There are many posts in the pipeline and since I'm doing this blog only as a hobby, it will take a while to go through all the announcements from the Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, as well as any additional information from the Treehouse Live streams. But to begin I wanted to through my general thoughts about the Nintendo Switch 2, where I continue to have the same feeling I had after the announcement in January.
It mainly feels like a boost in hardware, so that Nintendo can keep doing what they've been doing for the past eight years, without completely losing 3rd party support. It feels more like a "Nintendo Switch Pro" than truly the next console / handheld generation for Nintendo. It's probably closest to the Game Boy Advance in comparison, but also feels similar to the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, just without the big innovative gimmick, like a 3D screen. Well, they brought back the microphone and there is the new mouse functionality for the Joy-Cons, but whether this this will be a game changer or not remains to be seen.
To use a mouse you want to be sitting at a desk. And of course I could just hook up the Switch to my PC screen and play there, but that's not what I have the Nintendo Switch for. That's what I have my PC for. Well, I also have a laptop table at my couch, which theoretically would allow me to use the Mouse-Cons, but it won't be as comfortable as playing normally. So, I don't think this will see much utility, but at least it's easy to ignore, unlike the Wii U GamePad.
Otherwise, the games clearly make use of the better hardware, where something like Mario Kart World or Donkey Kong Bananza probably wasn't possible on the old Nintendo Switch. At the same time the technological jump isn't as impressive, where it doesn't blow you away like Breath of the Wild did on the Wii U. Bananza looks even quite close to Super Mario Odyssey in its visual style, where it probably was made by the same team, and it also has a lot of dithering going on, which is a graphical optimization effect I absolutely hate.
Naturally, a handheld system won't be able to compete with a PlayStation 5 or a current PC. I also don't need it to, as long as the games are fun, I'm actually quite happy with the current Nintendo Switch. And the better hardware will without any doubt offer prettier and smoother experiences than before.
So, there wouldn't be anything fundamentally wrong here... if it weren't for the price point. I don't necessarily mean the console itself, where it's only a bit more than I expected here in Europe (470 vs. 450€), but the game prices are ridiculous: 80 or 90 for retail versions (EUR, but also USD). That's even pricier than the competition and that's dumb. That the Nintendo Switch games were relatively cheap was always an advantage and Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot here.
Digital games have the price point that Switch 2 games should have, but I always prefer to have the games on cartridge. Which won't even be the case with all retail games, because titles like Street Fighter VI will utilize "game-key cards", where they only act as keys that allow you to download and play the games in question. Unlike mere download codes those have the advantage that they can be used with multiple systems, but you're still tied to the Nintendo eShop in the end.
It's understandable that they want to save production costs, because cartridges with larger storage are rather expensive, but if Nintendo goes bankrupt, then you will be out of luck. So, I personally prefer to have as much on cartridge as possible, but it doesn't look like that's what Nintendo prefers us to do. The new boxes also look atrocious, it's too much red. They should have gone with the dark grey of the Nintendo Switch 2 system...
Silver lining is that the retail games usually end up cheaper in stores, where it's often somewhere around 45€ for Switch games, instead of the 60 of the digital versions. If you've seen the chat during the Treehouse Live streams, you know that the people are not happy with the new prices ("DROP THE PRICE"). And if no one buys the new games for 80/90, then those prices will go down a bit. But at the same time the market is getting even more ridiculous with the current economical developments, so let's see where this is all going... Maybe they will charge 100 for Mario Kart World now.
Now, I'm not too worried that the Switch 2 will become a second Wii U, but I don't think it can regain the momentum of the Switch with these prices and offerings.
3 comments:
I've been thinking about the pricing issue for a while now. And far from me to defend the excesses of late-stage capitalism, but I also think gamers in general have been both spoiled and immune to the economy to an extent. NES games used to cost $40 dollars in 1988, and SNES RPGs could get even more expensive (upwards of $70) in the 1990s. One can imagine how much worth $70 dollars was 35 years ago. In other words, TOTK costs a lot less than Final Fantasy VI.
The truth and the reality are one and the same: gaming was always an expensive hobby. Even Atari 2600 games were pricey. The way I see it, CDs and DVDs created a false impression for a lot of people, especially during the PS1 and PS2 eras. That gaming could be a cheap diversion.
And now, between Trump tanking the world economy and companies making bigger and more expensive games that require a lot of manpower, costing millions. Well, I'm not surprised individual games can cost this much now. There's a reason so many game studios either went bankrupt or were acquired by a bigger player over the past 20 years. Making games is expensive, and we've been actually spared much of that cost for a long time (on the assumption that enough copies of any single game would sell enough to cover the cost).
Thank you for your thoughts, these are some valid points.
Luckily, the prices don't affect me as much personally (yet) and I don't mind spending a little more on games, but not too long ago I would get a nice Special Edition of a Nintendo game with an artbook and some extras for 90€, so the increase is certainly felt. And the more games cost, the less will people be willing to buy. There are cheaper alternatives for entertainment and Nintendo raising the prices so much could hurt them more than benefit them. But I have zero insights into their margins...
The increase is felt, no doubt about it (and I miss good old paper game manuals myself). And an $80 Mario Kart could (most likely will) hurt them in the long run.
But I still remember their struggles in the 3DS/Wii U days, when Iwata took a personal pay cut in order to assure that no one's job at Nintendo would be in jeopardy. Whether that was just a PR stunt or not (which I don't believe it was), it made one thing clear: Nintendo is not a multinational powerhouse jack-of-all-trades enterprise like Sony or Microsoft. Their games are their bread and butter (and Sega folded their console manufacturing side of the company for a lot less). It's one of the reasons I believe they started branching into adapting their games into movies so eagerly after holding out for so long. They can't rely on the game sales alone forever.
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