Nintendo's new console: the Switch (formerly NX)

[GarlandExCon]

Well that looks like fun.

It makes my hand hurt just looking at it. Definitely not for anyone over the age of 40.

 

[sullynathan]

Seems like this console doesn't have much hard drive space. I just want to buy a Nintendo console with backwards compatibility to play certain games. Haven't owned a Nintendo console since the NES.

 

[Siveon]

I'm excited. I can finally play another mainline Monster Hunter game on a TV and not have to squint and look at giant fucking monsters on a teeny weeny screen.

Or Capcom jumps ship to the PS4/Xbox One. Either way you'll get your wish.

 

[FeelTheRads]

What is with the fucking people today not cutting their fucking nails? Get a fucking nailclipper, you fucking hobo.

 

[tet666]

Its fascinating, up until you realize that its just an NVidia Shield. And that most console gamers don’t have a need or desire for hand-held gaming (I know that there is a subset that buy things like the Nintendo DS and Vita). Which is sad, as to make it hand-held they had to compromise from making a truly great console to a console with a gimmick. Personally, I don’t need the gimmick, and I don’t have a DS or a PSP or a Vita any longer because as an adult I don’t have room for those type of devices in my pants, this is no different. I play games on my Phone because of convenience and absolutely nothing about the Nintendo Switch seems ‘Convenient’ to me.

So, Nintendo is releasing a new console to fill a space that no one I know needs filled, with a ‘Primarily for Home Use’ console that will be no more powerful than a PS3/360?

I’m sorry, but as cool as the device itself seems, it’s overwrought and pointless to me. I hope that Nintendo can survive it

 

[Kahr]

Kann Nintendo please already give up and bend over for Sony? They don't need to humiliate themselves any further.
I imagine how they laughed about Sega and now they will follow the same fate.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm excited. I can finally play another mainline Monster Hunter game on a TV and not have to squint and look at giant fucking monsters on a teeny weeny screen.

Or Capcom jumps ship to the PS4/Xbox One. Either way you'll get your wish.

Nah. They'll keep mainline MonHun on the Nintendy handhelds, because they have Monster Hunter Frontier G (will be updated to Monster Hunter Frontier Z now that it's getting a PS4 release) to capitalize on all the other major platforms, and they don't want to sabotage that by competing against themselves. All the people parroting that Monster Hunter is on handhelds only because that's where the Japanese people like them are ignoramuses who don't know shit. That couldn't be further from the truth. The only reason Capcom doesn't release numbered titles on home consoles and the PC is because they have their MMO on those devices and, like I said, they don't want to compete with themselves on those platforms.

 

[evdk]

They have Bethesda on their list of third parties and they showed Skyrim in the video. I'm guessing the remastered version will release on it. Nintendo needs third party support, getting R* will be another step.

Uhuh.

Where's the reflection?!?

 

[sullynathan]

man, I don't know. Just giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they'll just lie about a game being on their system.

 

[tet666]

man, I don't know. Just giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they'll just lie about a game being on their system.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/skyrim-not-confirmed-for-nintendo-switch-despite-a/1100-6444660/

 

[sullynathan]

 

[taxalot]

Laptop syncing saves with the desktop and even the smartphone and tablet for emulated games and dosbox.

That's what real men will be doing.

 

[Siobhan]

Always funny to see a bunch of guys rage about Nintendo. But you are not the target demographic, and Nintendo's main competition is no longer PS4 and Xbone but smartphones. They're losing their core audience of kids and tweens. Before smartphones, kids that wanted to play video games had to go the console/handheld route, and that naturally led to a certain dedication --- if you already have a dedicated piece of gaming equipment, you're gonna use that quite a bit. And that's how Nintendo groomed the next generation of gamers. With smartphones, you buy a game for 2 bucks every other month or so and it will keep you entertained just fine for 10 minutes between streaming video and chatting with your friends. But a super-casual consumer base like that is not enough to sustain Nintendo. For now, they can bank on the nostalgia fags to keep them afloat, but time is running out.

So the real question is whether the Switch will lure kiddies away from casual smartphone games back to proper games (yes, even a simple game like Mario is leagues above Fruitninja in complexity). Not splitting their franchises across two consoles anymore will help, and I hope they also made sure that Android games can be easily ported so that smartphones don't have any exclusives.

 

[sullynathan]

I don't think Nintendo wants to just target kids and teens anymore, especially after looking at the people they used in their advertisement video. It isn't working and they must change. Probably why they even showed Skyrim at their thing

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Always funny to see a bunch of guys rage about Nintendo. But you are not the target demographic

And they don't understand that the demographic they're trying to for are the most fickle of the bunch. They went for the Wii because it sounded neat, and the 3DS for the same reason. Then they promptly moved onto something else. Most of them don't keep up with actual video game news (those are people in the other demographics), so they didn't really understand what the WiiU was about. The faithful bought it anyway because that's what they always do. But after a year or two if they didn't care for Splatoon they were shit out of luck for true must haves on the thing.

And that's what will happen here too. Nintendo puts on an impressive initial display to attract the people who have the attention span of a pumpkin, then relies on its 'unique' first party experiences while third party support slowly dwindles to nothing. The faithful staying faithful and waiting for those one or two games that define the entirety of that particular consoles' lifespan. Everyone else has buggered off.

Then a few years later we'll be discussing the next weird move by Nintendo and someone else will come out of the woodwork and say "Well you're not the target demographic." Trying hard not to think about the console sitting in his closet that was taken over by spiders two months ago.

 

[Higher Animal]

Nintendo not chasing the latest specs in consumer video entertainment is a good thing. Graphical fidelity and processing power has stalled, and increases in performance come at a premium. Most users don't care about the latest and greatest, and haven't since the PS3 era. Maybe 2% of the market cares about having the latest and greatest specs.

The portability factor only makes sense in the context of augmented reality. If Nintendo can create Pokémon Go type experiences on the fly with Pokémon classic type gameplay inside, melding the two together could be worth something. People tend to like novelties like this. Maybe Nintendo can simulate paintball esque gameplay experiences with the machine. Otherwise portability is not valuable.

The coolest feature of the device is the way the controller can be broken apart to accommodate new situations for gameplay. I always thought that a cool addition to consoles would be the ability to modify your controller to fit the gameplay you experienced. I have no idea about the engineering task, but it would be a novelty for meta gaming and increase user comfort to be able to physically change the controller around to meet individual needs and desires for gameplay.

 

[Higher Animal]

It's a shame that Nintendo's leadership got into this "Nintendo has to be totally different from others" mindset after the Wii. Back int he days they created regular consoles with the NES, SNES and the Gamecube. And their kickass games made them successfull. Now, they try to be successfull through their gimmicky consoles, instead of concentrating on the games.

The market has permanently shifted. Making games is much more expensive and creates less value than it did in the Gamecube era. There were three times as many publishers and six times as many developers operating in that generation.

Nintendo cannot create a GC like that produces the same profit margins as the original. There's too much technology noise and game choices available. They have to be forward thinking with their products and target multiple markets in order to stay afloat.

Videogames, as a culture, are declining. In fifty years they might have 1% of the digital entertainment marketplace. Nintendo is doing what it has to do.

Also, dudebros stopping basketball to play NBA 2k is a literal and actual thing that could happen. all dudebros love 2K, and play it as much as they play regular basketball.

 

[Mr. Pink]

WAIT A MINUTE...
HANDHELD CONSOLE...
THAT PLAYS GAMES ON THE BIG SCREEN TOO...
THAT USES CARTS...
I RECOGNIZE THAT CONCEPT

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Nintendo not chasing the latest specs in consumer video entertainment is a good thing. Graphical fidelity and processing power has stalled, and increases in performance come at a premium. Most users don't care about the latest and greatest, and haven't since the PS3 era.

The same thing was said about both the Wii and the WiiU. 4chan, Reddit, NeoGaf or Gamefaqs doesn't matter. Subsequently it was disinterest in developing for a gimmick and a lack of power to achieve parity that helped kill off third party support. Along with Nintendo not being as interested in courting developers, of course.


Microsoft saw the signs and hopped off the Kinect boat almost immediately. Sony's motion controls are just there, develop for them if you want. Most don't. Nintendo's consoles for better or worse *are* their gimmick. And comparatively few throw their all into messing with it.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Skyrim gameplay for Nintendo Switch leaked

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Skyrim gameplay for Nintendo Switch leaked

Nay, that's beta footage! Here's the real deal.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Brilliant little handheld. Too bad you needed Fusion Cells if you wanted it to have any kind of lifespan.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Yeah, I wonder why don't nerds score better at the hottest ladies if that commercial is true?

They do. However, your inability to score has nothing to do with so-called "nerdiness".

 

[Machocruz]

They hinted at a new 3D Mario (as in Mario 64) and a new Mario Kart, so that's something.

But yes, the launch lineups for Nintendo consoles have sucked for pretty much every single one of them past the N64. It's not even that hard: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, some party game that's not Mario Party, a racing game (can overlap with the party one) and you're halfway there.

Apparently it is that hard for them, because they don't understand you need the right Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Not 3D Mario, not Other M or Federation Fucks or whatever it is. 2D Mario is the seller, when they don't half-ass it like their last couple of attempts. They keep trying to make 3D Mario as popular and it's not happening. Metroid is supposed to be the 'cool' Nintendo game, the one with action, sci-fi, darkness, shooting, mystery, Alien theme, big monsters to fight. It's not supposed to be cuddly or laden with traditional narrative and NPC chatter.

 

[Higher Animal]

The same thing was said about both the Wii and the WiiU. 4chan, Reddit, NeoGaf or Gamefaqs doesn't matter. Subsequently it was disinterest in developing for a gimmick and a lack of power to achieve parity that helped kill off third party support. Along with Nintendo not being as interested in courting developers, of course.

I don't know how solid an analysis this is. Had the Wii U sold more in its first few runs then the development power would've been there. The idea that it would've been cost prohibitive to provide an underpowered port of PS4/Xbone games only makes sense if the people aren't there to buy the games in the first place. Had the Wii U doubled or tripled its base, then every single COD would've shown up on the system.

Your argument is that the Wii U's problem was that it wasn't expensive enough on launch day, expensive enough to cover the hardware costs associated with producing a high end PC that might've been near PS4/Xbone statistics. I don't think the consumer market rejected the Wii U because it was too cheap or because they couldn't detect micro-improvements in graphics that high end specs would provide.

Technical parity *costs* money. The more expensive something is, the less people want to buy it. Nintendo's problem was losing the casual-indietainment generation to IOS and Android. The market also faces a much bigger problem in losing out to augmented reality, social media, and other tech reliant creative fields. Nintendo is simply getting caught up in the storm that all other video game publishers are.

I mean, your argument assumes 2001 market conditions. We live in a post great depression, tech and game saturated market. More horsepower wouldn't do a thing for Nintendo. It barely does enough for Sony and Microsoft, and that's their only play.