After watching the Nintendo Switch presentation, I walked away satisfied with what I saw. Was the 1 2 switch trailer slightly cringe-worthy, and did the translator sound like he hated his life and his job? Yes, absolutely. Is the launch line up the best? No, it's not, but the same could be said for the Xbox One and PS4 launch lineups, which weren't filled with very many spectacular games either. Besides those faults, I walked away from my tv more than ready to pay for a Switch day one, and with it being only 300 bucks, I have to say I've never been more excited for a Nintendo console launch.

Let's start off by mentioning the hardware. While the Switch will be less powerful and run at a lower resolution than other current generation consoles, I've never been one to care about resolution and graphics in my games. I believe those are superficial reasons to get excited about a console or game, and the only time a game should be judged by it's looks, is when it comes to art style. The Switch will come with three playable modes, those being tv mode, handheld mode, and tabletop mode, with the battery life lasting from around 2.5 to 6 hours depending on which game you're playing. The battery life is what I expected, and frankly, 2.5 hours of Skyrim, Mario, or Zelda on the go is fine by me. The JoyCon controllers are really interesting, and pack a lot of power into a tiny controller. They have accelerometer, and gyrosensors for motion control in each controller, haptic feedback, and Motion IR camera in the right Joy-Con, which senses the shape, motion and distance of objects in front of it. What that means is that it will be able to tell you what direction your hands are facing and where they are at, something new and unprecedented in controllers. With only 32gb of memory, I can see why people might be wary about it, but you can expand the storage with up to 256gb with micro SD cards that will help out on that front. Also, Nintendo games are generally smaller than most games on Xbox One and PS4, so I believe storage won't be a problem.

What also has me pumped, is the third-party support pouring in for the Switch, with over 80 third-party developers making games for the new Nintendo console. Developers like Square bringing in fives games, three of them being Dragon Quest titles, oddly enough. Bethesda bringing Skyrim special edition, Suda 51 is bringing a currently unknown game which features Travis Touchdown, and a Street Fighter 2 HD remake coming to the system as well. While we're on the subject of third-party games, I had noticed a shot during the trailer shown at the end of the conference, which featured an unknown DBZ fighting game. We don't know if it is a port of a previously released game, or if it's a brand new game exclusive to the Switch.

You can't talk about about Nintendo without talking about the first-party games, which is a large reason I look foward to Nintendo consoles. There is a new Mario which looks to harkin back to Super Mario 64, with it's butt-cam, which looks like it's talking place in our real world, or at least the hub world will be in a fictional New York, however, the big game for the Switch and the talk of the press conference is Zelda: Breath of The Wild. They premiered a trailer for it that looked absolutely phenomenal, which featured decent voice acting, but the huge announcement at the end of the trailer was that Breath of the Wild will be coming as a launch game, which makes up for the weak launch line up, as they probably knew that it would outshine anything else they would have been able to put out on the console in time.

Overall, I can say that I'm still excited about the launch, and hopefully pre-orders don't run out before I can get a chance to reserve, but even then, I will be getting a Switch as soon as possible, and I'm optimistic about the direction that Nintendo is going with the console, considering how large of a flop the Wii U was, both commercially and critically. How do you guys feel about the Switch, and do you think it's worth it? Will you be getting one at launch? Why or why not?

Have a nice day readers, and see you tomorrow.

My impressions thus far:
+ March 3rd is a bit sooner than I would have though
+ Having a SKU with some colour is always a plus
+ The TV to Portable mode does actually seem to work
+/- No pack-in game for launch is a bit of a miss
+/- $299.99 (USD) gives Nintendo room for a pack-in/price drop down the road, but at this price the cost of additional controllers/docks should be much cheaper
+/- Pay for online play with all the setup done with an app for your phone? Seems like a bad idea.
- 32GB seems like a small amount of onboard storage once you include formatting and system resources.

Assuming stock is better than the NES Classic I might have to get one for the Legend of Zelda.

Just want to mention that Switch probably won't get the special edition of Skyrim, but the original game. Todd Howard calls the game Skyrim and the trailer shows the original logo instead of this special edition logo.

@onemanarmyy: Is that a limitation of the storage on the Switch cards? The new version has all the DLC as well and that might be too large?

The cost of the pro controller is the biggest turn off for me. The motion stuff and weird, unrealistic idea that anyone would want to play multiplayer games on a tiny screen using a tiny controller are easy for me to ignore as I'd likely always leave it docked and play on a TV. With that though comes the extra cost of a pro controller in order to get the idea; experience as the grip controller doesn't look comfortable at all. I can't justify that price tag to play maybe 3 or 4 Nintendo first party games every year.

Having already been burned by the Wii U, I am going to sit and wait. List of stuff that I don't like: The extra controllers are quite expensive, not a huge Legend of Zelda fan, no game coming with the console itself, the online model appears to be bad (another wait and see), and the terrible app that you have to use to just add friends to parties/chat. I think I will wait till the end of the year to see if it is worth buying or skipping entirely.

Too little games for me to invest at this moment.

The system looks potentially rad, but i'll wait a little until there's a more solid software lineup.

@onemanarmyy: Well that's disappointing it only being Skyrim regular edition, but hopefully it at least comes with all the DLC

@wasabicurry: I've never actually bought a Nintendo console at launch before and I've been hyped about Zelda for a while now. I'm willing to look past the negatives and put faith in them. TBH Zelda is the only game I need for the Switch.

@skullpanda1: i have no idea, i just thought it was weird they used the old logo and then did a google search and saw some sites wondering the same thing.

I don't see myself buying this. That fact that people are psyched that this console is going to have a game that came out six years ago on it is kind of sad.

I still need them to show the UI and how the Virtual Console will work. If they're able to get the VC right, then I will buy it. I want this thing to not just be my Switch, but also my NES/SNES/N64 and so on. I've missed so many great Nintendo games over the years, so it would be great.

I'm glad to see a positive outlook after that presentation yesterday. I thought it was bad, but it's good to see another point of view.

I'll get one eventually like I did the Wii U and Wii, but I'll probably get one sooner with the combined libraries of their mobile and console development all on one platform. I assume third party support will drop off but all of Nintendo's concentrated games alone will make it much more worthwhile.

@colonel_pockets: I'm surprised at all the negative responses to the conferences honestly. Maybe it's because I'm easy to please or I'm just more of a half glass full kinda guy. I can completely understand folks trepidation in terms to it though, but I feel Nintendo finally has the console they want and learned from the Wii U mistakes. Heres hoping anyway lol.

@brendan: I will be okay with only playing Zelda, Mario, Bomberman, and Splatoon 2 on the Switch for a while. Third party games are just a bonus anyway to owning a Nintendo console to me.

The Switch looks fine to me. The weird motion party games with the joycons might not hit (though Wii Sports sets a decent precedent for that kind of stuff being viable), but it should be capable of doing all the things I could want out of a Nintendo console, which admittedly isn't a particularly long or imaginative list.

Or, actually, I guess there are some sour points: more storage would help (but then again, they can't put a HDD in this thing and NAND flash is currently experiencing a dire shortage, so I can actually give them a pass on this as long as the games are conscious of space constraints), I'm wary of the service model, and the price in Australia is super gougy by comparison to the JP/US RRP. So I don't know, the price thing is hard to swallow. I think I might not have a choice because Zelda, but we'll see.

Their only worthwhile launch game is a WiiU game. Their online offering is laughable. If you're not into splatoon (which is still like 4-5 months after launch) there is zero interesting game coming out before the holidays and even then, Mario might be pushed. They had no good first party surprises like a Metroid or Pokemon game. Some of the third party stuff might turn out great but it's all at least a year off. This thing is going to starve while other consoles get an avalanche of exciting games.

@d-man123: I walked away from that presentation thinking that Nintendo didn't learn anything from the Wii U. I think part of the reason that my opinion is like this is that it is being released in 6 weeks. If this thing was being released in the fall, then I know they would have more time to explain all of the consoles features. Opening the conference with stuff we already know and motion control games isn't the best first foot forward.

Well I didn't watch the stream, but after learning the details i'm all the way out. The over priced controllers, the 2006 motion resurgence, the online subscription for a notoriously bad online service, no touch screen?, and the 3 hour battery life. Pass

I will say, New Donk City is something i won't soon forget.

I should note that Dragon Quest X and XI are currently only confirmed for Japanese release. They very specifically said this during the conference - a Western release for those games has not been confirmed.

I do want DQXI to come to the West, I think what little I've seen of it looks pretty cool, but it's also going to come to PS4 and 3DS and I would much rather get it on my PS4

Jeff was saying that apparently it uses normal SD cards or some such up to 250 gigs, disk space shouldn't be a massive issue if true.

Can't wait personally, reckon it's going to be a really cool little devise. Won't get it at launch cos that's just silly, will wait to see how it shakes out and probably xmas this year look at getting one.

+ Zelda and Mario
+ Price point for the actual console ain't bad
+ The build quality looks decent

- Price of accessories
- A shitty looking online system thus far (Ooo, one free NES or SNES game once a month? Amazing! /s)
- 32 GB internal storage (yes, I know you can use a SD card, but they could also have put in more, and it wouldn't add that much to the cost of the system)
- Not that powerful. I know Nintendo has always been like this, but come on ffs, it's 2017, not 2006.
- 3 hour battery life when playing Zelda on the go AHAHAHAHahahahaaaa. Why even make it portable at this point. Oh, right, I know. Because that way they can make the console less powerful and blame it on it being "portable".
- If what Jeff and Dan said about Zelda being "choppy" on the Switch, and the Wii U version not being choppy, yeah, I'll stick to the Wii U which they managed to fool me into buying.
- Let's not be fooled, this console ain't that portable.

Hopefully this will be Nintendo's last console, so they can focus on what they are actually good at. Making games.

[Warning: This a bit of an unhinged rant.][EDIT: It was also maybe an overreaction in hindsight]

I don't understand how a single person can be positive on this conference or this console or this company after the big blowout of info.

I have never seen a platform holder act so willfully ignorant of their own reality. This was Nintendo's do or die moment and they fucked it up harder then the fucking Wii U. This thing is not succeeding. The idea that anyone can look at this thing and say it could have any modicum of success is borderline delusional. It's really more the question of how long it takes for Nintendo to crash.

I'm not joking.

Right up until the end of the countdown to the conference they were riding high with fantastic messaging and the fucking second that thing started it all blew up. Charging for online when Nintendo's track record for the quality of their online services has been an industry wide joke forever. That's not even the worst of it. Let's ignore the utter insanity of pushing all your online features to a smart phone and ask what all the first year online titles are that you'd be paying for access to:

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Only addition is battlemode)
• Splatoon 2 (Let's be honest it's really Splatoon 1.5)
• Smash Port(Rumored)
• Pokemon Stars (Rumored)

You notice something about them?

They're all ports of games you could play on the Wii U, or 3DS, online for free! They are launching a paid online service that serves no purpose at all. That's completely insane!

The console costs $300 which is $50 more then the XB1 and PS4! Those consoles could hit $200 around the 2017 holiday! In fact I'd pet they'd even have a bunch of pack ins as well! Speaking of pack ins!

Why the fuck is 1 2 Switch! a $50 game and not a pack in with this console? That thing should be a free throw in that's downloaded with every system! Did they not notice that the Wii sold because of Wii Sports? This thing is clearly not even in the league of Wii Sports! It shouldn't even get a physical release! It would be like selling a physical release of face raiders for $40!

The Joy-con's are less intuitive and ergonomic then Wii-motes and cost more then wii-motes! In fact every controller costs nonsensical amounts of money. A set of Joy-con's cost $80 and the pro controller costs $70! You want to know why they cost this much?

HD rumble! The licensing fees for HD rumble are skyrocketing the price along with nfc and shoving a bunch of gimmicks into the damn thing! It doesn't even have pointer functionality like a wiimote!

I don't care if you can feel the ice cubes drop if it's going to make costs go into the stratosphere for an already absurdly overpriced console.

The dock costs $90 for a bunch of plastic and cables! Battery life is two and a half hours!

It's only actual launch game is Zelda. You could buy a refurbished WiiU for $200 and buy the the WiiU version of Zelda for $40 less then the price of a Switch without any games.

It has no launch games.

They want you to pay $300 for a paper weight.

I will step in and say that it might legitimately be difficult for them to offer more space due to the NAND shortage.

It's not like they can put a HDD in it, either. (I wouldn't buy this thing for 200AUD if it had a HDD in it.)

I had not considered the NAND Storage shortage issue, thanks for including!

Going into the presentation I was all ready to slap my money down for one, but afterward, I find myself deciding to wait until later this year or even early next year to pick one up. I can always play Zelda on my Wii U.

The one thing is that the system seems to have some amazing potential, minus the battery life issues, it could bring some of the promises of AAA gaming on the go that the Vita was trying to bring.

Also, a lot of the negative feedback to the system are things I remember seeing when the 3DS came out, and that thing eventually skyrocketed in sales. Unlike the Wii U, this thing is an amazing piece of tech, sure it's not powerful, but it is doing things nobody else is even trying. And the overall cost was the one thing that eventually brought the 3DS down in price where people finally started buying one.

Everything about the presentation told me I can wait for better prices and bundles a year or two from now.

I wonder if they are considering a portable only version if this thing bombs. And whether I would buy a cheaper, less versatile version.

@thephantomstranger: agreed . Well said .

Nintendo products do not exist for people like me. But I have to say, 1 2 switch looks fucking stupid. Zelda looks cool. But if the frame rate is garbage on switch and WiiU then I might as well buy a WiiU.

I really want to know how exactly their online stuff is going to work.

@thephantomstranger: This seems more than a little unreasonable but nobody will remember this post in the future anyway, so... consider me a delusional fool, I guess.

A. I actually do think this thing will be successful, being THE Nintendo console AND portable.

B. Beyond financial success I stand by my statement that every Nintendo console sans Virtual Boy has been worth owning for me. If the Wii U can produce enough beloved games for me to justify it's purchase then I feel pretty safe going in on Switch.

Over the years I find myself more and more detached from the cultural climate of distrust and resentment towards...well, I was gonna say video games but it's 2017 so...the world, really.

@hxcaleb: That's where my excitement stems from. Nintendo is always willing to innovate and try new things and I will back any company that has the balls to do that. There online better be top notch if you are eventually going to start paying for it, because as we know it's a disgrace how they handle online.

Jeremy Parrish basically sums up how I feel

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/opinion-switch-isnt-for-everyone-but-its-definitely-for-me

I love Nintendo IP, at some point I will buy this thing. It's a question of when, deliver enough games and I will get one.

But as a value proposition, I think the Switch has some big problems. Some of those are pretty solvable (like the subscription service and the Virtual Console), some are likely permanent (CPU, lack of backwards compatibility).

@thephantomstranger: While you raise valid points, I don't think those points hold as much weight as you think they do. Shall we save this discussion for when the thing is out? I think it will be successful. At least a lot moreso than the Wii U. I think you will be proven wrong.

@slag: Yeah, I'm totally with Parish when it comes to the Switch and portable games in general.

I'll get it as a gift.

Holiday 2017 for me with Mario.

Nintendo is that kid that strikes out in tee ball. The switch was a concept that was almost impossible for them to screw up and they did it anyways. I'm so bummed about all the news that's come out and continues to come out because I really want to play Zelda.

Yes, they Xbox and PS4 didn't have amazing first party launch lineups but they still had third party support. Nintendo is going to have gimped versions of Skyrim, FIFA and NBA 2K

I was hoping the switch would be a DS I could hook up to my TV but instead it's a mobile wii

Play it on Wii U?

@visnes: don't have one but it's quickly becoming a more attractive option. I also really want to to play Bayonetta 2

@mems1224: I sold my Wii U to get a Switch and the only game I'll really miss is Bayonetta 2. It's the best game I have played in years.

Don't know about that since Nintendo stopped manufacturing them.

I don't understand why people insist on spending extra money on a pro controller when a grip is included in the package. Jeff said that the grip feels fine as a normal controller so shouldn't that be good enough?

For me personally I ordered a pro controller because I want to play Zelda the best way that I can. I was kinda on the fence about it...
It's also to minimize the wear and tear on the joycons I get with the system. That's ultimately what made me buy one. But they're not cheap so I'm not advising anyone for or against doing this.

I am absolutely on board with getting a Switch. It won't be around launch because frankly I don't feel like putting effort into getting a likely short of stock item but I will get one and I'm excited for it.

Zelda, Splatoon, Xenoblade and Mario in the first year is great. And Puyo Puyo Tetris (No more carrying the heavy PS4 around and fumbling through Japanese menus!). Then I look to the likely franchises to see on the Switch such as Monster Hunter and Pokemon. I am really excited for those franchises on this thing.

Sometimes on weekends my group of friends will get together to play tabletop or video games. The Switch is shaping up to be the perfect system for us to easily bring to whoevers house, slap it in a dock, sync up controllers and go. I was the only one who bought a Wii U in my circle and carrying that thing around while they just needed to have their DS to play Smash was a chore.

The bad parts for me are the cost of accessories and the poor online system. How they thought smart phones was the right way to handle it is beyond me. The paid online is looking like a fucking joke. On the other hand I am really glad they didn't give me a reason to pay more subscriptions. I will pay for it when I want to use online which will probably just be two or three months for splatoon 2 and Monster Hunter.

I don't think the price for the actual system is all that crazy and I'm Canadian. It seems right in line for what it is. The accessories no but the system sure. A huge bummer it doesn't come with some kind of software to play with (that we know of?) preloaded into it.

I went into the Switch presentation expecting to pre-order one and I left it deciding not to buy a Switch at launch, and quite possibly never. I just don't think Nintendo has learned anything from their past failures and they are doomed to repeat their same mistakes again.

My reaction to the Switch disappointment has actually been to double down on the Wii U and pick up some of the Wii U games that I had been holding out on. I'll be perfectly happy playing Zelda on the Wii U and catching up on RPG's on my 3DS. If somehow the Switch does prove successful, maybe I'll consider buying one in a year or so, but I am not optimistic that what Nintendo is doing will appeal to a large audience.

I hope I'm wrong, but for now I'm going to trust my gut on this one.

@visnes: don't forget the overpriced games, at least in the UK

I checked on my Amazon order yesterday and the delivery date changed to pending. After and hour and a half on the phone to customer services, I was told that they can no longer guarantee the order even though I ordered as soon as the preorders went live. I had to order one or the blue/red ones and the delivery date isn't until the 9th March.

I'm not too bothered as long as it actually arrives, I'm just nervous now. At least it's all paid off!

I'm from Norway, I know all about overpriced games.. :P

So I took a breath, watched some footage of arms, and talked to someone hyped for this thing.

The sky actually isn't falling for Nintendo but they should probably stick to directs and treehouse streams instead of conferences.

Arms looks good and also has online so I was a bit unfair saying that all their online titles are just WiiU/3ds ports and more interestingly a crazy amount of their year 1 games have online so it seems they know they have to make enough online multiplayer games themselves to justify paid online considering third parties sure as fuck aren't going to.

Also thinking it over the vast majority of games we know about are slated for before E3 with the exceptions being Xenoblade 2 and Mario Odyssey. We still don't know what Retro is working on and if that thing isn't at least teased at an E3 direct then I question if Retro even still exists.

The Nintendo site lists friends list management as accessible for non-subscribers which considering it lists the app as part of the paid service that means friends management is accessible through the console. In fact the app won't be available at all until summer of this year.

Mario Kart is out in April. Arms in the Spring.

Do you expect you won't be able to form lobbies and invite friends in both those games at launch?

I don't think the app is the only way you can do any online interaction I think Nintendo just sucks at communicating things.

Also on the Nintendo site is a mention that "most games will require" the paid service so I imagine there might be an exception for Pokemon but likely only Pokemon. At minimum they ought to throw in a Pokemon bank subscription with the paid service.

Speaking of Pokemon and handheld franchises I came to a realization that the battery life for handheld style games on the switch should be way better then 3 hours.

They didn't nail the conference but they'll still have all of their marquee franchises out in year 1.

Mario Kart, Smash, Pokemon, Zelda, 3d Mario, Splatoon, etc.

That's going to put it in a crazy better place then the WiiU. I know people like to play the whole "if these games didn't save the WiiU they won't help Switch" but the WiiU didn't have these games at launch and that makes all the difference on the momentum. It also makes sense why we haven't seen any handheld franchises for this thing yet because those make much more sense for holiday this year when it'll either have a price drop, if shit goes bad, or a sale to put it's price closer to that of a handheld.

Reading between the lines they seem to know what they're doing but that conference makes it kind of difficult to do that when you see FIFA man staring into the abyss of your very soul.