Nintendo Switch Thread

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Welcome to the Nintendo Switch thread! If you have a Switch, post your friend code in a reply and I'll add it to the list. @ me will make it happen faster.

Halforums friend codes:

Dei - SW-0001-1830-2164
Far - SW-5375-6250-7816
Covar - SW-1688-0964-0686
Hailey Zero Mission - SW-6991-2406-3602



--From announcement day--
Figured it's time to make a topic since Nintendo decided it's a topic worth discussing (only two months before launch).

They got the price point out the gate right away, $300. Not a bad price for a new console, but I'm doubting their launch line-up will represent that value.

They say the Switch comes with two controllers, but it's really that the two halves of the Joycon can each be a controller, for certain games. Speaking of games ...

1, 2, Switch: I can't see this taking off like Wii Sports, even if it came free with the system. They went through the trouble of having all those people play cowboys and wizards at each other, but it doesn't seem like much of a game.

Arms: This at least looks fun. Yeah, Nintendo's had Punch-Out, but this looks to be approaching a boxing game the way Splatoon approached shooting games. And on that note ...

Splatoon 2: It should be called Splat2n. If Banjo-Kazooie can have Banjo-Tooie ...

I'm not exciting about Xenoblade 2/Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (they didn't seem too sure of the title) after Xenoblade Chronicles was such trash. I'm looking forward to whatever Shin Megami Tensei is coming, but it sounds like they've barely started working on it, so I expect that to be out sometime in 2019, at best.

-_- EA insists that bringing FIFA to Switch will be the most intense and immersive sports game experience ever for Nintendo players. Clearly someone never played Super Mario Strikers :awesome:.

Overall, I'm impressed with some things and not with others. I'm glad it's going to be a hybrid of console/handheld so Nintendo can stop competing with itself. The controller doesn't look bad in its many transformations. There's promise in some upcoming games ... whenever they're coming. That said, it feels like we're taking a step back here, like Nintendo shareholders noted how well the Wii did 10 years ago and insist that maybe Nintendo can make motion controls the next big thing again. Sure, maybe playing Skyrim with each Joycon half being each hand and playing that way sounds fun, but after 15 minutes I'm pretty sure the shtick will get tired and you'll just choose to switch to playing like normal.

So, I'm personally not sold right yet. Have to see how it goes when I play hands-on at Nintendo's event thing next month.

EDIT: It's region free, so that's also a plus.
 
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Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

SO-that city level in Mario Odysey isn't JUST filling me with anxiety right? I remember the LAST silly mascot that had one of those, AND IT LEAD TO ITS ABSOLUTE DOWNFALL!!
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Oops, I should've waited to post until I got to the end of the video. I thought once they did the montage of games they'd already previewed, that would be it, but then ...



It's actually releasing on time ... forget EEEEEEVERYTHING I said; solid gold launch line-up, Nintendo! Now the only problem is going to be the inevitable scalping and shortages, but fuck, I love this trailer and I can't wait to eventually play this.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
On the plus side, the Switch will be able to charge from a standard USB type-C cable. On the negative side, the low end of it's battery life is a mere 2½ hours.

Even if I had the money, I'll be waiting for a revision to the hardware, and still maybe not at all. As much as I want Breath of the Wild to be good... It's going to take a lot to convince me that Nintendo actually made a game that won't annoy me like Skyward Sword did (which it did by having amazing portions broken up by too many horrible UI and gameplay design decisions.)
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Mentioned in another thread but I'm pretty surprised at how many of these early games I'm interested in.

Zelda for sure, Mario looks like solid fun as always, I loved Hyrule Warriors so I'm game to try it with Fire Emblem. More Splatoon's good, and Bomberman was a welcome sight.

I actually ended up enjoying Xenoblade X and Chronicles is one of my favorite games, so I'm down to give 2 a chance. The more generic anime style of characters worries me a little, but if the game's still on the same grand scale of the others in terms of exploration and combat I'm all in.
 
Piotyr

Piotyr

From Nintendo's switch games website: www.nintendo.com/games/switch/

Presumed Launch Lineup
1,2,Switch: March 3, 2017
ARMS: March 3, 2017
Zelda Breath of the Wild: March 3, 2017
Has Been Heroes: March 2017
Just Dance 2017: March 2017
SnipperClips (puzzle game): March 2017
Super Bomberman R: March 2017

After:

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Apr. 28, 2017
Puyo Puyo Tetris: Spring 2017?
Splatoon 2: Summer 2017
NBA 2K18: September 2017 (normal release date for the series)
Skyrim: Fall 2017
Super Mario Odyssey: Holiday 2017
FIFA (No year): TBD
Minecraft Switch: TBD
Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers: TBD[DOUBLEPOST=1484288955,1484288588][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, Nintendo just posted this:

 
Dei

Dei

The little tiny controllers are going to be terrible for American adults. I predict most won't use them for multiplayer.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

CynicismKills said:
The controller size and battery life are easily the biggest worries I still have.
Click to expand...
I can't see it being an effective handheld at 2 and a half hours, but I also wonder how long it'll take them to put out a version with better battery life. I mean, the USB means you can charge almost anywhere, but at home I remember how much it sucked to have to break from Wind Walker HD after less than three hours to sit the gamepad on the cradle.

Many this is Nintendo's method for getting us to take a break.

Either way, I don't expect to get one at launch, both over my own funds and the shortage/scalper situation. It's already being stated there won't be a huge supply at launch, limited pre-orders, Nintendo's usual these days.
 
Eriol

Eriol

chris said:
Bowser is a caring daddy
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I love the idea of Bowser being a great parent. I also like how in the "talking about their games with them" how the example is Jr. nailing Mario with a red shell. Great segment. I also particularly liked how it showed that just suspending can be heavy-handed, and talking to them (you know, INTERACTING WITH YOUR CHILD) is preferred.

OTOH I'm wondering how easily hacked that system is going to be. How about your opponent triggering suspend on the people they're playing against? That's my biggest concern now.
Dei said:
The little tiny controllers are going to be terrible for American adults. I predict most won't use them for multiplayer.
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I'm a 6'7" (2m) monster. I thought the original XBox controllers were perfectly sized. This is probably going to be an issue for me.
Zero Esc said:
I can't see it being an effective handheld at 2 and a half hours, but I also wonder how long it'll take them to put out a version with better battery life. I mean, the USB means you can charge almost anywhere, but at home I remember how much it sucked to have to break from Wind Walker HD after less than three hours to sit the gamepad on the cradle.
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For WWHD, I just took the power cable, ran it to the tablet, and kept playing, but that's me.

I'm actually not at all concerned about the battery because it's a STANDARD for once. They're not doing "Nintendo custom connector 29A-RevB" but a standardized USB-C connector. So you'll be able to find 3rd-party batteries and chargers to work fine. In other words, extending battery life (double/triple) will cost you $10-$20, and not a $75-$100 official add-on. And it might even be from a battery you already have for your phone and/or tablet. So I basically have one already. This is a great feature.


I'm probably buying one because I think that I would use it in a different way than a would a normal home console. Yes I'll use it for that, but I like taking my games with me, hence why I have so much time into Minecraft PE these days, and relatively less on the computer version. If I'm on the computer, I want to do "those" types of games, sometimes on the big screen. But I also like the idea of being ABLE to put my portables on the big screen, but I'll admit I'm thinking of the Switch as more of a portable I can big-screen, than a home console I can portable. But that may change for which games I'm playing. Probably depends. Either way, I think they have a sale. I wish it was $250USD though. $400CAD is rougher.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

My biggest concern with the switch is the fact that it runs at lower specs when in mobile mode than it does when docked, so a game that runs 60fps docked might get cut to 30fps on tablet mode. My concern is that developers won't utilize this well, and we will end up with shit ports that run like ass unless docked.

I mean, developers these days can't get a game to run at a constant resolution/frame rate on a PS4 whose processing power never changes.
 
A

Anonymous

Anonymous

Ravenpoe said:
I mean, developers these days can't get a game to run at a constant resolution/frame rate on a PS4 whose processing power never changes.
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That "might" be because some teams (COD, 100% certain) are using ancient engines (Quake 1) heavily modified and hacked to hell to run on the new hardware with new-looking affects. Their architecture is absolute garbage and so it's a miracle it works at all. This is typical of much of the game industry. This is why independent titles never have that kind of problem, because they were written from scratch (using modern game engines) recently. They have whole other sets of problems however.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Anonymous said:
That "might" be because some teams (COD, 100% certain) are using ancient engines (Quake 1) heavily modified and hacked to hell to run on the new hardware with new-looking affects. Their architecture is absolute garbage and so it's a miracle it works at all. This is typical of much of the game industry. This is why independent titles never have that kind of problem, because they were written from scratch (using modern game engines) recently. They have whole other sets of problems however.
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Yes, AAA game developers generally suck these days, and I don't expect them not to suck on the switch, but rather suck more.

First party games I have no doubt on. Nintendo's WiiU titles ran at a rock solid 60fps
 
Eriol

Eriol

Ravenpoe said:
First party games I have no doubt on. Nintendo's WiiU titles ran at a rock solid 60fps
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I always thought it was fascinating how they did Hyrule Warriors on the WiiU, with the local multiplayer, reducing the image quality so the hardware could handle the two different areas. What wasn't as well documented is that they also reduced the view distance on mobs appearing, which made some things "interesting" on how/when they would appear in multiplayer vs single-player. If FE Warriors does the same type of thing, but needing (or at least supporting) two Switches, I think they may have sold my/our family (Hi @Dirona!) an extra Switch. We played the HELL out of that game, and it was because of local multi-screen multiplayer. We would probably play it split-screen too, but to each our own screen was NICE.

Any idea where to pre-order in Canada? Bestbuy.ca is already pre-ordered out.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Eriol said:
I always thought it was fascinating how they did Hyrule Warriors on the WiiU, with the local multiplayer, reducing the image quality so the hardware could handle the two different areas. What wasn't as well documented is that they also reduced the view distance on mobs appearing, which made some things "interesting" on how/when they would appear in multiplayer vs single-player. If FE Warriors does the same type of thing, but needing (or at least supporting) two Switches, I think they may have sold my/our family (Hi @Dirona!) an extra Switch. We played the HELL out of that game, and it was because of local multi-screen multiplayer. We would probably play it split-screen too, but to each our own screen was NICE.

Any idea where to pre-order in Canada? Bestbuy.ca is already pre-ordered out.
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First party Nintendo devs were able to get a lot of performance out of limited hardware just through great optimization and smart art design. They knew that even the prettiest textures look ugly if they make the game crawl
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Here I was looking forward to portable Dark Souls, but From's programming infrastructure is ass, so I'm guessing the reports of Dark Souls 3 running smooth on the Switch are based on docked performance only.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Zero Esc said:
Here I was looking forward to portable Dark Souls, but From's programming infrastructure is ass, so I'm guessing the reports of Dark Souls 3 running smooth on the Switch are based on docked performance only.
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Looking into a lot of the (leaked) specs, it appears that the only thing that changes when docked is the GPU's output, not the main processor. So while framerate MAY take a hit, the core logic of the game should be unaffected by portable/console modes. And since the difference between 720p and 1080p is a lot larger than it seems (double the pixels, more-or-less), being half-clocked GPU for mobile seems like the difference will be nearly nothing with regards to choppy-or-not docked vs mobile.

But that's theorycrafting. We won't know until we see it.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Frank said:


Ha ha ha ha ha

no.
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From what I saw, this is part of their "bonus" to actually being able to play online, which is what you're actually paying for. Which is complete bullshit. I wish years ago people had said "fuck you" to MS for XBox live, and then hopefully they would have gotten the message and provided "normal" levels of online services free. Then NOBODY later would have tried to monetize on consoles (fuck you too Sony for going sub required for PS4... PSN on PS3 was free, which was a GOOD MOVE) basic things like playing with your friends like we have on PC on multiple platforms (Steam, Battle.Net, etc).

So everybody who paid for XBox live way back when, this is YOUR FAULT for not telling MS that they were insane to get people to pay for what you could get for free on PC. Now we're ALL paying (literally) the consequences of that.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Once again, I don't find myself interested or excited for this gimmicky crap. I'm having a hard time understand how exactly this new fangled thing even works. Every time a new system is announced, it's all about its latest ridiculous bells and whistles, and not as much about the games. Sure, they have games listed for release, but how many of them will be good or worth getting a whole new system for? It's like VR or Motion Control. Yeah, it's a neat gimmick at first, but to this date, there has not been a single universally beloved game that everyone says, "THIS! You need to get this new fangled thingamajig for THIS game."

To quote Yahtzee: "I continue to argue that all these motion controls and all these tea Earl Grey hot Star Trek mechanisms still require more effort with less reliability than moving a fingertip half a centimeter to press a button. You know, video game consoles didn't always need marketing events that resembled political rallies. They basically sold themselves. 'Here's a thing that lets you play fun things,' they would say. 'Which games?' I would ask. 'These ones!' they'd reply. 'Ooh, those DO look like fun!' we'd conclude. Now the same statement has so many asterisks next to it, it looks like a fucking constellation map."[DOUBLEPOST=1484337430,1484337218][/DOUBLEPOST]
Frank said:


Ha ha ha ha ha

no.
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That's another thing: why can't Nintendo's online accounts be more like Steam? Or any console? Have the same games on your account no matter what system you got them on. Why do they insist that people must re-purchase the same NES or SNES games over and over again? The final dealbreaker for me on getting a PS4 was that I couldn't carry over my PSN-bought games.
 
Eriol

Eriol

ThatNickGuy said:
Once again, I don't find myself interested or excited for this gimmicky crap. I'm having a hard time understand how exactly this new fangled thing even works. Every time a new system is announced, it's all about its latest ridiculous bells and whistles, and not as much about the games. Sure, they have games listed for release, but how many of them will be good or worth getting a whole new system for? It's like VR or Motion Control. Yeah, it's a neat gimmick at first, but to this date, there has not been a single universally beloved game that everyone says, "THIS! You need to get this new fangled thingamajig for THIS game."
Click to expand...
Metroid Prime. I've commented to multiple people over the years that I bought a GameCube for ONLY that game. I bought other games later that I enjoyed, but if I had spent $300+ on the system plus just that game, it would have been money well spent. It was THAT good, both at the time, and now I want to re-play it from mentioning it.
ThatNickGuy said:
To quote Yahtzee: "I continue to argue that all these motion controls and all these tea Earl Grey hot Star Trek mechanisms still require more effort with less reliability than moving a fingertip half a centimeter to press a button. You know, video game consoles didn't always need marketing events that resembled political rallies. They basically sold themselves. 'Here's a thing that lets you play fun things,' they would say. 'Which games?' I would ask. 'These ones!' they'd reply. 'Ooh, those DO look like fun!' we'd conclude. Now the same statement has so many asterisks next to it, it looks like a fucking constellation map."
Click to expand...
I agree with that. I think the Switch offers the interesting "TV + Go" idea that's worth marketing, but my response to basically everything else about it is "ya whatever, show me more Zelda!"
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
chris said:
Isn't that the same with Playstation plus ?
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Nope. The monthly games from both PS+ and XBL stick around as long as you continue your subscription. You don't just get the current month's game, you get all the previous months you've been subscribed as well.
 
chris

chris

figmentPez said:
Nope. The monthly games from both PS+ and XBL stick around as long as you continue your subscription. You don't just get the current month's game, you get all the previous months you've been subscribed as well.
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True but where exactly says it that Nintendo will force you to pay for the games you downloaded for free as part of your subscription ?

OK, just saw that NOA confirmed it, never mind.
 
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Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

chris said:
Isn't that the same with Playstation plus ?
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Ps Plus gets you two games per Sony console each month, and you can keep playing them so long as you're subscribed, not just a month. For example, having PS3, PS4, and PSVita, the past year could put 72 games if I add each to my account. Been neglectful of the PS3 ones and not each game is good, but plenty of them are. Honestly, more than I even have time to play.

So it's pretty different and Nintendo continues to be behind the times. They SHOULD have a way to import your VC libraries from either Wii U or 3DS, and still have all the current stuff without rebuilding the library from scratch a fourth time, but it's Nintendo.

Meanwhile, same consistent PSN all these years means I can still boot up Dino Crisis on my Vita back from whenever the hell I bought it to play on PS3 and PSP.[DOUBLEPOST=1484341164,1484340999][/DOUBLEPOST]
chris said:
True but where exactly says it that Nintendo will force you to pay for the games you downloaded for free as part of your subscription ?
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Not force, but you only keep them a month. It's not remotely alike.

This reminds me, I forgot to check January's PS Plus titles.
 
Zappit

Zappit

Staff member
Plus side. The controller looks like a fucking controller, not a damn wiggle wand or button tablet. I'm sorry. I absolutely hated the different Wii controllers, and stuck to the Classic or GameCube controllers as often as possible. I like this setup.

Minus side. Paid online? If the free version restricts all online play, then screw it. I don't care about matchmaking or lobby services. If I go online to play, will it let me? Will some games, like Splatoon 2, require the paid service?
 
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