How close is the Switch 2 reveal? (Nintendo)
The Thursday letters page remembers the Dreamcast, as it prepares for its 25th anniversary, while one reader predicts Minecraft’s box office.
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Too soon
Much as I’d love to see a Nintendo Switch 2 reveal this month, I really can’t see it happening. Nintendo is blatantly going to do Directs on all three of their upcoming games, either separately or in one giant-sized Direct. I’d guess separately, so that is going to take up a lot of time and before you know it it’s going to be the end of the year.
The only thing I can see is some kind of vague teaser at The Game Awards in December. By that point you could argue that most people have made their Christmas present decisions, so there’s less people to put off from bunch a regular Switch.
I still don’t see the benefit for Nintendo though. The people that care already know it’s on the way and ordinary causal gamers won’t need to know more than a month or two before it’s out. So my prediction is that we’ll get nothing till next year.
If there is something brewing at the moment – and those are reliable sources in the story – then I’d suggest it’s either people getting confused over production starting up or maybe… maybe Nintendo is toying with the idea, but I don’t think they’ll do it.
Sean
Gimmick Wisdom
Loved hearing about Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom and I’m absolutely not surprised to hear it’s a cracker. It looked great the second they showed it. I love with Nintendo games you can not only get the gimmick instantly but given their track record you can pretty much guarantee they’ll make the most of it.
I think that explains some of their occasional failures. Things like Princess Peach Showtime! didn’t seem to have anything to them other than you play as Peach. I didn’t really know what it was the whole time and still don’t really, since naturally I never bought it.
But watching the trailers for the new Zelda you instantly get how it works and want to give it a go yourself. I feel this is the way you get people interested in new IPs too. It’s not about fancy cinematics and amazing graphics it’s ideas. If you’re promoting something that’s brand new but it has an actual clear idea that you can hook onto, I’m immediately interested.
Janson
Changing course
I love how everyone already knows that Sony is going to learn nothing from Concord, there’s not even a question that they might stop and think maybe they’re on the wrong course. Fairgame$ looks horrible based on the teaser trailer and I can’t imagine it having any different a response than Concord.
The world doesn’t need a new live service game. Even the successful new ones only last a few months, because people just don’t have the time. Unless one of the big ones fails there’s just no gap in the market for any of these games to fill, especially when they’re not doing anything new.
There’s only 24 hours in the day and the number of people that want to spend them playing Overwatch 2.1 are very limited. And yet somehow it’s going to take Sony multiple more flops to realise that.
Johnson
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Some achievements
Reading that story about Concord players trying to get the game’s platinum before it’s shutdown I realise that I have no idea how the trophy system on PlayStation even works. To be fair, I had an Xbox the last two generations, but I didn’t care about the achievements on that either.
Am I the only one that just has no interest in the whole concept? I turn off the notifications, so I have no idea when I get them, and I have no idea what the rewards are. Don’t you get a free background or something on the PlayStation? They always seemed such like such a lame way to try and extend a game’s life and I hated being forced to do boring tasks just for some non-existent reward.
Ash Galore
Back from the dead
Just a quick message to say that Broken Sword – Shadow Of The Templars: Reforged is available to pre-order on physical for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox from Red Art Games.
The Deluxe Editions have sold out but there is an unlimited supply of the standard versions. The Collector’s Edition was only available during the Kickstarter and has been delayed to next year, so they can release the best version of that edition.
Andrew J.
PS: Can’t believe it, but just had an email to say Hit.co.uk are back after their website has been down for three months. They used to be called Base and before that DVD.co.uk. I bought two games from them this year and the next month their website when offline for three months! I thought they had permanently closed down but they haven’t!
The high cost of living
I see this argument often about Xbox’s multiplatform strategy, when people ask ‘Why does it affect you?’ As far as I’m concerned, it’s nothing to do with some petty list war against a rival console. For years Microsoft has hidden their console sales figures, for obvious reasons. They’ve convinced the Xbox fanbase to think console sales don’t matter. They absolutely do! We are witnessing the ramifications. More and more games are skipping Xbox.
Make no mistake, Xbox isn’t putting their games onto other platforms because they want to. They have to do it! Their install base isn’t large enough. The only way to grow that customer base is with high quality exclusive content. But that requires patience, which is no longer applicable since the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft want immediate results, at the expense of diluting the Xbox brand. How on earth are they going to sell the next Xbox without exclusive games? Some will point to Game Pass as their USP, but not everyone wants to rent games.
I feel some Xbox fans are deluding themselves a console with no exclusives will be fine. Some are suggesting Halo, Gears Of War or Fable won’t go to PlayStation. If the customer base isn’t large enough, they absolutely will. Phil Spencer has said nothing to the contrary. Maybe once Microsoft deem it an unnecessary expense to continue producing hardware, they will finally wake up to the reality of the situation.
One of the reasons the Dreamcast failed was because of limited third party support. Don’t get it twisted, Microsoft are going to make a hell of a lot of money. But Xbox will become irrelevant – if not obsolete – in the process.
Si
Refunds are available
I’ve just purchased Concord… after I heard about the news it’s shutting down!
25,000 sales worldwide and I’ve managed to get one. I’ve either been a genius, as it’ll be worth something in the future as a collector’s item, or I’ve thrown £30 down the drain to buy a unplayable game.
Anon
Quarter of a century
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it on here yet but it’s the 25th anniversary of the Dreamcast this month. Which also means it’s 23 years since Sega went third party. Yes, the console barely lasted two years, even though it seemed like much longer at the time (I was younger then, I guess).
Given everything happening at the moment I can’t help thinking about Xbox, especially given the long-standing connections between Sega and Microsoft at that time, that neither of them managed to take any advantage of.
It seems to me that Xbox is following the same trajectory as Sega, except slower and with a lot more self-denial. The Dreamcast was a flop and Sega just admitted it and went third party, end of story. Although they were broke at that point so you could argue they didn’t have any choice.
I can imagine multiple scenarios where they made a mess of it though and in the end I think it all went quite smoothly, even if the whole swerve towards PC games still doesn’t sit right with me.
The Dreamcast was a great console but at the end of the day its games just weren’t appealing enough to many people. That’s basically the same situation with the Xbox at the moment, so clearly lessons have not yet been learned.
To sell a video games console you’ve got to have video games people want to play, that they can’t play elsewhere. Things are that simple and yet Xbox still doesn’t seem to get it.
Boatswain
Inbox also-rans
Wow, that Minecraft movie looks absolutely terrible. However, it has Minecraft in the title, so it’s going to make a billion easy. Even though it looks nothing like the game.
Whistler
It makes me laugh with things like Visions Of Mana, when they leave out the one thing they should’ve started with. It’s like that Metroidvania Prince Of Persia, when they created a new character and made him have generic rage too!
Tolson
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The small print
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