Jamba

Rob Fahey has done another great editorial and SMR is the topic. Liked the balance here, no blame being placed by him just addressing people's different attitudes and expectations. Very good breakdown of the mobile market's business models too: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-12-22-super-mario-runs-inevitable-backlash

I don't think that a PS4 could render that game as it is the majority of the time. Maybe if it was Naughty Dog making it but not a company using middle ware that doesn't have an army sized team. For me, it looked very much like a portfolio for an environment artist but very little game. *shrug* guess I'll put this in the vapour ware pile for now.

I was just thinking about Nintendo's appeal and which 3rd party titles would fit well and there are the odd ones that come to mind. They obviously need to get on board with the toys-to-life market again (could use the built in reader maybe?) but there are more recently some games that have a broader appeal that would fit well with a Nintendo system. Overwatch for instance is bright and characterful, basically the Big Hero 6 of video games. It's a strong multiplayer game and combined with Splatoon could really make way for a portable FPS market. Blizzard haven't worked with Nintendo since the failed Starcraft Ghost project (as far as I'm aware) but they have a huge amount in common. Now that Blizz are in the console game a bit more there is more hope for a happy marriage. Kingdom Hearts III: From a market point of view, this is perfect and Epic have already stated that they will be supporting Unreal on Switch. It would be a boon to have such a substantial game on the platform and S-E and Nintendo have a history with this franchise. Anything Starwars: Now I'm not expecting Battlefront to run on the Switch. I'd LIKE it to but I very much doubt it will. But the franchise has such a wide appeal that I don't think Nintendo can opt out of not trying to court it somehow. (I thought we had a separate thread for this but was having trouble finding it!)

Don't forget the inevitable hardware revision. We wouldn't want to miss out on the Switch-Lite or the NEW Switch would we? :p I just watched this video explaining about how much bang for buck the switch hardware is going to achieve. Was interesting:

Well the reason that I ask is that a big price like that on the mobile market at the moment is going to put people off. Whether the quality of the game can balance that is a different story. But from a business perspective, they've created a limiting format for the income on the game. As long as people play Pokémon GO there will be income from purchases but once all of the people who play Mario have bought it, there is no additional way to keep getting income from those players. I don't care either which way but I'm sure that the shareholders do.

So once you've purchased the game, is there any additional content you can buy in game?

I'm keeping an eye out on the FCC website to see if any information comes up but they do keep things confidential for a period. I'd expect some detail to pop up in Jan. So the more I think about this, the better it gets. One of the major issues that I have with mobile VR is that the tracking goes of really easily but that almost no games have inputs. With joycons, you instantly have a fairly sophisticated input set out of the box that lends itself to VR. What if we should be expecting BotW in VR, which could be played from a first person perspective? Mario Kart VR anyone?

So I've recently got back into this in a big way after not being able to play for a while. I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to the Xmas Mei event. Has anyone played that much yet?

Google Trends for 2016: https://www.google.com/trends/yis/2016/GLOBAL Consumer Tech 1) iPhone 7 2) Freedom 251 3) iPhone SE 4) iPhone 6S 5) Google Pixel 6) Samsung Galaxy S7 7) iPhone 7 Plus 8) Note 7 9) Nintendo Switch 10) Samsung J7

Yeah that's a pretty good summary, although I'd say that there's plenty of depth to keep pulling out of it, unlike NMS. For instance, you're likely to start earning money mostly by combat based missions which are fun but you'll start to want for something a bit more substantial. So you might look into exploration and mapping and there's a whole different ship layout for that kind of thing. Or you might want to have a look into the faction gameplay where what you do starts to shift the balance of power in the galaxy. There loads of local small factions that you can tinker with to and there's lots of benefits/cons. And if you break into enemy space and assassinate someone, I can guarantee you that space travel gets interesting quickly. If you have any real value in cargo on you or you have a bounty on you, you get pulled out of space travel by people with tractor beams (called interdiction) and you're kind of forced to fight. Can get pretty hairy!

Bit early to be making noise about it isnt it? Most people will have had enough to eat and drink and slept enough that they barely remember their own name by new years (or if you work in retail then youve just died inside).

I've been looking at the vid again and I'm starting to wonder how rugged it's going to be. I'd say that was a given for Nintendo but the 3DS certainly has changed that reputation with that crappy hinge. Specifically, I'm anticipating issues with the joypads and where they attach to the screen. The contact area seems pretty small and I'm wondering if a reasonable twist would break them.

Yes it's a completely different kettle of fish. They are upgrading to a platform which has hugely more RAM and CPU than required in most cases. A single platform which has a fixed (mostly) hardware set, which they have a deeper understanding of than anyone and they are porting games from platforms that they have a deeper understanding of than anyone. PC games have to deal with significant OS updates, complete changes in CPU and graphics architecture and the same game has to run on an enormous range of hardware types. So explain to me who has the more difficult job?

Well it's really about screwing everyone in the purchase proposition surely? If you buy a game, you feel that you should get license to play that for a reasonable amount of time and always on their most current console. Can you imagine what Steam would be like if you lost your library if you changed PC? Nintendo are about to do this to everyone for the second time because of their piss-poor excuse for a centralised system, which has been a concept in games since 2004 (maybe even earlier). Not to mention, do it to all of those people that actually bought the Wii U. It's hugely anti-consumer. Justifying charging everyone again is a business decision only and a poor one. If you have the virtual console and you charge people a premium price to not go and easily pirate your entire library, the you should support them. That means updating the game to fit modern standard without charging people. Look at Skyrim HD and how many people go that for free, look at the content that gets added to PC games. There are many more pro-consumer efforts going on there. Hell even SEGA's PC versions of the DC games are pretty damn well priced. It costs me more for a SNES game than for that! You can even look at the value that people got for the Uncharted Collection and that Sony themselves have regularly put it on sale and then compare that to releasing TP and WW remakes at the prices they did.

I'd hope that there's a multiplayer game ready for launch. They need something to promote the benefits of the system, hope the online and community functions will play. I cant see anything other than Splatoon, MK or Smash doing that. Plus those games keep giving unlike the single player games that leave a droughty kind of feeling.

Surely Nintendo have set a precedent for not getting their messaging right?

I think the price point is going to be very telling about how they are going to position the Switch as a product. I can see there being serious issues if Nintendo don't match their messaging with the price. If not, people will be put off by a high price and claim that it's too much for a handheld and vice versa.

There's room for an SSD in the dock. Maybe you can store your library in there and copy to the tablet what you want to play right now. As for the system as a whole, I'm optimistic but not yet convinced. As with everything Nintendo, the potential in the hardware is there but that pitch can be ruined by some small but important realities. I'm thinking very heavily on the original Wii videos.

I was referring to general interest and cultural relevance, rather than sales as I was replying to what Ronnie was talking about. VR particularly has been widely covered in the normal media. You were talking about cultural interest. People only have SO much time and money after all and for most, Netflix is a better choice to spend they're money on. What you've just said about VR being niche is also exactly what everyone has been saying about Nintendo consoles for years.

EDIT: sorry! Didnt see how many people had replied to you already! I think you may be effected by the echo chamber of the internet. My impression is that culturally Nintendo have had specks of relevance with things like Pokemon go but the wider audience doesn't care what's happening with Nintendo. Most people who are vaguely interested will have their ears prick up when the news comes out but definitely won't wait for it. This is classic Nintendo, get everyone excited and then let the market go stone cold. Many more people are focused on VR, big PC games like WoW and Overwatch, Youtube, Netflix, the world being SO expensive right now. Nintendo have a lot of noise to compete against.

Pretty sure that more people have the latest model of iphone compared to the combined userbase of the wii, Ds, 3DS and Wii U. It would make for a reasonable business decision. Agree on all points!

Maybe having this conversation by PM would be more appropriate? Also you cant go calling people a hypocrit for derailing the thread and then continue driving it off track either. And you both are talking about Ronnie in front of him like hes not here.

Ive been asking myself this question a lot and I cant really settle on and answer. One thing I do want is fpr it to be a far more cloud based offering. If it turns out that Nintendo still cant provide an online system that isnt directly tied to hardware ids then I may give it a miss. Ive got tired of feeling like im getting robbed any time a buy a VC game as they are top expensive in my opinion anyway and then to be robbed again when they essentially delete your library next gen. I like the hybrid idea but I'm staying to wonder if the handheld part should just be a phone. Everyone has one and it would massively open the audience.

Most of that 5 months will be jam packed with the clamour of new releases around xmas. Honestly, the sensible time I see for Nintendo to announce would now be late Feb, after the xmas hubbub has died down. And that's why I'm now expecting a release being delayed to later in 2017. And as an aside, you need to chill big time. It's a forum, you should have got used to people liking different things to you a long time ago. You don't need to go digging your heels in and derailing this thread all the time. What youve just said to drahkon was completely unprovoked. I have no idea why you're being like that. EDIT: well apparently not directly unrpovoked but still. I dont think I know what thats about.

Absolutely fuck all dude. Starting to wonder if someone got the release details wrong and we're actually getting news in march, not the console.