 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We got a nice little late night edition for you guys. I've been trying to vary up the content a little bit over the last few days. And one thing I really wanted to focus on is a bit more discussion videos. And this video in particular is gonna deal with a topic that's near and dear to our heart. And that is how relevant is Switch still in 2022? And what are the, if not haters detractors saying about the Switch today that maybe is different than say five years ago and what are my thoughts on the criticisms and whatever people bring up because factually, Nintendo's on top of the world at the moment, right? They are the number one selling platform. All their games keep topping the charts. Nintendo's doing fantastic. So from a business perspective, Nintendo's doing better than almost they've ever done. You know, we DS era and Switch. Like that's, no, that's it. That's the best Nintendo's ever been in terms of video games when it comes to making money and selling systems in games. But that's not the focus. The focus here is what is the perception around, I guess, the internet? Because I think the general perception with the general consumer is no, they just don't really care. That's why they keep buying all the games and buying all the Switches. But we're focusing on a core audience here. And I actually took to Twitter to ask that very question. And before we get there, I wanna thank you guys so much for being here. If you enjoyed this video, why don't you go ahead and hit that subscribe button, hit the like button. You know, hey, if you know who this person is in the background, go ahead and say hi to him down in the comments. All right, let's get into my thread on Twitter and some of my thoughts. So I put out there, hey, calling all Switch haters. Maybe it was a little extreme, especially for a channel that everyone who follows me obviously likes Nintendo, but come at me and tell me why does Switch suck? Hey friends, retweet, let's get them all in here. Got a plan for this later, which of course, you know, wasn't gonna get as many in as I hoped for because, you know, we are a Nintendo channel. Now, we have a few responses in here and if you guys get featured in here, that's awesome, congratulations. Master of Hyrule says, I wouldn't say a Switch hater, but I got lots of criticism. The Joy-Cons are the most comfortable in handheld. There's no 4K, needs bigger storage and other things I can't think of. So let's talk about the Joy-Cons, 4K and storage and then we'll go back and grab somebody else's comments here. So first off, when it comes to talking about the Joy-Cons, I think the comfortability of the Joy-Cons while holding the Switch in the hand is really the least of the problems with the Joy-Cons. Joy-Cons drift to me is the biggest issue with Joy-Cons, not how comfortable it is to hold in hands when honestly, that is solved by like a little, you know, $15 accessory that you could buy at a bunch of different stores or right online on Amazon and other various outlets. So like this is the Skulling Company grip right here. Obviously you guys know what the Satisfye grip and all the other really cheap third party grips already fix this problem and you could say, well, okay, but that's not the same thing. That doesn't change the fact that it's not the most ergonomic and I hear you on that. And obviously we all would like to be a bit more ergonomic. I will argue though, that when Nintendo was designing the Joy-Cons, they weren't just considering handheld play. They had to consider holding the Joy-Cons sideways. So let me grab my Switch here and show you what I mean. You know, you guys know, if you've never done it, you gotta take your Joy-Con off and be able to hold it like this comfortably. And if you have this giant bump back here, it's actually not that comfortable to hold in that way. It's already not the greatest, but it's even less comfortable when you have a bump. And I know because I've tried it with third party Joy-Cons and I don't like it. You know, I like it even less than that. So I think there was a lot of considerations when Nintendo went with this design to consider all the different ways that you can play Switch, not just in handheld. Let me personally, I just gotta spread my hands like this and it ends up, you know, kind of cradling just fine. But again, you can always grab a cheap grip like this and that kind of solves the problem. I know using accessories to solve a problem isn't exactly great, but Nintendo had to consider a whole bunch more than that. So I guess you can call that a problem. But I think Joy-Con drifts probably the bigger one that I would focus on. Now, when it comes to no 4K, does it really matter? I'm being sincere here. I know a lot of people have 4K TVs now and they're really, really cheap. I mean, you can get them for like 250 bucks at your local Walmart and get like a 55, 60 inch TV for that price. That's a little insane. Like, you know, even thinking about the size of the TVs you can get, let alone that they're pretty much all in 4K. It's almost hard to find a 1080p television. I mean, now they got 8K ones out there you can get. So my whole thought process with this is I don't really think 4K is the B's knees. Eric's sitting over there playing MLB the show on a 4K television, but with an Xbox Series S and it's not outputting the game in 4K. It's actually only outputting it in 1080p and it seems to be going just fine and looking just fine at least to us. It might not be, you know, it might be even better than the Series X or the PlayStation 5 or PC and that's fine. But I'm not sure that 4K really matters when the default screen is only 720p. So when you consider this is 720p, it's kind of a weird to consider going to 4K, especially expecting a mobile chipset to game at 4K. I mean, mobile chipsets in laptops struggle at gaming at 4K that are more powerful than the Switch. The Steam Deck, by the way, that everyone thinks trounces the Switch can't really game in 4K. So yeah, and that's using like the latest and greatest technology out there from AMD. So I'm not sure that no 4K is a viable criticism. If you want a game in 4K, you shouldn't be buying a portable system in the first place. Now, when we talk about the storage, I think that's fair. I criticized Nintendo for this in the very beginning. Only 32 gigabytes of internal storage included is a problem. It's been a problem since day one. Yeah, there's cartridges and you can play all the games locally on Switch from off a cartridge, not all the games with the games available in cartridges. But then some of them like NBA 2K require massive downloads that are bigger than what the internal storage is, let alone if you ever buy indie games, play Nintendo Switch online, you're gonna end up needing to buy micro SD cards. And I'm glad they gave us the option to expand with micro SD cards, but giving us 32 gigs, which was like the maximum you could get on the Wii U, yeah, I didn't like that. I was hoping for at least 128. I think that would have been fair. There's not a single game released on Switch that's bigger than that. So it could literally play every game that's ever released on the platform and be able to at least install it and play it. So I do think that that storage is a viable issue. I think it's been an issue for five years, but obviously Nintendo doesn't care to do anything about it, despite our best hopes, since the memory module was independent of the main board on the original Switch, we always hope that that meant there'd be future upgrades and they just never really came. So I just hope the next platform fixes that issue. All right, let's move on to some of the other stuff being said out here. So I'll just restart some more, so just be in a, just kind of be in a little turd here and talking about all these positive things. Same with Mike Perez. I love you guys. You guys are awesome. So then we have a Buttermake Tassim3 here. And he says, I don't hate Switch, but most of the games just don't resonate with me at all. Maybe it's just got something to do with the Fed. I'm just growing up and starting to view and enjoy games in a different way, but there's no Switch game other than Breath of the Wild than I can say, stuck with me. Now, obviously that's personal preference about what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy. What's interesting is I find the older I'm getting, the more I'm enjoying things like Kirby and the Forgotten Land. The more I'm enjoying games like Mario Odyssey. And I think the reason is, is because I stopped caring about games having to be a particular way. I used to, there was a time in my life that I pretty much just played Zelda games, and that was it. Besides that, I was playing on Xbox, PC, doing all the hardcore games. And now that I'm older, and I don't know how old this particular person is, but I'm a father of three, I'm in my mid thirties, really finding that I'm falling in love with the whole of Nintendo again and some of the simplicity in some of the games and some of the complexities that exist in some of the simplistic games. Even Kirby and the Forgotten Land has some challenging things in it if you want to go attain it, but not everyone's gonna wanna do that. So, I don't know. This is obviously personal preference. You like what you like. Moving on. Quest mode games mentions, I love the Switch, but it hurts the breath of the wild too. We're released on a six year old tablet instead of anything resembling modern hardware. It's to the point where you have to wonder what Nintendo might be capable of if they had a more current piece of tech. And here's what I could tell you what Nintendo would be capable of. Exactly what they're already doing just at a higher resolution. You wanna know why I can say that? Cause that's what we see Nintendo do time and time and time and time and time again. Nintendo doesn't base their game design around the power of the platform. So we can hope that Nintendo would reach for the stars and go for this ultimate 4K 60 FPS hyper-realistic Zelda game or whatever you're hoping that they do, but that's just not what Nintendo does. They don't feel like they're restricted by the hardware in that way. Now I could argue, yeah, 60 FPS would be great, but Nintendo thinks the games play just fine at 30, so they don't really feel 60 is required for something like Zelda. And I can agree to a point. It's playable at 30, even if preferable at 60. So I could see why you might be a little bit disappointed. Luckily for you, Switch games are easily emulated on PC, so if you wanna get it in a better way, you absolutely can. But yeah, I don't really think it makes that big a difference. When I see Breath of the Wild in 4K 60 FPS on a PC, I go, yeah, and the game was great on Switch. Okay, so it's a little bit better on PC and great games don't need amazingly powerful systems to be great. And I feel like we've just had this entire Switch generation proving to us, Breath of the Wild included, that we don't need powerful hardware to get great games. So I'm not so sure that powerful hardware is gonna make that big of a difference for Nintendo because they don't really focus on power when they're making games. Kirby and the Forgotten Land isn't any better if you're slapping on a PS5. All right, moving on. I love the system. Unfortunately, the performance is not good. I play mostly JRPGs on it, so I don't mind. And I feel like that's just a common complaint about the power. It's particularly an issue with a lot of third party games. Obviously, it's why we're getting a lot of cloud versions. So sure, obviously, the hardware is from 2015. You know, we're seven years out from when that Tegra chip came out. So sure, it's dated. We know this. It is dated that, you know, we're also probably at least two-thirds of the way through the generation. So we shouldn't be that far away from something new anyways. All right, let me see. Harry Chess says, I love the Switch, but the joy console, like the idea of them is cool. But the drifting, the bad motion control, how so that it is really frustrating to play it with. And the joystick doesn't have full 360-degree input. I shouldn't have to pay extra for good controls. Now, that's the first time I've seen that the Joy-Con is on a full 360-degree input. I've actually done testing on this, and they absolutely do. It's possible your Joy-Con are just having issues that are failing or drifting or whatever else. That's getting rid of that. And the bad motion controls. Again, I haven't had issues with the motion controls in any game I have played. However, I haven't played House of the Dead. And sometimes we might be blaming the Joy-Cons for something that's the game's fault for not being properly optimized for the Joy-Con. I don't know which way you wanna look at it. If you have other examples of games that the motion controls really suck in, I would like to know because every game I have used motion controls in, including Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon, they've worked beautifully. So yeah, if you have some other examples, I would love to know. And I'd love to know if you've tried other Joy-Con too, just in case there's an issue with the ones you have. All right, moving on. It doesn't suck, it's an amazing system, obviously. Yourself here says, I don't hate the Switch, but I don't love it. Portability has existed in gaming for years, as well as ways to play portable games on a screen. I guess I just don't see the big deal. The fact that it's the only gimmick has led to a lack of Nintendo's usual innovation. And I kind of responded to this already. So I'll just read my response because I feel like boiling down the Switch's innovation to just, oh, it's playing on TV, then playing on the go is missing a little bit of more of what the Switch is. So I said, but is it? I always felt the beauty of the Switch isn't that it's a gimmick, but that it combines a bunch of prior console idealizations into a single form. Sure, playing portably and on TV is one of those ideals, but so is the idea of motion controls. Hello, Nintendo Wii era. More than that, it also adds that with a single purchase, you can detach controllers and up to two people can play at the same time. Something no prior system allowed you to do and it expands on the usability of the system, not that anything Switch does is fantastic, but a lot of what it does is good enough to create a unique package of features that hit on a very wide range of consumers. So the gimmick, as they say, is really how much functionality is packed into it and all the various ways you can use it. Take the Steam Deck, AKA what some call the Switch Killer. It is more powerful and can be docked with a TV slash monitor, but a lot of the extra functionality Switch provides isn't actually included with that system. Do you wanna dock it with a TV or a monitor? Then you need to buy extra accessories. Do you want Wii like motion controls? Again, you're gonna have to buy extra stuff. Two players, extra stuff, tabletop mode and has no kickstand. So again, extra stuff. So I always felt that made it special is really that combination of features. And then yourself says all of these things are very poorly implemented though. That's a big issue for me. The motion and gyro controls are less precise than its predecessors. Playing with one joy-con, especially the right one is uncomfortable. The kickstand on the basic model is horrendously flimsy and I agree, the base kickstand is great. It is crap, right? I mean, we have the OLED one here. This one is significantly better. But here's the problem I have with this. I admitted none of these things are great. They're good enough. Think about it. Who's gonna be interested the most in taking off two joy-cons and playing them on the side with other people? Children. Guess what? I have children. They do it all the time. They don't complain. Why? Because it's good enough for them. See, that's the thing. Switch is trying to reach such a wide breadth of audience that it doesn't do anything great. But it does things for those that wanna play it good enough. And that's what I mean. So maybe you don't like the detachable joy-con, but kids do. Maybe you think the motion controls aren't good enough, but then I'm sitting there playing one, two, Switch, Skyward Sword, HD and Splatoon 2 and not having any problems with the motion controls in various different games. So it's good enough for me, just maybe not good enough for you. So you see what I'm saying? There's, you know, the kickstand. Again, flimsy as hell. And yet there's my kids using that flimsy as hell kickstand on the counter playing the game without complaint. So yeah, kickstand ain't for me. They ain't complaining about it. Sometimes I think as adults, we just expect the sun and the moon and everything would be tailored perfectly to our desires. That doesn't mean your criticisms aren't valid. It's just not considering alternative use cases that aren't you. And I like to look beyond all that because I get to see alternative use cases that aren't just me. But it might be, I'll tell you who's been playing more Switch lately than I have. It's insane. I can't get her to stop playing Fire on the Warriors. She's probably already replaying it on a second file right now. All right. And then last, there was one other one I wanted to read here. So let me just scroll down a little bit here. And Naban Islam says super weak hardware. The fact that as a Switch owner, we get the worst versions of any third party game. We're even lucky enough to get them in the first place. And also the online is absolute trash and a complete revival. So we're not gonna touch on the hardware. The worst versions of any third party games also linked to that hardware, although before Steam Deck you could argue but you got it portably. Okay, now there's an alternative method for that. But the online is absolute trash and a complete ripoff. Look, I don't think we should have to pay to play games online, right? I think there needs to be a hell of a lot more transparency when it comes to the games being added to the service. I don't know that the service of the games on Nintendo Switch Online is really a adequate replacement for Virtual Console. Why can't we have both that makes everyone happy? But I will say this. For $80 a year, you're getting a decent amount of stuff. A decent amount. You're getting the retro library. You're getting, how do we put this? You're getting some DLC for free if you happen to own those games. I know for free is whatever because you're paying for a service so it's not really technically free. I always hate when these companies are like over giving you something. I know I paid you and you're just adding something to what I already paid for. That's not free. I already paid for it. So when you look at the stuff they're adding to it, I kind of just sit back and go, honestly for $80 a year, it's not the worst thing. It's not the best thing. It's just not the worst. It's not trying to be Game Pass. It's not trying to be PlayStation Plus. Both of those cost significantly more money. And yet Nintendo's missing a lot of basic features. Voice chats through a phone app. Sucks, no way to message people. Sucks. They do have screenshot and video functionality but it's pretty limited. So I agree on the base premise that Nintendo Switch Online isn't very good but I also don't think for what you're paying for it's the absolute worst thing out there. Especially if we continue to see Nintendo add future DLC to it. That really bumps up the value of the service if all their paid DLC ends up just getting added to the service. Again, we don't know if that's gonna happen but so far it's happened for two games in a row and next time we get paid DLC announced we'll see if it happens again. But yeah, I'm not gonna sit here and defend NSO too much. So at the end of this video I just wanna say all of these criticisms are extremely valid. Me defending Nintendo, it sounds like it comes off as Defense Force. Oh my gosh, you're such a Nintendo chode. Okay, yeah, I have some bias. I'm not gonna deny that. It's my channel, this is what I do. But all of these criticisms are ones I've already lobbied against Switch. But in spite of it, I find myself massively enjoying the platform every single week. So it always makes me wonder, are these criticisms mattering as much to me as they do to you? When Nintendo keeps giving me games I wanna keep playing on this platform. Okay, Kirby right now. Cool, Nintendo Switch Sports later this month. Cool, Mario Strikers in June. Cool, Splatoon 3 maybe in July. Cool, Xenobite Chronicles 3. Yes, Pokemon Gen 9. It's open world, I'll probably give it a try. Oh, oh wait, we're not done, Bandai to three. Yup, I wanna play that too. I'll press it a while too, you know, in March of next year, you don't even need to ask. So as long as I keep getting the games I wanna play, the games kind of trump all of my downsides with the Switch. Sure, they could all be better on Xbox or all be better on PlayStation 5 in theory. I don't know, there's something nice about laying in my bed, playing on my Switch. Especially the OLED screen now. I mean, the little bias here is I have the latest and greatest and everybody does, but all that panel is quite nice. How do I say, I didn't, you know, sometimes I forget how nice it looks and take it for granted till I'm laying next to Julia who's playing on my old Switch and I glance at hers and I glance at mine. We're playing the same game and I'm like, yeah. Yeah, baby. Anyways guys, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for all of the feedback and the criticism out there. And I hope you guys enjoyed this little discussion video. I'll catch you tomorrow.