Video Games
Can we talk about the Nintendo Switch with any level of reason?
The Nintendo Switch.
Oh boy.
Let me be clear: I am a Nintendo fanboy. I am up front about it. If they do something wrong I have a tendency to downplay it or just not talk about it. I will also be reactionary to someone making dumb statements about Nintendo because I feel they are unfairly maligned, all while knowing it’s just a corporation that wants my money and loyalty and nothing else.
We got that covered? Still want to read? Okay cool.
Here’s my thing about the Nintendo Switch: I feel the positives outweigh the negatives. Of course I do, you might say. I read the first paragraph! But I also feel that my lack of discussing the problems I do have with the current reports on the console lead people to not listen to what I have to say in defence of it, so I should probably write something to make both details clear. Okay? Okay!
#1: Nintendo just released a handheld with the greatest potential for games ever but nobody cares because they hate it as a console
This is the second straight console where people are going into it confused as to what it actually is. The Wii U had casual consumers confused on if it was just an extension to the Wii that you buy. It was easy to treat those folks as idiots but IF YOUR MOST CASUAL OF CONSUMER THINKS YOUR CONSOLE IS JUST AN UPGRADE TO THEIR EXISTING CONSOLE, THIS IS YOUR FAULT. Marketplace confusion should never be blamed on the consumer. And Nintendo has done it. Again.
Only this time, it isn’t that people think this is a Wii U extension. Actually changing the name to something not Wii related repaired that. No, Nintendo released a product with two functions. The Nintendo Switch is basically a high powered handheld that can be played at home through a converting dock. However, Nintendo doesn’t want console fans to think this is just the replacement for the Nintendo DS so they have been focused a ton of time and effort on selling it as a home console.
This is leading to people throwing shade at Nintendo for creating an underpowered game console once again, complaining about how they are getting Wii U ports and a game from six years ago. If this was a Wii U replacement and you couldn’t leave your house with the tablet, that would be fine.
But this is a handheld! A true to form handheld! You can take it anywhere! You can play it anywhere! And it’s a handheld that’s playing a AAA title from three years ago with improvements! Why is this not mind blowing and fantastic to folks? Why, because the battery only supplies three hours of life (more on that later)? Why isn’t this being treated like the most amazing handheld ever produced by a gaming company?
Well, that’s simple. Because Nintendo isn’t selling this as the next great handheld. They are telling people the 3DS will still be supported and have been focusing their efforts on branding this as the replacement for the Wii U. And that’s confusing people. Which is Nintendo’s fault. I don’t entirely blame the difficulty on this sell because they are merging two markets together, but they are doing it while making neither market happy.
#2: Nintendo will never make AAA titles for your console of choice, so stop asking for it
Let me just get this out of the way because it always annoys me. Nintendo is never going to make Super Mario Odyssey for the PS4. Nintendo is never going to make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the X-Box One. Maybe I eat these words one day. I doubt it. Why do I know? Because Nintendo’s investors don’t give two iotas about Nintendo in the console market. And the Switch proves it.
You see, before Nintendo can “go to war” with Sony and Microsoft, they have to fight with their investors, who always sell stock at every announcement they make only to buy it back up before software/hardware releases. Why do they fight their investors? Because their investors want Nintendo to leave the console/handheld gaming market completely and only make mobile apps.
The strongest influence on Nintendo’s financials do not want them to stop making their own hardware for any reason other than making games on an iPhone instead. Which means if the Switch is a huge failure, that’s means Nintendo doesn’t just pull out of the console hardware market. They will pull out of the console software market as well. And everything will soon start focusing on dedicating their IPs to mobile gaming.
You can see the influence already. Nintendo announces a paid online service. Is it on the system? No. It’s an app. Nintendo is being rumoured to revealing a Fire Emblem game for iOS and mobile at their direct event tomorrow. This is to appease the investors. But those investors won’t be happy until everything on the Switch is instead available on a phone.
I’m not telling you this in a, “Support the Switch or everything you love about Nintendo will be dead” threat. This is basically an inevitability that I’ve felt dread over for the past few years. I have a good feeling that the Switch was the most successful gaming device for the next four years, it still won’t change this path. Why wouldn’t Japanese investors want Nintendo in the console market like Sony? Because Sony lost 11.3% in their Game and Network Services compared to fiscal 2015, and nobody really sees that number getting better in 2017. Sony is simply in a better position to make some money in the console market for a few more years. That doesn’t mean they don’t face the same inevitability Nintendo will. Sony is just hoping that one day they can package Playstation hardware into TVs, so those same TVs don’t sink the entire country.
Honestly, the only reality for more great games that could come out of this is if prominent Nintendo producers quit to run smaller game studios after Nintendo moves to mobile. But you won’t get your Nintendo properties in those studios. They will have to create new ones. Dream up your own Mighty No. 9 scenario with a Nintendo producer, I’m gonna go cry in a corner.
Also: Folks like Bob Chipman need to stop doom and glooming every time stock is sold when major portfolio managers in Japan admit to always unloading Nintendo shares when they reach peak profit only to sell them when the stock price drops. This is common. Stop doom and glooming Bob (except for the mobile part since I totally just did that).
#3: Launches suck, stop asking for too much at them
First of all, Nintendo rarely sells a system at a loss at launch. They took losses for the Gamecube and Wii U and both were minimal. Just about every other system is sold at launch at a profit. They are not Microsoft, where people still can’t really figure out how they make any money in their game division. They are not Sony, where they sold a $600 PS3 at a loss just so they could get Blu Rays into the home. Nintendo doesn’t have anything to fall back on. They just have Nintendo. You weren’t getting a handheld that can play AAA Nintendo titles for less than $300 US. Trust me, I hate the price. I likely won’t buy a Switch until Christmas so I can afford the system with a couple games. But stop asking for things that are never going to happen.
Also, do any of you have any memory of system launches? System launches suck. Sony tried to convince people that Knack was going to be a big deal at the PS4 launch. Remember the hype on Ryse: Son of Rome? Or the launch of Killer Instinct? No, you don’t, because there was a wealth of games a year later that made you easily forget that stuff.
Yes, there was also third parties picking up the slack with Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty, but much of that comes with when they launched. Nintendo is launching in the spring. Sony and Microsoft launched in the late fall/early winter. But what’s with the complaint on the amount of games? The Wii U launched with over 20 games at launch… and then nothing. You don’t think Nintendo realizes that? You don’t think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2 are likely done but they don’t want another six month gap of nothing coming out? Nintendo is trying to spread out the titles so there’s something to play. Even then, you’re getting a new Zelda, a new IP (which, I’ll admit, even if it has promise it’s the Knack of the Switch launch), and only waiting a month later to play Mario Kart 8 on the go.
Go look at spring launch consoles and their releases. Can’t think of one? Playstation 2 was released in March of 2000 in Japan. It had Ridge Racer and Street Fighter EX3 plus a Drum Mania game. The Gameboy Advance actually had a pretty successful launch in March of 2001 with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Super Mario Advance, but it also had the advantage of basically being a portable Super Nintendo (also Super Mario Advance was seriously just Super Mario Bros. 2) So now ask yourself. Would you prefer Nintendo to just hold off the system until November so they can claim Zelda, Skyrim, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Mario Odyssey at launch? Yeah, didn’t think so. Also, the Nintendo 64 launch in September of 1996 had just two games for it: Pilotwings 64 and Super Mario 64. Guess what: nobody gave a heck because Super Mario 64 was great.
#4: Nintendo’s online service right now is absolutely terrible and I’m embarrassed to talk about it
I know Jim Sterling covered this as well as anyone could, but I like to fail to reach the heights of others. One temporary game a month is insulting. If Nintendo wanted to make something of value, they could have had a “Virtual Console vault” where paid subscription means you get to play a growing library of virtual console games at no extra charge. You lose access when you stop paying for the service (no different to Netflix, yes Jim mentioned this already) but while you have it, Nintendo is providing you an open door policy into their library of games.
We’re not getting that. We’re getting one a month. Why? Because as we all can assume, Nintendo isn’t ready with their virtual console games on the Switch. They are converting them one at a time slowly instead of hiring a company to just emulate each game perfectly. They are touting potential online play, but you know that won’t be to your fanatical levels. I’m honestly fine with people just plugging any cheap headset into their cell phone to do their voice chat over that, but I have little faith in Nintendo handling demand if a game like Splatoon 2 becomes a bigger success than the Wii U original.
Nintendo was supposed to get help from younger developers in designing their online strategy and it really feels like the same flop reactions we dealt with on Wii and Wii U. And the fact the Nintendo Switch isn’t backwards compatible means I’m not selling my Wii U or 3DS, which means I have zero need or interest to purchase virtual console games on the Switch, unless it’s a game I can’t get on my Wii U or 3DS. And right now, there isn’t much in that department. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door? You damn right I’m buying that on the Switch. Earthbound? Got it for the Wii U. No point buying it again*
*I have purchased Chrono Trigger four times now in my life, and Final Fantasy VI has been purchased at least three, so take my words on purchasing the same thing over and over with a grain of salt. If Final Fantasy VI comes out for the Switch, I’m probably going to buy it. I am Cecil from Final Fantasy IV constantly falling for Kain’s evil desires. I’ll also probably buy Final Fantasy IV again.
#5: Your mobile phone sucks for games and also eats battery juice like nothing on sucky games, so why are you complaining about Zelda having two and a half hours?
This one frustrates me to no end. I am a handheld gamer, far more than a console gamer anymore. I know from my 3DS that you only get a couple hours when playing, and it’s probably best to find an outlet if you’ve been playing on a long trip. Cars have charger outlets. Coffee shops usually have somewhere to go. We live in a world where everyone has big glass phones that die out in half a day if your brightness is at high and you’ve been using data for a while.
So why, oh why, OH WHY, is it suddenly a big deal that when playing something like Skyrim or Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, that you’re only going to get two and a half hours out of it before having to charge? Can you imagine your Samsung Galaxy trying to play Breath of the Wild? You’d get an hour at most and the phone would be so hot by the end of it you might as well turn it into a Molotov cocktail and throw it at the Bourgeoisie. I have a brand new phone and even then, I have to kill the brightness on my screen and maybe even shut off the data if I want to get two hours of play time out of it. And that’s a crappy Google Play game. Like hell am I getting Skyrim from it.
So shut up about your phone specs because you’re not getting Nintendo quality games out of it (and don’t link me to some AAA title you got playing on a $800 phone. You want to link me to something? Find me a game at Mario Kart 8 quality for a $300 phone which can run for three hours and I’ll give a care of what you have to say) and shut up about the battery life because we live in a world where recharging a phone is everywhere, and so is recharging your Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo Switch: To conclude
Ever since the Super GameBoy came out back in 1994, I have wanted to play new games on my handheld system since the dream of playing handheld games on my Super Nintendo was realized. I had to wait until 2001 to play Super Nintendo quality games on a handheld, and by then the Nintendo Gamecube was released. This is the first time I’ll get to play console quality games on a handheld without losing the console aspect. It’s everything I have ever wanted for a Nintendo system; the marriage of console and handheld. And even though I realize this is Nintendo’s way of sliding out of the console industry due to pressure from their investors to move more mobile, it’s still perfectly aligned with how I game today. I don’t play 100 games anymore. I don’t need three new titles every month. But I’ll now have a system that just in 2017, when I purchase a Switch at Christmas, I’ll have at least three games ready to go to play for it.
This all said, Nintendo’s marketplace confusion and mediocre online service announcements drive a lot of fear in me, and it all comes back to not a Nintendo system, but the Playstation Vita. See, the Vita was by far more powerful than the 3DS and could play PS3 quality games, with PS4 interactivity. It had a great screen, and was by far the most powerful handheld on the market. And that was its problem, as outlined by Extra Credits. You could make AAA quality games for the Vita, when the handheld market is usually not just a step down in quality from console, but a step down in price. Now Nintendo has a handheld that people treat like a console because they can play it on their TV, which might allow the price to still be high enough to warrant AAA titles to be sold for it. But it will make it a lot harder for the companies who were used to the 3DS level of development and could afford the team for that development to create for it. This is why Nintendo took a, “The 3DS will still be around” stance, similar to when the DS came out and Nintendo said it was just a third pillar. They don’t want companies to eat their hat just to develop for it. So Nintendo not only has to convince AAA publishers to make their game for a handheld/console hybrid, they also have to convince handheld developers with higher budgets than indie developers to make games that fit the system’s quality. It’s an extremely tough sell, and is likely the sell that will make the system unattractive to AAA publishers.
Where Nintendo has some advantage is the talk that the NVIDIA chip is said to be easier for portability than the Wii U was, with a lot of talk on the tools and assets available through it’s custom chip will make it easier to develop games. Japan has just been getting cozy with Unreal Engine 4, and that could mean that anything coming out on the Unreal engine from Japan will be easy to bring to the Switch. What we haven’t heard much on is the indie library, and while I feel Nintendo did a much better job bringing indie games to the fold with the Wii U, they are still way behind what they could do. The fact I never got Papers Please for 3DS/Wii U is a hecking travesty. I’m glad Image & Form Games is on board with the Switch, but pretty much anything that’s going to be popular with Steam should be released on the Switch. No excuses. Farming Simulator 18 and Constructor HD is a good start. I want Night in the Woods confirmed for Switch yesterday.
Overall, I’m still extremely excited for the Nintendo Switch, and if it wasn’t a spring release I would be buying it day one. That doesn’t mean I’m happy with everything announced, even when I’m less happy with the way people are reacting for either ignorant (launches always suck), selfish (Odyssey ain’t coming out for PS4), or unreasonable (just because you pay per month for your $800 cell phone doesn’t mean you can complain about a $300 US price point, especially when you don’t get Nintendo quality games on the $800 cell phone) reasons.
I’m not gonna say, “Nintendo ain’t perfect” because that’s hecking lame. I don’t need perfection. I just need great. And Nintendo needs to prove this generation that as great as they are at making games, they can also be as great at developing and marketing consoles. Jury still out, but it ain’t looking great.