Nintendo Has Failed Us
- Jan 13, 2017
- 5 min read
I had known that the Nintendo Switch blow-out reveal was going to be happening at 4:00AM local time (for me that's the UK) but never intended to watch it due to its absurd time for watching a press conference. Come 2:00AM, however, where I'm sat in my living room still playing my PlayStation 4, and I decided that I might as well stay up and catch the conference seeing as I'm so close to it and not feeling particularly tired. When it was all over, I wish I had just gone to bed.
When the Nintendo NX rumours were starting to fly around back in 2015, naturally gamers got excited at the prospect of a brand new video game console from Nintendo, even if the one that was available to purchase at the time, the Wii U, was and still is considered a lackluster system by the wider gaming community. Come to October 2016 and we get our first look of the system, and are given a general idea of what it is and what will be available for it, before having an in-depth reveal this month.
The conference began very un-Nintendo, at least for the Nintendo we have seen for some years now. Flashing lights, a DJ, a large stage akin to an E3 stage; Nintendo seemed to be different. Rumours had been flying around just days prior to the event that games such as Mother 3 (known as EarthBound in regions outside of Japan), a new Pokémon game for the Switch, and even Beyond Good & Evil 2 were all coming to Nintendo's latest. But were any of them there? No. That's fine, though. With rumours, you have to take a grain of salt and not invest too much into it, hoping that it will be true. But what actually was there most certainly did not make buying a Nintendo Switch at launch (or even in 2017 at all) an investment I could feel happy about.
After talking about the console and the controllers, and announcing the price and release date (March 3rd, 2017 for $299/£279), they finally began to get into the games. First up, Nintendo's usual party-like game intended to show off the new platform's capabilities. 1, 2, Switch looks like an interesting game that sees players both take one of the Joy Cons (the controllers) and they have to press a button quicker than their opponent. Not exactly groundbreaking, but it feels like classic Nintendo.
Next up was Arms, a arena boxing game where players throw punches whilst holding the Joy Cons to beat down their opponent. But it's not just a simple boxing game, as there are a number of techniques and movements the player can utilise to get the drop on their opponent. Oh, and did I mention that the arms spring towards your opponent like an extending punching glove? Yeah.
After showing off a couple of games that failed to excite me about the hardware, we finally come to a familiar face: Mario! I've always been a bigger fan of Mario's 3D outings than his mainline 2D platformer series, and the latest entry looks brilliant. Super Mario Odyssey is a huge open-world 3D platformer with a myriad of different hubs and areas to run around in. It looks great, and I don't think I've ever played a 3D Mario game I didn't like, so I have faith that if I do ever pick up a Nintendo Switch, Super Mario Odyssey will be a joy to play.
Splatoon 2 was also revealed, but from what I can see, it's very akin to the original.
A slew of other games were announced for the Switch, including a game from Atlus, a game from Square Enix, 4 Dragon Quest games, a SEGA title (though nobody knows what exactly it is), and official confirmation that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is indeed coming to Nintendo Switch. But the problem with all of these games is that most of them don't have release dates. We do know, though, that Super Mario Odyssey is due this Holiday and Splatoon 2 is coming this Summer, but that's it, mostly.
Overall, the press conference was lackluster, boring, and at times, cringe-inducing (see the Splatoon 2 guy and the Grasshopper guy). The saving grace was the announcement that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be coming to Nintendo Switch on day one (it's also coming to Wii U on the same day).
With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild coming to Nintendo Switch on day one, third-party support in 2017 not delivering a great deal of games, and no other high-profile exclusive coming for quite some time, for day one adopters (hell, for anyone that buys a Nintendo Switch before Summer when Splatoon 2 is available), they are essentially paying $360/£330 for a Zelda machine. And if they want to be fully kitted out with additional Joy Cons and the new Pro Controller, they are looking at spending an additional $80/£70. Not a great lineup of games that will inspire many to join club Nintendo on their latest outing.
The lack of games isn't the only thing that gamers have issues with. Nintendo now have the cheek to charge for online multiplayer beginning in Fall of this year. I know that PlayStation and Xbox carry subscriptions for their online play, but they have online multiplayer figured out. Nintendo on the other hand has no idea what to do when it comes to online multiplayer, yet they feel they are ready to charge for it.
Paying the subscription will not only get you online in your Nintendo Switch games but it will also give you party chat and a free game a month, similar to how PlayStation Plus and Games with Gold operate. However, they've not exactly done this right. In fact, they've done it really, really wrong.
The party chat system is absolutely ridiculous. To have party chats with other Nintendo Switch owners, you'll need to have your smartphone connected to the device. Party chat on Nintendo Switch runs through an external smartphone app. This just begs the questions of why I would do that at all instead of just having my friends talk to me through Skype or Facebook voice chat.
The monthly games program is also flawed in the face of its PlayStation and Xbox counterparts. You don't get a Nintendo Switch game, no. Instead, you get a NES or a SNES game, and you only get one game a month...and you only get to keep it for a month if the wording in their official press release is accurate and not some error of translation. Nintendo are putting in online multiplayer for the SNES games, though, so that is pretty cool.
All in all, the Nintendo Switch is definitely not something I'm going to be buying on day one, week one, month one, or maybe even in 2017. The price, games lineup, and ridiculous online system has pushed me further away from purchasing it than I was before I even knew about it in-depth.
Just as with the Wii U, I see this failing. When people claimed that the Wii U would be Nintendo's last console, I didn't believe them. It takes more than one bad console generation to kill a company's hardware ambitions. But Nintendo could be about to begin bad generation number two, and it seems that the company has already begun testing the waters for developing third-party software with their smartphone projects.
I love Nintendo. Growing up, I was seemingly plugged into my GameBoy 24/7, and with every new iteration of their handhelds, I've bought it. And with every one of their home consoles since the Nintendo 64, I've owned it. I even bought the Wii U on day one. But I'm sorry Nintendo, the Switch is just not doing it for me, and it appears that I'm not alone.
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