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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Switch Launch Feels Like a "Soft Launch"

Ck1x on 20 January 2017
NATO said:
So exactly how the 3DS was at launch then?
Seriously did anyone here buy one at launch? Do you remember how useless the firmware was until several updates later?

Considering that the Switch is launching with BoTW, it's nothing like 3ds launch at all! It will also get 1-2 pretty decent sized 1st party games a month leading up to the holiday season, not to mention whatever indie or 3rd party games that may come out as well.



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VGPolyglot on 20 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
VGPolyglot said:

Yeah, Zelda is such a killer app that the GameCube had two of them yet was still outsold 7:1 by the PS2.

The comparable situation is that the Wii had Zelda at launch and blew the competition out of the water.

When has the Zelda game ever been the best selling game on the console? I would say that every single time there is a Mario game that has sold more. It's Mario that is the killer app, not Zelda.



think-man on 20 January 2017

This might go down as one of the worst console launches in gaming history (only including the big 3)



 

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vivster on 20 January 2017
d21lewis said:
vivster said:
God bless early adopters.

You're welcome.

No, you're welcome.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

DanneSandin on 20 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
DanneSandin said:

And in my first reply to you I pointed out that this game is also coming to the Wii U - and that there isn't much else to play for quite some time after the Zelda launch. Zelda DOES count, but it's still a soft launch of the console with few games and missing features. I said that ONE game doesn't make this a great OR a good launch; it IS a soft OR weak launch. Maybe, at best, it's an ok launch, but that might be stretching it.

You really don't get it, huh?

Zelda stands so tall that in the real world people won't even consider which other games and how many the system will launch with. The decision to buy Switch will have already been made before that point. This is what a killer app is.

Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_launch

Switch does not match the definition at all. Switch also does not have a weak launch, because it's getting out of the gates with a killer app that is followed up by a massive multiplayer hit in the following month. It doesn't matter that Zelda is also on the Wii U, because the two versions launch day and date, the Switch version is superior and nobody is going to buy a Wii U at this point. It doesn't matter that Mario Kart 8 was on the Wii U, because the Switch game is a complete package of the biggest Mario Kart game to date and all the sales data we have access to shows that remasters of blockbuster hits are comfortably among the topsellers for a new system. That's two killer apps in the first two months that hit different spots: One is a huge singleplayer game, the other one is a multiplayer champion.

Oh yeah, I've totally misinterpret the meaning of soft launch! What I was thinking of is that Nintendo is launching "half a console", or half done machine. Sorry my bad. But I still think that the Switch has a weak launch since it's missing quite a lot of features, and while it has some blockbuster games coming out, there really isn't much else to play in between the releases.



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VGPolyglot on 20 January 2017
RolStoppable said:

Twilight Princess launched with an attach rate of ~70%. It should be clear that it was the main reason to buy a Wii for most of the people who showed up early. The belief that Zelda cannot shift hardware on its own is ridiculous.

Wii Sports had a 90+% attach rate, though.



malistix1985 on 20 January 2017

The hardware is slow these days, even compared to Nvidia its own new mobile chips, the later the console arrives the more ancient it would feel.

Scorpio is around the corner and it would sting.




Twitter @CyberMalistix

potato_hamster on 20 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
VGPolyglot said:

Yeah, Zelda is such a killer app that the GameCube had two of them yet was still outsold 7:1 by the PS2.

The comparable situation is that the Wii had Zelda at launch and blew the competition out of the water.

It did? Since when was outselling a console that cost over double the Wii did when it launched by only 14 million units "blowing the competition out of the water". It only soly 36% of home consoles sold between the Wii, PS3 and Xbox One. It was one of the closest console sales competitions ever.



d21lewis on 20 January 2017

Now to drop some facts.

-3DS launched in February. A first quarter launch is not unheard of.

-SNES launched with F Zero, Pilot Wings, and Super Mario World on day one.

-N64 launched with Pilot Wings and Mario 64. That's it.

-The worldwide launch of the Vita was in February.

-Vita (beloved on this site) was $300 at launch for the 3G version and ZERO memory.

-The PS4 and Xbox One launched with several features unavailable. I could list them if you want.

The Switch launch doesn't feel like a "soft launch" to me. I've been around long enough to say it just feels like a launch. Period.



VGPolyglot on 20 January 2017
RolStoppable said:
VGPolyglot said:

Wii Sports had a 90+% attach rate, though.

It was bundled with the Wii in America and Europe.

So, that makes it impossible to determine what the main reason for getting it was. You used attach ratio to show that Zelda was the main reason people got the Wii, and then I countered with a game that had a higher attach ratio.