My thing is, Nintendo has never been about high graphical fidelity. They’ve always focused on gameplay and an art style first. Why anyone would even try to play a game like mortal Kombat 1 on the switch is beyond me.

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

I will say, I personally miss the Nintendo that DID care to some degree about that kind of thing. But not because I want to see Mario's pores or whatever. Rather, I feel like the era where they weren't behind in terms of hardware scalability was also their most creative. Mind you, this is just a guess, but I think that's part of why people would seek other games out on Nintendo platforms, because Nintendo is increasingly narrowing its scope. Gameplay and artstyle do indeed always come first with Nintendo. But the niche which it fills doesn't fully express what you'd hope to find on a console anymore. So people look to other publishers to fill that gap in, but the hardware struggles to deliver.

People seem to keep letting ports like Doom and Witcher make them forget that the Switch is overall less powerful than 8th gen consoles, which themselves were considered underpowered A DECADE AGO. How anyone is surprised that a game made with 9th gen in mind can't just downgrade the resolution and cut the framerate in half and call it a port is something to boggle the mind! The Switch only held on to third parties this long due to the laundry list of older 7th gen games that could be safely ported at low cost. Without those, the third parties would have dropped it like a hot rock years ago.

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, unlike the Wii, I think what saved the Switch here is that there are tons of remasters happening these days, and the indie scene is huge. So even when it's getting basically NOTHING modern, it's still getting lots of experiences. Which isn't necessarily a criticism of the console. But it's something you knew was going to happen if you paid attention and understood the technology at play.

If the rumors are true, and the successor is Xbox One/PS4 adjacent…it’ll be neat. OVERDUE…and neat! …I will play every single Final Fantasy game if the Switch successor is XSX/PS5 adjacent Edit: also, gosh, the reminder of the Rift Apart PC port hit me hard in a tangent. Remember when everyone was like “LOL REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE SAID THE PS5 WAS THE ONLY CONSOLE THAT COULD RUN THIS GAME” and then they didn’t look at the…results of playing it on a not-PS5-level PC?

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

It won't be XSX/PS5 adjacent. It couldn't be. It won't even be XSS adjacent. It will absolutely have rendering features from them. But the need to run off of a battery necessitates really low power consumption that will NEVER allow that kind of raw output. They'll have to rely on tricks, which is fine of course! I do expect something that in some ways is roughly equal to the One/PS4 though. As for Rift Apart, yup. That comparison was to the PS4; they were saying that the game couldn't run as it was built on a PS4, not a Series S or X, or PC or whatever. It CAN run (kinda roughly) with a SATA SSD. And it runs mostly perfectly fine on a slower NVMe SSD. But it does NOT run on an HDD, which the PS4 was equipped with.

The best move for Nintendo to pull with their next system is to ditch the pseudo-handheld nature of the Switch, instead making a home console that has its ass firmly planted on the shelf. The Steam Deck may not be cheap by any means, but it has increasingly become clear that if you want the premium, portable experience, that is the system you need to invest in. Not only because of the wealth of Steam games that one can play on it, but the emulation capabilities are so powerful that basically every major home console up to the Wii (and maybe even PS3/Xbox 360) falls well within the Steam Deck's wheelhouse. Nintendo just can't keep up with that; better to hand the reins to Valve and remain content with having pioneered the format. Especially since the Deck may very well get cheaper with time. It's also difficult for me to see any advantages that these compromised systems afford Nintendo's developers; matter of fact, I'd say that they've only hampered the development teams' creativity. I mean, what first-party game has even used anything unique to the Switch that couldn't have been pulled off on the PS5 or something? Since it's totally possible to play the Switch in docked mode, none of the games can actively utilize stuff like the touch screen functionality because that would alienate those within the audience who never use the console in portable mode (including me). I doubt that "Super Mario Wonder", "Super Mario RPG" or "The Thousand-Year Door" are going to really benefit at all from the Switch's specific hardware capabilities. The reliance on gimmicks for over a decade now seems unnecessary because Nintendo's development teams don't NEED them in creating compelling experiences. The best Nintendo games have always been those that employ inventive game design WITHOUT major gimmicks attached (motion controls; gyro control; microphones; heavy touch screen use; whatever). And the occasional insistence on shoehorning major selling points of the hardware into released games have either hurt mechanics (like how a lot of the Nintendo DS' microphone-oriented minigames could be genuinely harmful to people with asthma) or led to difficulty with game preservation when later systems don't feature the same tech. If Nintendo were to release a really powerful home console that was dedicated to BEING a home console, it would still sell gang-busters because of the stellar first-party titles while also roping a bunch of third-parties back into the fold.

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

I more or less completely agree, although I do think it's important to recognize that - in terms of business at least - I don't think Nintendo sees the Steam Deck as a threat yet. Nintendo console sales this gen have been really, really good. And somehow I doubt the deck is doing even a fifth as well, despite how well it IS doing. The main difference comes down to how much space the Deck can fill in terms of player needs (PC games they've already purchased, greater freedom to optimize the experience yourself, emulation; the type of stuff you pointed out), and therefore how long investment in that ecosystem will last. As long as the PC continues to get more and more easy to use, EVERY console manufacturer should be worried about their longterm viability, as players slowly accrue PC games over time, until eventually their main usable library is there and they need to justify getting a console for some other reason.

@majine.2606

9 ай бұрын

Much as I don't like the anti-consumer angle of it, the fact that all of Nintendo's first-party titles remain exclusive to their systems should mean that they would probably be the last major console manufacturer to fall in the event of PC domination. It's really the only reason that I'll more than likely buy the next Nintendo system; scummy as they can be as a company, I can't really see myself skipping out on an entire generation of Mario games alone. That having been said, emulation tech is getting better and better these days...I think the big thing that would kick Nintendo down is if emulators could easily mimic their systems within the year of release or something. That would likely get them to crack down a lot harder on emulators in court, and what the outcome of that would be is up to total speculation. Now I'm wondering if part of the reason that Nintendo doesn't invest in better architecture for their systems is because they believe that the quality of their games is enough to make high-end graphics and modern technical infrastructures unnecessary because people will buy their games, anyways. If true, then it would certainly be disappointing to hear since Nintendo used to never settle for anything less than the best in their systems. @@LibraScope

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

@@majine.2606 I think Nintendo's mindset with aged/weaker hardware is really simple... they want to control their market, and they want to ensure every aspect of it makes them a profit from day one. Their consoles make money on every unit from day one. Microsoft and Sony's don't. Their games are much cheaper to produce, due to the lower fidelity. They have a much stronger stranglehold on the cartridge format used than the cheap and agnostic blu-ray. I do agree that they'd probably be the last console manufacturer to fall as a console manufacturer, given their business choices. But I think that's because they'd go down with the ship, while Microsoft and Sony are ALREADY preparing for a future where they cultivate storefronts, not hardware. They're looking ahead and trying to transform. Good or bad for the consumer (and there's plenty of bad there), I think that will prevent a total collapse of their gaming brands when consoles are no longer traditionally viable.

Dlss vs fsr/homegrown upscaling should ideally close the gap for Nintendo next gen somewhat but I suspect Nintendo Will cheap out on the hardware so I don't know by how much. I feel like were so close to reaching the sweet spot where we sincerely dont need better, devs would appreciate it but im not sure my eyeballs will see much difference. If not this gen I feel next will be 12+ years. We're reaching diminishing returns but not enough to stop me getting that ps5 pro 😁

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

Yeah, I think upscaling will really help. Modern Nvidia tech as a whole should help a lot with the Switch 2. My main curiosity is how they're going to handle cartridges (if at all) while keeping the cost of them down, given the speeds they'll HAVE to hit in order to handle a lot of modern titles that are on the horizon. NVMe SSD storage have gotten a lot cheaper. But I don't know if it's THAT cheap yet.

usually at the end of console's lifespan there are games that push the limits of its hardware now there's just watered down ports of games that can barely run properly even some first party nintendo games like zelda and pokemon have technical problems which contradicts their sticker of quality label they had in the past also Saints Row (2022) being a good game? Really? I would have an easier time believing the people who defend Sonic 06 over THAT game

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

How much of Saints Row 2022 have you played, versus what you've seen cherrypicked and heard? And how much recent gameplay? Because the game absolutely was pretty buggy at launch (though it wasn't NEAR like a Cyberpunk, or a Sonic '06 level). But it has since been largely fixed, and the foundation of the game is effectively Saints Row 3, but with more freedom, more mechanical thought, and more self-aware design. It genuinely isn't even just a meh game that finally works; it's a pretty good game that works well. Given how everyone talked about it, that wasn't what I expected when I downloaded it. I expected to play it for five hours, go "Wow, this IS trash." and move on. Instead I got the Platinum Trophy.

I never really understood this argument. The Gaming PC has been objectively optimal for decades. Nintendo survives off of library alone. They don't need to run PC games. They can control their own scope. A brick is a better hammer than a screwdriver, but I could just use an actual hammer. Why do I need a brick?

@LibraScope

Ай бұрын

I'm not sure what you mean... Like... it's a moot point because people shouldn't be going to the Switch for anything but Nintendo games?

@AJGsTV

Ай бұрын

@@LibraScope more like… if a game could be played on PC why play on anything else? If I were making a console, I wouldn’t be trying to compete with PC specs. I’d be carving out a niche like Nintendo has done.

@LibraScope

Ай бұрын

@@AJGsTV I mean, I guess that's fair. But Nintendo's niche is still undeniably both misleading in some ways, and also hostile to developers. Nintendo's niche is more of an Apple style walled garden of insular choices that often come at the expense of customers and developers. But also, I'm not sure I ultimately agree, because there is still a wild gulf in ease of use between PC and a high spec console, and port consistency. And that's before we even get into the massive difference cost required to buy into PC in the first place. You're not playing the latest games at console equivalent settings for the price of a console. That has never been a thing, outside of the very end of a generation, or a really savvy consumer who knows exactly what they're doing. Either way, my point wasn't that Nintendo bad because console poopy or anything like that. Nintendo bad for dozens of other reasons. My point was specifically that the Switch itself is dead, because the new tools being used for making games fundamentally cannot work on the system. Whether one is okay with that or not is up to them.

@AJGsTV

Ай бұрын

@@LibraScope Seems like a minor disagreement... if any at all. My PC was cheaper in the long run. I'll never need another high end console again. I got this thing before the PS4 released and it runs Elden Ring today. So long as console exclusives are a thing, Nintendo is wise to focus on cheap and stylish ones. Even so... While I don't really care for infinite growth; I cannot deny I am pumped for the next Nintendo console.

@LibraScope

Ай бұрын

@@AJGsTV I'm certainly interested in what they'll do. In particular, I'm interested in how they'll handle the tougher problems ahead in terms of hardware balance, as well as how they'll approach the fact that the handheld 'console on the go' market is now super saturated with solid options.

What did you say about the Switch?

@LibraScope

23 күн бұрын

I don't know. Which part?

@RacerC45

23 күн бұрын

@@LibraScope When you said the system itself is "dead" even though it's not.

@LibraScope

23 күн бұрын

@@RacerC45 There are multiple ways and reasons you can consider something dead.

I mean, I think Nintendo is the only one who has yet to admit that the Switch is dead honestly.

@ehsanghazavi470

9 ай бұрын

Ah yes a 3rd party game meant for series x and ps5 shows the switch is dead... you're stupid if you believe that

@LibraScope

9 ай бұрын

Judging by the Dislikes I'm getting, I'm gonna disagree, lololol. :D