Be Excellent To Each Other

The online service has amoosed me.



Sign me up immediately! Where's that take my money picture? Put that up, but make it the largest image the site can hold. Nintendo are spoiling us with their generousity.

....fuck no.

Mind you, I'm not a fan of 'Nintendoey' games. But still... Fuck no.

I did start to write something along those lines.

"Ceases to matter" to who? The Wii-U sold poorly, so I'd argue there's not that many people willing to buy a console for Nintendo exclusives. And I see nothing in the Switch that makes it obviously better at attracting third party developers than the Wii-U was. So if you're prepared to drop £280 for half a dozen Nintendo games, that's great, but that's not been a particularly successful formula for many years.

Amazing to me that not only is it just NES/SNES games as part of their subscription, but they take them away from you after a month, even if you remain subscribed.

It's basically a paid demo for 30 year old games.

I love Nintendo but I am pretty sure they've fucked it.

Edit: they are also requiring a subscription for voice chat, but they system itself can't handle voice chat, you need to use an app on a "smart device".

These are both super weird decisions.

hmm, I do hope it's the X2, but most rumors I've heard have put it with a X1 - and a lower clocked version, at that.
Just makes me worry it'll have little 3rd party support in a few years. I get that a lot of people get Nintendo Consoles for Nintendo games, but many more people will consider, as Doc said, they'll pay £280, get a dozen or so Nintendo games out of it, and that'll be it - while the other consoles continue to quickly grow their libraries in comparison.

If it's powerful enough it manages to attract (and hold onto) other developers and publishers - great, I'd totally consider getting one. But from what I currently know? (Rumours, but it's more than Nintendo have given us) It just doesn't seem worth it

This could possibly be the last console Nintendo makes.

Eurogamer hands-on is positive about the hardware, at least: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... in-trouble

The system can't handle voice chat? Wtf?

To be honest, I'm glad about that.

I'd much rather have Mario Kart on my PS4 anyway.

At least with their shift to Arm and partnership with Nvidia, it will be pretty easy for them to release other devices that share the software library.

If this device sells as poorly as I imagine it will (after the initial demand from Nintendo die hard fans), they can easily put out a traditional home console with roughly the same guts, but no screen, battery, dock, joycons, and not designed to be portable, for about half the price, and still let you play all the same games.

They could also make a more traditional handheld device more in line with the DS that plays all the same games too, and would actually fit in your pocket and be more in line with the price that people expect from a handheld.

That's my hope. I'm not at all sold on this device, but they're obviously planning to iterate on hardware. That's actually exactly what Iwata said was the plan for "NX" back before he popped his clogs.

If they still exist to be able to do that, I just can not see the point of this console. It seems to be aimed at a problem that doesn't exist.

Nintendo have a massive mountain of money, they could hemorrhage money for a decade and not go bankrupt. Even after that they'd be a prime acquisition target for several massive media conglomerates, and could indeed make big money by going full third party on PS4/Steam/Xbox mobile.

The risk of them no longer being a platform holder is real, but they're not going to disappear.

Thats a bit mean really, I just had a look at my SNES roms in Hyperspin, the whole set comes to less that 2GB in size, it wouldn't kill them to give out the whole SNES library and let people play them whilst subscribed.

As I understand it though, Nintendo always make a reasonable profit on their hardware, so at over 13 million units sold the Wii-U didn't do great numbers but it will have still put a decent wedge of cash into the bank for them (if the previous assertion is correct), and then there were some 92 million units of software shifted, many of which will have been first party Nintendo titles. (Do other companies still pay royalties to publish on other consoles? I honestly don't know.)

Add in peripherals, Virtual Shop sales and whatever else, and it's entirely possible that Nintendo did quite well commercially out of the Wii-U as a whole, despite it being, in the grand scheme of things, a poor seller.

As Lewie has already noted, as a company they're not exactly short of cash so they're clearly doing something right overall.

All that said I'm as dubious about the Switch as everyone else, the Wii-U was pretty weird with its screen-on-a-gamepad configuration which no one really seemed to know what to do with, but the Switch takes it a whole new level of oddness.

That said, if after 6 months or a year there are a handful of real must-have titles for it that can't be played on anything else, I'll get one. I still don't regret my Wii-U purchase and despite only playing six or seven games on it in anger, it delivered some magical gaming experiences, and appealed to me in a way that the PS4 and XBone utterly and completely failed to do, and still do now.

This would be fantastic but it'll never happen mostly down to licensing issues for the majority of games.

I'm a Nintendo fan (without being a fanboy), and even I am beginning to think that the best thing that could come out of the Switch is it speeds up Nintendo's transformation to a third-party all-formats publisher.


True. Some games (even including popular titles such as Star Fox) are just lost to time due to licensing, sadly.

There are a lot of games that are not in license limbo, as evidenced by them being on the virtual console.

Watching the BBC Click bit about about the Switch has raised my interest in the console a little, but I think it'll still be too expensive for me. Apparently The Binding of Isaac will be getting a proper retail release for it, which would be a good thing, but I can't see me starting that all over again considering the time I've sunk into the PC version.

My son is 4 now, so I'm thinking that in a year or two it'd be nice to look at playing some video games together (he's not quite ready yet as he still isn't great at games with 'rules'). A Ninty console would seem to fit the bill. I could see myself picking up a Switch, especially as I've not got involved in the U/XB1/PS4 generation at all.

The more I think about the Nintendo Switch, the more I think that it could be the console for me. (Good job considering I've ordered one)

It's no secret that I've become disillusioned with my Xbox One (my current gen console) and the games just don't do it for me anymore. Nowadays, I spend more and more time with a handheld whether it's my modded PSP, my GP2X Wiz or my 3DS and I'm away from the TV. I think I need that Nintendo spark to come back into my life and keep me entertained.

Also according to my Windows calculator, it's only 45 days till this is released. Excited!

I can only imagine what a great little emulation machine the Switch will be if when it is hacked.

Between the cost, (limited) software range, confusing mess of add-ons, lack of handheld style games on offer... I'm still really disappointed with the Switch.

The red and blue controllers look quite snazzy

so no universe.. boo
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... ndo-switch

but i was happy that the switch does seem to be easily expandable in a ds way..
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... al-storage

Ninty have told us what the differences are between the WiiU and Switch versions of the new Zelda will be.

Bottom line: WiiU 720p/Switch on telly 1080p/Switch in handheld mode 720p. Frame rates are locked for both at 30FPS. Switch might have slightly better frame rate and draw distance.

Indeed, so at £340 for the Switch version, or £50-£60 for the Wii-U version - I'll go with the Wii-U version.

I've only got a 720p telly anyway.

60FPS would have been nice but understandable to target 30FPS for a slower open world game, in the same sort of way Pikmin 3 didn't suffer from 30FPS but DKCTF and Mario Kart 8 really benefited from the 60FPS.

Where'd you see this? I've only seen it reported as 900p on the Switch on TV so far. IGN

You're probably right.

For me the point is there's really not much in it.

A slight bump in resolution, along with what would be a couple of notches on slider bars in the graphics settings, Eurogamer reported some extra environmental sound effects - but fundamentally they're both 30FPS open world games with a gnat's cock between them in resolution.

So yeah, deffo Wii-U version for me, since I've already got the console likes.

I'm glad they've stuck to doing Zelda on the Wii-U, as nothing else makes me want to jump in with the Switch at launch. (I guess they had to really, that'd be a massive 'fuck you' even Nintendo would shy away from.)

What's up with that? I bought it back in 2007 when I got my XBox360 (prior to that I'd had a nice Sony Trinitron CRT), and at the time 1080p flatscreen tellies were ferociously expensive (£1500+) whereas you could get a nice 720p telly for just under a grand.

Since the 360 was a 720p console anyway, it seemed like a nice match for the console.

The telly still works perfectly and it also has all the connectors ever, for example component for my old chipped XBox and SCART for the old VHS player, along with 3xHDMI and all the usual sort of stuff. It also has optical audio in/out/passthrough which is perfect for my 5:1 speaker system which handles the media centre PC and 360.

Obviously it'll break at some point and I'll need to replace it, but since I don't have an XBone or PS4 (i.e. 1080p consoles), and the Wii-U is a 720p console, I don't see any reason to bin a perfectly good telly for no reason.

A lot of media is 1080 of course, but watching a 1080 media file on a 720 telly is fine.

Wow, watching content in peasant 720p. How...antiquated.

Don't listen to them Hearthly, there's nothing wrong with that telly. The more inputs it has, the better.

You've made me think about the optical pass through too. I wonder if my TV has one of those? I've never bothered with it as I go straight from my Xbox One to my surround sound receiver but what if I could get everything through my external speakers? That would be good. I shall investigate!

They often don't output as many channels as they get in, because everything is terrible.

That is a sound explanation as to why it wouldn't and one which I totally understand. Now you've said it though, it does remind me that maybe I've tried this before?

What's the point of an optical port that doesn't output as many channels as it receives? Lame.

For instance: https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/20-tvs-tes ... sound-bar/

I have an LG TV. Doesn't look good for me then.

I'm trying to remember the ins and outs of how I've got everything connected up to mine but I do know it works properly and I get full 5:1 from both the PC and the 360. In fact come to think of it I might have them both directly connected to the twin optical inputs on the speakers, and use the optical passthrough on the telly for something else - I honestly can't remember, and I don't suppose it really matters

(Buying a media centre PC with an optical out was a whole extra level of fun in itself, and we're going back a few years here too when it was far from standard. IIRC I had to go several steps up the range to get one that didn't just have normal 3.5mm jacks.)

But anyway, yes, it's a good telly and I'm in no hurry to replace it whilst it still works.

I think my PC has an optical out port.

Amount of times I've used it? Zero.

I've got a 4K telly. It's lovely despite not being able to play anything in 4K on console or PC alike. ("Totally legal") films are great though now we're starting to see some be ("released").

TV Master Race looking down on the peons who use a 720p rig.

We have one of these. It was £250 3 years ago from ASDA's Black Friday. Might get a new one but that would mean making a decision.

Plas-ma? Never heard of it.

http://nintendotoday.com/switch-app-matchmaking/

You fucking what, mate?!

Voice chat and "matchmaking and lobbies" are done via a phone app?!

Bomberman for Switch is £50.

Bomberman.

Also hands on previews suggest that the current build drops frames quite a lot, despite being capped at 30fps.

Bomberman.

What?!

DONE VIA A PHONE APP