Ashley

Plus don't discount people buying the Switch even after it's been replaced as it'll be reduced in price. Hell, some families may buy an additional one for their kids or whatever.

Yeah I think apps are good for practice but the needs of their user base are so varied it is never going to be perfect. And that's fine, you shouldn't expect it. I guess part of it comes down to linguistics (ironically). What is "learning a language"? Mastering/fluency is clear, but does learning a few sentences for a holiday qualify as learning a language? If so then Duolingo does do that. And what I found with Duolingo was you ultimately end up learning the sentences that they repeat at you. It's easy to learn those, rather than learn the reason behind how they work. Which I guess is why apps are moving towards AI-based conversations.

If the games and release dates are all the same in each column why split it out?

It might be that you can choose whoever but the marketing focused on those 3 but I know in the past they have fixed the party so could go either way.

This won't happen but imagine if they released Prime 4 in two parts; part one on Switch and part two on Switch 2. Still complete games in themselves, but essentially a two-parter across consoles. As I said, never going to happen but curious to just see how that would play out.

Well I guess if you start early it helps. Plus some languages have a fair bit of overlap. Saw something the other day that said Italian and Spanish have about a 50-60% similarity and I did notice when in South America knowing Italian did help bridge the gap a bit. And some people are just smart.

Yeah that was the kind of thing. A native speaker would tell him something and he'd repeat or whatever, basically standing in for you. Good to know he's learning a lot!

Oh yeah Duolingo is fine for a bit of practice or the basics and I tend to do similar if I'm going away somewhere, just not great for actually acquiring a language. I attempted Greek a little while ago and used an app to get used to the alphabet itself. I didn't get very far.

Yeah I've tried a few of the coffee break podcasts over the years and they're always pretty decent. Don't know about the German but I know the Italian one is hosted by some Scottish guy (with an Italian woman) and I'm not normally a fan of the accent but it's very calming in that instance.

I was going to create a new thread as I thought this was too old to bump but I can see I last posted last year so whatever. I've recently tried to get into Spanish. Dabbled in the past but now giving it more welly and feeling better about the approach. I did dump Duolingo (Italian), as I said I probably would in my last post. I gave up on day 2222 but was using gems to maintain the streak but was without internet for several days in the Galapagos so now that's gone. But with Spanish I'm trying to be more active. Found a few YouTubers that I'm finding useful. One does videos for about 20-30 minutes going over a concept and just encouraging repetition, another is about 10 minutes and is a mixture between language learning concepts/approaches and actual linguistic topics. In addition I'm reading a book that was highly recommended and is good, although being from the 50s some of the vocab is superfluous (I don't think I'll need to talk about sending a cable or buying a pipe) but it does a good job of teaching through repetition. Next week (I'm away for a few days) going to start building an Anki deck as well based on these resources to help and trying to read and watch more Spanish stuff. Plus I've got the finale of The Good Place dubbed in Spanish saved as an audio file of my phone and listening to that as I've heard suggestions if you listen to the same thing like 50 times your ear becomes more attuned to hearing a foreign language. Overall I think I've got a better approach to learning now and Duolingo was definitely a placebo affect. Which I had known for a while but didn't make the jump.

Ah so they're bringing back The Phantom? A breakout surprise from the first game. Their introducing is a really unique moment.

I don't see upgrade patches being free (and nor am I that fussed about it). This is Nintendo after all and they've happily charged us £5 to buy Super Mario Bros multiple times and now we don't even get to buy it.

I look forward to seeing this kind of thing again

Rumours/speculation/insight (delete as appropriate) from industry insiders suggest late next year and dev kits are starting to be distributed: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sources-nintendo-switch-2-targets-2024-with-next-gen-console/

Not confirmed but seems likely.

Donald Glover and his brother (that kind of rhymes) will be writing the Lando series once the writers strike is over.

controllers have peaked. There will never be a better one

We're now over half way through the year and have a pretty good sense of what will be out, although we'll likely get a few more surprises, so what do you plan to pick up? Feel free to include recently released stuff that you've not yet got. I will probably get Pikmin 4 at some point. The excessive hand holding in the demo did annoy me, but the core loop is good and I would assume the non-stop dialogue would eventually die out. Will probably get Super Mario RPG too (but maybe ask for it for Christmas) because I have dabbled in the original years ago through means but I'd like to play it properly, I think in part because it was denied to us for so long. And in terms of stuff already out*, Ghost Trick, Advance Wars and play through the Mario and Rabbids DLC. When exactly I'm not sure as I don't game much now but by the by. *Yes technically Pikmin 4 is "already out" as of today

Jeremy Hunt in "not a good look" shocker.

I always assumed the Mario universe had an elastic timeline like The Simpsons

Maybe they'll surprise everyone and have that nightmare-fuel horse man mascot from Everybody 1-2 Switch.

I knew this was coming for mobiles but didn't consider its potential impact on the Switcha2.

Rick! I can but dream

Wonder if that means Steve Martin will be back.