Obviously I must admit that my fantasy of Nintendo Switch being secretly Steam compatible was just that--a fantasy (though one that I still hold was plausible), but I didn't expect the Nintendo Switch "Treehouse" event to be as awful as it was. Any attempts to "win back the crowd" have gone out the window and instead Nintendo tries to further alienate fans (and ex-fans).
It's like they took every bad idea from the last two generations and then combined into one console.
There's an online feature, which is like Xbox Live, but worst--at this rate, your console will stay offline unless you want to buy presumably the same Virtual Console games for the second, third, fourth time, and even the "free" Xbox Live allows things like voice chat and basic online play.
The Miis are back per a screengrab from Mario Kart 8 DX, though likely in a lessened capacity.
No Nintendo mainstream console has disallowed backwards compatibility since the release of the Nintendo GameCube in 2001, and we see how that performed, despite a fairly strong line-up of titles and many of the same third party titles the PS2 and Xbox received, and no handheld has disallowed backwards compatibility ever. But since this does seem to be a hybrid device, maybe we could count the Virtual Boy, and we all know what happened to that.
Rather than an exclusive launch title game that showcases what the console is capable of, we get 1-2 Switch, basically a collection of mini-games to see who can time the button the best. I guess it's fitting that the launch title didn't really focus on the actual graphics. And what could easily pass for a tech demo or at least part of a pack-in game will be $50 at launch.
ARMS looks to be the next-gen "Wii Sports" of the Switch (at least boxing), with its more accurate motion controls than anything the Wii had to offer, but to be honest, although it is somewhat of a creative idea, it still feels like Nintendo is nostalgic for the Wii rather than its older, more successful consoles. It was mentioned that the game will have traditional controls rather than forcing motion controls, so we don't need to be up in ARMS over that, but it looks far too bland to be anything close to resembling Punch-Out!!, with the actual character names being case in point: "Spring Man and Ribbon Girl".
What about some pun-based name based on the fact that his hair looks like cupcake frosting, or perhaps toothpaste?
Besides, what the fans want to see (the ones that keep buying Nintendo products despite the fact that since the N64, every console gets worse and worse) is the fifth iteration of Super Smash Bros..
I never played Splatoon but I heard it was fun. Hell, even Yahtzee liked it well enough despite some rather obvious shortcomings. Splatoon 2 on the Switch sounds looks like it might be a fun party game but again, it's not a launch title. Furthermore, I expect that if you have to pay for online (and Splatoon was mostly online multiplayer), there can at least be more than two teams, which is all I saw in the trailer. A third & fourth team could be good, so if you had three friends over, all of you can be on one team or all playing separately.
Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! actually looks pretty fun and would probably be one of those intriguing little indie games that come out on Steam from time to time had it not been on the Switch. We'll see how that goes.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild again looks fine and will take the same way that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess went for the GameCube and the Wii. That went well for both consoles, but the Wii also seemed to be exploding with new game concepts and ideas that could take it even farther. Not so much with the Switch.
Super Mario Odyssey looks great, and I have to say it looks to be as good as a Mario game as the first Super Mario Galaxy. Probably this is because it's the first 3D Mario game since Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I never played due to the fact that I hadn't finished the first one (yet) and without an overarching story like SMG one was just felt like an overpriced expansion pack (which it was originally supposed to be). But I couldn't help but get these Sonic Adventure vibes out of it (someone else noticed). It's like we're going full circle back to '99, Nintendo becomes Sega and Sears becomes Montgomery Ward. But unlike SA, SMO won't come out until the holidays, and even then I don't think it could carry the console.
You can't just say, "Well, the games look great," because consoles have shown a collection of great games in and of themselves do not make a console successful. The Dreamcast definitely had a line-up of exclusive and decent games, as well as actually (for 1999 at least) being better than anything else on the market, yet it was discontinued just after less than three years on the market.
It's still underpowered per other consoles (especially at the storage size, just 32GB) and far overpriced for a handheld (especially one that can't play any other games). Basically, they either need a dramatic price drop or some other huge feature that hasn't yet been revealed to really sell it properly.
The good news if the Switch fails (let's hope so), it might mean Nintendo finally going to computers, as for years, they've refused (admittedly, 1980s and 1990s PCs were not on par with console games and far less friendly, but that's different) and only allowed licensed tripe like Mario Teaches Typing or whatever. And no, Silhouette doesn't count, I think there's ample evidence that Silhouette is a hoax perpetuated by early Snes9x developers.
Like the Dreamcast, the Switch will probably be technically impressive, get a lot of mileage out of hacking, and will probably have some really neat exclusives, but ultimately it won't last. Call me back in four years and tell me I'm right.
It's like they took every bad idea from the last two generations and then combined into one console.
There's an online feature, which is like Xbox Live, but worst--at this rate, your console will stay offline unless you want to buy presumably the same Virtual Console games for the second, third, fourth time, and even the "free" Xbox Live allows things like voice chat and basic online play.
The Miis are back per a screengrab from Mario Kart 8 DX, though likely in a lessened capacity.
No Nintendo mainstream console has disallowed backwards compatibility since the release of the Nintendo GameCube in 2001, and we see how that performed, despite a fairly strong line-up of titles and many of the same third party titles the PS2 and Xbox received, and no handheld has disallowed backwards compatibility ever. But since this does seem to be a hybrid device, maybe we could count the Virtual Boy, and we all know what happened to that.
Rather than an exclusive launch title game that showcases what the console is capable of, we get 1-2 Switch, basically a collection of mini-games to see who can time the button the best. I guess it's fitting that the launch title didn't really focus on the actual graphics. And what could easily pass for a tech demo or at least part of a pack-in game will be $50 at launch.
ARMS looks to be the next-gen "Wii Sports" of the Switch (at least boxing), with its more accurate motion controls than anything the Wii had to offer, but to be honest, although it is somewhat of a creative idea, it still feels like Nintendo is nostalgic for the Wii rather than its older, more successful consoles. It was mentioned that the game will have traditional controls rather than forcing motion controls, so we don't need to be up in ARMS over that, but it looks far too bland to be anything close to resembling Punch-Out!!, with the actual character names being case in point: "Spring Man and Ribbon Girl".
Besides, what the fans want to see (the ones that keep buying Nintendo products despite the fact that since the N64, every console gets worse and worse) is the fifth iteration of Super Smash Bros..
I never played Splatoon but I heard it was fun. Hell, even Yahtzee liked it well enough despite some rather obvious shortcomings. Splatoon 2 on the Switch sounds looks like it might be a fun party game but again, it's not a launch title. Furthermore, I expect that if you have to pay for online (and Splatoon was mostly online multiplayer), there can at least be more than two teams, which is all I saw in the trailer. A third & fourth team could be good, so if you had three friends over, all of you can be on one team or all playing separately.
Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! actually looks pretty fun and would probably be one of those intriguing little indie games that come out on Steam from time to time had it not been on the Switch. We'll see how that goes.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild again looks fine and will take the same way that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess went for the GameCube and the Wii. That went well for both consoles, but the Wii also seemed to be exploding with new game concepts and ideas that could take it even farther. Not so much with the Switch.
Super Mario Odyssey looks great, and I have to say it looks to be as good as a Mario game as the first Super Mario Galaxy. Probably this is because it's the first 3D Mario game since Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I never played due to the fact that I hadn't finished the first one (yet) and without an overarching story like SMG one was just felt like an overpriced expansion pack (which it was originally supposed to be). But I couldn't help but get these Sonic Adventure vibes out of it (someone else noticed). It's like we're going full circle back to '99, Nintendo becomes Sega and Sears becomes Montgomery Ward. But unlike SA, SMO won't come out until the holidays, and even then I don't think it could carry the console.
You can't just say, "Well, the games look great," because consoles have shown a collection of great games in and of themselves do not make a console successful. The Dreamcast definitely had a line-up of exclusive and decent games, as well as actually (for 1999 at least) being better than anything else on the market, yet it was discontinued just after less than three years on the market.
It's still underpowered per other consoles (especially at the storage size, just 32GB) and far overpriced for a handheld (especially one that can't play any other games). Basically, they either need a dramatic price drop or some other huge feature that hasn't yet been revealed to really sell it properly.
The good news if the Switch fails (let's hope so), it might mean Nintendo finally going to computers, as for years, they've refused (admittedly, 1980s and 1990s PCs were not on par with console games and far less friendly, but that's different) and only allowed licensed tripe like Mario Teaches Typing or whatever. And no, Silhouette doesn't count, I think there's ample evidence that Silhouette is a hoax perpetuated by early Snes9x developers.
Like the Dreamcast, the Switch will probably be technically impressive, get a lot of mileage out of hacking, and will probably have some really neat exclusives, but ultimately it won't last. Call me back in four years and tell me I'm right.
