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Rumour Eurogamer: "Nintendo demoed Switch 2 to developers at Gamescom ahead of widely-expected launch next year."

If it starts getting most of the same releases that the PS5 and Series X/S get then it may not matter.
I think the point being made was that Sony/MS can still ignore the Succ as a direct competitor, bc the Switch versions won't look as good.

Perhaps to your point though, I think there's a big difference between the way a game like Apex looks on the PS4 and the blurriness on Switch and a possible drop-down from 4k/60fps with a PS5 game to 1080p/30fps with RT on the Succ. For a lot of ppl who still don't have a 4k tv, the difference may no longer be meaningful.
 
Switch 2 having the 'worst' looking ports is a foregone conclusion because you're comparing a mobile device in the same price bracket as contemporary stationary consoles, just an inherently unfair comparison. Just has to look good enough to impact one's decision making. E.g. 13 Sentinels is such a good port that if you have any interest in playing portably, then the Switch version is an easy choice. Some might want to play spec wars with DF videos as their ammo but I expect the vast majority to not care, as seen by the Steam Deck and people willing to crank down settings just to run their existing library on the device.

Multiplatform ports contributed heavily to the Switch's success and Nintendo has no doubt received feedback from developers as they were customizing it with Nvidia. I would expect more Day 1 ports as the more modern GPU featureset with AI upscaling can close the gap significantly. I assume studios and publishers want a piece of the Switch pie much earlier this time. This is the point of the Matrix Awakens demo. There will still be games that skip it but if you're a Switch 2 owner then I anticipate you will still enjoy a vast quantity of Nintendo games, cross-gen titles and current-gen ports and at much better visual quality on average.
 
Switch 2 having the 'worst' looking ports is a foregone conclusion because you're comparing a mobile device in the same price bracket as contemporary stationary consoles, just an inherently unfair comparison. Just has to look good enough to impact one's decision making. E.g. 13 Sentinels is such a good port that if you have any interest in playing portably, then the Switch version is an easy choice. Some might want to play spec wars with DF videos as their ammo but I expect the vast majority to not care, as seen by the Steam Deck and people willing to crank down settings just to run their existing library on the device.

Multiplatform ports contributed heavily to the Switch's success and Nintendo has no doubt received feedback from developers as they were customizing it with Nvidia. I would expect more Day 1 ports as the more modern GPU featureset with AI upscaling can close the gap significantly. I assume studios and publishers want a piece of the Switch pie much earlier this time. This is the point of the Matrix Awakens demo. There will still be games that skip it but if you're a Switch 2 owner then I anticipate you will still enjoy a vast quantity of Nintendo games, cross-gen titles and current-gen ports and at much better visual quality on average.

I think Japanese studios is going to become an interesting test case if Switch 2 indeed can run something like The Matrix Awakens demo because probably most (all?) of those studios won't be able to afford to make a game that surpasses that visual fidelity any time soon.

So I wonder if there will be some of "Director of next Final Fantasy/Monster Hunter/whatever wants to do a PS5/XSX exclusive, but are told by the business suits of their company that they have to make a few concessions to ensure a Switch 2 version as well because ignoring the overwhelming market leader in Japan is no longer an option" type of thing.

Like you look at a franchise like Final Fantasy, I'm not really sure if 16 has caused any kind of franchise growth that they were probably hoping for, the only way a franchise like that may have a chance to start growing again is if they re-establish the IP as a 2-2.5+ million seller in Japan and that isn't going to happen without Switch. Just is what it is.

If you're the president and board of directors at Square-Enix, can you really look off a Switch 2 for a project like Final Fantasy 17? Is a moderate/tiny perceptible leap in graphics really worth losing sales of potentially 2 million or even higher from a Switch 2 version (especially in Japan) for a franchise that's struggling to grow/possibly losing audience?
 
I think the point being made was that Sony/MS can still ignore the Succ as a direct competitor, bc the Switch versions won't look as good.
They were able to ignore Nintendo since the Wii because Nintendo consoles just outright weren't powerful enough to run the new big releases at the time. If the new console can run, say, the new Assassin's Creed or Madden or Witcher same-day with little to no functional concessions then Nintendo is suddenly in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft again, for the first time in nearly two decades.
 
Through 11 quarters the worldwide shipment number for PS4 is 43.5m versus 41.7m for PS5, so it's probably not very ahead or very behind anywhere. More PS5s shipped in the last year (20m) than had shipped for PS4 at the same point, though (18.2m) so it is catching up.
Thanks for the context. Didn’t have the energy to try and find the numbers for myself.
 
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Through 11 quarters the worldwide shipment number for PS4 is 43.5m versus 41.7m for PS5, so it's probably not very ahead or very behind anywhere. More PS5s shipped in the last year (20m) than had shipped for PS4 at the same point, though (18.2m) so it is catching up.
Exactly, and despite the RRP being 499 compared to 399 for the PS4, for the first year or more you often had to pay a lot more than that to get one.
But somehow people are still arguing about prices being a barrier based on some historical idea rather than actual reality.

Sometimes I do wonder if people argue just for the sake of it.
 
Sometimes I do wonder if people argue just for the sake of it.
You were the one arguing that it was outselling the PS4. I get the point you're making that the PS5 is still very attractive at its price, but you can't really keep arguing a specific point and then say people are arguing for the sake of it when it's proven you're wrong.
 
You were the one arguing that it was outselling the PS4. I get the point you're making that the PS5 is still very attractive at its price, but you can't really keep arguing a specific point and then say people are arguing for the sake of it when it's proven you're wrong.
My post was
"PS5 on track to outsell PS4 makes it pretty clear that the price is not an issue."

It is on track to outsell and the price is NOT an issue.
 
My post was
"PS5 on track to outsell PS4 makes it pretty clear that the price is not an issue."

It is on track to outsell and the price is NOT an issue.
You posted an article of the PS5 outselling the PS4 in a specific region in response to someone saying the PS5 hasn't outsold the PS4 launch aligned- with the obvious implication being that it's outselling the PS4. It isn't. You can't go back and be like "I said it was on track" when your replies were obviously implying more than that.

Even your original comment that it's on track to outsell the PS4 is wrong. Sony just posted a quarter where the PS5 was massively down from the previous quarter, and the PS4 still has a hold over it in sales, so what does "on track to outsell PS4" even mean in this scenario? If you wanted to say it's on track with PS4, fine, even with PS4's lead in sales I think that's a fair comment. But there's no reason to believe it's tracking ahead of PS4 yet.

I don't even think your point is wrong that the PS5's price isn't effecting it too much, and I do expect PS5 to outsell PS4 launch-aligned this holiday, but that's completely hypothetical. I'm just saying your wording is wrong. Hopefully that's an understandable nuance and you can see I don't find your overall point entirely wrong.
 
You posted an article of the PS5 outselling the PS4 in a specific region in response to someone saying the PS5 hasn't outsold the PS4 launch aligned- with the obvious implication being that it's outselling the PS4. It isn't. You can't go back and be like "I said it was on track" when your replies were obviously implying more than that.

Even your original comment that it's on track to outsell the PS4 is wrong. Sony just posted a quarter where the PS5 was massively down from the previous quarter, and the PS4 still has a hold over it in sales, so what does "on track to outsell PS4" even mean in this scenario? If you wanted to say it's on track with PS4, fine, even with PS4's lead in sales I think that's a fair comment. But there's no reason to believe it's tracking ahead of PS4 yet.

I don't even think your point is wrong that the PS5's price isn't effecting it too much, and I do expect PS5 to outsell PS4 launch-aligned this holiday, but that's completely hypothetical. I'm just saying your wording is wrong. Hopefully that's an understandable nuance and you can see I don't find your overall point entirely wrong.
Fair enough, I could have expressed myself better.
 
"Worst" as in "ugliest and poorest?" Or "worst" as in "good, but not as good as the others?"

ugliest and poorest. obviously. the switch 2 is not a handheld ps5
More of the latter (good but not as good) unless a port is exceptionally shitty.

DLSS can resolve decent looking high res visuals from remarkably low input resolutions. The result is better than the barely 720p that some of the worst looking Switch 'impossible' ports can manage. 540p -> 1080p looks fine. And 1080p scales better on modern sets. That and the GPU has a modern featureset.

If a demanding third-party port is on the Switch 2 in the first place, I expect it to use DLSS. Otherwise that's just not making best use of the system's resources.
 
DLSS can resolve decent looking high res visuals from remarkably low input resolutions. The result is better than the barely 720p that some of the worst looking Switch 'impossible' ports can manage. 540p -> 1080p looks fine. And 1080p scales better on modern sets. That and the GPU has a modern featureset.

If a demanding third-party port is on the Switch 2 in the first place, I expect it to use DLSS. Otherwise that's just not making best use of the system's resources.
That's reassuring. The gap is closing.
 
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I am pretty sure I am alone but beside mouse wheel/buttons for my ring fingers I would love to see an evolved (possibly even haptic) stylus added
 
we'll still get those p3r style skips with games that could run on my crappy laptop skipping the switch 2 because ??????
Yeah definitely. That's because many Japanese third parties see Playstation and Nintendo as separate platforms. Japanese games Switch was missing was not because Switch couldn't run them, but because pubs like Sega, Capcom and Namco see Switch audience differently. Sega see us as children while Capcom and Namco old ass nostalgia ridden gamers.

Right now western publishers like WB, THQ Nordic and 2K have brought almost all of their recent catalog, save for few misses because of specific reasons. They're gonna give full support for Switch 2, likely none of their titles are gonna skip it. I expect Ubisoft to join this club.
 
This is late, but since I was just discussing it elsewhere, I have to say this for the record, contrary to the narrative about Nintendo being forced to let their hardware vendors do all the design work for them now as opposed to how it was in the past.

Everybody knows the V1 Switch was easy to hack. Many people know that it was due to an unpatchable hardware flaw, and many know that it was Nvidia's fault. But what I think most people don't know is that Nintendo had already found all the TX1's security flaws and told Nvidia about them before the Switch even launched. They were working on the TX1+ "Mariko" revision by late 2016, and from documents in the gigaleak, we know Nintendo was actively researching the chip's security and making requests to Nvidia to address them in Mariko. So much for "Nvidia smart, Nintendo dumb," huh?

I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of Switch exploits, but the main one that everyone thinks of when they think of hackable Switches had been found and fixed by January 2017. Other notable ones were found by November 2016. Under different circumstances, Nintendo could have launched with a much more secure system, thanks to the work of Nintendo's hardware team at NTD (and probably also NERD and NCL). As it stands, they chose to wait and release Mariko as a refresh in 2019, and Mariko Switches have still not been hacked without direct hardware modification to this day, and they likely never will be.
 
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This is late, but since I was just discussing it elsewhere, I have to say this for the record, contrary to the narrative about Nintendo being forced to let their hardware vendors do all the design work for them now as opposed to how it was in the past.

Everybody knows the V1 Switch was easy to hack. Many people know that it was due to an unpatchable hardware flaw, and many know that it was Nvidia's fault. But what I think most people don't know is that Nintendo had already found all the TX1's security flaws and told Nvidia about them before the Switch even launched. They were working on the TX1+ "Mariko" revision by late 2016, and from documents in the gigaleak, we know Nintendo was actively researching the chip's security and making requests to Nvidia to address them in Mariko. So much for "Nvidia smart, Nintendo dumb," huh?

I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of Switch exploits, but the main one that everyone thinks of when they think of hackable Switches had been found and fixed by January 2017. Other notable ones were found by November 2016. Under different circumstances, Nintendo could have launched with a much more secure system, thanks to the work of Nintendo's hardware team at NTD (and probably also NERD and NCL). As it stands, they chose to wait and release Mariko as a refresh in 2019, and Mariko Switches have still not been hacked without direct hardware modification to this day, and they likely never will be.

I'm pretty sure at this point the entire "Nintendo dumb, it was all nVidia" narrative is just some absolutely weird cope about Nintendo having pretty tight hardware this time.
 
They were able to ignore Nintendo since the Wii because Nintendo consoles just outright weren't powerful enough to run the new big releases at the time. If the new console can run, say, the new Assassin's Creed or Madden or Witcher same-day with little to no functional concessions then Nintendo is suddenly in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft again, for the first time in nearly two decades.
They ignored Nintendo because they wanted to ignore Nintendo. They certainly did not ignore Nintendo for the DS! How powerful was that compared to the PS3?!?!

During the PS1 and PS2 era, the large Japanese third parties came to arrogantly believe that they lead the market, not that the other way around. They came to believe that the PS1 and PS2 were successes because of them and the Dreamcast and Cube were business failures because they withheld software support.

They believed that they could will the PS3 and PSP to success. They believed that it would be a good thing to put Nintendo out of business by not supporting the DS or Wii and instead losing money on the PS3 and putting out b-tier games for the PSP.

It turns out that the market wanted more DS and Wii games. The western third parties made great money putting games in the Wii. All third parties put one or two good titles on the DS.

After that second round of DS software, Sony blew its magic whistle promising wealth from overseas markets while letting Japan become DS and 3DS land for supporting the PS4 rather than the 3DS or Wii.

None of these choices have to do with hardware specs. Certain managers might mention hardware specs in public as a BS justification for why their game Is bombing on PS5 rather than prospering on Switch. None of them will admit to shareholders that their personal biases matter more than maximizing sales and profits.

But the proof is in the pudding with EA FC 24. EA once said they couldn’t put a full featured FIFA game on Switch because they couldn’t port their proprietary engine. Turns out that was a load of hot air once it became clear that a full featured Switch version would be a great way to achieve sales and MTX revenue growth.

It will be interesting how things play out with PlayStation giving up in Japan, focusing on GAAS, and the Switch 2 having graphical parity. Will Square put its new AAA titles on Switch 2 day and date or will they go bankrupt with another Forspoken - FF16 1-2 punch?
 
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It will be interesting how things play out with PlayStation giving up in Japan, focusing on GAAS, and the Switch 2 having graphical parity. Will Square put its new AAA titles on Switch 2 day and date or will they go bankrupt with year another Forspoken - FF16 1-2 punch?
No-one anywhere has said that the unreleased Switch 2 will have graphical parity.
As annoyed as I am with the Jim Ryan direction, Playstation "giving up on Japan" is ridiculous but not as ridiculous as talk of Square-Enix going bankrupt because they somehow hurt your feelings by not supporting Switch enough.
 
Yeah definitely. That's because many Japanese third parties see Playstation and Nintendo as separate platforms. Japanese games Switch was missing was not because Switch couldn't run them, but because pubs like Sega, Capcom and Namco see Switch audience differently. Sega see us as children while Capcom and Namco old ass nostalgia ridden gamers.

Right now western publishers like WB, THQ Nordic and 2K have brought almost all of their recent catalog, save for few misses because of specific reasons. They're gonna give full support for Switch 2, likely none of their titles are gonna skip it. I expect Ubisoft to join this club.
While I largely agree with your point, I think Capcom is in a different category from Sega and BN. With Sega, RGG has outright said that they think Nintendo is for families and not their games and Atlus is all over the place. BN's biggest games from the last 7 years have all skipped the Switch. If you add FromSoft into the equation, the situation looks worse.

On the other hand, Capcom built a game from their most important franchise (MH) from the ground up for the Switch and has made their most recent RE games available via the cloud. Street Fighter 5 and 6 are the major outliers, but MH Rise alone is one of the most important games in the Switch library.

If this trend continues, you can expect all of Capcom's biggest franchises to appear on the Succ in some fashion (many day and date), a random assortment of Sega franchises to appear (usually late ports with the most popular ones missing), and zero BN internal studio games to appear on the Succ. That feels materially different to me.
 
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Anyway, this is a cool story, and it's cool we can all pretty much agree that it's real.

The next gen Nintendo console was, in a way, shown off at Gamescom. That's exciting stuff.
 
Anyway, this is a cool story, and it's cool we can all pretty much agree that it's real.

The next gen Nintendo console was, in a way, shown off at Gamescom. That's exciting stuff.
It's unequivocally my favorite story about the Succ bc it means we've really entered the end game before a reveal. New hardware is an exciting time!
 
None of these choices have to do with hardware specs. Certain managers might mention hardware specs in public as a BS justification for why their game Is bombing on PS5 rather than prospering on Switch. None of them will admit to shareholders that their personal biases matter more than maximizing sales and profits.
I do think there's some truth to this to a degree, but I do tend to come at it from a different view.

The common narrative that Nintendo's position was destroyed by the single decision of going with cartridges instead of CDs tends to ignore the relative approaches Nintendo and Sony had towards third-parties. And also vice versa.
As much as people joke about "arrogant Nintendo" or "arrogant Sony", it's hard to argue against Nintendo's arrogance towards third-parties in the NES & SNES heyday. It's also clear that Sony was incredibly developer-friendly and very keen to build good relations.

And of course that had an impact.
Look, this is just how business works.
Part of it really is about relationships, partnerships, and attitudes. Because of course an attitude of, "look, we're building a platform for you to succeed" was met differently to, "we're building a platform for ourselves, we designed it entirely around our flagship game, I suppose y'all can make games for it too if you pony up and follow our rules, but you'll still be competing with us and losing".

The narrative also ignores the effort Sony took to broaden the market, acknowledging that the core demographic was aging and speaking to them directly while attempting to draw in people who had never played games before. Which, funnily enough, is what Nintendo would then go on to focus on.


Anyway, I say all that in a historical context, I have no idea what the situation is today. But it seems to me that it is unreasonable to think "it's because of hardware" is more logical than "it's because of relationships".
Because think about it. The Switch's lower power profile, in isolation, makes it an easier target. You don't need to go ham on asset detail to stand out, because the bar isn't as high. You still reach an audience of many many millions, with cheaper, shorter development. You can then more easily port your work to the other two because, while the architecture is different, optimisation won't be as much of a pain in the ass.
That isn't how it works in practice. The Switch is "hard to develop for" in comparison to the other two, because it's not being developed for. It's being ported to. Its second-class status is given to it by default. Games are made and ported, because it makes financial sense to do so, but there isn't the will to rally behind it.
For some developers, this makes sense, since their bread-and-butter is cutting-edge experiences.
But for, frickin, Atlas? It makes no godamn sense at all. It absolutely isn't the hardware. It's never been the hardware.
HOWEVER, I doubt Nintendo is the same as it was in those days. Humble pie has been eaten. Maybe the lesson has stuck. I dunno. But it takes time to build relationships, especially when there's historical baggage. I think it's clear the situation is changing, albeit slowly.
 
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No-one anywhere has said that the unreleased Switch 2 will have graphical parity.
As annoyed as I am with the Jim Ryan direction, Playstation "giving up on Japan" is ridiculous but not as ridiculous as talk of Square-Enix going bankrupt because they somehow hurt your feelings by not supporting Switch enough.
No-one anywhere has said that the unreleased Switch 2 will have graphical parity.

Ok. Close enough so that nobody other than online graphics enthusiasts who use pixel and frame counting software can tell the difference. In other words, the same from the perspective of the market.

As annoyed as I am with the Jim Ryan direction, Playstation "giving up on Japan" is ridiculous
PS4 software sales declined in Japan compared to PS3 software sales. That means that Japanese customers were loess interested in the PS4 software than the PS3 software. You’d think that SIE would try to turn that around by releasing some new hit software to appeal to Japanese customers. Instead, they closed Japan Studio, started requiring that developers submit technical questions in English rather than Japanese, changed to select button to X rather than O in contrast to Japanese convention, and started censoring Japanese market releases according to North American rating criteria rather than Japanese rating criteria. Since then, PS5 software sales have cratered in Japan, despite the hardware sales being solid.

If that’s not giving up selling games in Japan, SIE has a funny way of trying.

but not as ridiculous as talk of Square-Enix going bankrupt because they somehow hurt your feelings by not supporting Switch enough.
You put a lot of words in my mouth, there. I personally couldn’t care less if Square Enix goes out of business or not. RPG’s bore me and I always thought that Final Fantasy was boring with all the menus and cutscenes. The only Square game I have bought in the last 20 years is Nier Automata. Great beat-‘em-up with a completely silly and nonsensical story tacked on.

I am talking about pure business. Square ate an expensive flop in Forespoken and a large disappointment in FF16 this year. The company took a bath on the FF16 expenses on their most recent quarterly financials. Companies take a bath on a product if they just want to get the loss over with. They aren’t in imminent danger of going out of business as Final Fantasy 14 is bringing in good revenue for them. Long term, no MMO lasts forever and Square can’t be happy about spending over $100 million for about 3 million FF16 units sold. That’s approximately breaking even (3 million times $40 per unit to the publisher after the retailer takes their 30% ish cut).

Also look at the context. Final Fantasy used to sell as much as Mario. Now it sells 1/10th of a ten year old port of a Mario game. That is stunning. It has to be alarming for the C-suite at Square
 
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No-one anywhere has said that the unreleased Switch 2 will have graphical parity.
As annoyed as I am with the Jim Ryan direction, Playstation "giving up on Japan" is ridiculous but not as ridiculous as talk of Square-Enix going bankrupt because they somehow hurt your feelings by not supporting Switch enough.
But from a business point of view Square Enix decisions seems stupid. Why does a studio that makes JRPG games only care about Playstation? When many more japanese gamers buy Switch games? JRPG is much bigger in Japan than in the west so surely the japanese market should be their priority? Seems their dreams to become bigger in the west makes them prioritize the western market and its golden boy the playstation over their own japanese market and its Nintendo top dog the switch. Playstation is a Call of Duty console, Final Fantasy is only becoming less relevant on the Playstation for every new Playstation console. So either Square Enix changes what games they make or their change their console strategy in the future. The time when a Final Fantasy game could be a huge Playstation hit is over. Their current strategy has made FF16 less relevant than Pikmin 4 in Japan. Sony and Playstation abandoned Japan for the west with the launch of the PS5, and the Japanese gamers answered that rejection by flocking to the only remaining Japanese video game hardware company, Nintendo.
 
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SE said " the high end of the company's expectations were not met" and it hasn't been out long, sure It'll make a good profit specially when the PC version comes out.
I don't disagree that it has dropped off hugely from the PS2 era and they should release more on other platforms but talk of bankruptcy is silly talk IMO.
 
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SE said " the high end of the company's expectations were not met" and it hasn't been out long, sure It'll make a good profile specially when the PC version comes out.
I don't disagree that it has dropped off hugely from the PS2 era and they should release more on other platforms but talk of bankruptcy is silly talk IMO.
You’re right. I was using hyperbole when talking about bankruptcy over the Forespoken and FF16 products.
 
I am not sure if the NSW2 is close of far in terms of release, but damn I want to know more now haha. I remember the switch talk started a year before release, but the sw2 seems to be progressing very quietly.
Between the switch pro, switch2 there were a lot of rumblings here and there, but I cannot wait for the reveal and more speculation.

In terms of price, my wish is $349, but I agree $399 minimum seems more likely.

In terms of games, I want patches instead of rereleases, but I would not mind a BOTW/ToTK collection, XENO Collection/ Bayo Collection/Kirby collection/ Metroid collection/FE collection... Yeap give me all those Nintendo with improved textures, framerates and all extras possible and you will have my money again.
 
I'm pretty sure at this point the entire "Nintendo dumb, it was all nVidia" narrative is just some absolutely weird cope about Nintendo having pretty tight hardware this time.
There's a lot of weird narratives about Nintendo out there. The other day I had to explain to my gf that Nintendo's hardware has been historically weaker than the competition for strategic reasons and not because Nintendo is inexplicably incapable of delivering said power which she seemed to think was the case (and that's not even close to the first time I've heard that one from someone before either).
 
I bet that the Zelda 4k/60fps demo will be showcased in the rumored Direct of September 13th

right? RIGHT?!
On a more serious note: I still vastly prefer to take all these supposed-to-be-sure leaks with a MOUNTAIN of salt (a grain wouldn't be enough)
 
I bet that the Zelda 4k/60fps demo will be showcased in the rumored Direct of September 13th

right? RIGHT?!
On a more serious note: I still vastly prefer to take all these supposed-to-be-sure leaks with a MOUNTAIN of salt (a grain wouldn't be enough)
Take care. It's not healthy to consume so much sodium.
 


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