Be Excellent To Each Other

Adjusted for inflation/strength of the pound? I'm not sure Nintendo are entirely to blame here.

Hell, if games aren't affected by inflation then consoles don't get to be either.

If it helps, Nintendo are trying to charge £60 for some of the games.

Pretty sure the RRP of games have gone up in the last ten years, my friend.

They've hovered around the £40 - £50 mark for at least 25 years, but sadly I can't find a graph or anything.

We'll just remember how much they cost right now and come back to it in 2022.

Yeah, I can remember paying 45 quid for X-Wing back in 1993, and I think a buddy paid £60 for Streetfighter II on the SNES around the same time.

!remindme 01/01/2022

I figured that looking at the release prices for Street Fighter games would be a good way to see how things have changed (or not), but it's really hard to find data.

Going back to my original point about console inflation:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/10/15/t ... sing-power

Allow me to counter with
Also why didn't you choose the table with a GameCube in it?

I just picked the first one I found, which was five most expensive consoles of all time. It's pretty illustrative.

"Hey, this table might tell a story if we sorted it by any one of several suitable columns"

"FUCK YOU I DON'T WANT TO"

A $299 console wouldn't get close to the top five in that table. Although contradictorily I also think it's too expensive to buy at launch so

I don't agree with Hero that it's a 3DS replacement though. It's neither home console nor portable. And the 3DS still has games slated for release this year and next.

Oh yeah, these ones are pretty good actually.



So adjusted for inflation a Gamecube and a DS would be $449.95. So a $299 Switch suddenly seems like a bargain.

Sterling or GTFO.

Did they actually say anything on the hardware of the console? I've not seen it mentioned anywhere.

https://twitter.com/FioraAeterna/status ... 0506310657

very excited to buy a downclocked tegra with motion controls for $300

— Atelier Fiora 🧙‍♀️ (@FioraAeterna) January 13, 2017

ouch

Nintendo haven't said much else at the reveal but it's been known for a while that the graphics are served up by Nvidia CUDA cores, and by all accounts not that many of them. (Specifically the Nvidia 'Tegra' chipset, probably the X2 variant.)

The Switch looks like it'll be more powerful than the Wii-U, but not by any order of magnitude, with about 33% of the CUDA cores found on a GeForce 950 (a £130 graphics card).

It also needs to be remembered that raw power doesn't tell the whole story, and it depends how 'close to the metal' the drivers can get.

It'll most likely be a capable 1080p console, underpowered compared to the PS4/XBone on the raw stats, but lest we forget that the likes of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii-U look fucking gorgeous in 720p, and are kicked around at a near-flawless 60FPS, so it's not all about horsepower.

That's entirely missing the point of Nintendo consoles though. You could make the same sort of barbed comment about the Wii-U not being much than an overclocked Wii, but then Nintendo make it do things like Mario Kart 8 and it ceases to matter.

The Switch will stand or fall on its games, Nintendo never duke it out on horsepower or specs, the question that none of us know the answer to yet though, is whether or not the market for their games, especially at £40-£60 for a 'pseudo mobile platform' that costs the best part of £300 in itself, still exists.

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.