Ushi No Tane Forum

A year ago today the Nintendo Switch launched! It arrived with great fanfare, Breath of the Wild, annnd shortages. I was one of the few in my area who managed to snag a system at launch and i've been in love with it since.

I feel like last year was a very great opening year for the Switch. We got a Zelda, a Mario, a Xenoblade, a Splatoon, and tons more! I personally spent most of my time playing Breath of the Wild and various PS4 ports, happy for finally play some titles I missed out on.

Regardless of if you got a Switch a launch, later on, or are still planning on picking one up, here's to a great first year and may this one be great too! Got any expectations? Memories?

Breath of the Wild really helped me through a rough patch in my life, totally brought me out of a funk I was stuck in. I also love how it so easily drew in a community worldwide as we all discovered the world Nintendo had crafted. I'm kinda hard to please video game wise, but i'd say that the Switch has caught my undivided attention, always looking forward to what's coming out every week. This year is stacked with JRPGs, and i'm super hyped for them! Project Octopath, Shining Resonance, Atelier, plus so many more!

Happy Switchmas everyone!

It really has been mesmerizing watching the rollout of the Switch. At launch I was still a salty Wii-U owner, so it took quite a while to get my hands on one. XD

I relate a lot to your Breath of the Wild story though, Bluie. It came out at a really necessary, really tough time in my life. And then when I did finally get my Switch...the very next day I evacuated from one of the hurricanes last year.

It boggles my brain how good of a first year the console had. I've never seen so many good games on a single console in its first year. I don't know that I've EVER bought so many games in a calender year...and there were plenty I didn't play.

As for what to look forward to...the year seems pretty open! Hoping for Octopath Traveler, more information on the next Shin Megami Tensei, Bokumono, Smash. If this year is remotely comparable to last...we've got a lot to look forward to.

And yes. Happy Switchmas. (Forgot about that one...haha.)

not a very good console tho

It's been cool to see developers absolutely FLOCK to the Switch, throwing their games at it as fast as they can. This is the first time in a long time (ever?) that Nintendo's console has been easy to develop for. And any time a new game comes out, half of what I see in the comment sections of announcement articles is people asking if it will come out for the Switch, if it hadn't, already. Everyone wants to play on their Switch! Though there are always going to be people that a console does not suit, it's amazing how, barring that, the Switch is as close to universally loved as I have yet seen. But I get it.

It's not graphically powerful because Nintendo never focuses on that. They're all about pure fun, and the Switch is definitely fun. It feels lively, like part of your life, rather than part of your living room (or wherever you keep your consoles.) Personally, in spite of how many games there already are in the Switch's library, I don't have many on it, because most of them don't appeal to me, being largely indie games and platformers, which I usually do not enjoy. But we've got a Tales of game coming (if only they would tell us more!) and a bokumono game, and really, everyone is trying to get their games onto the Switch, so...this library is just going to be bursting. This is the first time I've gotten in on a console in its first half year, and it's been neat watching the craze. Makes me wonder if other game companies are going to be influenced at all by it when their new consoles come out.

The rage of indie games is, I think, bringing about more innovation and variety than ever, and it's exciting to think of how many unique games are going to end up on this console. I'm more interested in the polished games made by established game companies, but it's neat that the Switch is attracting them all, especially given that Nintendo has already announced that they want to concentrate on the Switch and stretch its lifespan to longer than the typical console's. I do wonder how long that will be, and just how big this library is going to be by the time they do move their focus to the next console.

This is just the first birthday. How many is the Switch going to have while still active, I wonder...

Still just watching it. Issue I have with it I guess is that I do not want a console system ... at all. If I did, I'd probably get a PS4, but I just don't want one.

Other than my PC games, I want a nice handheld system that will fit in my pocket, and just be great at being a handheld system. I would like to see a replacement of the 3DS, as I think they've about updated it as much as they can. My fear is that many may think that the handheld games market is being replaced by smart phone app games, which I admit that they are sharing more and more of the same market.

So if they make a switch mini, that is only a handheld, that doesn't have controllers that come off I'd get that ... but that would basically be a PS Vita or PSP.

LeBurns wrote:Still just watching it. Issue I have with it I guess is that I do not want a console system ... at all. If I did, I'd probably get a PS4, but I just don't want one.

Other than my PC games, I want a nice handheld system that will fit in my pocket, and just be great at being a handheld system. I would like to see a replacement of the 3DS, as I think they've about updated it as much as they can. My fear is that many may think that the handheld games market is being replaced by smart phone app games, which I admit that they are sharing more and more of the same market.

So if they make a switch mini, that is only a handheld, that doesn't have controllers that come off I'd get that ... but that would basically be a PS Vita or PSP.

A Switch Mini could be pretty awesome! I think that's still a few years off though, the way the technology is progressing. As it is a Switch could fit in a pocket...a big pocket...but a pocket.

And I wouldn't have said THIS until the end of the year, but I think it's possible Nintendo could keep the mobile market from destroying the handheld market with this system. There's nothing else comparable in power and portability aside from gaming laptops. And I would challenge anyone to find a gaming laptop for 300 USD that can run Doom.

LeBurns wrote:Still just watching it. Issue I have with it I guess is that I do not want a console system ... at all. If I did, I'd probably get a PS4, but I just don't want one.

Other than my PC games, I want a nice handheld system that will fit in my pocket, and just be great at being a handheld system. I would like to see a replacement of the 3DS, as I think they've about updated it as much as they can. My fear is that many may think that the handheld games market is being replaced by smart phone app games, which I admit that they are sharing more and more of the same market.

So if they make a switch mini, that is only a handheld, that doesn't have controllers that come off I'd get that ... but that would basically be a PS Vita or PSP.

Yeah, that's understandable. I use the Switch exclusively as a handheld, but I only take it outside with me maybe once a week while my 3DS was almost always with me. If they do a mini revision down the line, i'd totally trade in my current for it. I don't even have my dock anymore, I sold it off with all the other goodies as they were just sitting in their box.

The biggest issue with a smaller system is that a lot of games would suffer being on an even smaller screen. Games like BoTW and Xenoblade 2 have text sizes that are bold and easy to read, but some indies have the tiniest text ive ever seen.

But I don't think we'll be seeing a Switch mini for quite some time. Nintendo is focusing more on add-ons right now like the Labo. Give it a few years though, see where the marketplace shifts, and mini version could show up! By then, the Library will be teeming with great games!

Bluie wrote:The biggest issue with a smaller system is that a lot of games would suffer being on an even smaller screen. Games like BoTW and Xenoblade 2 have text sizes that are bold and easy to read, but some indies have the tiniest text ive ever seen.

True, even if I could play Skyrim on something the size of my 3DS I'm not sure I'd want to. So the porting of big AAA games to a Switch Mini would be a problem there. They would have to be heavily modified ports. Course that's kind of what they are doing now as the Switch Skyrim isn't much like the other systems graphic-wise, though still much better than anything on a 3DS could put out.