On launch day, many Gamestop employees stapled the paper receipts to the Switch 2 box, and the staples punctured the device’s screen! While it was certainly dumb to staple the receipt to the box, you really have to put the onus of the blame on Nintendo here. Seriously, they charge you $500 for a handheld, and they can’t even be bothered to use packaging that protects it from getting damaged? How careless is that?
I’m also seeing some reporting that the joycon drift problem that existed for Switch 1 has not been fixed for Switch 2. Someone actually took the new joycons apart and saw the same structural issues that existed in the original joycons.
You can see the video here:
Nintendo is clearly a company going downhill. I’m sure this is only the beginning.
The stapled screens is an anomaly occurring to one Gamestop store. It’s a nothing burger.
Walmart including a coke and Pringles for preorders was a nice touch. Wal-Mart must not have been happy with the pre-order mess. Companies do these things if they want your continued support. And it is good to get goodwill for a console launch because a console generation can last for nearly a decade.
As for Nintendo going downhill, it’s been doing that for a while.
Even though Iwata was president when the Gamecube largely launched, he couldn’t change the directory of the company until the next hardware launch (DS launch). Nintendo’s trajectory isn’t really seen by the public until new hardware appears. I believe this direction just accelerated when Iwata passed away.
Some people are accusing me of being negative on the Switch 2. I have to wonder have they even listened to the negative streamers out there? They are foaming at the mouth. As for myself, you don’t see that white hot hatred. You see something worse.
Apathy.
I just don’t care anymore. When Nintendo decided that the definition of 2d Mario was 3d Mario’s gameplay formula but put into 2d, I knew Nintendo was done.
Allegedly, these are the numbers, though they lack context as to specific regions:
24 hour launch sales:
I have now heard from 3 independent people that Nintendo have globally shifted over 3m Switch 2 units. This doesn’t include any additional sales made today already and over the upcoming weekend.
For perspective, no console has come close to that level of…
You said you believe that Switch 2 will likely have a trajectory similar to the SNES, but I’m not so sure. I believe Switch 2 could potentially be a flop similar to the Wii U. In fact, I believe it is more likely than not. As to why, there are some clear similarities between the two consoles.
Like Switch 2, the Wii U was expensive. Its price tag of $350 (in 2012) was a huge turnoff for people. Like Switch 2, it launched when the economy was not doing well, and few people had money to spend on a game console.
Back in 2012, a lot of people had soured on Nintendo due to how poorly supported the Wii was (bad games, not enough games). Well, this pattern has also repeated with the Switch. Super Mario Wonder, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Princess Peach: Showtime… All these late releases for Switch have been major disappointments. Nintendo has actually released fewer games for Switch than when they had two devices to support! I find this to be especially galling.
Both Wii U and Switch 2 had little excitement at launch. Wii U launched with Nintendo Land which was a bad pack-in game. Switch 2 obviously has a better pack-in game in Super Mario Kart World, but I would argue there isn’t much excitement for it. Why? Because Nintendo added DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a few years ago that doubled the number of tracks, essentially giving us a second game. Because of this, I don’t think there is as much interest in a new Mario Kart as there would have been. You also have to consider that Mario Kart has never been a game that moves hardware. You only buy it if you already own a Nintendo console.
One difference that needs to be acknowledged is that the Wii U gamepad clearly repelled people. There is nothing about the Switch 2 hardware that is repellent, but there is nothing exciting about it either, as it is merely an upgraded Switch with a bigger screen, more power, and a few other extra features that no one really cares about.
Both Wii U and Switch 2 launched during a time when people who bought the previous console felt little loyalty towards Nintendo. If that’s not a recipe for a flop, then I don’t know what is.
Finally, both consoles had a lot of third-party support at launch. But those third parties abandoned the Wii U in droves when their games failed to sell. As you’ve said, there is every indication that third-party games won’t sell on Switch 2 either. So we will probably see a similar flight of third parties from Switch 2. This means it will be up to Nintendo’s first-party games to keep the console afloat. But just as the quality of Nintendo’s Wii U first-party games weren’t good enough to keep that console afloat, does anyone really believe that Switch 2 first-party games will be good enough to keep Switch 2 afloat? I certainly don’t.
In terms of hard numbers, I still think Switch 2 will outsell Wii U. But not enough to avoid being a flop.
Wait a minute though. To me, Tears of the Kingdom and New Super Mario Brothers Wonder are disappointments. NSMB Wonder might be tepid sales, but the game did sell. And Tears of the Kingdom definitely sold over 22 million copies which is not minor. I am saying that a good part of that is momentum from Breath of the Wild. I don’t think those numbers will jump to Zelda on Switch 2.
Wii U was so bad that many people didn’t know it was a console. They thought it was a controller. And Switch 2, for all its faults, is still the same setup as Switch 1. There is no going from motion control to giant honking tablet controller.
The biggest thing that hurt the Wii U was the PlayStation 4. The PS4 was a hit.
Switch 2 doesn’t have a competing hit console. PS5 isn’t it and Xbox Series S isn’t it. So I think Switch 2 won’t be drained of customers as Wii U was.
I don’t think the fundamentals of game console sales have changed. The Nintendo console is a box people buy to get to Mario. The software is going to be the draw. And since there will be no exclusive third party software, it is all up to the first party software.
Will Switch 2 sales increase with the release of the next open world Zelda game on it? Absolutely.
Animal Crossing and 3d Mario also will increase Switch 2 sales.
But the Switch 2 situation feels so much like the N64 or Gamecube.
The Wii U comparison is not a good one to make because Switch family are handheld consoles, not home consoles. Nintendo’s handheld consoles have been less fragile. So I do not think it will have a major drop like the Wii U. I’d say a decline with the sales tip toeing around the big First Party releases.
Many people bought the 3DS and didn’t buy Wii U. Do you expect so many people to not buy any Nintendo games for a generation? I don’t.
I noticed certain game consoles like the NES, DS, even the Wii, the Switch somewhat, just fanned the flames of gamers. Gamers became more obsessed and more hardcore. SNES, N64, Gamecube, 3DS just does the opposite. It makes gamers want to play less. Some consoles like the Virtual Boy and Wii U are wet blankets altogether to the fire of gaming.
I don’t think Switch 2 is a ‘wet blanket’, but it is a longterm decline. For 2025, the sales are largely going to be governed by supply, not demand. Tariff situation has made supply situation worse. There will be a perception the Switch 2 is selling better than it actually is for this entire year.
This year's Summer Games Fest presentation was really concerned with how few people made a lot of those games, huh?It feels kinda fucked up. Not just because they're often misrepresntating the real size of these teams, but because I think it's playing directly into a new(ish) flavour of dev hate.
Game Industry is attacking the ‘solo dev’ by saying no games are ‘solo dev’ due to assets, testing, and other parts. This is so ridiculous, and my own experience doing game dev can blow this out of the water.
If you bake a cake, you do not single handedly create every freaking ingredient by hand. You do not mill the flour. You do not farm the chocolate. In addition, you do not create the oven the cake is baked in. You do not create the utensils that the cake is eaten. You just bake the cake. Hence, you become the baker.
When you ‘solo build a house’, that does not mean you chop down every tree individually and turn them into boards. Solo build does not mean material building. Solo build means you take those materials and ‘build the house’.
I am a solo game developer. However, I did not write my game’s engine. I have bought and used free assets such as sound, music, and art from others. And yet, I remain a solo game developer. The engine is the ‘plot of land’. The assets are ‘materials’. But the house construction, the game construction, is all me.
Gaming has always acknowledged this definition of game development.
Here are the creators of Star Control 2: The Urquan Masters. This has been recently legally settled that these two gentlemen are the creators of Star Control 2. When asked “How many people made Star Control 2?” everyone answered, “Two guys.”
The song writers who won the online contest are credited in the game for their contribution. But they are not considered a developer of the game. An illustration made by someone is credited but is not considered a developer of the game.
To this day, the Game Industry acknowledges Star Control 2 is made by two people. Legally, it is now recently established that Star Control 2 is made by two people.
The Game Industry attacking indie games because the developers purchased an asset or hired a composer as saying they are not ‘solo developers’ or whatever is the Game Industry going batshit insane. The standard has always been the above.
The cake is made by the baker, not the flour maker.
Games are made the developers, not by the ingredient makers.
In my own game, I have made the vast majority of assets or, at least, re-assembled them. They are distinctively mine both in copyright and as a work of labor.
The indie game scene is using the time old standard of what a ‘solo dev’ is and so on. The Game Industry needs to stop being butt hurt about Clair Obscura running rings around their bloated operations.
He gets very close when noticing cinema follows the left to right pattern. He then ultimately concludes it is because our brains are wired that way. No shit. But why? He also becomes very close with the reference of the angel and devil on the shoulder.
One data collection that was completely unexplored was political rhetoric. In other words, propaganda. Propaganda has been whittled down to a science for well over a century. Today, TV political commercials are no longer a thing. But they once were. They also shared this ‘facing right’ trait is good.
In political ads, the ‘good guy’ is always shown facing right. The political opponent is always shown facing left. In the same way, the ‘good guy’ is always smiling, and the political opponent is always frowning (and is in black and white).
This is beyond ‘what feels right to the brain’. If you want to display a HERO, you have him move to the right. If you want to display a VILLAIN, you have him face the left. Video games didn’t start this. Cinema didn’t start this. Theater didn’t start this. It goes back even further. How far is unknown.
Nintendo needed something like this for its switch 2 killer app:
And it’s not like they couldn’t. They literally made a sequel to a game series that wasn’t originally developed by them, had KOET develop the game, and release it on switch:
Also, this marvel games studio is something you should keep a close eye on in the future. It’s basically filled with former blizzard employees, the glut of them people who left from the overwatch project, but they’ve been secretly poaching all of the good talent from the other games. So it makes sense that they’d have a good eye for figuring out which company to license the next-gen marvel vs. fighting game too since Capcom screwed up on infinite while arcsys knocked it out of the park with dragon ball fighterz. Well, that, and Sony has a huge stake in the Marvel IP as well.
If Nintendo really cared about expanding its audience, it should’ve put in more effort in trying to get the FGC people to seriously play on their hardware. Instead, they’re just satisfied with just Smash Brothers and Splatoon while leaving a more traditional FGC title like ARMS to die. Except not since it’s getting an asset update for the switch 2 for free, so I have no idea what Nintendo’s doing.
This isn’t Iwata’s Nintendo. Nintendo’s mission is not to increase the number of gamers. Nintendo’s mission is to increase revenue. They will increase revenue by raising prices, by making you buy the same game over and over again, by spinning out the IPs to movies, by making parks so the fanboys can go and spend even more money, etc.
Within a year, where there is evidence of things not working as planned, I expect Nintendo execs to throw the software guys under the bus. And when that happens, things get very chilly at Nintendo. Every dev wants to work at Nintendo because Nintendo is very pro-dev. That will change once the executive side starts throwing them under the bus (which they will because executives are never wrong in their decisions).
You didn’t really do your due diligence in why I specifically chose rune factory for a switch 2 launch title I’d want to play; the switch 2 physical version has all of the assets needed to run either on the switch 2 or switch 1. Yeah, you can buy it on PC, but that’s only on steam, and I don’t want anything to do with that platform and the DRM screws up rhythm game performance, not to mention there is no real good portable handheld that’s just as plug and play as the switch is; I’m already exhausted tinkering around with emulators for the switch (ie- don’t want to screw around with settings for 3D games because those keep constantly crashing with no explanation but my guess is the custom shaders they’re using is the culprit), and I don’t want to figure out how to mod a game meant for use on an actual PC because the developers were already too lazy to figure that out.
Been also checking online to see what the news was for unofficial performance enhancements for switch 1 games running on the console, and a lot of them were unexpected great surprises, so this already checks off one of the big reasons I’d want to get a switch 2 right now if I wasn’t so sure if I could find one in stores, but from what I’ve been hearing, they do have a bunch in stock at various retailers and Nintendo’s been inducing artificial scarcity as a way to induce FOMO to the true neckbeards.
The reason why I’m more neutral on the switch 2 launch situation right now is because we haven’t seen Sony and Microsoft’s response to it just yet. The only thing they’ve done is increase the price of the PS5 abroad because they’re too chicken to do it over here because they know riots are going to happen. If I were Sony CEO, I’d intentionally lower the prices of the games even more and justify keeping the PS5 (with optical drive) even lower or on par with the switch 2 because we already have a ps5 pro for the neckbeards and e-sports TOs who’ll write those off as a business expense anyway. I’d also talk smack about Nintendo saying the value isn’t there because you’re paying 10th generation prices for barely 8th generation performance, and here we are charging you guys 8th generation prices for our games and even less sometimes.
Remember that it was Sony’s hunger that drove Nintendo to really look deep inside to retake the crown. Right now nobody seems to be hungry to be the king of the gaming space, and if Sony or valve corporation doesn’t want it after tbe end of this year’s holiday season, then yeah, we can consider Nintendo officially done for because they’re free to do whatever they want. After the holiday season is done they can really evaluate whether or not their non-videogame attempts work as a way to get them to play their actual video games actually work. It’s most likely not, especially if they have to be bedfellows with Sony in order to make a live-action Zelda movie happen.
You’re assuming I didn’t know that Rune Factory and some other Switch 2 games were all on the cart. I did.
When I buy a game, I look at all the options available. If there is a DRM free option, I usually go with that one. Rune Factory is, at least, on Steam.
I actually bought a PS5 for Final Fantasy 16 (ugh). If Final Fantasy 16 was available anywhere else, I wouldn’t have bought a PS5.
The console is a box we buy to get to Mario. Without the exclusivity, these consoles seem more and more ridiculous. Also, only old people are buying consoles anymore. The young people are avoiding them.
If you want to buy a Switch 2, go right ahead. And I hope you are happy with it. But if you recall, I didn’t buy the Wii U or the 3DS (until fire sale prices). Same with the Gamecube and N64.
If you want to see Switch 2 negativity, you should see other sites. Some people are screaming ‘Wii U’, but I am thinking a more SNES like sales trajectory. So much depends on the first party software. And I do not have faith in Nintendo on that.
I see a ton of disappointment in the Switch 2. It’s like people’s eyes have been opened to what Nintendo is. I have nothing to add to the Switch 2 reports as other people are covering it.
But as someone whose blog is twenty years old, I can say that Nintendo will not be pivoting back from this. Under Iwata, and throughout the Gunpei Yokoi Era, Nintendo was a gamer company. When Gunpei made the Ulrahand prototype, Yamauchi told him to make it into a game because Nintendo served gamers. Gunpei was, “WTF? How do I make this into a game?” He added some balls and stuff. The point is Nintendo made products FOR gamers and to CREATE MORE gamers. Today, Nintendo is an entity that serves its shareholders. It is NOT designed to serve gamers. Nintendo will do what its shareholders wish it to do. It will build theme parks, more stores, alarm clocks, movies, merchandise, and, yes, even some games.
In 2004, Iwata gave his “I am a gamer!” speech. Would today’s Nintendo executive team say anything similar? Even Shigeru Miyamoto no longer works on video games (if reports are accurate).
In the past, Nintendo would do a miss with a game console and pivot to correct it. Sometimes these pivots brought out interesting new products such as NES and SNES Classic Minis after the Wii U.
There won’t be any pivot because Nintendo is no longer a gamer centric company. Nintendo won’t declare that they failed gaming. They will just declare the gamer market failed and continue their errors.
I played the original Mario Kart 8 on Wii U when it was first released in 2014, and the game was so amazing that I played it almost every day for 6 months. You have mentioned in the past that the true challenge for Nintendo is that they have to beat their previous games. Well, at the time, I remember being at a loss as to how a future Mario Kart game could possibly beat Mario Kart 8 in terms of track design.
I’ve been watching playthroughs of the new tracks for Mario Kart World, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, even if you ignore the lame “commuting” tracks, the new main tracks are not better than the original tracks of Mario Kart 8. There are new versions of Wario Stadium, Moo Moo Meadows, Bowser’s Castle, and Rainbow Road which appeared in the previous game, but not only is the track design inferior but the music as well. Nintendo has settled for changing the gameplay rather than making better content.
I don’t think we are going to see better versions of Smash, Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Metroid, Animal Crossing, Pokémon, or Splatoon on Switch 2. And all of these games (except for Smash) certainly could be improved upon, but Nintendo won’t do it either for ideological reasons or because they are just too lazy to do the necessary work.
You are right that the only reason to buy Switch 2 is for Nintendo’s first party games. But if the sequels aren’t going to improve upon the previous games, then what’s the point?
Right. These First Party games are going to be the key to maintaining Switch 2 momentum.
I’m hearing different reactions to Mario Kart World. But to be honest, Mario Kart is really hard to screw up. Can anyone tell me of a bad Mario Kart? Not bad retroactively. Just bad during its time. Every Mario Kart ‘did its job’.
Let’s return to the SNES analogy. Here is the SNES launch window:
I just love the vibe of the SNES launch. There is something ethereal about those SNES screenshots… something about the colors. The games just glowed.
SNES launch window was essentially a bunch of sequels.
Launched in September of 1991, and it said it would have 18 games for it by Christmas. Not bad.
Above: Did Super Mario World challenge the limits of your imagination, reader?
I bought a SNES and Gradius 3. I still think Gradius 3 is the best of the launch games outside Super Mario World.
I rented F-Zero a ton (liked it). Rented Pilot Wings (but was WTF with it?). Rented Sim City (thought it inferior to superior PC Master Race version).
In November, right after SNES came out, came this motherfucker game of Final Fantasy 2 (4). That game held me in awe and remains my most memorable game from the SNES Launch Window. FF4 was more than a sequel. It was a revolution. It was the true birth of the ‘JRPG’.
Some highly anticipated games came out but were complete duds. Super R-Type, the Double Dragon games, etc. Some of the sequels were OK like Super Ghouls and Ghosts and Castlevania IV. Contra 3 was very different from its NES titles but still phenomenal.
Outside a few titles like Super Mario Kart (I bought that day one while everyone made fun of me) and Super Smash TV (so good!), SNES was largely lame. It did turn into a JRPG machine. Absolutely loved Final Fantasy 4 and 6 on it. I didn’t get into Chrono Trigger until the year 2000.
In so many ways, the SNES wasn’t as interesting as a console as the NES. SNES had the appropriate sequels, but none of them held the same type of traction. Some of the sequels were just flat out wrong such as Yoshi’s Island (sequel to Super Mario World). Donkey Kong Country games were Rare games.
The NES blew open new possibilities of gaming that the Reader cannot understand. The NES popularized the D-Pad which revolutionized how we played video games. The NES popularized the PAUSE BUTTON allowing video games to be integrated into our lives better. NES popularized SAVE BATTERIES. It popularized SCROLLING. It popularized 2d platformers (this is an understatement). The console was wild. I was playing four player games like Gauntlet on it. You had fantastic PC ports such as Shadowgate.
SNES just seemed lacking. I just love, love, love the 16-bit ‘glow’ graphics. The music and audio of the SNES, thanks to Ken Kutaragi’s chip, was divine. But the games were mostly sequels.
And the SNES began to fall behind the Genesis.
The marketing also changed. It became ‘in your face’ extreme sports style marketing which turned me off.
This is my convoluted way of saying Switch 2’s sequels are not going to make ‘Switch 2 rise to heaven’. The best selling Nintendo games are anti-sequels. Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an anti-sequel to what we knew of Zelda. I also think Covid artificially increased so many of the Switch software sales skewing the true market value of them.
Nothing about Switch 2 feels ‘new’ or ‘fresh’. I think this is going to be a big problem for Nintendo as consumers do not think of the Switch family as handhelds but as home consoles. Their expectations are not where Nintendo’s expectations are.
Actually, I lied: there’s xenoblade, but that’s technically a 2nd party title, although that wasn’t why I was eying the switch 1 to being with many moons ago; I just wanted a 9th generation Japanese console because that was the best way to play Japanese developed games. Every time I play another jrpg now my brain points out in disgust how the camera cinematography isn’t as good as monolithsoft. But yeah, that was weird they left the cross remaster on switch 1 when that was the only xenoblade game in the series that had online multiplayer mechanics, which is what the switch 2 is all about.
And therein lies the problem with Nintendo’s offerings. Monolithsoft is the only internal developer within Nintendo that’s “young” and hungry which hasn’t shown signs of slowing down. Nintendo’s guidance in helping them make xenoblade was a shining example of how a little bit of discipline for an ambitious team created a game that was essentially a loud answer during generation 7’s criticism that the JRPG is dead and that western rpgs are the future.
I wasn’t joking when my interest in buying a switch 2 wasn’t because of Nintendo’s tired and old IPs because they haven’t done anything worthwhile with them for literally console GENERATIONS while monolithsoft’s contributions have stood the test of time; xenoblade is still very engaging today. And even the stuff they work on the side for Nintendo makes waves like the Zelda renaissance with breath of the wild. I want to see what witchcraft monolithsoft can pull off with more powerful hardware because xenoblade 3 and tears of the kingdom somehow are able to run on the switch 1 without self-immolating itself.
If the switch 2 ends up going SNES 10 years from now, I’m fine with that because I want to play the new rune factory on it because unlike you malstrom, I like Japanese mythology (they also have western naval commanders trying to upended the status quo with airships or something because why not); I literally bought a Japanese Xbox 360 as my first generation 7 console because that was the only practical way for me to play senko no ronde since g.rev decided not to release it on Dreamcast, and I already got my money’s worth blowing over half a grand for the hardware because the other alternatives at the time would be to track down and buy a sega NAOMI arcade board with a copy of senko no ronde SP (which was the arcade version released to coincide with the game on 360), then figure out how to hardwire the stupid machine to work, or go fly out to Japan and spend $20+ a day playing the game at a local arcade over there. And either option would’ve cost WAY more money than importing a Japanese Xbox 360, an official arcade stick, and a copy of the game. An arcade gamer’s mindset is WAY different from a traditional console gamer’s mindset and this example is just one of the many reasons why I don’t see the switch 2 in the same light as most people here do.
The whole point of video games, especially as you get older and have more resources to have the opportunity to expand your horizons, is to see what others are offering, even if that offering is literally just one game on a system you don’t own yet. An arcade gamer would buy the home version of the arcade game instantly because the alternatives are just not financially practical; this is why Neo-geo owners don’t bat an eye at the cost of any of their games on the system because they’re literally arcade perfect versions.
If I can get a better experience on PC, why not go PC?
Nintendo locks your software to the hardware. But on Steam, you can change and manipulate your hardware. On GoG, you are DRM free.
What is the reason for me to buy a game console anymore? There are no more console exclusive games outside of Nintendo games. And do I really need more 3d Mario, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Smash, etc.? Not really.
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