I thought it was a really great stream in terms of production (though I don't know what was up during the translation of Suda-51's segment, maybe he went off-script). Slightly confusing on pricing and release dates - especially Europe (i.e. I'm in the UK) whom is completely unknown to me.

I'm extremely excited. Zelda looks fantastic. I'm shocked at how quickly they have announced a new Xenoblade game and I am stoked to play it (best gaming news I've heard in months). I liked Hyrule Warriors (especially as a Zelda fan-service game) so the Fire Emblem Warriors game will probably light the same itch. Interested in the Shin Megami Tensei game teased, and a bunch of the smaller third party games. New Mario looks like a horror I can get behind. The WiiU is my favourite console since the PS2 - just in terms of the consistent quality of the games on the system - despite owning less than a dozen games for it. For the Switch, just Zelda and future Xenoblade as two truly great games is enough to get me on board at release (especially since I have a gaming PC, and now a PS4 Pro for Uni, to satiate any third parties who avoid Nintendo).

The games that didn't appear made sense to me (most notable, Pokemon, which you wouldn't want to cannibalise Pokemon Sun/Moon sales/community now for preparation for Switch port in future). And it was significantly more engaging than E3 conferences, or the last few Nintendo Directs.

They're blowing this so badly. I love the idea of a gaming oriented tablet with a TV dock, and Nintendo make some of my favourite games. And yet I'm sitting here going "uh...no, thank you."

That price, the anemic lineup of games - oh sure, Breath of the Wild looks beyond incredible. But it's a Wii U game. I HAVE a Wii U. I don't need a Switch to play it. Would the higher resolution display be nice? Sure, but my GamePad works fine.

And then there's all the periphery nonsense like their continued fuzzy & nigh incomprehensible online strategy, which they now want to charge for.

This thing is launching completely unfinished. They're not ready, it's not finished. They're blowing this so badly.

I won't be surprised if that 'late 2017' Mario game will be released somewhere 'late 2018'. And Nintendo probably knows this is well. There might be a little bait and switch going on there ;).

I could go on and on, but here are a few criticisms... *ahem*

You're really licensing IPs out to Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja again?

You're turning Fire Emblem into Dynasty Warriors? lolwut

Xenoblade is regressing back to Dreamcast era anime graphics?

You couldn't even bang out a Mario Kart? We're getting a 3 year old port?

Still nothing from Retro?

The hook for the next Mario is that his hat is a side kick? Really?

Trying to bring back motion controls with the Joy-cons, yet no pack-in game?

So much regression it's mind-boggling.

The positivity around this launch has already soured. Nintendo did a terrible job and it feels like this was rushed to launch. The portability is a gimmick in light of the battery life. What a crushing disappointment.

Mario, Zelda and Splatoon, I'd be really surprised if any of those weren't great, but I guess I wish the presentation had a few more nice surprises. Arms could be fun if it's responsive, more SMT is cool, other than that, nothing too exciting on the games front that we didn't already know about. Another No More Heroes is cool, but it feels a bit weird to have Suda come out to show a drawing and that guy from SEGA announcing nothing whatsoever. Padding like that probably shouldn't happen in a one hour show announcing the specifics of new console hardware.

The wrist-strap covering the rail and housing proper sized buttons to actuate those shoulder buttons is nice. Using the joycons like that seems like a bit of an additional feature that's ergonomically less than ideal, much in the way of holding a wii remote sideways, so improvements to that is good. The built in IR sensors or whatever it was, that's an interesting addition, could be cool to see what devs come up with for that. Now you can have that hyper realistic Baseball Catcher simulator you always wanted where you do that thing where you signal the type of pitch to the pitcher like I saw in all them movies. Now they can reboot Alex Kidd and take those garbage RPS sections to new heights. Nobody listen to any of my ideas for this, please.

HD™ force feedback could be interesting, if it actually works anything like how it was described, with actual discernible haptic sensations. The idea of Nintendo charging for online services was good for a laugh. Nice to finally get confirmation of touch screen, and capacitive to boot.

So there's my room-temperature take nobody wanted, but what I really want to talk about is that sizzle reel at the end where they were playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix. What?

Man that was a thing.

They could have knocked it out of the park and instead we got monked.

I want to state that I was pretty excited about the switch. Now I hope they show more/better stuff between now and March 3rd or I will probably hold off until end of 2017/18.

I'll start with some PROS:

1) Lots of RPGs in development which is something I am looking forward to. SMT/FE/Xenoblade 2 - good start but all in development.

That Square-enix game looks nice, (hope it gets a US release. )

2) Zelda looks great and confirmed launch title.

3) USB type C (corrected)

CONS:

1) Start with Mario. Always. They started with some non-info info and ice cube simulator.

2) Prices across the board are at least 15% too high overall. I suspect they will go down at some point (maybe even before the end of the year). They could have made a splash at 250. At 300 it should have the 1 2 switch game and pro-controller and a 350 version with that and more storage.

2a) Side point what is the storage? Has that been confirmed at 32GB? Yikes.

3) No details really on the "paid" service? why even mention it? If it included access say all the nintendo back catalog from OG nintendo through say GC yeah I would pay 10$ a month for it. I think they would have mentioned it though if that is what this ends up being. So far its just for chating setting game dates? we got phones, its 2017 nintendo.

4) No details on the UI/Store/Accounts.

5) The trailers were very lack luster minus Zelda and Mario (Personally I don't have much interest in 3D mario but I am glad to see its return). FE had absolutely nothing but some text and a hand. SMT had nothing either. Splatoon was alright, but nothing new as far as I could tell. Nothing from Sudo 51 besides one slide of art... why even have him there? WHY?

6) no mario maker, no pokemon, no monster hunter these should have been no brainers to show/present have ready at or very close to launch. Especially since mario oddessy is at least 9-10 months away. How and why do they think they can launch without a mario game? What on earth have they been doing for the entire year off they have had from doing jack all for the WiiU and barely anything for the 3DS? Edit: Also hey you could have made a real metroid game that would have people excited as well. WHAT ARE YOU DOING NINTENDO?

7) ARMs is a full priced 60$ video game

8) Skyrim on the go is something no one asked for. I am glad its on a nintendo system, but man, anything new? No? Pass.

9) Battery life - man they should have just said up to six hours and left it at that because 2.5 is not acceptable. Hopefully that is on maybe some super intensive game that is using wifi while compiling some videos and it leans closer to 4-5 hours on average.

EB Games Australia finally updated. 470 dollarydoos for the system, 120 for the Pro Controller. It's real steep.

If this is available, I'm going to get the Switch first day. With that other thread about preordering it, I have no desire to do that, so I hope it's at the store first day, and I hope I have enough money for half of it (since my brother will help with half). The only reason behind this is because I would much rather play Zelda on there, and I want to play Zelda the first day it's out. I'm really disappointed however that there seems to be no optical input, which just means that I won't get full surround support with my setup, but that's fine I suppose. My system makes even the Wii U games sound fine, as opposed to my last home theater system. The games like Mario looked awesome, and my brother is really excited for Xenoblade 2 among other things. The whole motion control thing, like the first thing shown, was incredibly dumb to me, but Arms looked neat. I'm just glad the motion controls don't deal with a sensor bar (I don't think?) Lastly, maybe it's a little late for some, but Zelda with voice work! That's pretty cool. I didn't hear much of anything when they showed the many minutes of gameplay after they announced it other than the 'wake up' stuff, so I wasn't sure if they were limiting it a bunch, but it seems like characters will be fully voiced in cutscenes.

@adequatelyprepared: Jeez, if that's the real RRP, that's pretty bad! That's interesting though, because the deluxe Wii U was $350USD at launch and was $430AUD at launch here. So it'd be weird for Switch to launch at $300USD and for us to get raked over the coals for 470 whole buckaroonies. Also, that pro controller price is obscene!

@damodar: It's an odd choice, especially when you consider the types of bundles with you can get around that 400-500 kangabucks range with the PS4/Xbox One.

Apparently this thing does have a touch screen after all. Was I not paying attention or did they completely skip over that? Seems weird if they did considering how indepth they went talking about ice cubes and Gamecube handles.

I could see the price being bumped up by the controllers. Lots of rumble and motion stuff packed into a small space.

Really excited to see what those Square and Atlus games are! But otherwise Zelda and Mario look spectacular, ugh everything about those two trailers had me giddy, more than I can remember in ages. Can't wait. Some of the details are a bummer, especially that pro controller price! Fuck!

I have purchased every Nintendo console on launch since the gamecube including every handheld variation. The switch seems horrible. 3 hour battery life?! Splatoon and MK8 re-releases?! Buying the virtual console games again for the 14th fucking time!? Paid online for a service that has historically been horrible.

Nintendo really had a good shot by combining all there efforts into one console. The 3DS is a great console. Nintendo is so out of touch it feels like they are still in 1999. Hell, that Donk City portion of the new Mario looks like Sonic Adventure. I swear I could hear the station square adverts in my head when I saw those screenshots.

Very dissappointing, but not for my wallet.

Huge missed opportunity that shows Nintendo doesn't know its worldwide audience very well. Imagine if they had just come out and said, "Zelda, Mario, Metroid, all within 2017, and starting at $250 USD. And here's your fucking storage specs. Boom!" They would have killed it, and the Internet would be celebrating. But instead they start with fucking motion controls. LOL.

I'm looking forward to the Switch, I thought it looked kind of cool. I liked the look of that Square game and I'll play anything made by Atlus. I like Zelda but, that's looking like the only good game for a while after the launch, the other games they showed just looked ok and the price is acceptable for me.

I've placed a pre-order, but I'm not sure if I'll follow through on it. The console, a "Pro controller", one game and a 120 gig memory-card will end up costing me around 550 euros combined. I mean, the console itself is already more expensive than the Xbox One or PS4. By the end of the year those consoles will likely cost under 200 bucks.

Zelda is the only game out of the lineup that I really want to play and all of that online stuff has got me very worried. I might just wait for the end of the year to see if there are bundles or price-cuts.

PS: I hope that the soundtrack in New Donk City is just pure donk.

I missed the conference but from everything I'm reading this looks to be another Zelda box.

Man, they fucked this thing up in a way I was fully expecting but really hoping they wouldn't. Just top to bottom a complete disappointment for me. 70 bucks for the pro controller, launching a console in 2017 that can't run their flagship title at a resolution higher than 900p30fps, switching(heh) to paid online multiplayer, leading with MOTION CONTROLS in their fucking presentation, after coming off the absolute fuckery that was the Wii U. 32, fucking 32 GB of internal storage. Jesus H Christ, man. I thought they were finally gonna pull it together and really make something unique and interesting and fucking nail it this time around. What a profound disappointment, we got another Wii U on our hands here.

Least I'll get to play Monster Hunter at maybe 900p30 or something. Fuck me.

One of Nintendo's largest issues is that it's out of step with it's competition. Both Sony and Microsoft could get away with less than stellar launches because it's not like the competition was offering anything that much better. Nintendo needed to make a really strong sell for a day one buy to get people away from PS4s and Xbox Ones and I really don't think it was enough. By the end of the year the Switch could be a strong console but I just don't know about this launch you guys.

Very expensive in some regions, 1-2-Switch not bundled in for whatever reasons and still really vague communication on how their online works with the smartphone (I'm just going to disregard my assumptions so far because it can't possibly as dumb as I think it is). I do think they have some nice titles in the launch line up, most notably LoZ, Puyo Puyo Tetris, that new Bomberman game and even Disgaea 5.

So, bets on how long until Nintendo bows out of the hardware game?

@isomeri: you are really willing to shell out over 500 euros for a console that only has one game that interests you? Man that's brand dedication.

@redhotchilimist: Bowser using that tiny little controller to play is adorable. And actually all those parental controls sound super neat. At the very least Nintendo continues to be the most aspirational company in their belief in games as family unifiers.

@humanity: No, I'm probably not. I've saved up the money ahead of time, but might now put it towards a "Scorpio" or travel.

I skipped this past batch of Nintendo consoles (3DS and Wii U) because I felt kind of burned by my Wii and DS purchases, both of which only had a small number of games which I bought and played. My hope was that because of this new unified platform, Nintendo would come out with a stellar game lineup right from the start. I was expecting to see 3-4 games that interested me within the first year, but now there really are only two. It would have been exciting to see consoles from all three manufacturers under my TV for the first time since the launch of the Wii, but this may not be the time.

The announcements this morning actually got me looking at used Wii U consoles online, which was the last thing I expected. If the Wii U version of Zelda seems stellar, I might just pick one of those up and play all the good Wii U games I missed like Bayonetta 2 and Super Mario Maker while I'm at it.

If this console doesn't do significantly better than the WiiU then they're done after this.

It's such a good little video. None of this stuff really applies to me as a childless twentysomething, but I appreciate the craft that went into it.

I know, right!

Mannnn, I can't believe I have to wait a whole day for Jeff special on this! I work for an outsourced company of Nintendo and generally hate the naysaying of their products/strategy, but man this seems to have been royally fucked up. How could they get it so wrong?

£279.99, no pack in game, 32GB, two games on launch day and no mention of Pokemon, Monster Hunter or Mario Maker.

I was really excited for the Switch until today.

Not a single screen shot of a user interface, or a single word about the Switch's online storefront and what type of games will be made available, or if any of your previous NES or SNES game purchases will be backwards compatible, but there is a three minute long video about parental controls.

Oh, Nintendo. You don't really want my money, do you?

People are saying from the Japan hands-on event that the Arms and 1-2 Switch are pretty good. I think.

Online subscribers will get 1 game* free of cost every month apparently.

*NES and SNES games only.

Also the GameSpot article believes you will only have access to the game for that month.

A hell of a lot of info to take in but overall I'm way more excited now for this than I was before. Super Mario Odyssey looks like a must play for me, and if it's region free that's a game changer too. Still unsure of what the online will look like for the system, what storage capability does it have ( can I use external drives? ), THE ACTUAL SPECS as well would be nice to see, etc.

Regardless of the outstanding questions though they got me Day One.

I'm so in.

@firepaw said:

For a long time, Nintendo have successfully been able to argue that their products don't require modern hardware. But the same does not apply to software and services. It's clear that they still either profoundly misunderstand what online services are supposed to be or are unqualified to produce said services. Ultimately, I fear that this failure to embrace modern network solutions will be what sinks Nintendo.

@weyounnumber6: 32 gigs in the system. No external hard-drives. You can put a micro-SD card in there. The display is a 6.2-inch 1280x720 multi-touch screen.

@isomeri: Ugh 32 GB with no external hdds hurts

Was more leaning towards Day 1 purchase before the presentation than I do now.

In terms of software (especially launch) lineup this feels like a successor to the Wii U - which isn't a good thing in my book.

Will wait probably till holiday 2017 season, so I have an idea how the console has been receipt and based on that what kind of first/third party support I can expect.

"The Switch is not competing in a vacuum"

In recent years, the prevalent mantra surrounding Nintendo Consoles is that they don't want to compete with Sony or Microsoft. Don't they? They don't want money?

They cared for competing in the NES and SNES eras.

And then people give the example of the Wii and the "blue ocean" marketing strategy. Well, I think the Wii is a successful exception on how to build a culture and business model of a console, and exceptions are exceptions for a reason. The low attach rate shows to me that people consumed the machine like one of those musical summer hits that breaks records. And the WiiU sales support that, just by comparing it to the poorly managed launch of the Xbox One. The lasting feel for the 360 helped mitigate that disaster a lot better than the lasting feel of the Wii helped the WiiU.

All in all, I don't buy that logic that Nintendo does not want to compete. They would love to have the numbers and the mind-share that Sony has now.

It's ok, for people that are dedicated gamers and play in more than one machine. But you should not build your culture and business model to target that "secondary" spot.

A lot of people don't either have the money or the time to play videogames in several machines.

I don't believe that Nintendo wants to be niche. They simply aren't doing a good job in convincing a lot of people that Nintendo products should be their primary source of entertainment. You should always aim for that. And they, still, have the brand to aim for that.

The Switch is an interesting concept. And, as I said before in this forum, I think this product is so different and compelling that word of mouth, social interaction, and youth zeitgeist can be more important predictors of its success than the typical cornerstones of this business: price, power and 3rd party support.

Yet, it wouldn't hurt for them to try a "Playstation 2" instead of a "Wii", once in a while: a strong price/performance ratio, the minimum non-gaming functionality, 3rd party support of the best selling AAA franchises and a 1st party catalogue that has aesthetic variety.

lol this console is absolutely insane

Lack of games, overpriced unit, insanely overpriced accessories (check out the non-US prices), continued failure to secure third party support, paid online, no clarification on account stuff, crappy battery life, lacklustre system specs (even with already-low expectations)... looks like another flop to me.

Sorry to say it, but the day I can just buy Nintendo games on other consoles or PC can't come soon enough.

@damodar: When the Wii U launched the Aussie dollar was stronger than the USD. It all seems so long ago... sucks to be us but it's no surprise at all.

I can wait for Zelda. Not sure how long, but hopefully by the time good deals show up there will be other games.

Also, I thought New Donk City was a meme but I guess not. Send help.

@firepaw: The language used certainly suggests that you only get it for the month unlike both PS+ and Xbox Live Gold which stay active forever as long as you grabbed the license that month and have an active subscription.

Overall I'm less interested in this than I was when they first showed it. I don't think it's going to flop or anything. If it has decent games in the future I might pick one up.

@gwil: At least this thing will provide for one solid GB video segment.

Does this mean that 1) you are going to be required to use a smart phone or tablet to be able to voice chat and 2) that the free NES/SNES VC game you get is only going to be playable for a single month?

@circlenine said:

Does this mean that 1) you are going to be required to use a smart phone or tablet to be able to voice chat and 2) that the free NES/SNES VC game you get is only going to be playable for a single month?

Not sure about your first point, it just says that they're making an app for that, not that it's absolutely required. As for your second point yes it does seem like they're letting you play it only for a single month.

The phrasing on the first point "all from your smart device", with no mention of it just being an option or an additional thing makes me a little worried that the system by itself isn't going to be an option for chatting.

e: smart phone != smart device

I see what you're saying, but then that means Nintendo is releasing an online subscription in March without chat/inviting your friends and all their other stuff. Making you wait until summer for a "limited" version of their smartphone app sounds INSANE, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Wait what? Online is just gonna be voice chat on my phone via an app, that I have to pay for?

What?