Nintendo Switch, the only console today making games which are games

[Jaedar]

The other thing you're missing is that the Switch has sold 139 million units, which is nice, but it's completely ignoring the fact that from the SNES on, Nintendo also had handhelds at the same time.

This is a very good point.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, the Wii was $250 when it was released in the mid2000s. The DS was $150 around the same time. This lines up pretty close to the modern Switch and Switch Lite prices of today. But combined, the Wii and DS combined sold 255 million units. I don't think you can argue that the Wii/NDS era wasn't the most innovative era for Nintendo. Both consoles were fairly underpowered for their time, though the NDS did have an ARM7 as well as an ARM9 processor. It was a pretty interesting piece of hardware.

 

[taxalot]

The Switch is an overwhelming success, the Steam Deck is a runaway hit, and yet developers , Sony, and MS all act like "better graphics, 4K and AI " are the answer to their current economical crisis.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The Switch is an overwhelming success, the Steam Deck is a runaway hit, and yet developers , Sony, and MS all act like "better graphics, 4K and AI " are the answer to their current economical crisis.

Not to mention how many of these live service and AAA games are failing with super bloated budgets and AAs / indies are cleaning up.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Imagine the indie developers' butthurt if AAA companies will start to produce many low budget games, instead of the very few big budget AAA games like now.

 

[taxalot]

Imagine the indie developers' butthurt if AAA companies will start to produce many low budget games, instead of the very few big budget AAA games like now.

They already did.
Dave the Diver.


They also tried with smaller titles from Ubi & EA (Unraveled, Valiant Hearts), which have been critical and review successes, but they gave up for some reason.

It worked, and they ignored it.

I don't know what else to tell you.

Spoiler

To be fair, they probably thought they couldn't compete on that field with the indies, for the simple reason that such corporations are a juggernaut to manoeuver and getting the same result an indie developper gets in a product is probably much much much more expensive to Ubi & EA than for an actual den living off pasta and working from his bedroom.

But in all fairness, a return to PS1&PS2 style of graphics (maybe a bit cleaner and sharper) for a certain category of products would result in dramatic cheaper games to produce, that could somehow work on a gameplay/storytelling similar to AAA gaming. It could sell well and work perfectly on the biggest install base ever from the PS4 to the Switch to the Deck to cheapo PCs. Why aren't they trying this, not for flagship titles, but as an experiment ?

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Damn, didn't realize until very recently while playing around with emus that the Switch had a shit-load of games; yes, indeed, it is a success. Unfortunately, most of the RPGs are ports/remasters of jRPGs from of days of yore. However, even there they tend to be good ports/remasters (Live A Live). Some of the exclusives look intriguing like SMT V, and the remastered SMT III is probably the best way to play this well-regarded, dex-approved jRPG. Also, I always wanted to play a modern 3D SMB game (ie Super Mario Galaxy), having not completed one since the days of my Super Nintendo original hardware, and now looks like the time to do it, on the Switch in emulation. I wonder how effective my DS5's motion controller features will be with these games that were designed (required?) for it.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

There's one game called Astral Chain (aRPG?) on the switch that I recently tested in Yuzu that I thought had an interesting battle mechanic. You're a police-person of the future, not terribly dissimilar to the aesthetic of Spielberg's very good Minority Report, who fights with a tamed astral/spectral creature, visible only some of the time, captured from the dimension where their evil brethren have come (the premise of the game), and can only have them materialize for brief periods before you need to reign them in with your astral leashes/chains. It's all very cool, cyberpunkish (except you're the good guy) and anime and should greatly please the weaboos and animetards. However, I think it's impossible to die in this. I was giving chase to some baddies on the highway (or being chased by them) and crashed my cool neon motorbike head-on fullspeed into at least 10 vehicles - from buses to trucks - and didn't miss a beat in my pursuit (though there was collision at least). I think you can literally just stand there and take damage from 20 spectral enemies and your health doesn't go down, but you won't end the sequence until you do fight. I didn't test this thoroughly but it feels like it. Should I bother to continue? I did reach the post-title sequence where you can select difficulty and I selected hardest (std) so does that make a difference? But... I do like the spectral monster-pets on a chain/leash idea.

 

[Machocruz]

Just found out Battle Brothers is on Switch. BB + Monster Hunters 3U - GU...greatest console of all time??

 

[911 Jumper]

Reminder: Online play for Wii U and 3DS will shut down on Monday

Yeah, Nintendo sucks. But if you're still playing on your 3DS and Wii-U, and you've gone the CFW route, there's this:

https://pretendo.network/

It works pretty well. It takes no time to set it up, either. About five minutes of work and I was getting my ass beat by people from all over the globe in Mario Kart 7.

If you haven't jailbroken your 3DS yet, don't be a pussy. Don't follow videos on YouTube, most of them are out of date and are great ways of bricking your systems. Here's the guide for it that is always up to date:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/

And for the Wii-U:

https://wiiu.hacks.guide/

And here's most of the published homebrew for all those consoles:

https://www.gamebrew.org/

Thanks for the links. Reminds me that MVG recently covered Pretendo on a recent vid (if anyone's interested):

 

[911 Jumper]

Discord is nuking Nintendo Switch emulator devs and their entire servers / The Yuzu story isn’t over

Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers’ accounts — and the company isn’t answering our questions about why it went that far. Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th.

“Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests. In this instance, there was also a court ordered injunction for the takedown of these materials, and we took action in a manner consistent with the court order,” reads part of a statement from Discord director of product communications Kellyn Slone to The Verge.

The developers of Suyu and Sudachi only received vague messages about how they were sharing content that allegedly violates intellectual property rights, according to images shared with The Verge. Meanwhile, Discord tells us that it’s following its normal process for DMCA takedown requests — but it’s not at all clear there was a valid DMCA takedown request or that those communities were actually violating IP rights, and it’s quite possible Discord isn’t following its own policy by kicking them out.

Remember, Nintendo got Yuzu to settle rather than proving its case in court, and the settlement did not give Nintendo the rights to Yuzu’s freely copyable GPL v3 code. Developers of Yuzu’s forks also claimed they were changing the code further, among other practices, in an effort to avoid pissing Nintendo off. And that code wasn’t hosted on Discord in any case.

But it’s possible that people were sharing Nintendo’s cryptographic keys, firmware, or even entire pirated games in these servers despite those commitments. At the end of the day, most people seeking out a Nintendo Switch emulator are looking to play Nintendo games on it. But with the servers gone, it’s hard to prove either way.

Even if Suyu and Sudachi were infringing, Discord’s policy does not suggest it would permaban, much less nuke entire servers, on the first offense. Discord did not answer questions about whether these users were repeat copyright infringers, had received any previous warnings, or were forwarded any takedown requests.

Sudachi developer Jarrod Norwell tells me it came out of the blue: “Their first email was that my account has broken the TOS, with no additional information.” He claims Sudachi wasn’t doing anything infringing. Later, he was told it vaguely had something to do with intellectual property but says Discord still hasn’t given him any details.

Source: The Verge

 

[taxalot]

If we pretend it doesn't exist, maybe it doesn't.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The Yuzu story isn’t over

Supposedly Yuzu was made with the assistance of the official Switch development kit, which caused a bunch of the Suyu programmers to bail on the project since Suyu is based on Yuzu. So yeah, story's not over.

The Discord thing is pretty retarded, though.

 

[flyingjohn]

Suyu programmers

Teenargers that change the name yuzu to suzu in the source can hardly be called programmers.

 

[911 Jumper]

The Yuzu story isn’t over

Supposedly Yuzu was made with the assistance of the official Switch development kit, which caused a bunch of the Suyu programmers to bail on the project since Suyu is based on Yuzu. So yeah, story's not over.

The Discord thing is pretty retarded, though.

Wasn't aware of that. If that's the case, it makes me wonder how they got hold of a dev kit. Will be interesting to see what happens.
But as I've said in this thread before, I don't blame Nintendo for wanting to shut all this stuff down.

 

[911 Jumper]

Overview trailer for the upcoming Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

 

[911 Jumper]

New additions to NSO's Expansion Pack

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

But as I've said in this thread before, I don't blame Nintendo for wanting to shut all this stuff down.

This is a pretty good video which sums up my frustration with Nintendo right now. The creator of the video mentions that Nintendo could easily keep the 3DS/WiiU stores up, while the argument I've heard for closing them down is that Nintendo has to keep patching the payment services for exploits for the 3DS/WiiU eShop. That's why they shut it down, because it was costing them money to keep them secure. The huge problem with that is that the 3DS/WiiU eShops use the exact same payment system as they're using for the Switch. So, that reasoning is a load of shit.

 

[911 Jumper]

This is a pretty good video which sums up my frustration with Nintendo right now. The creator of the video mentions that Nintendo could easily keep the 3DS/WiiU stores up, while the argument I've heard for closing them down is that Nintendo has to keep patching the payment services for exploits for the 3DS/WiiU eShop. That's why they shut it down, because it was costing them money to keep them secure. The huge problem with that is that the 3DS/WiiU eShops use the exact same payment system as they're using for the Switch. So, that reasoning is a load of shit.

I can see where he's coming from, but it's Nintendo – it doesn't care about making its library more accessible across generations, even if it generates extra money. What I've learned over the years is that Nintendo doesn't do the whole community “we heard you and we did this” engagement thing that you see with Sony and Microsoft (especially the latter). I've learned that with Nintendo, you just have to grab what you can when Nintendo offers it.

When, for example, Nintendo dropped that Mario 3D All-Stars compilation for Switch and then revoked access, people complained, but still to this day it's unavailable to purchase from Nintendo. Skyward Sword and Metroid Prime are remastered on Switch. Will Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and Prime 2 and 3 get remastered ports, too? Who knows? It's just how Nintendo does things. This unpredictable nature is undoubtedly a quirk that is strategic.

Regarding the Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdowns: I think there are several reasons for why Nintendo shut it down. But the main reason is likely security related. There was that incident last year involving Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U


It took Nintendo five months to restore online functionality
Mario Kart 8 And Splatoon Wii U Servers Restored After Five Months Offline

That probably spooked Nintendo. Then there's the number of active users on Wii U and 3DS. It likely isn't significant enough to justify maintaining online services for both systems w/ the risk of the platforms serving as potential attacks vectors for hackers.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Regarding the Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdowns: I think there are several reasons for why Nintendo shut it down. But the main reason is likely security related. There was that incident last year involving Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U

The exploit you mention is when you connect to a game with a person running the exploit on their host. With the eShops, you're connecting to Nintendo servers. Pretty big difference there.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The old generation game library is now ubiquitous and accessible through emulation. This was actually helped by the fact that Nintendo in the past was mainly focused to sell you new games, it didn't care about old games and didn't try to monetize them too much. Pretty sure present situation would be significantly worse if Nintendo actually "cared" about old games. Now that "retro" is a consolidated thing, the future of game accessibility looks no so good, at least in the short term.

This ofc doesn't apply only to Nintendo.

 

[911 Jumper]

Regarding the Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdowns: I think there are several reasons for why Nintendo shut it down. But the main reason is likely security related. There was that incident last year involving Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U

The exploit you mention is when you connect to a game with a person running the exploit on their host. With the eShops, you're connecting to Nintendo servers. Pretty big difference there.

Yes, from what I understand the vulnerability existed within the code of a number of Nintendo games that Nintendo was able to identify. Technically the systems are connecting to a Nintendo server to facilitate online play, but I couldn't find any info to suggest there were server side vulnerabilities involved.

The vulnerability was reported in 2021/22. Nintendo announced in February 2022 that the eShops would be closing in March 2023. It wouldn't surprise me if the decision was influenced by the discovery of those vulnerabilities in number of Nintendo games.
It was regarded as a serious issue at the time and was likely the final push to get Nintendo needed to wind things down with the Wii U and 3DS online services, and move gamers towards the Switch platform.

 

[911 Jumper]

Peripheral firm claims Switch 2 Joy-Cons use ‘electromagnetic suction’, have extra buttons

Switch peripheral maker Mobapad claims to have new information on the Switch 2, particularly with regards to its controllers.

The Chinese company, which specialises in making Switch controllers, claims to have “acquired a lot of first-hand information about the Switch 2” as it makes preparations to start creating third-party controllers for Nintendo‘s next system.

According to a new post on Mobapad’s blog, the Joy-Cons on the new system will be larger than those on the current Switch, and will use magnetic suction instead the existing sliding rail technology.

This follows similar claims from Spanish games website Vandal last week, claiming that the controllers would attach to the console magnetically, though not providing information on how this would work..

Crucially, because this technology only requires single pulses to turn the magnet on and off, if Mobapad’s claims are accurate then this method requires practically no power and will therefore not drain the Switch 2’s battery, and means the Joy-Cons will theoretically remain attached until the magnetic grip is deactivated.

Mobapad’s report also claims that existing Joy-Cons will still be able to connect to the Switch 2 wirelessly, suggesting that even if they can’t be attached to the device, they can still connect as extra controllers (in multiplayer games, for example).

It also says the Joy-Cons will have extra buttons. Joining the L / R and ZL / ZR buttons will be a third pair of buttons, while the right Joy-Con will feature an extra function button below the Home button.

Finally, it suggests the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with physical and digital Switch games, that the new handheld will support 1080p resolution, and that the new dock will support 4K resolution.

Source: VGC

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Finally, it suggests the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with physical and digital Switch games

Now you know why they went after Yuzu and the the Switch custom firmware developer. That is, if this is true. There's also a new flash cartridge following in the footsteps of the MiG Switch which is supposed to come out within a month or so.

 

[911 Jumper]

Overview trailer for the upcoming Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Full text as nikoferrynlennox's Instagram account is now Private (pulled from NeoGAF)

My first major “win” at my new job: in the original version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, this character, Vivian, is canonically trans in the Japanese release and is trying to escape her transphobic siblings who keep mocking her. In the US release, this was changed to her just being generally bullied. We remade the game for Switch, and a few months ago we were having a meeting about localization and I INSISTED that we keep her identity accurate this time. Not everyone was on board. MOST people weren’t on board because of the current political climate in this country over trans identities and bodies. She will be presented correctly in the US release of the game next month and I could not be more proud of queer fortitude and getting to fight for representation in the face of bullshit politics, even if it is just one fictional character in a cartoon video game. I’m glad they made the right choice.

His response to someone when said they were no longer buying the game.