Switch Is Nintendo's 'Fastest Selling' System in History
time.com
time.com
It had such a good cooperative experience that we could even play with my 4 year old pretty quickly. We even had a big night out for dinner after we finally beat the crown world. :-)
I watched some trailers from Super Mario Odyssey, where Mario was in a sandbox looking for adventures, like in Mario 64, but the sandbox was an actual real city and that really sold the game for me. The proper Mario games have always been massively fun which I can't always say about the Zelda games; the last Zelda before BotW I truly liked was Wind Waker. And there are rumors for a new Super Mario Galaxy game to the new console.
But all in all, these games are so far away in the future I can surely buy the new console in 2018 when I've finished BotW and its DLC's.
And this comes from a guy who enjoyed Witcher 3 with ultra graphics and 60 fps as his last game. :)
there must be a Mario maker switch on the horizon but it's yet to be discussed from nintendo
Mario Maker is great though, yes.
In my case it's also nostalgia. I've been working on my own apps and games, not to mention a day job, so this is the first console I have owned since the N64. Never got into console titles that seemed to be just as good on the PC.
That's 3 reasons right there... I ended up buying the Special Edition ($100 gets you the game, a music CD, a hard traveling case and a collector's coin) in March before I found a Switch in April.
I prefer the Pro Controller and using it as a standard console, but the mobility is great if needed. Sticker shock hasn't been a factor, since I remember buying 3 extra controllers for the N64.
The hunt for the Switch is as much as the hunt for the Classic was. Of course, now the Classic is going for 4-5 times as much... more than the Switch!
(Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie. You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card... better to spend $60 on a nice XBone controller and play games in a better emulator on your computer. Just my 2 cents.)
That's really my biggest complaint with the unit, the difficulty of charging the joycons. Taking off the wrist straps each time is really bad UX.
It seems like a different set of tradeoffs. RetroPie (if you're running on a Raspberry Pi, and not on a PC) will have fewer game systems that it can support, of course. But it's also cheap enough to just buy one as a dedicated game system that you leave connected to a TV, so the kids aren't grabbing your laptop to play retro games, or something. For a little more money, you could set up an NUC or something, of course.
> You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card
A lot of kits come with NOOBS loaded on them. You can load RetroPie directly into Raspbian by using a setup script that they provide. You could also boot into Raspbian via NOOBS and use a USB adapter to flash a microSD with another OS.
You could even take a blank SD, extract NOOBS onto it with your phone, and boot the Pi off that (NOOBS and Berryboot just need to be unzipped onto the SD; they don't require images to be flashed).
It really had no competitors. PS Move, while a nice technical effort, came too late and didn't have the developer support needed. The Kinect failed also for the same reasons on top of lacking a holdable controller so Kinect-games were ultimately forced to be super simple as waving and moving around can only do so much.
The Wii U had these types of games and they didn't blow up like the original Wii. I think its fair to say no one expected the Wii to take off like it did and unrealistic to expect Nintendo to follow the same formula and to get the same results. If anything, motion control games died fairly quickly as the fad ran itself out and are only coming back now as a much needed accessory for pricey VR systems.
I'm imaging Mario & Co racing around in shopping carts, grabbing and tossing bananas etc..
However, I am having a lot of fun with Graceful Explosion Machine and Fast RMX. They don't have the depth of BOTW, but they are good games that are worth the price tag. If there can be more games like those, the Switch could do well in the long run.
A lot of Nintendo fans are early adopters, that's why they're buying a console with one significant game in March. For the general public they need to have more on offer than that.
Here are new AAA games which we are assured will be out by Christmas: Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skylanders, NBA 2K18, Arms, Splatoon 2.
There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform. Meaning people won't be buying a Switch to play those.
No doubt you're moaning about me leaving out Super Mario Odyssey, but at the time of writing SMO has no set release date only a vague "TBD, Holiday 2017." As does Project Sonic 2017. Nintendo games overrun their release date as much as other publishers, therefore one cannot be assured SMO will ship before the big holiday period.
If you look beyond 2017, it remains pretty slim pickings for the Switch. Likely until at least summer 2018 we won't see more than perhaps half a dozen exclusive AAA games on the console. We still have no assurance that the mainstream Pokemon franchise will be developed for the console.
The Wii U also sold fairly well early in its life, but sales dried up and never recovered with publishers avoiding it due its poor sales performance. The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself.
It all remains to be seen. I'll be paying close attention to Christmas 2017 sales figures because it might be the life or death of the Switch.
TONS of gamers didn't get to play any of them because the WiiU sold so poorly, so for a great many people they're 'new' games and worth buying the system for.
I think the prospect of putting AAA games on a portable system, will draw a lot of AAA studios to take the risk, if their game can be run on the hardware. I think the portability factor is a large factor of why they are selling so fast despite the lack of games right now. I think people want to see what its like to play non-junk/freemium/IAP driven games on the go. At least it was a major factor for me. I can't wait to play Mario Kart with my co-workers at lunch!
You know, I'm not sure. Those games are out for other home consoles, sure—but the Switch is not, precisely, a home console. Its form-factor makes it not just a substitute good for an XBO or PS4, but also a substitute good for a 3DS or an iPad. You know, a thing you buy for your kid to play with on car-trips.
And that means that those older and Indie titles—which wouldn't see very high attach-rates when ported onto current-gen home consoles—might fare a bit better, because they're reaching a market which didn't have access to them before. You can't play Skyrim on an iPad or a 3DS.
Its rare to find 8-player party games with simple controls that anybody can get into.
I like LAN parties, but the whole concept of them is kinda limited to the nerdy crowd. I'm totally a nerd btw, I go to conventions and play in those LAN rooms and stuff.
But opening up gameplay to my general non-nerd friends only happens through couch gaming. A lot of my friends straight up wouldn't get a chance to play in a LAN-party setup. But they come over and have fun with Mario Kart, Puyo Tetris, Smash, or most recently... Bomberman.
It's a completely free and open world, no grinding required, with simple gameplay yet with challenging layers that appeal to the folks with wanting more, a beautiful environment with amazing weather and climate differences and so on. Above all there is no in-app purchases required. It's a reminder of what games on the iPad could have been.
It's pretty amazing that one game, available on a previous-generation console, is able to drive that many sales of a new console.
People are basically spending $360 to play BotW.
I'm interested in nothing else right now though - the rest of the available games seem like Indie shovel-ware or re-releases. Shovel Knight. Come on, that's like 2 years old by now.
I'll still buy every Nintendo game they make for this, but highly unlikely I'll end up with a sizable 3rd party collection on it. Got a PS4 Pro for that.
At this stage in my playthrough, I often have to explicitly toss out weapons because I have too many -- very rarely do I run out of weapons and have to farm.
I actually disagree with it being well designed. The weapons are too common and break so frequently I feel like I'm playing a weapon changing simulator. They have never been a limitation and I have never worried about finding a new weapon to use. However I do find myself constantly having to bring up the menu to change weapons. I have 12 weapon slots and pretty much every slot is a knight's claymore or guardian weapon.
Once you get to the point of farming the world minibosses you'll never find yourself wanting of a good weapon. Hinox and Lynel have good weapon drops and they drop pretty frequently.
I feel as though weapons should have been made more rare but more durable so that there were times when you wouldn't have a weapon because they were rare to come across and you'd second guess yourself about using your weapons on lesser mobs like red moblins or keese.
I find myself needing shields more often than weapons - since I like to go Guardian hunting and I kill them exclusively with shield parries. One or two missed parries and my shield is destroyed. While I rarely miss the parry anymore, it does still happen.
In other games you can end up with ridiculously overpowered gear, and then cheese your way through all the areas of the game that are note late game.
If you do this here, you will waste very good weapons on enemies that are not very hard. Then you'll pick up their middle-tier weapons. Or you'll just preserve your good weapons by not wasting them on cheap enemies, which actually makes things more fun.
It also runs the other way. If you go straight for Hyrule Castle you'll actually find precisely the kind of weapons you need for Hyrule Castle there.
You can sneak into Hyrule Castle in the early game to get great weapons, but they won't last forever.
The power issue is separate and can be resolved (or not, it's sometimes fun to immediately feel like a badass while never being invincible) in a lot of ways. I don't really see how permanent weapon damage would make much difference in those tradeoffs, at least compared to a game that has repair.
Weapons are dropped off of almost every enemy, and were never a problem to get, though there is a fairly high churn rate- most weapons have like 50 strikes in them (maybe 5 battles) before they break. There are a number of weapons with significantly more than that though (Zora's Diamond spear is like 300 iirc)
I never had to farm anything in that game though.
But now I have 4 or 5 more weapon slots than I started with and 3 additional ones elsewhere. And they are all full of different weapons. Now the hard part is figuring out which ones to keep when I come across new weapons, so I'm usually happy when something breaks because it takes the decision away :p
It's a little sad to see that awesome sword you kinda got attached to break, but....there's always something new to try. Two-handed spears, giant hammers - adds nice variety.
I'm yet to farm anything.
My concern with the Switch though is it's the same problem the Wii U had: Nintendo is likely the only company that will really make AAA games for it, and they can only make so many games. The next game I'm looking forward to comes in December (Mario), and Nintendo have not announced anything else compelling yet.
By making these oddball consoles, Nintendo puts themselves in an impossible position of supporting the console entirely on their own. With how much resources it takes to make AAA games today, they just can't scale up to the challenge. BoTW was in development for what, 5 years?
Moreover, I've also heard that a development license for the Switch is crazy cheap- like $500? I wouldn't be surprised if they're more interested in indie and "pro-indie" titles than AAA. I mean, look at "One-Two Switch"- it's almost more of a tech demo than a party game.
I actually don't know anyone (that includes me) who bought a Switch as their primary system or as the system to play all games on - everyone I know bought it to play Nintendo games.
Looking at the eShop now, it's Zelda, followed by some shovelware, followed by games I can get on Steam. Or the PS4.
There's gotta be some non-Nintendo Switch exclusives that are actually good and not just ports/re-releases.
Game is amazing.
(One example, I got Dark Souls for $5 and have 100 hours on it, that's 5 cents per hour. Sure I didn't get it when it first came out (otherwise it would have been more, though not that much more -- but at the same time I may also have put more time into it with more active PvP) but I didn't need to, I had other stuff to play. I've got quite a backlog, or things to buy to add to the backlog when they're on sale, of amazing games to play that I don't need to play the latest thing at full price. Or a more recent example, I spent $15 helping back Yooka-Laylee two years ago, and it took me 23 hours to 100% it, so 65 cents per hour. Suppose it was $60, though, that's still only $2.60/hr.)
But bringing it back to the main point of the thread, which isn't cost, what's Nintendo going to do next? They have a ton of unused/underutilized IP, they can't make AAA content on a similar schedule to the rest of the industry, and it's not because their offerings are just that much better. Additionally when people can have 100+ hours of fun with the launch title, why are they going to buy other games when they come out? The Wii was notorious for having a very low bought-games-per-console figure, even though there were several great games for it. I can't imagine many third parties looking at the Switch as anything but a dumping ground (when the added dev cost is low) for stuff they already put on other platforms. In a few years everyone will have a mobile phone more powerful anyway so maybe it won't be much work at all.
Sony has a lot of developers making exclusives, which is why I own a PS4. But virtually anything else is cross-platform already, except for the MS exclusives. And chances are, I'd get a 3rd-party cross-platform for the PS4 Pro before the Switch.
I don't know how Nintendo can dig themselves out of this predicament.
The last Zelda game I bought was Skyward Sword for my Wii. Fairly early on I ran into something in one of the dungeons that I simply could not get past. I just could not get the timing right for the necessary move. I think my reflexes have slowed down a little as I've moved firmly past "not a kid anymore" into "middle aged enough to occasionally have some stupid kid at the drive through actually try to give me a senior discount", and that was enough to get me in Skyward Sword.
Since Zelda games before BoTW have generally a linear progression where you must complete various things in order to advance, getting stuck pretty much is game over.
The reviews I've read say BoTW tosses that out and is very "open world", and there is almost no need to finish any particular thing in order to progress.
Is that actually accurate?
Some things may be easier with prerequisites met but are still 100% possible if they aren't.
What criteria are you using here? Perhaps you are not a long-time fan of the series, but if you are factoring in innovation and engaging gameplay relative to the time period, Link to the Past comes out unequivocally on top.
So depending on when these stats were put together, I could be part of the group putting Switch BotW sales above the Switch console and I imagine there are others who ordered similarly.
The Wii U was a massive failure, precisely because of a lack of third party titles. Nintendo has great ip, but they don't push out enough games. No real Metroid in quite some time and Mario won't even hit the switch until end of year. Other console manufacturers have been far more successful than Nintendo recently.
Edit: to clarify, I love Nintendo, have since the 80's. It's not true that they've been killing it for decades though, Sony has been eating their lunch off and on since the PSX.
The Wii U was essentially a failure because Nintendo thought there was still a market for a chained-to-a-TV console—and there is, but only in the "hardcore gamer" segment that don't care for Nintendo's games lineup. The segment who are interested in Nintendo games, have shifted to being far more interested in mobile games than TV-console games (even if they would enjoy playing those games on a TV once in a while.) The Switch is an acknowledgement of this, and that's why it's succeeding.
I don't follow gaming news closely, so when I heard of the Wii U I thought it was a hardware revision not unlike the Xbox One S to the Xbox One. It took me over a year after launch to learn that the Wii U is an entirely new console.
The same thing happened with the 3DS. When I finally looked into getting one this past holiday season, I was confused by the 3DS vs 3DS XL vs New 3DS vs New 3DS XL. I was hesitant to buy since I wasn't sure if the New 3DS was a hardware revision or an entirely new console like the Wii U.
On top of that, the marketing wasn't there for me. I learn of my gaming news when it hits the front page of Reddit. When the Switch was announced, there was massive hype behind it. I didn't see the same for the Wii U.
You know, people level the same complaint at the iPhone, but it doesn't seem to have caused Apple any difficulty selling them. Maybe it's just that Best Buy/Toys-R-Us/EB Games employees aren't as good at helping people find the right model as Apple Store employees are?
On the other hand, the iPad's numbering was eliminated on its 'primary' model around the time of what would have been the iPad 3. That, in conjunction with the four different sizing options, seems moderately confusing and not consumer friendly. Not sure that that's why the tablet market is declining, but it might be contributing.
It took me until about a month ago! I skipped the Wii and never considered the WiiU because I thought it was a Wii expansion, and as such I figured I'd update when the next console was launched (Switch). Once it was, I did my research and realized that the WiiU would've been a fine purchase for my purposes (retro gaming + nintendo first-party games for WiiU and Wii).
If I'd known what I know now, I probably would have bought a WiiU a few years ago.
The Wii U was a failure because of an utter and complete failure at marketing, of the same kind that doomed the Dreamcast back in the day.
* The name is awful, and led to frequent confusion about it being an addon to the Wii.
* It got almost no advertising, especially when compared to the Wii, and especially the Switch (which got a freakin' super bowl ad!)
And then the more technical concerns:
* Poor support all around. A number of first party franchises like Metroid never even had a mainline game on the system, and we know the third parties were absent.
* Dual-screen concept doesn't map well to a TV. Star Fox Zero is a crying shame because of this. The game is a pain in the ass because of the switching between screens, and it could be so much better without it.
* Expensive: $350 at launch.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the console's under-powered-ness was the big problem. Nintendo's been developing consoles that are hardly cutting edge for well over a decade now. I think the problem was the marketing failures and the low attach rates convinced the third parties to not even bother.
They lost against the PSX as well though (iirc, 3x more PS1's sold an far more games.) They struck gold with the Wii initially, but at the same time, moved further away from the mainstream gaming crowd. Many games were little more than poorly implemented gimicks.
I'm hoping they hit a home run with the switch, but it's too early to tell. I have one and, while BotW is great, I have nothing else to play.
I've tried to get into gaming lately but the console stuff is just so contrived and dull. It's so focused on trying to be a movie (a bad one at that) that it has completely killed any idea of fun. The COD series is the absolute worst culprit. I really don't want to sit through a cutscene, then spend 30 minutes figuring out how the game works. I just want to play.
But Mario, Zelda...they're all just pure FUN. This is gaming as I remember when I was a child.
Do we know already what AAA games will be released on PS and Xbox during that period?
The core game is so good, so expansive, that it doesn't bother me in the slightest that there's upcoming "DLC". Don't get me wrong - I hate the trend in general, but in this case it's not a bad thing.
Edit: Ok, I realize that they even call it DLC on zelda.com, but my point still stands: these are expansions. The kind gamers used to get excited about.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm very optimistic, and have already bought/pre-ordered it (it's a gray area which to call it, because it unlocks some things immediately, but the bulk of it isn't available for a few months), but my optimism is mainly based on the Mario Kart 8 DLC, not what they've announced about the BotW DLC itself.
BotW has been a system seller up to this point, but only because the hardware's supplies are fairly limited at this point. I don't expect the DLC's release will be a significant factor in the Switch's continued sales, unless their other first party titles end up having disappointing sales.
True, we don't know the specifics, but my point was that the core game doesn't feel like it was intentionally broken just to make way for DLC like we see far too often with games these days. Any new content is an expansion on what is currently a masterpiece.
Sure, we don't know how expansive an expansion it is, but I'd still argue that even a small release is an expansion at this point. I'm also giving them the benefit of the doubt considering how excellent the core game is.
In that sense, I think (from what we've heard), BotW's DLC is not really an expansion pack in the old sense.
But why is DLC fundamentally bad? To me it seems to match the tick-tock-tock nature of engine development: build a game, spend years on an engine and content, price it at full price, then release a series of cheaper content-only products that use the same engine. Use that income to pay for next gen engine development.
The alternative is that developers can only release content if it's feature-length and using a next generation engine? That seems like a pointless demand.
The same reason preorders are bad: it creates perverse incentives for developers and publishers.
The problem people have with DLC isn't that developers are being demanded to release feature-length content, it's that developers are incentivized to lock stuff that's already developed and in the game behind a paywall. Essentially selling you content that you already purchased.
I'm not too worried about Nintendo succumbing to this problem, but there are some other devs out there with no such scruples. EA and Activision come to mind..
Is that an empirical finding?
However, for the holiday season, they've got a bunch coming up: GT Sport, Hellblade, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Nex Machina, Yakuza Kiwami, etc.
https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/ps4-console-exclusives-conf...
It's almost too much to keep up with...really a golden year for Sony.
Shadow Complex (metroidvania style game, and actually pretty good), Metal Gear Solid V, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, Fallout 3, Prison Complex, Device 6... and that's not including PlayStation exclusives that I am almost certain to love, like Ico/Shadow Of The Colossus.
There's plenty of amazing 'different breed' type games outside of Nintendo, is what I'm saying. At the same time I agree that Nintendo remains special: out of all the games I've played in recent years, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Zero Mission, Mario Galaxy, Animal Crossing (GameCube), etc. are equal and often better in my book than all the other great stuff.
I guess my point is that as a gamer dipping in and out of the 'scene' alongside figuring out what React Router decided to break on this update and dealing with adult life stuff, there's been plenty of great stuff outside of Nintendo, but nonetheless Nintendo has remained a consistent source of gaming joy that, in other places, is harder to find.
And reading all the reactions here, many people feel the same, a strong passion with the brand.
The console itself has been frustratingly difficult to find since I missed the preorders. I'm hoping Nintendo can pull it together before all my friends finish BoTW.
The only hitch was I had to order a bundle (switch + zelda). And zelda, strangely, came a few days after the switch.
Sadly Konami is dead so no more Castlevania games in the style of the DS ones :-(
Only tricky bit is that you have to have blessedly-pure ROMsets for automatic per-system playlist generation to work (it's hash-based), but that's a minor hurdle (and going through it will encourage you to clean up any "messy" sets you have, which isn't really a bad thing). There's a stickied post on their forum that'll give you the names of what you need. And you can always manually create playlists or launch individual ROMs, regardless.
Not affiliated with it, just a big fan of what Retroarch/Lakka and related projects are doing for emulation.
Is it that the Switch is the most immediately desirable system in Nintendo's history, or just that it's the most quickly produced one in history?
The hit Nintendo took by selling an underpowered console was loosing 3rd party support, as it was reportedly too much effort for folks like EA to support a platform that was so far behind their other supported consoles.
I wonder if history will repeat with the next generation of xbox/ps around the corner. If switch sales continue at this pace, I suspect not.