8 ms·
As the article alludes to this is in large part due to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Which has a higher than 100% attach rate on the Switch, which is
by RubenSandwich 10y ago
As the article alludes to this is in large part due to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Which has a higher than 100% attach rate on the Switch, which is simply amazing.
- berberous 10y agoIf you are not interested in Zelda though, there is almost zero reason to spend the money on a Switch right now.
- rocky1138 10y agoEven if you are interested in Zelda, consider getting the Wii U version and playing it on your PC using Cemu. That's what I'll be doing.
- _ph_ 10y agoThere are a couple of very nice third-party games available on the switch now too (Snipperclips are great!) and the updated Mario Cart is just a week away. But indeed, Zelda would be the main reason to get one right now.
- slantyyz 10y agoBut unlike the original Wii, there's no Wii Sports to get people who would normally not even buy a console to buy in.
- fredleblanc 10y agoTo be fair, the Wii U had these — arguably better versions of all the sports — and that wasn't a large draw for that.
- slantyyz 10y agoTo me, part of the problem was that Wii Sports Club for WiiU wasn't a free pack in.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThe Wii and Wii sports was a freakshow level of success. It tapped into a lot of things Nintendo simply is not going to be able to reproduce: aging gamers with few casual gaming outlets, the novelty of motion controls, half the cost of a xbox/ps, etc. It really had no competitors. PS Move, while a nice technical effort, came too late and didn't have the developer support needed. The Kinect failed also for the same reasons on top of lacking a holdable controller so Kinect-games were ultimately forced to be super simple as waving and moving around can only do so much. The Wii U had these types of games and they didn't blow up like the original Wii. I think its fair to say no one expected the Wii to take off like it did and unrealistic to expect Nintendo to follow the same formula and to get the same results. If anything, motion control games died fairly quickly as the fad ran itself out and are only coming back now as a much needed accessory for pricey VR systems.
- slantyyz 10y agoTo a much lesser degree, Brain Age did the same for the Nintendo DS. It expanded the DS market to a lot of non-traditional buyers.
- MBCook 10y agoNintendogs also caused a huge jump in sales.
- Joeri 10y agoThe wii is still really fun and quite different as gaming experience from regular consoles. I booted it up today just for fun and ended up playing mario galaxy for hours with my 5yo cheering me on. Playing my ps4 is also fun, but not as relaxing and definitely not as approachable.
- Apocryphon 10y agoWhat about 1-2 Switch?
- MBCook 10y agoReviews haven't been very friendly to 1-2 Switch. Seems like it should have been a freebie/pack-in or at least very cheap (say $10-20).
- ajmurmann 10y agoThis to me is up there in dumb Nintendo decisions together with calling it "Wii U" and discontinuing the mini NES. Did they really think anybody would pay $50 for that? 1-2 Switch like Wii Sports was a perfect demo of the system and everybody should get it for free to entice them.
- jorvi 10y ago> Mario Cart I'm imaging Mario & Co racing around in shopping carts, grabbing and tossing bananas etc..
- scotu 10y agototally plausible nintendo game. In a good way
- Apocryphon 10y agoNot a bad approach to continue evolving the series
- mathw 10y agoWe need a supermarket battle arena!
- kbutler 10y agoThat's about right.
- city41 10y agoSnipperClips is a fun game, but I can't imagine anyone could say it justifies spending $300+.
- Karunamon 10y agoThis is the boat I'm in. BOTW is the only triple-A game on the platform right now. Even their eshop has a dearth of content available, much of it ridiculously overpriced.
- bphogan 10y agoThis. However, I am having a lot of fun with Graceful Explosion Machine and Fast RMX. They don't have the depth of BOTW, but they are good games that are worth the price tag. If there can be more games like those, the Switch could do well in the long run.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoThat's my concern for the Christmas period. A lot of Nintendo fans are early adopters, that's why they're buying a console with one significant game in March. For the general public they need to have more on offer than that. Here are new AAA games which we are assured will be out by Christmas: Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skylanders, NBA 2K18, Arms, Splatoon 2. There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform. Meaning people won't be buying a Switch to play those. No doubt you're moaning about me leaving out Super Mario Odyssey, but at the time of writing SMO has no set release date only a vague "TBD, Holiday 2017." As does Project Sonic 2017. Nintendo games overrun their release date as much as other publishers, therefore one cannot be assured SMO will ship before the big holiday period. If you look beyond 2017, it remains pretty slim pickings for the Switch. Likely until at least summer 2018 we won't see more than perhaps half a dozen exclusive AAA games on the console. We still have no assurance that the mainstream Pokemon franchise will be developed for the console. The Wii U also sold fairly well early in its life, but sales dried up and never recovered with publishers avoiding it due its poor sales performance. The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself. It all remains to be seen. I'll be paying close attention to Christmas 2017 sales figures because it might be the life or death of the Switch.
- MBCook 10y agoZelda is (supposed to be) amazing (haven't played it), Mario Kart 8 was amazing, and Splatoon was amazing (assuming sequel will be). TONS of gamers didn't get to play any of them because the WiiU sold so poorly, so for a great many people they're 'new' games and worth buying the system for.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoAlmost all Wii U games don't have a release date for the Switch yet. If they can get the entire Wii U back catalogue released by Christmas 2017 that would definitely help, but that's a big "if" and Nintendo hasn't claimed that they're trying to.
- dragontamer 10y agoYou gotta try 8-player Bomberman. Its a damn good party game.
- babuskov 10y agoIdk. I watched some videos of it on YouTube and the fun factor it seems to be well below the Atomic Bomberman on PC.
- dragontamer 10y agoThe important bit of party games is to meet your friends face-to-face and sit on the couch together. Its rare to find 8-player party games with simple controls that anybody can get into.
- babuskov 10y agoWe just bring the laptops, set up a LAN game and 7-8 of us sit in the same room. It does involve bringing some hardware along, but it isn't a big deal. We used to do it quite often.
- dragontamer 10y agoHmm... I can name at least 3 people who don't even have a laptop who were enjoying themselves in the last 8-player Bomberman game I played on the Switch. I like LAN parties, but the whole concept of them is kinda limited to the nerdy crowd. I'm totally a nerd btw, I go to conventions and play in those LAN rooms and stuff. But opening up gameplay to my general non-nerd friends only happens through couch gaming. A lot of my friends straight up wouldn't get a chance to play in a LAN-party setup. But they come over and have fun with Mario Kart, Puyo Tetris, Smash, or most recently... Bomberman.
- babuskov 9y agoOk, I'm almost convinced now. I do have friends who come over and don't want to bring their laptops, esp. people with kids. Perhaps I will try it.
- jczhang 10y agoby that logic, everyone should just get Wii U and Zelda instead of switch.
- miend 10y agoI also heard Psyonix was considering bringing Rocket League to the platform. If they do, that would be another very good reason to get it. But I agree that BotW would be the only reason I'm interested in the console at all -- similar to how cooperative Monster Hunter experiences with friends would be the only reason I would consider one of their traditional handhelds.
- lancewiggs 10y agoThis version of Zelda is astonishingly great - very different to others in the franchise. It's a completely free and open world, no grinding required, with simple gameplay yet with challenging layers that appeal to the folks with wanting more, a beautiful environment with amazing weather and climate differences and so on. Above all there is no in-app purchases required. It's a reminder of what games on the iPad could have been.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoOne potential reason for that (apart from the one mentioned in the article): people who went ahead and purchased the game, but can't find a system yet. I know more than one person in that position.
- kbutler 10y agoDid that, then three weeks passed before we finally found one. It's pretty amazing that one game, available on a previous-generation console, is able to drive that many sales of a new console. People are basically spending $360 to play BotW.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoI skipped the WiiU, precisely because the one game that might have motivated me to get one got delayed so long that it was also available on the Switch.
- PopsiclePete 10y agoThe new Zelda is amazing. Not only the best Zelda game ever made, I think it's just one of the best 3rd person open-world adventure games ever made, for any system, period. Definitely a system seller. I'm interested in nothing else right now though - the rest of the available games seem like Indie shovel-ware or re-releases. Shovel Knight. Come on, that's like 2 years old by now. I'll still buy every Nintendo game they make for this, but highly unlikely I'll end up with a sizable 3rd party collection on it. Got a PS4 Pro for that.
- johnchristopher 10y agoI was ready to throw money at it until a friend of mine told me I had to farm some sticks to get weapons because it wears out. Can you confirm ?
- pyi 10y agoNot sure what your friend is doing, since weapons are extremely plentiful and disposable. You're also encouraged to find other ways of killing enemies, usually by using your Sheikah Slate powers to manipulate the environment to kill monsters. Think of the weapons as an analogue to ammo in a shooter.
- Jasper_ 10y agoThere is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic. Basically, it's the game's way of making sure you experiment and play around with new weapon types, give you more of an interplay during combat by picking up enemy weapons and using it against them, and giving you overpowered weapons without letting you just find "the best weapon" and keep it forever. At this stage in my playthrough, I often have to explicitly toss out weapons because I have too many -- very rarely do I run out of weapons and have to farm.
- Nadya 10y ago>There is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic I actually disagree with it being well designed. The weapons are too common and break so frequently I feel like I'm playing a weapon changing simulator. They have never been a limitation and I have never worried about finding a new weapon to use. However I do find myself constantly having to bring up the menu to change weapons. I have 12 weapon slots and pretty much every slot is a knight's claymore or guardian weapon. Once you get to the point of farming the world minibosses you'll never find yourself wanting of a good weapon. Hinox and Lynel have good weapon drops and they drop pretty frequently. I feel as though weapons should have been made more rare but more durable so that there were times when you wouldn't have a weapon because they were rare to come across and you'd second guess yourself about using your weapons on lesser mobs like red moblins or keese. I find myself needing shields more often than weapons - since I like to go Guardian hunting and I kill them exclusively with shield parries. One or two missed parries and my shield is destroyed. While I rarely miss the parry anymore, it does still happen.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoThough that game was also released for their previous console, which you think would take some level of pressure of the sales of the newer platform.
- jsgo 10y agoI ordered BotW on the last day of Amazon's 2 week 20% off thing for prime members thing. Would've liked to ordered w/ a Switch, but unfortunately that wasn't going to pass. Luckily, a few weeks later after searching various stores' stock, I lucked out and was able to get the Switch as well (Amazon as well, actually). So depending on when these stats were put together, I could be part of the group putting Switch BotW sales above the Switch console and I imagine there are others who ordered similarly.