The Nintendo news and discussion thread

[hazeredmist]

That's awesome thank you - just digesting your helpful post right now!

I probably should have said I've already got MK8 on Wii U, I've got Splatoon also and never got that hooked, also I've completed Zelda BOTW on Wii U.

I'll be referring back to this list several times, again immensely helpful of you!

[Stanshall]

I thought I'd remembered reading your thoughts on BotW, at least. No worries at all, happy to share some feedback.

A brief (but extended) note on ARMS, too. It is mechanically fun but they didn't really build much of a game around it or reason to keep playing. It was also painfully slow to unlock new arms for fighters. They've addressed much of this and I've had more fun with it in the last couple of weeks than I did at any point until now. I didn't play much Splatoon on the Wii U but I heard that it went from strength to strength with updates and support. I see ARMS heading in the right direction, along a similar path.

[hazeredmist]

Just ordered Sine Mora since it's in the upper end of your tiering system, that's pushed me over the edge. I do like a bullet hell shooter and while the Vita version didn't hook me for long, it sounds like this is a decent improvement visually and features wise. Plus it's cheap, £17.85 at Base.

[Suits]

Nintendo Japan are doing physical items for the My Nintendo rewards programme.

It's only posters but its the first physical rewards so far - it's a start.

I hope they come to the EU as I want that Lynel poster, that artwork (ever since I first saw it ages ago) I totally love.

https://gonintendo.com/stories/294521-m ... lda-breath

[Stanshall]

BotW DLC 2 is out November 23rd.

[Craig]

So the Switch looks to be a big success sales-wise so far, and the future is looking pretty good in regards to Nintendo and indie output. The jury is still out on third parties it seems, but I'm sure many are looking to Skyrim, Doom and LA Noir's imminent releases and judging if there's space for them on the platform.

I've been thinking of the Switch in terms of the wider industry and the upcoming gamepocalypse crash that everyone seems to have been predicting for a while. The core tenants seem to be -

1) Triple AAA games have spiraling costs
2) Although games are selling through many more copies, they aren't selling enough to make back said spiraling costs.

This leaves publishers with 3 main options - look to make money elsewhere (fitness clubs, pachinko), look to make money other than the initial purchase cost (in game purchases, free to play games) or cut development costs. (or hey, do all three)



The problem with cutting development costs is your game may suffer going shoulder to shoulder with other developers who haven't cut their budget. Your game may seem dated and your staff will be accused of being lazy. It's an arms race we see in both the console tech and the software.

However, the Switch offers a way out. If they can maintain a healthy user base who are buying games, developers can develop what are essentially PS3/Xbox 360 gen games with an appropriate team size. This happened with the Wii with developers making pared back versions of their franchises, but the problem was that this made the games simply look cheap "baby" versions in comparison. However, with the Switch we've already seen people defend graphical fidelity and have lower expectations because it's also portable.

Essentially, Nintendo have given developers an excuse to work on smaller cheaper games, while possibly sidestepping the disdain.

I think many are cautious right now with how games were perceived on Wii, and they'd probably do better to release new franchises rather than lesser versions of current gen which won't come out favourably in digital foundation comparisons, but the expectation for sky high budgets seems lower with the Switch, and people seem okay with that. Hopefully some of the bigger publishers jump on that.

[DomsBeard]

That's awesome thank you - just digesting your helpful post right now!

I probably should have said I've already got MK8 on Wii U, I've got Splatoon also and never got that hooked, also I've completed Zelda BOTW on Wii U.

I'll be referring back to this list several times, again immensely helpful of you!

Yeah great post for me too as I will be getting a switch soon. Mario O, K and BOTW are my top 3 to get.

[Stanshall]

Craig, interesting post and lots to think about there.

I'd say one reason why few people are concerned about the Switch's graphics is because they're not as far behind as the Wii was to the PS3, and also, the jump from PS3 to PS4 is a lot less significant than PS2 to PS3. I look at Odyssey or BotW, or MK8D, ARMS or Splatoon 2, for that matter, and I don't feel they would be improved for being on a more powerful machine. Of those five, probably BotW would be most improved by a greater draw distance and therefore less flat textures but I find it beautiful as it is and I crave nothing more from it technically.

If we turn to third party offerings, I've played the latest FIFA on both Switch and the XB1S and while there are clear differences, in terms of gameplay, the Switch version is superb, misses very little despite its custom engine, and it's undoubtedly the best portable football game I've ever played. I'd also choose that version over the bells and whistles version every time, purely due to the versatility. I understand that the NBA game is similarly excellent, post-patch. The only shame really is that these have sold so poorly, which I'm surprised by.

In terms of indie titles, I've lost count of the number of devs coming out and saying that Switch sales have knocked it out the park. I'm delighted to read this because I feel we're getting the cream of the crop and it'll only get better in this respect.

[seansthomas]

Ridiculous bunch of games out next week.

Rime, Batman Telltale stories, DOOM, Skyrim, Rive, Rocket League, Ittle Dew 2 and LA Noire.

Want 5 of those but still got a huge backlog.

[Stanshall]

Will probably just be Skyrim and Rocket League for me but I'm very tempted by Rime and Doom.

[Whippledip]

1) Triple AAA games have spiraling costs
2) Although games are selling through many more copies, they aren't selling enough to make back said spiraling costs.

Has this actually been substantiated anywhere? Companies love to pull this line out all the time but I have a hard time believing it with the US's track record on labour laws and the constant stories of development studios not being paid overtime and horrible working conditions, particularly in the "crunch" periods.

This kind of thing is rampant, for instance here in Aus, over the week one of the largest banks cut 6000 jobs to "lower costs" while also posting a 6 billion dollar profit for the year.

[Craig]

Most of the stories I’m looking for seem to be about the jump between PS2 to PS3 costs, but in those cases the cost is very much real. You have to be careful about taking management’s comments at face value, but just looking at the amount of people involved, unless everyone was working as unpaid intern, more money needs to be spent. There are also a lot of costly things we expect in games now too from orchestrated music to (good) voice acting.

Thinking on that though, I’m not sure how much these costs would increase between PS3 and PS4 - you have many artists making high resolution art and models, would the cost diminish between HD and 4K? Or will the artist be making mostly the same product and the guys of the PS4 handling the extra push?

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

Sad news this: https://youtu.be/Qg-HAbX6gcg

Nintendo and SanDisk preying on people who don’t know any better. No other way to slice it.

Businesses exist to make money and I have no problem with that. But there’s a difference between smart business and ripping people off, and this the latter.

Such a shame with Nintendo gaining back so much goodwill with the Switch and then sanctioning this underhand bollocks.

[Flabyo]

I get that people are cynical of the 'games cost more to make than then can make back' line, but I'm hearing it from so many places now that it does seem to have tipped over from 'excuse' to 'genuine concern'.

4K gaming is going to end a lot of studios. The asset quality required to 'compete' now is so high that you either have to scale back the quantity (e.g., Hellblade) or throw ever increasing numbers of artists at the problem (the solution the big publishers prefer). Dropping quality isn't really on the table, if your game doesn't look as good as the competition it won't sell whatever you do (at least in the AAA console space).

None of that excuses bad business practice of course, but I suspect if publishers thought upping the RRP to £70 would work they would've already done it.

(Game RRP has been static for the last 20 years around £40 on console. Inflation has not. In real terms games cost a lot less than they used to)

[hazeredmist]

(Game RRP has been static for the last 20 years around £40 on console. Inflation has not. In real terms games cost a lot less than they used to)

It can seem crazy to think this but gaming is a relatively cheap hobby really. Swap it for going to the cinema for comparable hours of entertainment or playing golf, tennis, whatever, and your costs are significantly higher. Go on a night out and you'll spend £50-£100 easy if you're pubbing & clubbing in a single night. Compare that to the hours of entertainment we get out of that £30-£50 purchase and your cost per hour even taking into account your TV etc is massively lower.

All these things along with rising dev costs, the fact a game isn't finished when it's finished and needs updates which needs devs being paid, make me think the recent history of DLC, season passes, micro-transactions indicative of publishers desperately trying to make this a viable business. The minute they realise it isn't, your high cost games will just stop completely because publishers need to know they'll get a return. It feels like a big implosion of some kind might just be around the corner, actually.

[KSubzero1000]

After today's Nintendo Direct trying to make sense of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's numerous systems and mechanical intricacies, I have to admit that the game is leaving me cold. I'll probably end up buying it, but I really think that Monolith Soft could gain from evaluating the difference between depth and complexity. I ended up burning myself out on the first one halfway through and haven't even touched XCX on account of its impenetrable set of needlessly complex systems. Somehow I don't think I'm alone in that?

I would very much like to see this studio understand the value of restraint and go back to something akin to Baten Kaitos and its sequel. Great narrative quality combined with a fun, unique but easily understandable combat system, set in low-scale locales with lots of charm and personality instead of these huuuge open worlds with thousands of collectibles and tabs upon tabs of pointless stats.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: less is sometimes more.

[Stanshall]

I haven't watched the Direct yet but that last one was quite embarrassing, literally listening to someone read out flowchart sequences of how the game is played. Massive turn off. It's better to pretend it's some anime fetishism wankathon thing and then people realise it's mostly pressing buttons and waiting for animations to play out. I might not get this after all. I'm going to wait for reviews, anyway.

[KSubzero1000]

To me, (J)RPGs should be about pure escapism, more so than any other genre. I want to follow larger-than-life characters on their perilous journey through breathtakingly beautiful landscapes while listening to a grandiose orchestral score. Not trying to memorize entire spreadsheets of information junk.

The reason why I'm so down on Monolith is because they've shown that they can do it right in the past, so this recent hyper-complexity trend is all the more disheartening.

[Craig]

I want to give the games a try as the worlds look wonderful, but every time I see the character designs and the clothing they wear I just can’t. I can do melodrama, but when everyone looks like they’ve walked out of a fetish club, I’m just taken completely out of the story.

[Whippledip]

I want to give the games a try as the worlds look wonderful, but every time I see the character designs and the clothing they wear I just can’t. I can do melodrama, but when everyone looks like they’ve walked out of a fetish club, I’m just taken completely out of the story.

Why is this kind of thing so prevalent in JRPG's and anime/anime inspired media? After Persona 5 I wanted to explore more media of that type, but boy they're making it difficult to get through some of it, I mean I've started to notice my own other issues with anime but that's the most common and most difficult hurdle to clear for my enjoyment.

After today's Nintendo Direct trying to make sense of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's numerous systems and mechanical intricacies, I have to admit that the game is leaving me cold. I'll probably end up buying it, but I really think that Monolith Soft could gain from evaluating the difference between depth and complexity. I ended up burning myself out on the first one halfway through and haven't even touched XCX on account of its impenetrable set of needlessly complex systems. Somehow I don't think I'm alone in that?

...

This is a problem I have with quite a few japanese games. I've had the 3DS one for a while but every time I try to play it I just get overwhelmed with all the vaguely or completely unexplained systems and stats. But this is compounded by giving these things nonsense names which make no sense. Make sure you driver is resonated with the blade augmented with aux chips and core chips? Use your skills to level up your arts and your experience points to level up your blade? Make sure your affinity charts are properly filled up?

Those things kind of make sense in context, but trying to remember all those terms in a progression system and exactly what they do and how they interact with other is so difficult because the terms they label them as aren't very descriptive.