[Frank777]

I'm not sure I've ever started a thread in the gaming section, so I thought I'd get the ball rolling here.

I'll add that Nintendo has always been my favourite gaming brand. It's a pity that after the massive response to the Wii, they didn't understand that all everybody wanted was a Wii HD. They would have made billions, but instead they gave us that tablet thing.

Oh, and Mario Kart 64 is the best racing game ever invented. Period.

[Kickaha]

I'm strangely eager to see what they pull out of their hat this time.

[Yontsey]

I'm really looking forward to this. I have the Wii U but it never really blew me away. I felt the game selection was kind of lacking and the fact that they try and make it a "family" console bugs me. Let's get some great graphics in this thing and quit messing around.

[Yontsey]

Here is the first look I've seen of the new system.

It looks pretty cool and whatnot, but I want to see some specs.

[turtle]

With the number of kids running around all I envision is half my controller missing when I'm ready to play it.

I like the concept overall though. Not that I would plan to go to a party in another building and try to get all of those party goers playing my Switch. Still, it would be nice for around the house. Small media cards are a nice switch too. My kids destroy DVD/CDs. Maybe this will make it easier... especially if they are just SD and copied content. Not that I'm expecting that.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by Frank777 Oh, and Mario Kart 64 is the best racing game ever invented. Period.

Nah, Super Mario Kart was better... 2D FTW.

[kieran]

I think it looks cool. Kind of seems like they're going back to the casual market, but throwing some of the WiiU in there as well.

Doubt I'll buy it, but it's interesting.

[Frank777]

Meh. I guess Nintendo hasn't learned that if I want to play a mobile game, I will use an iPhone or iPad.

YMMV, but a Nintendo at my place is a big screen, living room machine.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Yontsey Here is the first look I've seen of the new system. It looks pretty cool and whatnot, but I want to see some specs.

Ars has a pretty good speculative teardown of likely specs:

What we know (and what we can guess) about Nintendo Switch’s insides
How big is the Nintendo Switch? An Ars visual analysis

Summary of their speculation:

• CPU may be a custom Nvidia Tegra chip (based on ARM)
• GPU may be 256 CUDA cores on Nvidia's Pascal architecture
• a vent and presumably a fan are located on the top edge of the tablet
• video out when docked should be 1080p (duh)
• tablet screen may be 720p, reducing power demands for better battery use
• tablet screen is ~145 x 82 mm (about 166 mm or 6.5" diagonal)
• backwards compatibility with existing Wii U games is extremely unlikely; games will need to be rebuilt/recompiled for Switch
• those slide-off Joy-Con controllers are tiny at ~106.4mm x 34.3 (4.19 x 1.35")

[El Gallo]

My son made me watch the video yesterday. I'm not a big time gamer but much of what they are looking to do just seems backwards in this day and age. I can understand where they are coming from but it looks like an evolutionary dead end. Consoles overall seem that way to me though. There was a time when having a console made life easy because you weren't messing with driver updates or trying to update firmwares or other such nonsense.

Consoles have become computers and iPads and the like have become easier to use than the consoles of yore. Nintendo wants to push out 50 million new pieces of updated hardware that they want to turn around and sell $50 pieces of plastic to containing their games. They should have moved on to selling $5-10 games to Apple's billion devices.

Nintendo at this stage feels like Nokia. We own a Wii, a Wii U and my sons both on 3DS's.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by PB PM Nah, Super Mario Kart was better... 2D FTW.

I'm probably stepping into a small holy war here (at least I'm not debating versions of Super Smash Bros, amirite?), but Super Mario Kart feels to me like a totally different game from its later generations. Super was certainly fun, but whenever I try to pick it up some twenty-plus years later, I'm frustrated by how the controls feel so loose and slippery compared to 64 and beyond. I feel the same way about the original F-Zero. I loved both of these originals on the SNES, but in hindsight it's clear that Nintendo was still in a very nascent stage of figuring out how to translate real-world physics into racing games.

I've finally been playing some Mario Kart 8 lately with coworkers (we have a Wii U in a rec room), and although it's very pretty, I feel like something about the level designs is too complex or they fly by too quickly to appreciate. Hard to put a finger on it exactly. Thankfully that horrible blue shell is a little bit less common than on Mario Kart Wii, at least. I look forward to Mario Kart Switch in another year or so.

[alcimedes]

I think the problem with the MK8 courses is that they're too busy on the peripheral areas. It makes it hard to see what's course, what's fluff/unpathable.

I must say the release game list doesn't buzz me too much.

[Luca]

There's a lot about the Switch that doesn't buzz me much.

The only launch game worth a damn is Zelda, and it's getting released for Wii U as well so you don't even need a Switch to play it.

1-2-Switch should be $20 or a pack-in game. It's not worth what they're charging.

Other launch games are pretty meh for the price too. Most look more like $20 indie games than full $50-$60 releases. Many of them are older games being ported to the system.

Accessory prices are insane. $50 per joycon, or $80 for a set of two? $70 for a pro controller? Yikes.

Paid online. Granted, it looks like it'll cost about half as much as Xbox/Playstation, but those systems were created with online play at their core. You get a large library of free games if you subscribe to Xbox Live or PSN, whereas Nintendo subscribers get one NES/SNES game that disappears and is replaced at the end of every month. You don't get to keep it like you do with XB/PS games.

Nintendo have also confirmed that they will charge people yet again to move their downloaded games from previous systems. Because they can't just tie your purchases to an account, they have to make you keep paying over and over again for the same shit you already bought. They already did this when moving games from the Wii virtual console to the Wii U.

I just can't see this thing taking off like the Wii did. It has some neat gimmicks but I think not making 1-2-Switch a pack-in will kill it. The entire reason the Wii succeeded is that the Wii Sports pack in title was extremely accessible and everyone wanted it.

Now I suppose you could argue that while the Wii came with Wii Sports, it also only shipped with one controller, and you had to buy a second controller (many people bought the Wii Play controller bundle, which was $10 more than buying the controller alone). And the Switch comes with 2 controllers out of the box, so you don't have to buy extra (but you do have to buy 1-2-Switch). I don't know about that. At least with the Wii you could start playing immediately, and you could always take turns and then decide that it's worth buying another controller.

I have a feeling the Switch is going to disappoint much like the Wii U did. Nintendo keeps making the same promises about third party support that they haven't kept since the GameCube days, their games are few and far between, and all their stuff is expensive. I hope it doesn't fail because I like Nintendo, but I'm having a hard time seeing how the Switch will succeed.

From what I've heard about their launch production, they are playing it very safe with how many they're going to even build. So maybe they won't lose money - they'd rather underestimate its popularity than overestimate like they did with the Wii U.

[Frank777]

Our Wii still gets used in our house, pretty much only for Wii Golf.

As far as I've heard there's no new Sports games available for launch. No Mario Kart either.

Group gaming is what a lot of people want these things for. The kids can do their personal gaming on their iPads.

Sadly, that means no sale for us in the first few months. If a new Golf and MK come by Christmas, we may upgrade then.

[El Gallo]

My son who is a pretty hard core Nintendo guy has shown almost zero interest in the Switch. He has talked a bit about specs, battery life and so on and feels like many others that the $300 price point is too much.

[Frank777]

If this thing fails commercially, and it looks like it just might, Nintendo will become the world's most amazing game development studio.

[dglow]

...for platforms other than their own, yes.

[Robo]

Well, I'm excited.

We...may have gotten ours in, and we might have been having Bomberman and cow-milking face-offs in the back...

The day one line-up is kind of meh but I think a steady stream of games post-launch is more important. What killed the Wii U's momentum wasn't what was available at launch (we quickly sold out!) but that there was like nothing until Pikmin 3 like the next September. If we get Mario Kart in April and Arms in May and Splatoon 2 in June, that's already way more to play than the Wii U had in its first year, and I'm sure they'll announce more at E3 for this year too (like a Smash Bros. Deluxe).

Long-term, I think Nintendo being able to put all their wood behind one arrow, development-wise, will only be a good thing. Nintendo basically sacrificed the Wii U to save the 3DS — the Wii U's first year was so rough because Nintendo was focused on frantically trying to turn their portable around. It's pretty clear that in the HD console era, Nintendo can't adequately support both a console and a handheld, and it'll be even harder to do so when both require HD development.

For marketing reasons Nintendo is saying that the Switch is their new console, but it'll clearly replace the 3DS too, eventually. I would be extremely surprised if Nintendo didn't have a smaller "Switch lite" with built-in controllers as soon as they could sell one for $199 or so (late 2018?).

People seem to be way more excited for this than they were for the Wii U, so that's a start. Their marketing and branding is on point and way less confusing. But will they be able to sell 75M of them (to equal 62M 3DSes + 13M Wii Us)? That's a high bar. We'll see.

[dglow]

First and foremost: jealous.

It's great you have a Switch to play with. Yes to what you wrote, especially about the flow of new, AA games. If Nintendo nails that, and cater to smaller indie developers (which it sounds like they are), they should be able to carve out a good niche. Aaaand, their online buying experience must feel faster than an early-2000s virus-laden PC. Early reviews say the built-in software feels quick. Is that your experience, Robo?

Nintendo won't sell 75M units unless the price drops significantly, which it should over time. I'm a bit alarmed that the accessories are so insanely priced; but that seems to be the evolution of a game everyone is playing.

As for a Switch-lite, it would seem like an obvious move. But can they get away with changing it that much? Games are being designed around the removable motion-controller joycons (and the rumble and IR camera features), so 'building-them-in' doesn't seem an option. Likewise with the display; UIs already need to work from large 1080p TVs down to a <7" LCD. Could they go smaller? The 3DS only ever scaled up in size, but never down.

But you touched on it: what Nintendo does (or doesn't do) with its handheld line is a real mystery. I'm curious to see how it plays out.

(NB: I'll be sad to see the 3DS and its stereoscopy go. It kind of sucked at first, and was completely pointless for AR applications. But with the tracking camera on the new 3DS it works well – what a shame they didn't introduce the system with that. Oh well. Many games didn't seem to benefit from 3D, a lot of users seem to turn it off completely. But A Link Between Worlds was brilliant with the 3D on, long may it live.)

[Robo]

Originally Posted by dglow As for a Switch-lite, it would seem like an obvious move. But can they get away with changing it that much? Games are being designed around the removable motion-controller joycons (and the rumble and IR camera features), so 'building-them-in' doesn't seem an option. Likewise with the display; UIs already need to work from large 1080p TVs down to a <7" LCD. Could they go smaller? The 3DS only ever scaled up in size, but never down.

I think they could get away with building in the controllers for the smaller model. The back of every Switch game box has a set of three pictograms showing the supported play modes (plugged into the TV, kickstand mode with controllers detached, handheld mode with controllers attached); the smaller model simply wouldn't support the second mode (and would require extra joycons or a pro controller for the first). Already, not every game supports every mode, and the modes that aren't supported have an X in the box (like how 1 2 Switch doesn't support handheld mode), so it would be easy to see which games are supported. (I wouldn't be surprised if 1 2 Switch is one of the only games that doesn't support handheld mode.)

It could still be attached to a TV, so it would still be a "Switch."

I agree that the accessory pricing is a little high. They pack a lot of tech into the joycons but I really wish they were $40 and $70 for two instead of $50/80. And the TV docks certainly aren't an impulse "get one for every TV in the house" sort of thing. I think the $299 price for the system itself is fine for now, but I would have really liked to see a pack-in (*cough* 1 2 Switch) like every other game system includes these days. We'll see how it fares against PS4s and Xbones that'll be widely available on a semi-permanent sale for $199 this holiday season, though. I think Nintendo might need to come out swinging with a Mario Kart or Mario Odyssey bundle.

You'd be surprised how many people feel like consoles should come with two controllers, even though no console has for decades. "It only comes with one controller?" is like the most common question people ask about PS4s and Xboxes, even though most multiplayer on those systems has moved away from split-screen toward online. So including two joycons in the box should be a meaningful increase in value for many of the families that are going to be getting it, and it plays toward Nintendo's strength as the king of local multiplayer.

I feel like Nintendo's plan to charge for online, even though they're said to be charging about half as much as the other guys, is going to be a hard sell though. Nintendo is a "second console" for many, and I don't think many people are going to want to subscribe to two different services, however cheap the second is. And it kind of bums me out to think about kids getting Pokémon Stars or whatever and not being able to trade or battle over the internet without begging their parents for a subscription. I hope those games at least come with like a one-year "Poképass" code or something; that would seem like a reasonable compromise.

[Yontsey]

Robo, how does supply feel for people who didn't do a pre-order?

I feel like they're dropping the ball on this just like they did with the Classic. They basically disappeared from pre-order within a day or two and haven't see anything since.

[El Gallo]

Originally Posted by Robo I feel like Nintendo's plan to charge for online, even though they're said to be charging about half as much as the other guys, is going to be a hard sell though. Nintendo is a "second console" for many, and I don't think many people are going to want to subscribe to two different services, however cheap the second is. And it kind of bums me out to think about kids getting Pokémon Stars or whatever and not being able to trade or battle over the internet without begging their parents for a subscription. I hope those games at least come with like a one-year "Poképass" code or something; that would seem like a reasonable compromise.

From what I read, and I could be wrong on this, it appears that the monthly game is only yours to play for.... that one month after which it isn't accessible or you have to buy it to play it. That to me reads like a deathwish. I fully understand that on the PS systems you don't OWN the games but get to download and use them for as long as you are subscriber. However if you subscribe for years you end up with a large library of basically usable and accessible games.

From my understanding with the Nintendo system, again my understanding could be misguided or wrong, but it seems like you could subscribe for years and all you have is the game of the month and only for that month. That sounds like a pretty crappy proposition.

[dglow]

It's a different model, more like Netflix. Films come and films go; you watch while they're available or do you don't get to watch.

Hardly a 'deathwish', don't be hyperbolic.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Yontsey Robo, how does supply feel for people who didn't do a pre-order? I feel like they're dropping the ball on this just like they did with the Classic. They basically disappeared from pre-order within a day or two and haven't see anything since.

At my coastal metro elitist store, we have 40 grey and 8 neon systems, none of which are pre-ordered (we only did pre-orders online). That's actually not bad for a console launch, for us. Stores in smaller Midwestier cities are getting more like 15 and 2, however. (They come five to a case, but due to low stock of neons they're breaking up packs.) We're supposed to get a few more cases in just before launch, which would be nice.

We're expecting a pretty big line before opening on the third, just due to call volume and the fact that most other retailers have pre-sold much of their inventory. I don't know if we'll end up handing out tickets for all of our grey ones before we open, but I expect the neons to all be claimed by opening. Headquarters thinks all stores will have enough inventory to last into next week ("Nintendo Switch — available now!" is the cover of next week's ad), but they're known to...underestimate things.

I'd definitely get in line if you want extra joycons or a pro controller. We have one of the red/blue neon joycon sets. One.

I'm less worried about day one quantities and more worried that we'll sell a bunch on day one and then get nothing for months. Nintendo has really been dropping the ball on that lately; we haven't received NES Classics in well over a month and we can't even keep 3DS systems in. We get one or two, and they sell the same morning...they left so much money on the table this last holiday season, it was ridiculous.

[Yontsey]

That's kind of encouraging I suppose. With the midnight release, is that Thursday night going into Friday or Friday night?

I'm thinking I might try and take a stab at getting one.

[Robo]

Stores that are doing a midnight release are doing them Thursday night going into Friday. I've heard some GameStops are actually starting sales at 9 pm on Thursday night, as are some Best Buys I guess.

At [undisclosed red circle retailer] we aren't doing either, just opening as normal on Friday morning, when it will be available immediately.

[dglow]

Originally Posted by Robo I think they could get away with building in the controllers for the smaller model. The back of every Switch game box has a set of three pictograms showing the supported play modes (plugged into the TV, kickstand mode with controllers detached, handheld mode with controllers attached); the smaller model simply wouldn't support the second mode (and would require extra joycons or a pro controller for the first).

You called it: Nintendo Switch will support 'portable-only' games

[kieran]

I"m genuinely excited to pick one of these up, whenever that may be.

I haven't bought a console since the PS3, which I barely used, and the Wii, which I used frequently and then all of a sudden just stoped. I haven't had a portable gaming system since a Game Boy, so that should be fun. I really just want to be able to play all of the old NES games and Mario kart. If I can only get those, I'd be happy.

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by kieran I really just want to be able to play all of the old NES games and Mario kart.

So say we all.