Expanding Switch

With the recent Nintendo Direct, which I’ve just manage to watch thanks to life, we can say that its first year of games is pretty damn good. Very rarely does a console get this sort of first year. For example, the DS’ first year was abysmal before Nintendo turned the console around and made it the top selling console. Perhaps the only consoles that can compete with the Switch’s library as it is now compared to their first year are the NES and SNES. Famicom had pretty terrible first year, which the NES managed to avoid to some extent.

Switch’s success is tied to three or four different elements, depending how you want to count them. First is, without a doubt, that it is a hybrid console. Its portability without a doubt  is part of the Switch’s charm. Much like all previous handheld consoles that had extensive support, namely the Game Boy series and the DS, Switch is enjoying consumers carrying it around, though in somewhat limited extent due to its size. Sony could’ve taken few lessons from Nintendo how not to drop the ball with handhelds. Poor Vita, people had such high expectations for you. Being handheld is not really a reason for Switch’s success, but it is certainly part of it. Hardware, that is. Switch seems to be easy to develop for and allows more ‘portable’ games to be made that don’t require to be stupidly expensive Triple A. They have their own slot in the fray.

Nintendo bringing their old arcade games to the system is great. While some will scoff at them, and never remember that Nintendo started as an arcade game company before entering the home console market, these titles will have their audience. The more Nintendo brings their older titles that have not seen a release in years, the better. Just tie all of my past purchases to an account I can carry between consoles, so I don’t need to buy the same game again and again for new systems.

Of course, Nintendo releasing a Switch/ Super Mario Odyssey bundle will see more sales. The game, despite whatever personal issues I have with it, does look fun and may see good amount of sales. Now if Nintendo put the same effort and quality into a 2D Mario game, we’d be golden.

The second reason is that Nintendo’s own software has been of high quality. Breath of the Wild has gained loads of support from the consumers and generally has been accepted one of the better Zelda games. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, while certainly mainly just an upgraded edition of the Wii U game, it has made it rounds. The Battle Mode and included DLC really showed Nintendo that doing a complete release with some extra characters thrown in and tweaked gameplay pays the bills better than trying to what Capcom did with Street Fighter X Tekken. These games, especially Breath of the Wild, are keys to why Switch has been successful thus far. Hardware’s prowess doesn’t come from it being extremely good or able to push out incredible graphics, but something that can keep costs low and still be able to deliver easy environment to develop for. Develop games, that determine the success of the console.

This third reason could be counted with the second reason, but it really deserves its own slot, and that is third party titles, including all the smaller releases. While some of the titles are ports and some pretty low quality, but the fact that they are there makes the deal. Once you have the Big Titles in your library, you will want to look at the smaller and cheaper titles you might want to pick up. Indies (oh there’s that term again) will drop this sort of titles into the store from time to time. The more you have titles of at least decent quality, the better. Call it shovelware if you want, but all winning consoles had the most shovelware people could choose their favourites from.

The fourth reason is expansion. All consoles require their userbase being expanded at some point and it must be constant. Switch has been a success among Nintendo fans and general audience, but it still lacks certain appeal from its library. For example, Rocket League may be another port, and for a good reason gets dropped few notches because of it, but it offers something new not in other versions of the game. Same with Skyrim. The game may be six years old at this point, but there are still people who have not played it. It will also tap to the same core fantasy group that might find Breath of the Wild appealing, just with less Japanese feeling to it. Both Doom and Wolfenstein II both fall into a similar category with Skyrim in that they open doors to different interests the console currently offers. Back in the day, the media would say that the Switch is finally getting mature games to its library. It would have been preferable to have completely new entries to Switch in these franchises, but those can always follow if these are successful on the platform first and manage to solidify the userbase further.

Switch’s library is being expanded with these ports, like with L.A. Noir‘s updated one. While these are ports of past titles, they have an audience that will check them out, and another part will return to them if they’ve gotten rid of the previous version.

With this sort of tactic, the Switch has seen, and will see, a healthy game library from where both high-end and low-end product consumers will find something to enjoy. The problem of course with this is that it needs to be maintained. The Wii lost its steam halfway through due to Nintendo essentially dropping the support (Wii Music essentially killed the console), and looking at how Nintendo has released software on their previous systems, we can see that their main support is pretty much lost few years into a console, before things gear up for the development of its successor, with third party following in suit. As useless it is to hope that this time around that support wouldn’t vanish just like that, I highly doubt that’ll happen. While a console doesn’t have an expiration date other than when the developer drops their support, this five to six years cycle has become a standard of sorts. This is why we can be glad to see the Switch being expanded like this during its first year of existence, as that should lead into second and third year of further support and expansion.

 

Not everyone is cut to be a game journalist

With Gamescom going on, VentureBeat had their Dean Takahashi go in and play some games. What we got out of this was a pathetic showcase of Cuphead. For some 25 minutes, Takahashi tries to beat the first level of the game, after taking some twenty jumps to clear the tutorial. It becomes clear after these first few minutes, that Takahashi is woefully unequipped to play the game, which affects the content on whatever piece he would be writing about it.

Games are action and action takes practice. While video games are for everybody, not everybody can play video games. Low-end games may be a sweet spot for many, just like a low-end stereo equipment is sufficient to loads of users. However, unlike with stereo equipment, moving from low-end to high-end isn’t about how much money and time you put into it with games. With games you have to excel and have execution. You can’t just wing it and call it a day. Unlike a stereo reviewer, a game reviewer has a necessity to be able to handle the whatever demands any tier of game requires.

To use a comparison, the minimum requirement for a book reviewer is that he is able to read the text. This produces poor reviews, as simply being able to read is not enough. You have to understand the text. This can produce some mediocre reviews. Understanding is not enough, as the reviewer should be able to analyse the structure, the intent, pacing and have proper understanding on the style of fiction and academics of writing. Merely being able to read does not produce results, there needs to be more behind it.

Dean Takahashi’s poor play with Cuphead may not represent anyone else but himself. He might become the most popular example nevertheless, followed by Polygon’s Doom gameplay video, where they spent most of the time shooting floors and walls rather than the enemies while showcasing extremely poor control of movement.

This isn’t a Git Gud jab either. No, this just might be. You should be able to do the required execution of an action, if you’re intending to comment on the environment where the action is done. For electronic games, it’s the gameplay. That’s not enough though. You also need to know the basics of writing a review, how to approach a game to understand its underlying structure and understand it.

You don’t need to be good at playing electronic games. You simply need to be able to do play them properly and as intended. These two examples of Takahashi and Polygon showcases that they are not cut for the job. The rest on the other is somewhat questionable. Certainly there are those who are able to play games properly, there’s no arguing that.

There is a large distrust towards the game journalists nowadays, thanks for the media attempting to kill the industry and attacking their own consumers. The articles that signed the death of the gamers were numerous and appeared at the same time; Gamasutra, Kotaku, Polygon, Buzzfeed, Ars Technica and numerous others wrote articles with the same content. If “the gamer” was dead, then so was the industry. While guilt by association should always be avoided, I can’t help but to notice how people have become more careful when assessing what the game media is saying about games, or the people consuming electronic games. Erik Kain of Forbes, however, had a different, a more positive take on the issue. However, as usual, it’s better for you to check these sources yourself rather than put your trust on someone on the Internet. Kain certainly did and pointed out that deceiving linking is not of good taste, despite the intentions behind it.

The fact that VentureBeat went and changed the video’s title after the comments began to pour in gives the whole thing a shameful atmosphere. Furthermore, when inquired about Takahashi performance, he tends to ask other people to do better than him all the while telling Cuphead‘s somewhere between Super Mario Bros. and Dark Souls. That is a huge as hell region, which tells absolutely nothing. It would be more accurate the describe as a mix of Gunstar Heroes and Mega Man, as those have served as some of the sources inspirations for Cuphead. Takahashi may be getting vitriol from the Internet and belittled for his lack of skills, but the core point still exists; how can a person report or create a proper assessment on a product he is unable to consume properly? Whatever the end piece would be, it would be a twisted and inaccurate representation of the product.

Monthly Three: Computer game

This Monthly Three (imaginative name, I know) will most likely consist less content than usual, as the theme will be System X defining games, in this case What games define computer games? In this way I hope to showcase the core differences that stand between computer/PC gaming, arcade gaming and console gaming. As all three systems have differences in their core, the selection here are largely picked to present the definitive elements that a platform excels at.

We start with computer games, because they are the first to stem from the general field of electronic games. That’s a whole another can-o-worms we might open one day after discussing how computer and video games are simply continuation if child play culture.

But onwards, games that defined computer gaming as we know it nowadays. These are not in any particular order, so there’s no reason to look into that. The amount of games will be kept under ten for the sake of removing excess fat.

Competition from the past

I ran across DotEmu some time ago while I was looking at IREM’s games for sale. DotEmu has IREM Arcade Hits for ten euros and includes nice selection of rather hard to find games. It’s also the cheapest and easiest way to get hold of Undercover Cops, thou I have no idea if it has the gimped US version or the Japanese release. Still, the pack is pretty damn good overall, and this kinda make it sink hard; because of sites likes this and modern use of backwards technology these old games are competing with all the new games. In essence we could say that any of the new Super Mario games that will be released (and was released in the last generation) are directly competing with Super Mario Bros. 3. That’s a competition that I wouldn’t wish to partake, as overcoming Mario 3 is like trying to win against a bear in a fistfight; it’s possible, but it takes effort, work and dedication.

We have the Three Big Ones of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. While PC doesn’t directly compete with these three (unlike many think it does) it’s part of the group. Then we have these that exist on any platform at any given time, games that you can get from GoG and DotEmu, and from the consoles’ own webstores. These non-platform dependant games, so to speak, which are rising in popularity. Dare I say that they are the fifth in the competition?

Yes, I do dare say that these old games are their own entity and are directly competing on the consoles or on PC.

Steam doesn’t fit this bill by far, as it requires running while playing the games and a constant Internet connection as well as runs on DRM. This is PC gaming world, we can’t stop here.

The likes of GoG and DotEmu are only the source of this fifth element which exists next to everything else. You can download the games on your PC and play them without any kind of touch from the Internet or care if a DRM cycle kicks in. This Fifth Element has risen not too long ago and is constantly getting more steam. I assume that the popularity of the emulators finally made the developers realize that there wasn’t just demand, but it was also a dirty cheap way to make some profit. It’s a win-win situation either side.

This situation is a new one to the industry. How the hell are they supposed to compete with all the old classics? Well, the only way is to make them obsolete; to make the superior product. Super Mario 3 made Super Mario obsolete. However, Super Mario 4 didn’t make Super Mario 3 obsolete, neither did Super Mario 64.

Doom made Wolfenstein 3D obsolete. This level of craftsmanship we need. Why did the 90’s stop making old games obsolete? Because the games’ overall quality began decrease.

The industry really needs reconsider their approach during the advent of the new generation. It isn’t enough that the developers think that they made a good product, the customers need to think so as well. But now the developers are now competing with games that have been regarded as masterpieces through few generations back already. The newcomers, the kids of gaming, are about to find out how awesome R-Type is. IS. Not was. And that’s helluva harsh, but completely fair.

As a customer who wants more good games, these two services are really good way to get bunch of good games I never could get my hands on before. Now that’s service I’m willing to pay for.