Asriel said:
As Machina and Mbolibombo have pointed out, this is the trend for the generation. PS4 and Xbox One's first two or three years have been marked by ports, remasters and cross-generation titles. Hell, look at the HD remasters and remakes that have launched in the last few months or which are still being confirmed for those platforms: it's a feature of the generation. It's a reflection of increasing costs, increasing risks, shrinking profit margins and customer demand. Personally Switch, for me, strikes the right balance. There's so much content coming on every platform these days that's there's bound to be a mix of major titles, ports, indies, middle-tier, remasters and remakes. The market is so big that it's simply not possible to keep up with every major or quality release across every platform - 20 years ago that wasn't a problem. Case in point, I owned an Xbox One and Xbox 360, but being a multi-format gamer, I never got round to playing the Dark Souls series. Between multiple formats, other hobbies and my personal/professional life, there's only so much time and money most people can commit to gaming. Switch, with its portability and versatility, is a good antidote for that. Switch has a mixture of new titles (Kirby, Mario Tennis, Yoshi, Fire Emblem, Octopath Traveller, No More Heroes 3, Lost Sphear), titles that are new to me (Dark Souls, Dragon Quest Builders, Ys VIII) and titles I don't mind replaying (Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2) to keep me satisfied. That doesn't include indies and doesn't include titles yet to be announced for the year, obviously. You might have played these ports or remasters before - but that doesn't mean everyone has. They just have to be new to enough people to be worth playing. That's why GTA V and Minecraft are still selling on every platform under the sun. That's why Rocket League is going from strength to strength. It's why Mario Kart 8 DX has shifted 5 million copies and counting.
EDIT: Finally, I want to address your baseless 'shovelware' claim. Switch had a higher Metacritic average across all titles last year than PS4 - it had the highest number of 75% plus exclusive titles after PS4 and PC and the highest number of 'great' titles across every platform last year (90% plus). The average Metascore of Switch releases in 2017 was higher than that of (from lowest to highest Metascore) Vita, PS4, and 3DS, equal to Xbox One (which had fewer good or great exclusives) and only lower than PC (highest Metascore of the year). Not the perfect metric by any means, but one that, as far as an objective measure of quality for 2017 releases goes, is about the best thing we have. Consider that Switch had been on the market for 9 months when that happened, and in terms of the number of quality releases and the overall quality of its library, it's holding its own against systems in the prime of their lives and against PC, which has a vast quantity of software, and I think, if we are going to attempt to be somewhat objective about it, Switch's critical and commercial performance in 2017 flatly contradicts your claims.
|