 Hey everyone, so I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do for a video today But as I was scouring the internet looking at the news and just reminiscing on Some things that have happened since platoon 2 came out, which isn't that long ago, right yesterday And I've been playing a ton of it having a lot of fun Splatoon 2 is everything I wanted it to be and then some some surprising aspects of it And I thought about maybe doing a preview or like a reaction for it And maybe I'll have a video for that once I experience more of the game I want to beat the single-player mode first and I want to make sure that I'm fully ingrained in rank matches and get the full Splatoon 2 experience, but right now I want to talk about The MPD report that is specifically about Nintendo switch Losing out to PlayStation 4 for sales and I want to talk about Nintendo's general strategy with the switch and in particular with the Nintendo switch online app and When I get to the online app part I do want to note that a lot of this comes from the youtuber spawnwave And I'll have a link to his video in the comments below where he recently as of I think this morning talked about What his theory is behind the online app and I I agree So first let's just get into it the PlayStation 4 had its best June ever And that's not a surprise because in June they released a new PlayStation 4 slim They had a 1 terabyte high drive the color was gold But most importantly the system was $250 and that was a temporary price drop That means that as of now in July everything's back up to $300 and there's no more special price drop So that's not a surprise like it had a limited sale and it sold like hotcakes because of that sale I mean that's $50 cheaper than the Nintendo switch. That's really enticing to be honest now There's some some people that have been given Nintendo a lot of flak for Oh, the switch really isn't that popular It's this shows you know PlayStation 4 still leading the way had the best June ever people don't care about switch yada yada yada Well, here's the thing you cannot get your hands on a Nintendo switch. It is extremely Difficult they just released between two and I have a feeling that a majority of people that wanted to pick up that game day one Don't have a switch because they can't get their hands on it even this week as there has been a Some major retailers they have had you know what they claim to be daily stock Which just means they basically got one big shipment first between two and they decided to limit the sales of that shipment per day So that there was units available every day So people had I guess a better chance of showing up early and getting one You know if you couldn't wake up at you know 5 a.m. On Saturday to go stand outside your GameStop you could do it on Monday do it on Tuesday, Thursday, Thursday, Friday, etc Etc etc and get a chance at buying one now obviously GameStop I still think hasn't sold out of their bundled units on their website, but that's not necessarily a big surprise Because the bundled units require you to spend a ton of money When people might just want to buy that one game and the Nintendo switch at least for now so moving forward We have to remember that there is there's been a really limited stock of Nintendo switch and back in June It was even worse like here. They had daily stock leading up to the release of Splatoon 2 they didn't have that going on back in June. Yes, they released arms. Yes We had E3 we had all this crazy hype going on Super Mario Odyssey look fantastic But you still couldn't find a switch you you still can't find a switch today I went to GameStop just yesterday When I was getting a new pro controller for my Nintendo switch and they were out of switches They said they have been sold out Every single day within the first five minutes of the store opening and these are guys I believe the their excellent employees the store manager was there. I talked to him. I've known him for years and This was true when I went over to Walmart. It was true when I stopped at Best Buy for different things I wasn't there for switch anyways, but I'm always curious when I go to the major retail chains in my area Hey, you know, what's it looking like with switch and you know, how often when do you get stock and you know When does it sell out? Maybe I have friends who want to get into it and I want to let them know Well, it's very difficult to get your hands on a switch. So Yes, PlayStation 4 had its best June ever and that probably would have happened regardless of how many switch units were out there and PlayStation 4 was the best seller, but if Nintendo had enough switches to meet demand Chances are Nintendo switch would have had the number one June because that's kind of been the big hubbub For switch naysayers is well, yeah, it had that amazing launch month, but if you look at it now every month That's come out. It's not the number one seller. It's not the number one seller Sometimes it's not the number two seller and that's because of stock issues. It's not actually because there are so many units out There and people just aren't buying it right that that's not what's happening It would be different if there was the equal amount of PlayStation 4s and the equal amount of Nintendo switches on store shelves And the PlayStation 4 was just selling more that that's not what's happening. There isn't equal stock distribution People cannot easily get their hands on switch. I know some people that are even getting turned off from potentially looking to buy a switch this year Resigning themselves to wait until 2018 when they don't have to you'll keep hitting the refresh links online And and keep having to hope they get lucky when they go to stores on Fridays or Wednesdays or Mondays or whenever those stores get their Shipments in so we have to have some perspective when we're looking at this situation that yes PlayStation 4 is doing great and that's awesome for Sony. I am happy that they are continuing to do well The Xbox one is kind of just chilling. It's kind of waiting around for the X to come out But the switch it's doing fine folks. It is doing absolutely fine I know Nintendo has not updated us on total sales numbers yet, which is crazy I thought for sure they would have did that at the end of June at least given us updates to the beginning Of June and they didn't do that. So, you know, we have no idea how many units of the switch exist out there All we know are game sale numbers, which look pretty decent, you know arms sold over 250,000 units It was in the top 10 sellers for the month of June along with breath of the wild That's sold like 190,000 and Mario Kart 8 that's sold like 180,000 So Nintendo had three of the top 10 best sellers in June Which clearly mean they're selling switches because those games are continuing to sell And if they weren't selling switches with new copies of breath of the wild still be being sold on Nintendo switch I mean, let's think about that for a moment during the launch month There was more copies of breath of the wild sold than the switch units So if they're still selling almost 200,000 units of breath of the wild That gives you kind of an idea that there might have been 200,000 or so switches sold during June, which is a pretty dang good number I believe PlayStation 4 topped out at like 256 or something. So that's not even that far behind It sucks that there was only 200,000 Nintendo switches available when there's clearly way more demand than that But it is what it is now. Let's get briefly here into the Nintendo switch online app. You guys know well You guys at this point understand my vast criticisms of the application not the companion aspects of it I you know, I just use the companion aspect today to purchase a new shirt for my guy But There are aspects that deal with online voice chat specifically that bother me And there's two things I want to talk about this one of them that swam away didn't bring up and the rest is completely Information that I got from spawn wave. So the first part is that apparently on Nintendo of Europe's Online app site. They have gotten rid of the text that used to say limited feature set So if you remember right This app was released with the moniker that it would be free until you know the paid online service starts And that during this free period the app would just can it would just contain a limited feature set Compared to what the full application would get well in Nintendo of Europe I don't know if it means anything but that text has been removed from the website Suggesting at least, you know by omission that this is the full functionality of The app where there isn't extra features planned that we're not aware of and this is what people are going to be paying for next year But again speculation based on an omission who knows if it really means anything It could just be one person who updated the wrong file and you know things just get nuts And they just haven't fixed it or maybe it is a sign that yeah, you know, they don't they don't this is a This is the full functioning app. It's not a limited version of the app now That aside Voice chat is something I like to talk about here again because spawnwave explored the the reasons that people feel like voice chat are not on the Nintendo switch natively and The biggest reason people always throughout there is performance and he did some research on this and it turns out that Voice chat does not use a lot of resources either for at the OS level or when it comes at Individual game levels. In fact, he went back to talk about how with four megabytes of RAM on the Nintendo DS There were local game voice chats You brought up Metro Prime Hunters This is an example of a game that had it and yes these systems have built-in microphones and yada yada yada But they also released headsets and you could use your own headset if you want and just plug it right into the audio jack So this wasn't some some foreign functionality and it existed on the Xbox that existed on the PlayStation It existed out of the PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Xbox one You know 3ds Vita, etc. All you know significant amount of those systems that had this had way less RAM and way less GPU power and processing power than the Nintendo switch So the idea that the switch cannot do it from a hardware receptor because they're trying to maximize everything for games is a bit of a misnomer because when other you know other platforms including the Nintendo's own platforms have not had issues with this in the past Including the Wii U 3ds DS and even Wii You have to start to take a step back like no it's got nothing to do with the hardware capabilities or necessarily saving hardware for games because Voice chat uses such a significantly small portion of the resources You won't even notice it to be honest when you are looking You know if you could bring up a task manager on the switch You wouldn't barely even notice that voice chats doing anything and that's not to be surprising because voice chat basically just broadcasts a Signal out that is managed by a server that actually does most of the processing and then spits it back out So you're just transferring a signal essentially and then there's extra hardware that does all the other work And that's true on a phone as well. So that's not the case. What's happened is Or at least in his theory his theory stands that Nintendo purposely is putting voice chat on the app to try to force people or encourage Nintendo switch owners to download the app on their phone For various purposes such as advertising because eventually the app is gonna have push notifications and through those push notifications They can advertise to you when a new Nintendo switch game comes up when a new 3ds game comes out when anything new that Nintendo wants to Advertise now they have their app on your phone to do that They can also get data tracking off that they can see which applications inside the app are you opening up the most You open up splatting a tool out of you opening up an arms application or breath of the wild or whatever apps they end up adding Into the sub applications of the Nintendo switch online app Nintendo gains all this tracking data and we know that Nintendo has had a foray into the mobile realm and This just lets them potentially combine all those mobile games as well Into this app in terms of tracking Nintendo just gets a wealth of data on consumers here that they can use to target their games better and sell more games And the app is it's weird because in a way they want people to have the app So they could push more hardware and push more software sales off of your phone But at the same point they want you to have a reason to get the app because well Sony and Microsoft both have companion apps for the Xbox one and PlayStation 4 Reality is that most of the consumers of an Xbox one and a PlayStation 4 do not have the app because the functionality that it adds Well nice and while the apps work well enough They're not viewed as essential that there's no you don't when you get a PlayStation 4 There's nothing in there saying hey go go download this app so you can talk to your friends So you can play online so you can manage lobbies none of that is there But Nintendo in Splatoon 2 it's very obvious when you're going they have a whole section It says, you know play with your friends and chat with them online and when you go there It instantly brings up a screen on your system showing you that you need to go download the Nintendo switch online app So yeah I if you can't tell I kind of agree with spawnwave here I think Nintendo has purposely put voice chat on phones not to gimp it not because they don't care not because they're trying to add Another layer of protection for children. They are doing it specifically to force people To download the app so Nintendo can gather more data overall and push more units and have another way to advertise to consumers I think this makes a lot of sense and it's it's one of those things that Nintendo is never going to admit to I mean Let's be serious. Why do companies? Including Nintendo now put the ability to play online games behind a paywall Well, because if you remove that ability to play online games from behind that paywall and just charge for things like you know Subscription service to get a free NES game the voice chat app and a couple of discounts and all this stuff People aren't gonna spend the money because they're not gonna view it as essential But you remove an essential an essential aspect of playing games and say hey look if you pay you can have access to that asset Then people are going to do it like I don't want to have to pay money for Nintendo I don't want to use the app. I don't want to use any of this stuff But I know I'm gonna end up spending the 20 bucks for their subscription service just because I still want to play Splatoon 2 online. I still want to play arms online. I still want to play Mario Kart 8 online I want to play the future smash game online I still want to access to play games online on my switch So I'm going to pay that fee and because there are some things that are exclusive to the app I'm going to use the app. I mean the fact I was able to buy a shirt off the app. That's cool Like that that's fine. That's a companion app kind of thing I don't have any problem with the companion aspects as an option for consumers, but yeah Nintendo I'm slowly coming around at least on understanding from a business perspective why they are putting voice chat on a phone and why they didn't do it on switch and I'm okay with the business side of things. What I'm not okay with is that the app itself is crap That the voice chat disconnects and pretty much every single possible smart device situation that exists in the world That's just not okay. It still exists I highly suggest people if you have the app go into the feedback section and send Nintendo some critical feedback but you know constructive criticism as it were So Nintendo can understand exactly what consumers will expect out of this voice app Don't go in there yelling at them. Hey, just put this natively on switch like that's not gonna help the app improve Don't just say this app sucks like go in there be a look It would be really nice to be able to voice chat with my friends and still be able to check my text messages So be able to check my notifications still be able to check in our Facebook quick in between matches all that stuff I would love to be able to do all this and not be disconnected from voice. That would be great I would love to be able to put my phone in idle. I'm tired of it draining my entire battery because I got a screen on I did a battery test last night. I I didn't get a good recording of the results Not a surprise because I actually recorded with my phone So it's really hard to record my phone with itself under the battery test But yeah, I lost almost 50% battery in a 35 minute play session of just chatting And that was with brightness on low and no other apps open. That's just not good I'm okay with it using a lot of resources, I guess But if I could just put my phone into sleep and have that screen turned off those screens alone take up a lot of Batteries so anyways, I am Nathaniel Ruffijans from Nintendo Prime if you liked this video You know what to do if you dislike the video hit that dislike button Subscribe for more and if you already subscribe. Thank you so much. You are making all of my dreams come true and Yeah, we have a patreon a patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime if you care to check that out support our podcast Which will hopefully be back this week. We had more technical issues during the recording of it But we're getting there next on my list to purchase for the podcast is is a true mixing board So that'll fix some of the audio issues on my end, but yeah, you guys have a good day