ThePhantomStranger

@banefirelord: Eh the series doesn't need help being confusing though. Adding an artificial element of confusion would unintentionally take the blame off the game itself and possibly make confusion jokes feel less earned. Also wouldn't that just mean they rotate between Brad and Jeff? Jeff wouldn't need the help of not knowing what the fuck is going on to make comments about how batshit crazy the series is. Would it just be to spread out the burden of having to sit through the game?

Ben's earlier tweet, the fact that this wasn't premium, and the weird outro to this video kind of makes me a little suspicious that this isn't getting a part 2. It probably will and the outro was likely just Ben and brad realizing the oncoming pain of committing to a Kingdom Hearts playthrough but part of me thinks this is a fake out in some way.

Which would be a shame because this was good and I'd love to see the whole playthrough as a KH fan. Like it's not like KH fans as a whole are some bonkers group who think the games are perfect. Ben and Brad were shitting on the parts of the opening that don't hold up that a decent portion of the fanbase would likely also shit on.

Their commentary was about the things happening on screen instead of ignoring whats happening. They seem to be giving the game a fair chance which is all anyone would want.

I'm not all the way burnt out on Marvel stuff but I'm starting to just want to stick to one a year. This year was Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and next year will likely just be Black Panther and then Captain Marvel whenever that comes out.

Everything else I'd be fine with skipping. Like I'd rather skip both Infinity War movies and keep the Guardians characters separate in my head. Civil War already kind of made me despise both Tony and Steve.

There's also something strangely offputing about Disney's race to consume the entire mass market film industry with 3 marvel films a year and annual star wars films. Gotta fill that four tickets per year estimate and consume the entire industry. That's not even to knock the quality of the films just the marketing push and the overall saturation of it all.

I'm sure this Spider-man movie will be good just like how I imagine the Matt Reeves Batman movie will be good, he's a good director with Nolan/Jenkins level pull so he won't get hit by the WB bullshit, but in both cases I've seen like 4 spider-man movies and like 10 Batman movies.

I'm content with just thinking of some of these new movies as not for me but for the next generation though it's still endlessly annoying that whenever talk of the next Spider-man or Batman there's endless posts of "Finally we can have the first good Batman/Spider-man movie!"

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.

The only way this is even remotely possible is if Switch is a WiiU level failure but even then that's not what will happen.

They'd get out of hardware and AAA games development entirely and move over to phone gaming with a higher focus on merchandising and various non-gaming media endeavors.

I doubt the Switch will be a smoldering crater like the WiiU because while their messaging with the conference was a bit muddled and frankly utter shit there was a EU Switch commercial that was basically of the same style as the initial very on point 3 minute reveal trailer.

Things could get dicey when they start marketing 1 2 Switch! but the marketing for the Switch, not the conference, has been very intelligent what with masking all of it's family and kid use cases by simply using young 20 somethings in the ads instead.

In 2-3 years you'll probably see a Switch slim that loses the bezel on the left and right of the screen to get a bit more portable, can't lose the vertical bezel otherwise it wouldn't be able to support legacy Joy-cons, and that should fulfill the needs of the portable crowd.

The battery complaint from the portable demo is a bit weird though considering any normally handheld titles likely won't be nearly as demanding as Zelda and thus have much longer battery life. People seem to be taking the minimum of 2.5-3 hours for Zelda that was given as a maximum for all games instead of just an estimate for most demanding games. So the battery for something that would be a traditional console game will be fairly shit but say Pokemon likely will have five hours or something much more acceptable.

Also battery tech should improve enough in 2-3 years that again a revision of the Switch would improve it enough to be viable as a dedicated handheld.

I can only see this free trial as their out if their online services are laughed out of the room like always so they can back out of it or use the fact that they haven't announced pricing and just make it some super low price because otherwise Nintendo just killed all their system sellers with this one move.

Splatoon 2, Mario Kart, and a rumored Smash port all in the first year could have really improved their chances but with paid online those games are all of a sudden worthless.

[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.

Don't sell your Wii U, play Zelda on it, and wait until holiday this year for the deep fire sale discounts on switch in time for Mario. I doubt they'll port many Wii U games over to Switch, Nintendo seem to be utterly delusional with this launch and utterly unprepared, and even if they do port any over they'll be comically overpriced.

If Zelda plays worse on Wii U it's damn well not because of technical restraints it's because they don't give a fuck about Wii U owners.

@dudeglove: I actually read a bit of the first one when I opened the ff7 subforum to post this. Didn't read too far ahead because I'm still pretty early but I'll go back to them once I've finished the game.

@nicolenomicon: I'll change it, thanks.

@wynnduffy: If I could roll my eyes at you any harder they'd be receding into my skull. As soon as anyone criticizes jokes or gags in poor taste that target a minority for punching down people like you freak the fuck out as if criticism is tantamount to criminalizing it. Your logical leaps are absurd.