Super Bowl Commercial for the Nintendo Switch is out:

Link

Extended Cut

Paid online will also be 2000-3000 yen per year in Japan. That's roughly $17.50-$26.50 if they directly translate that over to the west.

 

If Switch online only costs $20 per year, I'd totally get it, and I've never been willing to shell out for online services before.

 

That's quite cheap compared to PSplus. I'll get it too if that's the estimated price tag.

 

I still think it's bonkers that you have to pay people other than your provider for internet and I will probaply not pay for it out of principle.
That said, it's a lot cheaper than I thaught it would be.

Where the switch is concerned, I'll probaply wait until there's a price drop or a decent Zelda bundle before I buy it since I'm still incredibly salty that they put a paywall on the internet stuff and that the controllers are this ungodly expensive. The Switch itself looks like it'll be a solid console though so that's something to be happy about.

Here's to hoping that Nintendo doesn't mess it all up with weird Nintendo bullshittery.

 

The difference being psplus and xblive give you the monthly games, where you only get them for a month for Nintendo's service.

 

That seems like such a bizarre move from Nintendo. They lose next to nothing in letting people keep those games permanently (or so long as they continue to subscribe, like Playstation+ games), especially considering they're just cheap roms instead of newer games. All it does is lessen the confidence that Nintendo might finally handle online stuff well. Their reputation for subpar online play and the fact that it being a paid service took people by surprise makes getting a subscriber base an uphill battle and they've already shot themselves in the foot.

 

This. Seriously. The only people I've ever met in person that actually pay to buy virtual console games are below the age of ten. The free games that you only get to rent for a month with this online service are things I can download and play on my phone in less time than it took to type this post, including the time required to find an emulator. Possibly less time than it takes to read this post, too, actually.

 

What's wrong with buying virtual console games? Some people don't like the hassle of having a DVD-CD spinning in their PSdrive and making loud noises.

Besides, I dislike downloading illegally and would rather support the company than downloading ROMs and emulators coz you know, that's stealing.

 

Not going to get into the "Piracy is theft" debate because this is not the place for that argument and I assume everyone else agrees. This is extremely difficult to do, but it's a good way of completely derailing this thread.

Going to clarify that I mean the nintendo virtual console - you know, something for which it is literally impossible for there to be a DVD-CD spinning in the drive because they only exist as downloads or cartridges for long-dead consoles.

What's wrong with it is that emulators for games this old are universal. It's a completely different beast from the argument about pirating modern games. Video game piracy in general is nowhere near as widespread or easy as downloading ROMs. Until pretty recently, it was essentially the only way to play these games other than hunting them down on the second-hand market. The last game made for the SNES was released in 1998. A significant number of the companies that made NES and SNES games no longer exist, or were bought by Sony/Microsoft/Whoever in the intervening twenty plus years. People have been able to download literally all of them ever made in one small file and play all of them seamlessly on anything they own since before Android existed and before Apple started approving third party apps. You can probably run them on a modern 'smart' baby monitor. Hell, through the Mid-2000s, Plug n' Play 'consoles' that were basically just a bulky controller that ran an emulator and had enough memory to store every single one of these games ever made were in every Walmart. It's probably worth mentioning that all of these options - Plug n' Play console from 2006, a first generation iPod touch, etc - all have much wider libraries than what Nintendo actually offers through its virtual console, because somehow Nintendo has struggled for years to emulate things that it made, to say nothing of the issues with licensing third party games. People that play these games the 'legitimate' way are a very small minority of the people that play them in general, and a significant percentage of those that do are playing them on the original cartridge that Nintendo last got paid for some time in the 80s or 90s. These are properties that lost all monetary value before a lot of us learned how to read.

Charging a few dollars for them, for the sake of those people that feel nostalgic, or like to collect things, or just believe that the only morally correct choice is to give Nintendo their money? Sure, no problem. It's actually a good idea - giving people a legitimate way to play games from their childhood without spending exorbitant amounts of money on the things no longer manufactured anywhere, for a reasonably-low fee. It's actually a marked improvement over their previous policy of "not offering them anywhere" followed by "selling the most successful and remembered ones as full-priced Gameboy Advanced games." Cashing in on their old properties in a convenient manner is actually a huge step up. Offering them as an incentive to pay for an online service when your competitors are offering actual, modern games worth money for the same? Not a great idea. Offering them as an incentive like that and making it temporary? It's just retarded.

It takes a decent amount of mental gymnastics to justify the idea that somehow a SNES ROM running on an Officially Licensed Emulator is worth $8 in the first place, let alone that being allowed to rent one for a month is a reason to subscribe to their online service. They could do a lot better. Just off the top of my head, they could do this with N64 games, or even Gamecube/Wii - they're the same device under the hood - games, even with the whole "you only get to rent it for a month" thing, that would seem worth it for some people. Or they could just do the obvious thing and offer every NES and SNES game - or even just the First Party titles - free over the virtual console so long as you continue to subscribe to the online service. It's not like it would eat into the sales of their NES re-release - sales are amazing but it doesn't matter since it's impossible to find one. There are tons of things they could do other than basically allow you to go into a time machine to the world's shittiest 1998-era blockbuster where you only get one rental per month.

 

Well, in that case, you clarified it better. ROMs for old SNES or even GBA games I don't mind using an emulator for it. I thought you were talking about more modern games because there are emulators for those. Wii U for example, if you have enough capacity to run an emulator for Wii U, you can possibly run games in HD 4k res.

Like this game

 

Breath of the Wild reviews are out:



METACRITIC (98 from 53 reviews) | OPENCRITIC (97 from 43 reviews)

 

I guess I'm happy for people who love Zelda. At this point though, I'll probably never go back until they make an interesting story or make Zelda the playable character.

 

Just got my hands on the Switch this morning 12:00AM.

Graphics of Zelda was pretty amazing. I did not expect that from Switch. The screen/console was very slick and controller was fine.

All in all, Switch is a fantastic console but with limited variety of games (for now).

The portable console really sold me. 5/5

 

The storm of reviews for Breath of the Wild isn't calming down, phrases like, "Best game ever made" are being thrown around. As @Big_Z pointed out, it's already one of the best reviewed games in history.

Question is, will people go out and buy the switch on the strength of it? I've thought about buying it if the Pokémon franchise moves to it but that and portable Skyrim were the only appeal to me.

After reading all these reviews though, I desperately want to play it and am seriously considering getting it simply because I don't want to miss out on a game that looks like it's going to go down in history.

Not that the reviews for the hardware are bad either. When it was announced everyone smiled and said, "neat idea" while thinking internally that it'll just be another Wii if it's lucky. System seems to have chops though.

 

Honestly the recent indie announcement video convinced me to 100% buy the Switch. If good/decent indies are coming to the console then the Switch will fill the niche for games my PC won't be able to play or the on-the-go play after the 3DS will be abandoned.
Now I'll have to decide if I want to buy it ASAP or wait and hope for reasonable bundles to come out before the winter season.

 

I'd wait. There are a few issues that have to be ironed out with it that Nintendo had to wait for launce to figure out. I imagine there's an entire department rolling out fixes as we speak. Hardware wise people are saying it's a test console and the improved version will be out in 18 months or so. Just silly things like the Joycon getting blocked by body parts of the USB port being unwieldy.

Then again, if they announce Pokemon Stars on it, fuck that noise, I'm buying.

 

So do people think it's going to be like the GBA/DS/3DS and get multiple revisions then? If that's the case I'd definitely rather wait for at least the first improved version, but I was kind of assuming it would be like Nintendo's other 'main' consoles and not get any real upgraded versions.

Still waiting for a Pokemon announcement, otherwise it's Mario Odyssey that'll make me go for it. Just watching the trailer makes me nostaligic for Sunshine and 64.

 

That seems to be the general consensus. It'll all go down to sales though. If sales are strong enough to support it then yeah.

 

I may or may not like Zelda.

I may or may not have been ignoring all gaming news the last two weeks.

I may or may not have driven 2 hours to the closest EB games store and knowingly paid above market price to get the Switch + Zelda, then turned around and driven home.

I may or may not get any sleep for the next 12 hours.

I may or may not be single.

 

Urgh, I'm pretty sure my Switch bricked itself and I've only had it for less than an hour.

I got back from Argos (UK) with my switch an hour ago. Set it up, including the my Nintendo account and then put in Zelda and started playing. Literally five minutes later the switch made a weird buzzing noise, the graphics distorted and then it went black.

I tried to turn it on multiple times and failed. I looked on Nintendo Europe's troubleshooting site and it said to hold the power button for twelve seconds and immediately after press it again. I did this three times and nothing happened. On the fourth try it went to the lock screen but immediately froze and made the worst high-pitch screeching sound I have ever heard in my life. It took 20 seconds of pressing the power button to turn it off and now it won't even turn on to freeze the screen and screech at me.

I'm currently on the phone to Nintendo but have been put on hold by a software robot for the past 40 minutes. I'm ringing them as I'll need to remove the Nintendo account from the console so I can attach it to a replacement I get from Argos and I can't do that as my Switch seems to be bricked.

Also I'll have to spend the 5 GBP to get to and from the Argos again which as a student with no job is pretty annoying.

All in all I'm just frustrated. All I wanted to do was play Zelda. I hope this is a manufacturing defect and not a general hardware defect like RRoD.

Edit: That bloody software robot just cut me off after near 50 minutes of waiting.
Edit 2: Apparently their phone lines are now closed due to staff training. Why in the world would you choose the day of a major hardware launch to train phone staff?