to a blinding sheen, but it lacks any real content beyond traditional racing and watered-down Battle Mode... I mean, Balloon Battles have been an important part of the franchise since the very first game, and seeing them cast to the side is disheartening. Battle isn't even fun in MK8. That's not even getting into all of the bizarre character omissions (Bowser Jr. and Diddy), the fact that previous Mario Kart entries not only had Balloon Battle but a variety of other Battle modes (Shine Battle, Bomb Battle, Mario Kart DS had that awesome Mission Mode). Mario Kart 8, by comparison, feels entirely empty.

Mario Kart 8 is one of the titles that had a lot of potential in terms of what it could do. And there were a couple of nice changes that were made to the general gameplay when you compare it to mario kart wii. And I'm not going to even get into why I think Mario Kart Wii, besides the wonderful roster just has relatively shitty gameplay in general. For one the addition of the speaker box item opened a hell of alot of doors for the series to go in because it adds some level of competitive play and I would have loved to see that in a balloon battle.

But as you said, with the lack of other modes in Mario Kart 8 made it lose so much replay value. I mean shit Mario Kart 8 could have had all those things and Nintendo didn't really deliver on that. I would ahve loved for Missions to make some kind of comeback and more variety in battles and not "oh hey lets battle on a fucking race track for no good reason and wait 20 minutes to hit an oppenent"

I could go into what I feel went wrong in smash bros. But right now I don't really have enough brain power to type out that long of an essay on what I think. So that could come another time.

IMO, it almost feels that so many of MK8's failings stem from time constraints or just plain laziness (especially the bastardized battle mode, lack of optimization for multiplayer graphics/maps that resulted in 30fps for 3/4 player play even without COM racers, and some of the roster choices).

For MK8.5, though, in addition to these things being fixed, I'd also love to see the menus improved; MK8's menus, especially when dealing in multiplayer, were needlessly convoluted, fighting players constantly.

As for Smash, I'd like to hear your issues with Sm4sh, if only to see if they line up at all with my reasons I thought it kinda went wrong (Cliffsnotes: the quantity of fighters, items, and stages hide a severely anemic single-player experience on top of a core gameplay that is overly-simplified and somewhat sluggish compared to previous games).

[Kosheh]

If everything they do is multiplatform, that won't help the Switch, especially if there are going to be Steam versions of the same thing.

I think I'm actually of the opposite opinion on this. One of the biggest problems with Nintendo consoles is that whenever a company releases a multi-platform title, ninety-percent of the time the Nintendo console is the one console that doesn't get it. This creates a huge problem for people like me that can't afford to purchase multiple machines every generation, because now we have to gamble if it's worth it more to buy a console solely for the Nintendo exclusives, or if it's better to get a console that's going to get everything else.

If Nintendo can create a console that guarantees that it will receive most multi-platform games, suddenly the need to make a choice is eliminated, as there is only one smart choice to be made. Granted, I still hope that Nintendo will see some 3rd party titles exclusive to their system, but as far as marketing goes, even if all they can get is multi-platform titles out of them, it will still be a huge boon for their sales figures. It would definitely get me to buy one sooner than later.

well do i have good news for you. B)

Nintendo's entrance into the Khronos group (which supports an open standard for desktop and mobile technologies) and being able to support UE4 (in addition to having Autodesk and Unity [Unreal's rival] show up on their "third party support" infographic) means that you'll actually see games being released on the switch alongside the other 3 consoles currently out on the market - for now, at least - they won't have the beefiness of the PS4 Pro or whatever but rest assured it's pretty likely you'll see a bunch of flagship Ubisoft games finally pop up on the device - I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Watch Dogs 2 were to pop up on this thing. Then again, the specs on this thing might actually be just behind a launch PS4, soooo they might look more like low-settings PC games, but

honestly Nintendo's made it way too exciting to see what's actually gonna pop up on this new console. the only thing that's gonna actually doom the switch is if the Unreal Engine devs announce UE5 or something.






long story short:
it's actually a very real possibility and not a pipe dream to assume that Kingdom Hearts 3 could release on the Switch if this thing pushes a ton of units

[Koh]

long story short:
it's actually a very real possibility and not a pipe dream to assume that Kingdom Hearts 3 could release on the Switch if this thing pushes a ton of units

Okay that I can't see, lol.  Even if the graphics would take a hit, the game's been in development for years, and I think it's slated for more information next year at least.  For them to suddenly decide to have a Switch port that late into the development cycle would be insane, lol.

[Jermungandr]

Nintendo themselves would have to make a very strong push for it at the very least. I don't know how much that would help them though, as I'm sure most of the HUGE KH fans probably already have PS4s by now in expectation.

[Kriven]

It really depends on how compatible the engine is with what Nintendo is building, doesn't it? If Nintendo Switch can support the KH3 engine out of the gate, wouldn't that make porting it (especially since it isn't even out yet) relatively simple?

[Kosheh]

long story short:
it's actually a very real possibility and not a pipe dream to assume that Kingdom Hearts 3 could release on the Switch if this thing pushes a ton of units

Okay that I can't see, lol.  Even if the graphics would take a hit, the game's been in development for years, and I think it's slated for more information next year at least.  For them to suddenly decide to have a Switch port that late into the development cycle would be insane, lol.

....yeah, given the hoops both Nintendo and SE would have to jump through in terms of work and effort probably would make that insane news - but the point I was actually trying to make is that "Nintendo can actually keep up with multiplat releases now". The point wasn't "IT WILL HAPPEN 100% JUST YOU WATCH", it's more "It's actually possible now thanks to Nintendo making good choices for once". tbqh I can't imagine the game running on it without there being a serious FPS drop

To throw more gas on this fire tho the Switch will already have been out for 6 months - and if they can't make the window for a port there's always the inevitable KH3 Final Mix they'll release a year or two later 

[Goemar]

The problem with the Wii U was that it's cool unique feature was locked to one person. Everyone else just had a lesser experience or an experience that the Wii had already given. For a family/local-multiplayer stand-point, that kind of sucked balls. The one thing every non-gamer I knew thought the Wii U could do was to be played purely on the controller, as in, take on a car journey and the kids can play it. Like, that's what it looked like it should be able to do.

The Switch actually does that. And unlike the ugly-ass Wii U controller looks damn nice and slick.

Honestly, the Switch looks pretty freakin' sweet. Like Everything about it looks good. It also looks like THE perfect system for Monster Hunter (and as the main reason for me not having time to be here - about 300 hours into Generations - I'm rather interested) - so as soon as that is announced for the Switch (which might, maybe, happen on Thursday...) they have my money.

Now for this to be perfect it would also be nice if it functioned well as a tablet. As in, let me use Facebook chat while I'm playing a game online without suspending play or disconnecting me. I mean, a lot of games will just not have voice chat. It's just how it is with Nintendo. If I can do a Facebook call to the friends I am playing online with on the same device I am playing the game on, that would be awesome. (Obviously a Voice Chat on the system itself like, you know, every other console does, would be nice Nintendo... just saying). If I can check my regular websites while waiting in a lobby or something - that would be awesome. Everything I've seen so far, looks great, but if it can also seamlessly nail the functions of a tablet/smartphone at the same time then it'll be flawless.