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Nintendo Reportedly Plans To Double Switch Production In 2018 (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Switch, Nintendo's latest hybrid console is doing pretty well for the company, which expects it to outdo the Wii U's lifetime sales within a year. The company obviously thinks so, too, according to a new report at The Wall Street Journal, which says that Nintendo plans to ramp up production of the hardware itself, beginning in April 2018. The report claims that Nintendo is planning to make 25 million to 30 million more units of its successful Switch console over the next fiscal year. Further, Nintendo may plan for even more if this year's holiday sales are strong, according to the WSJ's sources. The company has already built almost 8 million Switches, total, as of its latest earnings report.
As a Switch owner, PS4 owner and card carrying member of the PC master race there's one thing Nintendo has over all other platforms: They remember how to make fun games. So much of gaming (especially AAA titles) has become and incredibly boring grindfest, or graphics over story / substance. I think I have spent more time on the Switch this year than the two other gaming platforms combined.
So the Switch is still very hard to get in Japan, where you have to show up on shipment day at dawn, or you have to get a lottery draw through a mobile app. If you pay an extra 10000 yen (US$100), you can get one right away, so there's a scalper's economy. It's starting to ship regularly to USA and Europe, with 1-per-customer limits still in place in some areas. This is all what, 8~9 months after release? Add on top of that, the way-under-produced mini-NES/mini-SNES batches. Where is Nintendo's supply chain management? They have good relations with their assembly suppliers, they should be able to say "dedicate another couple lines for this month." They should have good relations with their memory, screen and other component suppliers also. Few other devices out there are struggling to get their parts, anything like Nintendo this year. It's like printing money, but the printer is broken.
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One cannot even get a Switch for the price that Nintendo is advertising on TV. You have indeed to pay an extra $100 to get even the basic model. This has been going on since the beginning and while shortages have dissappeared abroad, here in Japan Nintendo it's still almost impossible just to buy a Switch. That has nothing to do with lead times. It's just arrogance of Nintendo, gambling that customers will buy their product anyway.
Sorry, but you are just wrong on that. Odyssey does not have any moves that can not be done in handheld mode. Press + to bring up the menu, then scan through the action guide. It explains how to do every move in both 2 controller and single controller mode. Every single move either has a buttons-only mechanism you can use to trigger it, or it requires the exact same motion from both controllers so that you can trigger the move by just moving the entire unit.
Granted, shaking the whole thing in handheld mode is a little awkward, and the fact that there's no wrist strap option for handheld mode makes it a little more risky, but every move is possible in handheld mode.
The console advantages, as I understand them, revolve around ease of use.
A console is a turnkey gaming solution. Sure, there are big updates to download once in a while, but they just work out of the box.
The last thing I want in this stage in my life (I'm 40) is get home after a long day at work and fiddle with drivers, configurations, etc.
Once I get tired of the console and its games, I just sell it and buy the newest one at the time. However, I usually skip generations, and I never buy a console at or right after launch day.
And a PC doesn't have Gran Turismo, of which I'm a fan.
Translation: CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD SPYWARE Random gibberish explaining why you should install my spyware. Spyware.link
Makes you feel free, don't it.
Makes me feel free to post about doing something that a majority of people do? Did you have an aneurysm while posting?
A console is a turnkey gaming solution. Sure, there are big updates to download once in a while, but they just work out of the box. The last thing I want in this stage in my life (I'm 40) is get home after a long day at work and fiddle with drivers, configurations, etc.
About 99% of the people who break their machine "fiddle" with it and install random crapware or betas or tweaks get better FPS. If all you want is Windows, Steam/Battle.net/GOG and games with auto-updates enabled using release drivers and auto-detect settings I'd say any difference is absolutely marginal.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, not "all" PS4 and Xbox games are on PC.
Why anyone would waist money on those consoles when they already have a PC is a mystery to me.
The word you are looking for is "waste". Considering you made a mistake most native English speakers would NOT make, I'm suspecting English isn't your native language. And since English isn't your native language, you didn't experience consoles and computers like Americans did.
First thing, in the US console gaming predates computer gaming in the home. And even with the first of the personal computers, Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS 80, commercial games weren't a thing till after Commercial games had hit the big time on consoles.
This was an Atari TV ad from December 1977:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Remember the first computer to sell a million machines was the Commodore VIC 20! That was the FIRST computer that I saw commercial games in stores for, cartridges...Scott Adams games IIRC.
Also in the US we didn't have special import duties that applied ONLY to entertainment devices and not computers. So unlike say maybe Hungary or UK, consoles cost less than computers....a lot less.
Also in the US, all the best home computer games came on floppy, not tape or cartridge So while lads in the UK were playing their copy of Dizzy or Paradroid they copied from a rich friend on a boombox, americans were playing Ultima, The Bard's Tale, Flight Simulator II, Earl Weaver Baseball..on disk drives, which added to the cost of the machines. Not only that, but load times were LOOONG, even with fast-loaders and god forbid you try to play a game like SSI's Pool of Radiance with a single disk drive.
We also got hardware earlier than you did, sometimes 2 years earlier, so while you might have compared the NES to your early Amiga in the states the NES was compared to machines like the Atari 2600, Colecovision or C64.
And sometimes, instead of just one "big" computer, what we need is a lot of "little" computers. So someone might have a PC AND a console, AND a phone, AND a tablet, AND a portable console like a Vita or 3DS.
And here in the US software pricing is consistent across platforms, so a game will cost EXACTLY the SAME on PC and console. It isn't like PC publishers in Europe who subsidize PC games for Po/Ru/Hu/Ro by charging less than what Americans pay.
Besides, some people just like the whole coherent console experience. No muss, no fuss, even with modern consoles.
No need to vigorously shake anything. Small movements work. And it's not like the console is made of fragile parts that will bounce around and break. It's solid. It can handle a vigorous shake if that's how you choose to play.
Could they map them to a different button? Possibly. I haven't thought about what would work, what would interfere with the usability of other button-combo moves, and I certainly haven't done any sort of play testing with different combo's as I'm sure they have. So I really can't speak to what they could have done.
The circle hat throw? Just jerk the whole console to the side. It works just fine. When I read your first post, I actually believed what you posted at first. I thought "wow, that's a horrible oversight". So I grabbed the console, looked at the moves in the actio guide, noticed you seemed to be wrong, and tested each one before my first reply. It all works. It's perhaps a bit awkward for the reasons I previously stated, but it does indeed work.
I was planning to get one once they update the hardware, increase internal space, store savegames in the cloud, stuff like that.
But with it's explosive success, I'm not sure if it'll happen anytime soon...
Especially with no other news (AFAIK) regarding their handheld side, which has been their bread-and-butter since the N64, it appears more-and-more that Nintendo is just going to have "the console" which straddles the gap between handheld and TV-only machine.
This actually places them in a very interesting (and good) position, where they are no longer competing directly against Xbonex/PS4, but act more as a "secondary" option. As the DOOM port shows, while the system does have far less power that doesn't preclude hefty games from running on it, and the games that look or run better on the main two consoles can't be played portably with them. I think you'd have a hard time even getting a laptop to be as convenient, as you couldn't pull it out for a few minutes of gaming while on the bus and then stash it away again.
Wow, I thought we were having a reasonable conversation. Then you had to just go total asshole.
I don't need to justify anything. Nintendo knows how to make fun games. Their track record is proven enough for me, such that I'd buy any console they make even if the only game they made for it was a single Zelda game, and I'd consider it money well spent, no justification needed. As luck would be, Zelda is never the only game, and every system is well worth the investment. I've also got an XB1, and yet I've spent at least 10 times as much time playing the Switch as I did the XB1. Just as I played my Wii U at least 10 times as much as my Xbox 360, and my original Wii 10 times as much as the 360, and my GameCube 10x as much as my Xbox , PS 2, or Dreamcast.
FYI...the reason I had to fire up the console is that I've personally only spent a couple of hours playing Mario so far...90% of the time I've "played" it has been watching my daughter play it and working through the levels with her at the controls (it's a family experience that, for some reason, only Nintendo knows how to do well). So off the top of my head, I couldn't name every move that could be done, and I've never played the game in handheld mode, so I just wanted to check. You know...just so I didn't end up being an asshole like you and spouting off something that isn't true.
About 99% of the people who break their machine "fiddle" with it and install random crapware or betas or tweaks get better FPS. If all you want is Windows, Steam/Battle.net/GOG and games with auto-updates enabled using release drivers and auto-detect settings I'd say any difference is absolutely marginal.
This is true of PCs today. Gaming PC lifespans are comparable to console generations without upgrading parts. The PC hardware upgrading treadmill was a thing 10+ years ago, but it's slowed and is no longer a problem, although the myth/feeling persists. I upgraded my PC almost a year ago, but my prior PC lasted ~6 years without any upgrades. Techies can dive deep into PC upgrades and tweaks if they want, but relatively low-tech users (like myself) can get many years out of a PC with just the auto-updates. Cost-wise the amount I spent on the PC was comparable to a new console + controllers, and Steam sales typically make PC games cheaper over the lifespan, if one is patient enough to buy games on sale, YRMV.
Platform-specific games aside, PC's fall short mainly in because they are not well-suited to playing on the living room TV+couch and not suited playing in the same room with others, which are drawbacks PCs always had, with good reason. There are options now to connect or stream a PC to your TV so you can sit on your living room couch, but it's a technology step too far for most people.* Even if one does connect the PC to the living room TV, most PC games are not designed for playing with friends in the same room, so it doesn't fix that drawback.
*-Note, no opinion on if the logistics of connecting a PC to a TV really are too difficult. I am only saying most people don't do it, for whatever their reasons.