Nicktendo

Jim Stirling has been fighting this kind of thing for years. Definitely worth checking out his YouTube Channel if you are interested in seeing it in action. He's been sued by "devs" and annually releases his Top 10 worst games of the year which always provides a laugh. The Jimquisition is easily one of the best gaming shows on YouTube, where he calls out shady dev practices from the Steam garbage to the big names like Konami, Sony and Nintendo.

December 2016: [/url] January 2017: The addiction is real.

Switch being sold out would be good, obviously, but not if Nintendo are too conservative with production for launch and a number of consumers can't get hold of one, which is what I was getting at... but no, I just think it'll be ridiculous if it's sold out and becomes a success, that's clearly what I meant.

I pre-ordered in-store at GAME back in November. Even then they told me they'd already had a large number of pre-orders. I hope Nintendo judge the demand for this properly, a repeat of the Wii or the NES classic will not get the console off to a good start.

That's also what I expect from EA. I expect they'll release the 2017 versions, which have been out for 6 months already on PS4 and Xbone, at full price. I also expect them to be heavily nerfed in some way and completely bomb at retail. I expect that'll be the last we hear of EA for a year or so if Switch does eventually end up being a big seller. I hope I'm wrong, but history suggests otherwise. If anyone loves sending a game out to die, it's EA.

Anyone know when this is likely to be back in stock? I have a £50 amazon voucher waiting to be spent on this Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The Gamecube was pretty good for 3rd Party games, after the DIRE situation on the N64 and then later on the Wii U. I know Eternal Darkness and Baiten Kaitos were mentioned earlier... Not strictly 3rd party as Nintendo bought the games and published them exclusively on the GC. The same may have been true with Tales of Symphonia, but I honestly can't remember. That gen was effectively the last time all 3 consoles had a large number of "exclusives" to attract the consumer to their brand. Xbox had Halo, Sony had Metal Gear and Nintendo had Mario / Zelda just as an example, there were others. GTA was still a Sony exclusive in the middle of that gen, only coming out on Xbox towards the end of the gen cycle. Exclusives aside, most major 3rd party games were released on all 3 consoles, your Prince of Persias, Tony Hawks, FIFAs, Timesplitters, True Crimes etc. etc. The GC versions were generally better from a technical standpoint than the PS2 releases but weaker than the Xbox ones, thanks to the HDD and more grunt in the Xbox, but as we know the PS2 had a DVD player and a larger install base as an advantage. This was the last time Nintendo "competed" with Sony and MS and they didn't exactly set the world on fire, despite the "games only" machine initially being cheaper than its rivals and arguably having a better line-up of exclusives in the first 18 months, the GC was largely a failure from a financial standpoint. Nintendo had "competed" for 2 generations and come off worse both times. The Wii, while it continued to split the audience between "casual and hardcore" that had begun to emerge with the GameCube (totally unjustifiably where the GC is concerned in my opinion), allowed Nintendo to develop games cheaply and quickly instead of throwing more and more money at building a powerhouse. This strategy had already worked with the Game Boy and was proving successful with the DS. The Wii U was a continuation of that, but done in the worst possible way, with a laughable marketing strategy and the idea that 18-month-old full-price ports constituted 3rd party games. So what I would argue Nintendo needs to do moving forward is completely ignore what is happening on Xbox One and PS4. This machine was never going to be in the same league power wise, and trying to attract developers to port their games onto this console is going to result in either failure, disappointment or both in terms of sales and in comparison to their counterparts on the other machines. Nintendo needs to remember what made DS and Gameboy so successful as handheld devices and develop games which take advantage of the "older" hardware, but still offer innovative, interesting and substantial (this is critical) experiences that ALL gamers are interested in. Skyrim is a great game to have on Switch, but let's not forget, it's a 5 year old game already. Of course Nintendo are to blame, just as much as the 3rd parties for their failure in the past 10 years but it's up to them to win them back. Nintendo need to take a more pro-active approach. Encourage innovation and original ideas, support 3rd parties financially if necessary, invest in ideas and teams as they did with Silicon Knights, Monolith Soft etc. Push the system out to indies and emphasize how easy the system is to develop for, maybe even offer deals to devs wanting to appear on the e-shop exclusively (take less of a cut) or put some kind of My Nintendo discount at the game's release. Fast Racing Neo was a great, if not spectacular game, what's to stop Nintendo, for example, sending a few people down and helping out with the development, offering Shin'en the F-Zero name and spending a little extra time polishing the game up? Certainly much cheaper than developing F-Zero from the ground up? Everyone wins. It's about seeing potential and developing it, instead of just letting it out on the e-shop front page for a week and then forgetting about it. Third parties have to play ball as well though, if EA comes up and wants to release FIFA '17 at the Switch launch and a port of sequel to a 3 year old game, Nintendo should turn around and say no, because really that helps nobody. Nobody wants to pay full price for an old game, and all EA will do is turn around and say "nobody is buying our games". No, they wait and release the NEXT installment, alongside the big brother versions, without all the "play as Mario" or "cool new Switch exclusive mini-game, but secretly at the expense of a massive feature" bullshit. Build the game to Switch's strengths, it's never going to be the same, but please, without all the kiddie nonsense, then and only then could your game have a good chance of selling at least something. Because 12 year old little Tommy Jr. is probably already getting the Xbox One version for his birthday and no amount of "ha ha look at this" child-friendly modes will ever appeal to him. He has to want the game on merit because a) it's actually good and up-to-date and b) he can play it on the bus on the way to school. I find it highly unlikely that we are ever going to get the latest blockbuster or AAA releases, your Titanfalls or Witchers etc, simply because they are pushing the boundaries of technology. The Switch will not be so close to those boundaries, and no Nintendo console has been since the N64 and the GC, both of which failed, so what Nintendo and the 3rd parties need to do is have a strategy that works, low-cost but potentially higher return. If that's in the form of a "companion" release (I'm thinking Dead Space Wii here), or something more original but with the same care, foresight and respect to development as a AAA title then so be it. However, the 3rd parties also need to make the effort, they need to understand that Nintendo's audience is used to polished, high-quality experiences and fobbing them off with untested, unremarkable shovel-ware is not going to cut it, now or ever. Personally, I expect we'll be bemoaning the lack of 3rd parties on Switch by early 2018. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, but I need to see more of a will to make it work from both sides before I believe anything more substantial will happen. I expect on January the 12th we'll get some answers and the future of 3rd parties and Nintendo will become a little clearer.

Some discussion about the recently released rumoured specs.

I think marketing this primarily as a home console would be a mistake, especially given the specs. If it is cheap (sub £200) with the handheld experience being a marked improvement over 3DS, then I don't think Nintendo will have too many problems shifting it. The DS had incredible sales, the 3DS has been extremely solid, if not stunning. If Switch will be the new home of Pokemon, Layton, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, not even thinking about Mario and Zelda, then the machine will sell - there are still 60-80 million handheld gamers out there if you think about Vita and 3DS owners. Hopefully the fact that it can be played at home will attract a few more players. I still play my 3DS regularly, but almost exclusively at home. I'm ready for a 3DS successor to drop and the sequels to all those great 3DS games, if it also means I can play BOTW and Xenoblade/Skyrim type games on my TV through one console then it's win/win for me.

Great analogy, and I do understand, it's just depressing that the game has so many one star ratings despite people saying it's a "great game". I'm sure over time it'll swing back to more positive once the initial outrage has died down, but I do worry about how it could affect their decision making in the future.

True, but Mario Run doesn't force us to wait through timed periods or watch ads. Fallout Shelter and Pewdiepie's YouTube Sim are two great games that I've sunk lots of hours into on mobile but they have those issues, especially the latter. It's fair game a developer offering a game for free with these models alongside a "pay to win" option, but, personally, I'd much rather pay a small fee than put up with that nonsense. I'm glad Nintendo has chosen this method and once it's out on Android I'll probably buy it. It just amazes me that people can't even contemplate why these other games are free and the hoops they have to jump through to play them for free.

Some of these comments are unbelievable. I can't believe how many people expect stuff for free. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was with NTL, then Virgin from 2006-2011 and they were excellent. Never had a problem, didn't need a phone line and the speeds were always top notch. I'd always opt for them if your address is wired up to them. The TV packages are very competitive as well. I'm with BT now because Virgin isn't connected to my current address, and I've been surprised at how good it's been. I have to have a phone line, obviously, which is a pain, but I get 52mb and access to BT Sport for £28.49 a month, plus a £5 discount off my GF's unlimited sim only mobile package, with 20Gb of data a month, which she somehow manages to use up... All their services have worked perfectly since it was installed back in September. Gaming, HD streaming and using multiple devices has never troubled it. I was apprehensive about BT because my parents' broadband is atrocious, it drops constantly and is painfully slow, but I don't think they're paying for fibre, and it's the standard ADSL. Either way it's horrible.

Would 1080p and widescreen be too much to ask of Nintendo...? Absolutely aching to play Luigi's Mansion and Sunshine again after Wind Waker HD. There isn't a whole let else off the GC I'm overly interested in, but Double Dash would be nice for nostalgia's sake. I'd love to finally play through TTYD :p I'd prefer to play a new F-Zero than go through GX again, as good as it still is. Metroid, Pikmin and Zelda have already been done on Wii / Wii U. The rest, I guess is up to the third parties, but it would be great to have Capcom and Sega on board.

The Good Walking into Game in Leeds a week before launch and finally seeing this thing in action. I didn’t play it, but causally observed from a distance. This is when I knew Wii Sports was going to set the world on fire. At midnight on the 8th December 2006, I went to my local indy games store (don’t see many of them any more) and picked up my pre-order. I’d known Rob, the owner, for a couple of years and he was as excited as me for the release. I picked up the console with Wii Sports, Wii Play, Red Steel and Zelda along with a pair of component cables and two classic controllers. I think I parted with about £300 that day, but Rob knocked some money off as I was a loyal customer. I spent the next week playing Zelda and Red Steel (which I adored) until the early hours of the morning, weekends around Christmas were taken up with “Wii parties” and copious amounts of pizza and alcohol being consumed. It really was the most incredible launch of a games console that I can remember. About a year after launch, I sold my Wii, and bought a US NTSC console. Games were cheap from playasia.com and I managed to pick up Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl way before they hit the shelves in the UK. I’d cut myself out of the second hand market, but it was worth it to experience the REAL Virtual Console. The VC was undoubtedly the best thing about the Wii. I spent hours re-playing old games as well as going through a huge collection of fantastic Mega Drive games I’d never played as a kid, shout out here to Ristar, now one of my favourite 16-bit games of all time. WiiWare was great too, with both LostWinds games being a personal highlight. Despite the lack of big hitters, the Wii had a solid line up of first and third party games, often offering something completely new or innovative in terms of gameplay. The Galaxy games were superb, Mario Kart Wii was a decent entry which finally gave us decent, competitive online, Animal Crossing was engaging and fresh enough to be a step up from Wild World and Wii Speak provided a number of laughs with some members of this forum. I lost 3 stone with the help of Wii Fit. Wii Sports and it’s sequel were a revolution in gaming which harked back to that classic NES formula of easy to pick-up, tough to master, Excitetruck and Punch Out also followed this formula with great success. While third parties didn’t push the boat out because of the consoles limitations, there were still some fantastic games, which really took advantage of the hardware. Particularly De Blob, Boom Blox, Zack and Wiki, House of the Dead: Overkill and Little King’s Story – All fantastic Wii games. Nintendo fans also got enhanced ports of previous gen games which really added to the immersion, Resident Evil 4, Bully and The Godfather were my personal highlights. The console’s life finally came to an end after a short burst (Xenoblade, Last Story etc.) with Skyward Sword (A game which showed how far the technology had come since the waggle-fest which was Twilight Princess), but by this point it seemed nobody cared. The Bad Despite the Wii’s more than solid line-up of games, gamers were left wanting more, and thus was born the casual / hardcore split. As someone who has been a Nintendo gamer since the age of 4, the Wii alone was not enough to keep me gaming and will always be remembered by me as the console that led me to buy an Xbox. All my “hardcore” gaming friends had one, online gaming had exploded and the technology was genuinely pushing the medium forward. Nintendo seemed stuck in the past. If you wanted a decent racing game, sports game or online shooter, Nintendo Wii was not the place to be. Though Nintendo seemingly dropped the “blue ocean strategy” with the Wii U, their output on the Wii cetrainly suffered because of it. While they were still innovating, in a different direction from that of their competitors, games because smaller, cheaper and more linear. Side-scrolling platformers made a welcome return, but then were exhausted to the point of frustration. While the Galaxy games were a joy to behold in their own right, they failed to live up to the magic and freedom of 64 and Sunshine, relying a little too much on nostalgia. Brawl, while choc-full of features and surprises, failed to live up to the might of Melee. New Super Mario Bros., despite being a commercial success, was another failed attempt at luring people in with nostalgia as opposed to doing something new. The Uglii The Virtual Console. Yes, I know I already mentioned it in the Good, but the PAL virtual console was a mess. In 2006 and beyond, Nintendo were still offering us sub-standard games when the technology was available to offer us the original. Could they have given us a choice? Too confusing (probably). Could they have just offered us the original? Might not have worked on your Granny’s 20-year-old 50hz TV. I’m sure there were reasons why they went down this road, but it just felt like a big fuck you to European gamers. I’m also willing to bet that 95% of those gamers who downloaded VC games had the means of playing them in 60hz, but these arguments are long in the past now. Nintendo’s decision to not go HD, while nice on the consumer’s wallet (and Nintendo’s, incidentally) made their games look like ass on modern TV sets, at least without a set of component cables. I forked out for a decent CRT TV, just so my games wouldn’t look like a jaggy mess, and while it was a massive step up from my relatively cheap LCD, especially VC games, the decision is still one which annoys me to this day. While the other systems pushed the boundaries is display quality, Nintendo didn’t care, and it showed, big time. I don’t want this to end on a negative note, because I genuinely loved the Wii, but at times it seems this was despite Nintendo and not because of them. I will always remember the Wii parties as being some of my favourite gaming memories, in a world where online has become the standard. Nintendo’s last effort to capture the living room, while valiant, ultimately failed.

Had the evening off for a change so it was fun to play with you guys again. Got disconnected on the final race of GP1, but it's ok because Toad Harbour sucks :P Cannot believe the finish to Rainbow Road 64, unbelievable... Good night all round, cheers!

I got this in the Amazon Black Friday sale for £11. Thought it wasn't a bad price for 2 Amiibo and a set of AC Amiibo cards

Keep your ears peeled for this week's Famicast which includes an n-europe forum member trying (and failing) to participate in guessing 8-bit remixes of video game soundtracks

This is a pretty good economic analysis of why Brexit happened, why Trump was elected (even before he was) and what the future may hold for Europe. Find an hour and a half and give it a watch.

But hasn't the whole idea of the VC essentially been this: "Any new games this week, Nintendo?" "Yep, Super Ghouls and Ghosts!" "...K, cool. Next week?" "Look, Urban Champion. 'Member that?" "Yeaaah, I 'member. When's the next 3D Mario title coming out then?" "....Super Mario..." "Yeah....?" "World..." "I'm listening!!" "2: Yoshi's Island will be dropping next week on VC!" "Oh... When are we getting Destiny?" "Look! Clu Clu Land! 'Member?" -"Well I was going to buy a PS4, but now you drop THIS bombshell on me" (Said 10 million people). -"I'm out" (Said 40 million)

I have no love really for the "unholy trinity" of Clarkson and co. but seeing as how my girlfriend got 6 months of Prime free I decided to give this a watch. My general dislike of the three presenters, particularly Clarkson, could not cloud that fact that this is a genuienly engrossing, beautifully shot TV show for people who love cars, basically everything that Top Gear failed to be in the most recent season. I'm happy Clarkson is off the BBC, but with Amazon's budget behind them, they have clearly gone all out for this show after it had definitely become tired on the BBC in recent years. Now, it feels like a new lease of life has been breathed into it and it has been freed from the chains, budgetary or otherwise which may have held them back or led to frustrations at the BBC. I wish I had a 4K TV, as even in 1080p this was jawdroppingly stunning. I loved the amount of time they dedicated to the 2-part in-depth feature on the electric supercars, and regardless of what I think of them, their chemistry works, which is kind of critical when you consider the new Top Gear line-up. It was refreshing to see them, aged, haggard and generally unkempt indluging in a subject they clearly have an enourmous amount of passion for, not something we really see on TV anymore. Credit where credit's due, this was a massive success as far as I'm concerned and I will be tuning in again.

That's for Nintendo to decide, unfortunately, and highly unlikely in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure some sort of trade-in scheme could work, but I doubt they'd do it. We've already seen King Boo in MK Switch, as well as characters being able to hold 2 items, new tracks have also been rumoured from the leakers, so it looks like there will be some kind of new content, how much is anyone's guess though. In Splatoon we've seen new character designs and a new map, so it seems like that is getting new content as well, but again it depends on the scale of this new content. If Splatoon will be (as rumoured) a pack-in with the system, then I suppose this discussion is fairly redundant as early adopters will be getting it anyway. If they are going down the 8.5 route as opposed to the Mario Kart 9 one for the system's lifespan, then I expect we'll see a healthy amount of bi-annual or annual DLC on top of a huge base game, in which case I'll probably buy it.

I still haven't finished with these on Wii U and would love to keep playing on Switch with the community, but if the titles are going to be full price, Nintendo either needs to include decent number of additions to justify the price or give Wii U owners some sort of discount for me to jump.

I often read the Guardian online, as well as the Independent and occasionally I'll look at UK news stories on RT, as they often cover stuff ignored by our press, or have a different take to the left or right leaning media. I also read Delfi, which covers the Baltics and Russia in both English and Russian, as well as Lenta RU which is a fairly respected independent Russian news outlet which covers global news well. I agree that the Guardian comments section is usually pretty good and attracts a wide number of people both left and right leaning, usually provoking good discussion. I stay away completely from any kind of Facebook news and/or discussion. My main source of news used to be the BBC and the Guardian exclusively, but as time has passed I've been placing less and less trust in them and now read almost every article with a grain of salt while finding myself identifying less and less as a 'liberal', particularly in a post-Brexit / Trump world. My crumbling faith in them is mostly down to their shocking coverage of Russia and how unashamedly they potray everything that happens in that country in a negative light. And it is constant. Unrelenting, especially if one were to compare that with their coverage of China, who our leaders are conveniently more favourable towards. The straw that broke the horses back, so to speak, was when the BBC ran a written article on the currency crisis in Russia, December 2014, when the rouble plunged to 100 roubles to the pound. At the time I was working just off Nevsky Prospect and the BBC were going on about huge queues and a sense of utter panic at the currency exchange bureau right over the road from my work. It was complete bullshit. There was no panic whatsoever, at least that wasn't confined to a bunch of ex-pat teachers. No queues. Nothing. People simply didn't care. People were prepared to ride it out. After already being unimpressed with their underreporting of the riots on George Square during the Scottish Referendum and (what I perceived to be) bias in the run-up to the vote, they had already been on shaky ground with me. Now I am suspicious of everything they write, but still believe it gives a more rounded and generally more impartial view than other media outlets based in the UK. Plus it's fairly good for sport and local news. I still go there, but mostly as a force of habit.

Rabbids Go Home was one of my favourite games on the Wii. Essentially an action adventure game with an amusing premise, very good music and geniunely funny moments. The controls were really tight and the gameplay was challenging. Incidently, I never played the mini-game collection that launched with the system, but I've heard / read it's not any good. If Rabbids Go Home is anything to go by, then this game could be surprisingly good.