Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@BAMozzy: Yes but you can view offline on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu now!

@Rudy_Manchego: True but you still need to download content when connected and save it to storage to watch when you are offline or can't access the internet. Its still not a primary reason to buy a console and chances are if you have Netflix, you are likely to have access through other devices. I would prefer to watch Netflix or any video content for that matter, on an iPad or similar tablet than a 6.2" 720p screen - even an iPad mini! Gaming on the go is probably better on a Switch as that's its primary function.

@BAMozzy: Yes, I don't think anyone is arguing that people are buying Switch's for Netflix. Only that people have come to expect online media services/apps on both home and portable devices. At this stage, it is just a given and when they are absent it makes the system that little less relevant. A strong device with a great game line up and customer buy in is not going to miss them too much but a struggling device trying to find a place and appeal to new custom, well it is just one more reason not to buy. Certainly not a major reason but it is something else critics can use to hammer it with when even a £100 smartphone can do it.

Again, I travel a lot and I tend to take a tablet with me for media and a gaming device. I'd love to just take one .

@BAMozzy: I often take two 30 minute train rides, and the WiFi is good enough to watch Netflix on my phone. Maybe the support for Netflix and other multimedia apps isn't that big of a deal, because so many other devices support it. But I think that because every device supports it, except for the Switch, just adds more negativity to the whole deal. It seems that the Switch, as a complete product, is kinda rushed.

@Octane Is the phone connecting to a wifi hotspot or using the Sim card to access internet services?? Could you watch Netflix on that Journey with just a wifi iPad or would you need a wifi+3G iPad? The Switch, at least not this version, is releasing with just a wifi option and so would need to connect to a router or hotspot to offer any online option. For a lot of people, the Wifi is not strong/fast enough to offer video streaming - especially not at a 'decent' and/or watchable resolution. Phones use their Sim card to access the internet over their mobile network. Those devices that don't use a Sim often struggle to receive a decent and consistent Wifi signal and certainly struggle whilst on the move. They only work in small pockets like a cafe offering 'free' wifi access but for most 'wifi-only' devices, they don't work well outside of the home and rarely whilst commuting. If you are 'lucky' to receive a 'wifi' connection on your 30min train ride, then fantastic but for the majority, they would not get wifi access at all. Come to where I live and outside the range of my Router, you won't find a free wifi hotspot for miles and miles around you. In a big City, chances are you may find more wifi hotspots but outside of that, wifi hotspots are very rare.

@BAMozzy Nope, not using my own data for the internet connection, I often turn it off because I can get WiFi pretty much anywhere. It's not great everywhere, but our public transport has a pretty good WiFi network. I also understand that this option isn't available to everyone, but that's no reason to not support apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Versatility is great, it's the same reason why I would like to see voice chat support through the Switch itself and not exclusive to an app.

It's so strange that people are gonna hail Zelda for being such a great launch title. They basically delayed a Wii U game to at least have one good launch title. The game itself however is a remaster more than anything else, like The Last of Us was for the PS4 too.

Sorry, Nintendo just really dissapointed me with their line-up of games.

According to Nintendo, isn't Zelda the last game being developed for the WiiU? If that is the case, then the Switch is likely to be the only console offering 'new' Nintendo games. I wouldn't be surprised if some/all of WiiU's library comes to switch - maybe not Splatoon with 2 on the way or some of those that 'had' to have the screen controller to work of course.

I have my own concerns about Zelda - not console related - but if I really wanted to play it, not having a WiiU. I would probably buy a Switch. For WiiU owners, I can see why the Switch may not be a day 1 buy as they can pay two thirds of the cost of the game and still play it - maybe not at the same resolution on the big screen but the game isn't as complex or as detailed as something like Horizon or Uncharted for example. If it can hold 30fps - like the Switch version, and its not a game you intend to play on the go, is the £20 difference worth a bit more sharpness? Maybe for some people but some people were happy to play PS3/XB360 versions of games that had far greater differences than just resolution in some games and the costs were not so different either!

@BAMozzy If I already had a Switch, the choice would be easy, but now it's €50 for Zelda on the Wii U or €60 for Zelda on the Switch + the Switch itself (€330). Yeah, better draw distance is great, and so is the more stable framerate, but in the end it's still Zelda and the gameplay will be the same. The only real system seller for me is Super Mario Odyssey, so I'll wait for a holiday bundle (or maybe wait even longer than that). I can wait, but Zelda can't, so I'll get the Wii U version.

Honestly, if I was Nintendo, I'd have cancelled Zelda for Wii U.

@johncalmc Why?

@Octane I guess to force everyone's hands into buying a Switch, so they can play the new Zelda. Would mean higher early sales in theory, but would've made a lot of people VERY angry! In fact, it would've potentially had the opposite effect, if it rubbed enough people the wrong way.

I'm not super duper excited for Breath of the Wild like most, but if I do buy it, it'll be for the Wii U. I'm definitely going to play the waiting game with the Switch. I feel like it could go either way, but the initial signs aren't looking very favourable.

@Quintumply My point exactly. It's one thing to drop the support a year before its successor comes out. Cancelling a highly anticipated game that they have promised, multiple times, is coming to Wii U is another thing entirely. I think the backlash would be a lot bigger than Microsoft's Scalebound affair. If they wanted to force everyone into buying a Switch, they should've developed an actual good exclusive for the Switch at launch instead!

Because then people who are excited about Zelda have no option but to pay up for the Switch.

It would undoubtedly ruffle the feathers of some of the Nintendo faithful, but the fact is, the vast majority of the Nintendo die-hards would buy the Switch if it was a banana with Nintendo scrawled on it in marker pen. Nintendo fanboys don't matter. If they did, the Wii U wouldn't be a failure.

They need to appeal to more of the market, and giving the market any reason not to pick up a Switch - i.e. by putting the only exciting game on the system on another console - could hurt it.

I don't think it'll be a big deal. And I doubt the Switch sales will take too much of a hit. But business wise, I'd probably have cancelled it, and come up with some nonsense excuse about it being too big and too ambitious for the Wii U.

Anecdotally - and I know that doesn't really matter because this isn't a large enough sample - I've seen a lot of people say they're going to play Zelda on Wii U and then pick up a Switch further down the road. That's five people IRL, and many more online, including in this thread.

@johncalmc "come up with some nonsense excuse about it being too big and too ambitious for the Wii U"

They can't really use that excuse. The power of the Switch (undocked) is not significantly greater than than the WiiU - if indeed it is greater. RAM is doubled in the Switch of course but the GPU runs slower undocked than the WiiU's Radeon GPU and in terms of Gflops, the WiiU has the edge. I know that doesn't mean the newer system is less capable - advances in technology can make it more efficient. The CPU too runs slower but does have an extra core. The PS3 CPU is faster per core than the PS4's so that again shows its not always down to speed as the extra cores can make up for that.

In essence though, undocked the Switch isn't more powerful in RAW terms but offsets that with more RAM, an extra CPU core and better efficiency. I doubt you will see a 'great' difference between the handheld and WiiU experience. Of course when docked though, the GPU is given a speed boost which enables the games to run at higher resolutions. Jumping up from 720p is an increase of over 50% in size in terms of pixel count - from 921600 to 1440000 and considering the difference in clock speed is more than 50% undocked to docked, you can see where the extra speed is used to draw more pixels.

People may refer back to the pre-release build on the WiiU and its faltering frame rates and even a few visual differences but that could be 'fixed' and resemble the handheld experience of the Switch now on WiiU.

Point I am making is that Nintendo would have a hard job convincing people that the game wouldn't work on the WiiU - especially from a technical sense let alone the fact its already been demoed and announced. I see no reason that other games coming for the Switch couldn't work on the WiiU but Nintendo are effectively ceasing production on WiiU games or not prepared to port them across. It appears that they are essentially doing what you suggest with its other releases. I am certain that Splatoon 2, Mario Odyssey etc were developed with the WiiU but 'Switched' to the Switch. Its not detrimental to Nintendo (as such) as these games were not promised to WiiU owners like Zelda was but if all these releases were also coming to WiiU - albeit at lower resolution, then Nintendo may have a tougher time selling the Switch. Its not a jump up in performance to the same degree that the PS4 was but they have managed to fit more in to a much smaller and thinner device.

@BAMozzy I did say nonsense excuse. The beauty of different architecture when it comes to hardware is that even people who know struggle to really know how powerful a system will be in comparison to another. N64 was technically more powerful than PSOne in some ways, but because of the ways in which it was more powerful, it often looked less impressive. PS3 was technically more powerful than Xbox 360 in some ways, but because of the complex architecture and whatnot games often ran worse. To the layperson, the Switch is new, and so it stands to reason it's more powerful. I'd straight up fudge the numbers if I was them, and just say Wii U wasn't up to the task - buy it on Switch.

@BAMozzy I'm not sure of those other examples. Mario Odyssey wasn't playable during the event two weeks ago, and rumours said that it was the reason why the original Switch reveal had to be delayed by a couple of weeks, the game wasn't presentable yet, or at least, they weren't satisfied with it. So I don't think they could've released Odyssey sooner than holiday 2017, and let's be honest, that's five years after the Wii U launch, we'd probably be getting a new console by that time anyway. Splatoon looks to be more of an enhanced port than completely new game, so it's probably something that was relatively easy to develop, something to cover the summer months on the Switch. I doubt the Wii U would've gotten a Splatoon 2 even if it was successful. They would probably rely on more DLC to expand the original game like they already were doing. That's not to say that there aren't canned Wii U games that are now planned for the Switch, but I think we haven't seen those yet.

@Octane Maybe my explanation wasn't clear enough. The point I was making is that Zelda was announced for the WiiU so shifting it to the Switch to sell the Switch wasn't an option. Games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey can be switched over and used as a console seller as they were never announced or shown for the WiiU - even if they could run on the system.

What Nintendo appear to be doing is fulfilling that promise by releasing Zelda on the WiiU - giving it one last 'great' game before moving exclusively to developing and releasing games for the Switch only regardless of whether or not they 'could' run on WiiU.

@johncalmc stated that Nintendo should have cancelled Zelda on the WiiU to shift more Switch consoles but in doing that, it would have broken their promise to WiiU owners - especially as the game was demoed and playable on the console a few months ago. Instead of cancelling Zelda, maybe internally, they cancelled games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey and are using these as that reason. We won't know whether or not these were originally planned for WiiU even as a 'dual' release with the Switch. It seems that Nintendo are saying we are giving WiiU owners one last game which will also be the first great game on Switch but if you want 'future' Nintendo games, you will have to upgrade.

It would be like Sony saying Killzone: Shadowfall is coming out on both PS3 and PS4 but unless you upgrade to PS4, we will not be releasing any games for PS3 after this point regardless of whether or not the system is capable of running them. Of course Sony never announced Killzone or made it playable on PS3 but if they had and even had a playable demo a few months prior to PS4 releasing and then cancelled the PS3 version, I think a lot of Sony fans would be rightly angered - feeling blackmailed into buying the PS4 at launch. Of course Killzone doesn't have the following that Zelda does but the principal is the same.

Point I was making is that it would probably do more harm than good for Nintendo's image and something they couldn't do. With games like Splatoon and Mario, its far easier to announce just Switch versions to sell the console. We will never know if these were planned to release on WiiU or not, whether Nintendo decided to make these 'Switch' only to sell the console as releasing on WiiU too gives little incentive to upgrade in the near future. There are people who only upgraded to PS4/XB1s after 3years+ because the majority of games they wanted/played came out on older consoles.

What releasing Zelda on dual platforms does, is not only open up a bigger market - enabling Nintendo to not only sell the Switch but also maybe sell a few more WiiU's before its finally shelved. Not only that, it can sell more copies of Zelda to recoup some of te development costs. It may hurt the Switches opening week sales a bit but then with games like Splatoon and Mario to come, it also has games to give people a reason to upgrade for the long term.

@BAMozzy I honestly don't think it would matter, much. We'll never know, obviously. Perhaps there would have been an uprising among the hardcore Nintendites that bought a Wii U. But I doubt it. Nintendo fanboys apologise for Nintendo on an almost daily basis, across all corners of the Internet. They're nothing if not predictable, and I honestly think Nintendo could have gotten away with it.

I was saying this last year, and if I was Nintendo, I'd have seriously held back Super Mario Maker for Switch too so they could have a better launch.

Wii U has been dead for years. It became clear a long time ago that the console was goosed. Putting games out on it now is a waste of time. Yeah, they run the risk of upsetting people by cancelling Zelda, but I think they could have pulled it off.

I think it's more important, optically, for Switch to be overloaded with games so they can show gamers that the same problems that befell the Wii U no longer apply, than it is to appease the people that still play their Wii U.

@BAMozzy Don't worry, I understood what you meant. It's just that we know that Nintendo has been working on Wii U titles that haven't been officially announced yet (Pikmin 4 for example). And considering they're not coming to Wii anymore, they're probably Switch games now, but we haven't seen them yet.