spemanig said:
And so did the Wii. There's literally no way you can know if its missing western 3rd party support yet. What we do know is that Nintendo somehow convinced Bethesda of all publishers to make something for them when they've been notoriously and vocally against supporting Nintendo specifically because of their terrible third party communication. The fact that Skyrim appeared in that trailer is symbolic of the fact that something about that changed. Skyrim could have ran on the Wii U too, but Bethesda didn't so much as give it a second look. Something is clearly different here. And while I agree that Skyrim is a 5 year old game, it is also far and away Bethesda's most recognized game, and it's getting a remaster this year, and this teaser was very clearly targeted at people who aren't gaming enthusiasts who recognise something like Fallout 4 just as easy as Skyrim. It's far too early to make a claim like that yet. And don't be mistaken, I'm skeptical too. But there's being skeptical and there's being overly cynical. I think that you are going to see a lot of developers taking a "wait and see" approach on the Switch before moving to support it. I think that they are looking keenly on what type of audience the Switch garners and if that audience will be interested in buying their games. I think the Switch has a year to prove it to them, and I think that a year is more than enough to do so. I also think that the teaser is very clearly marketing to the kinds of people who will want to buy western third party games like that, which is a good sign of things to come. I think Nintendo can very easily mess up third party support, but nothing in that teaser or in the press releases since have indicated that they are on the wrong track yet. So far, they have been doing everything right, so it's unfair (though understandable) to project wrong doing onto the system. That last paragraph is something I might want to write an entire article about, because there is a rampant misunderstanding of what the Switch is trying to be. The Switch is not a hybrid, and I don't think it is being marketed or interpreted by the mainstream like one. The Switch is to consoles what a laptop is to a desktop. Or maybe a "lap-tablet" is more accurate. No one scoffs at laptops for being too weak because most people are not tech enthusiasts or professionals. They value convenience over power. The Switch isn't under-powered in the same way that the Vita isn't. It's a different bracket of devices. People buying a Switch aren't going to care about the power difference because the flexibily, utility, and convenience it offers far surpasses what can be achieved on a regular console. Most normal people value experience over performance, so if the Switch can deliver many of their favorite multi-platform games at a good enough clip, that's going to be an extremely tempting value proposition for them. Very few people buy new desktop computers anymore. Most people use laptops, and that's indicative of all tech trends. The vast majority of people only use their laptops for social media and microsoft word, and the vast majority of people who game on consoles only buy a few games a year - many of those games being sports games/online multiplayer shooters. For those people, having bleeding edge performance just isn't as valuable to them as it is to gaming enthusiasts. I'm sitting on my bed right now typing this on my 5 year old Macbook that is resting on my lap, and there's literally nothing you could do to tell me that a more powerful desktop computer at roughly the same price is a better value, because the experience is catagorically inferior. I think that the same argument is being made with the Switch. "Why would you want to limit yourself to playing Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare only on your TV when you can play it comfortably on your lap, and even take it to work with you to play on your lunch breaks?" There is a compelling argument to be made that that is the superior experience, and you aren't forfeiting very much to get there. We all know that the graphical leap between this generation and the last one hasn't been that large, and we also know that most games that have been made this generation could easily have been made on last generation hardware, but at a lower clip. And games last generation weren't ugly. That's when games were actually starting to look good. If the Switch is truly between the Wii U and XBO in terms of power, it's going to get perfectly fine looking and running ports of games. They will be inferior, but that won't matter literally at all because no one buying a Switch values power over utility. No one but maybe Nintendo enthusiasts who buy it for the exclusives. But, if this thing is going to be successful, it going to be because normal people are going to look at Switch versions of multiplatform games as the superier versions of those games. Watching Youtube on a desktop is a vastly inferior experience to watching it on a weaker laptop, and I think that for a lot of people, playing a game like Madden on a console will be an inferior experience to playing it on whatever the hell you call the Switch for the exact same reasons. I think that home consoles will be machines for enthusiasts while the chain of portable consoles that the Switch is will before everyone else. And the industry is mostly everyone else, so this is a very good idea. |
It's beautiful to see well ritten posts like this on VGC! Good arguments too, especially about Skrim and Bethesda's choice of game. Now it's firm that Skrim remastered will be on Switch.
I also agree with the argument about (lack of) power. The Switch is such a slick, smooth and convenient device as a hybrid that it doesn't have to compete directly with PS4 in hardware computation power. This is a widespread misunderstanding even among Nintendo fans.
The writing is already on the wall, the Switch will be a huge success.
