Nintendo Switch

[Captain Kelsten]

Quote

Speaking to Kotaku in the wake of its announcements about the Nintendo Switch online service, a company spokesperson said: "There are currently no plans to bring classic games together under the Virtual Console banner as has been done on other Nintendo systems."

 

So no to virtual console...but you could read the statement in a way that suggests they'll just do it and call it something else. 

[Girth Certificate]

Maybe they don't want the name to conflict with their Virtual Reality offering, due 2024 (likely to slip to 2026)

[rgraves]

48 minutes ago, Simmy said:

They've been incredibly slow to react insofar their online services are a shambles compared to the competition.

 

I know it's your opinion and all that, but don't you think 'a shambles' is a bit of an OTT description for a currently free online service that works perfectly well with games like MK8, ARMS, Doom, Rocket League, and Splatoon etc, has next to no unscheduled downtime, and handles system and game updates in a pretty smooth fashion?

 

It's feature-light for sure, but it's not 'a shambles'. It works exactly as they designed it to work. You turn on the console, it goes online, you play.

[mushashi]

29 minutes ago, Orko said:

Kotaku are reporting that cloud saves won't be available for every game.

 

 

It was mentioned in the PR, if people actually bothered to read the not very fine print in the first place.

 

Quote

Save Data Cloud Backup: By using Nintendo Switch Online, a backup of Nintendo Switch save data for most Nintendo Switch games will be stored online for easy access.

 

[Simmy]

16 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

I know it's your opinion and all that, but don't you think 'a shambles' is a bit of an OTT description for a currently free online service that works perfectly well with games like MK8, ARMS, Doom, Rocket League, and Splatoon etc, has next to no unscheduled downtime, and handles system and game updates in a pretty smooth fashion?

 

It's feature-light for sure, but it's not 'a shambles'. It works exactly as they designed it to work. You turn on the console, it goes online, you play.

 

Fair enough, shambles is perhaps a bit harsh. I'll just say that it does nothing of what I want from an online service. I want to catch up with friends in the evening over voice chat, get them all in a party and play together. I guess I've just been spoiled for the last 15-16 years with the introduction of Xbox Live. It's definitely plenty of time for Nintendo to have done something about it and caught up IMO.

[rgraves]

8 minutes ago, Simmy said:

I want to catch up with friends in the evening over voice chat, get them all in a party and play together.

 

Christ I feel old. I used to catch up with friends by knocking on their doors and asking if they could come out to play  

[Flub]

21 minutes ago, mushashi said:

 

It was mentioned in the PR, if people actually bothered to read the not very fine print in the first place.

 

 

 

It's still shite.

[rgraves]

I'd say it's just a legal cover for game saves that will live outside of their system. I'd bet some online games will store their own saves on their own cloud platforms, or maybe some already released stuff can't (or won't) be made compatible - so Nintendo cannot say it's 100% coverage.

 

Let's actually see before we get the pitchforks out....

[Flub]

Just now, rgraves said:

I'd say it's just a legal cover for game saves that will live outside of their system. I'd bet some online games will store their own saves on their own cloud platforms - so Nintendo cannot say it's 100% coverage.

 

Let's actually see before we get the pitchforks out....

 

True but this is Nintendo and if it's possible to Nintendo up online in some way Nintendo will find it

[mushashi]

Some games have in the past had saves locked to a memory card, I assume the statement covers those types of saves, used to be mainly Japanese games IIRC.

[Flub]

3 minutes ago, mushashi said:

Some games have in the past had saves locked to a memory card, I assume the statement covers those types of saves, used to be mainly Japanese games IIRC.

 

On the Switch? Are you sure? I didn't think the carts were built that way.

[SozzlyJoe]

20 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

Christ I feel old. I used to catch up with friends by knocking on their doors and asking if they could come out to play  

 

Well, if you used to play NES games with these friends then your time is back brother!

[rgraves]

9 minutes ago, SozzlyJoe said:

Well, if you used to play NES games with these friends then your time is back brother!

 

Never had a NES, was a VCS2600 child. Simple times.

[mushashi]

9 minutes ago, Flub said:

 

On the Switch? Are you sure? I didn't think the carts were built that way.

 

No idea if any Switch game has system locked saves, but games on past Nintendo systems have had them. A quick Google shows that the carts don't actually have any writeable storage anyway, it's all saved onto the system itself.

[rafaqat]

On 01/05/2018 at 20:54, Pockets said:

This thread's kind of silly now. It was one thing when everyone was excited about 3-5 year old games, now they're 15 year old ports. It'll be £20 too.

 

I guess you can view the "remasters" as the equivalent of cover songs maybe . Something for a whole new audience to appreciate the amazing design and fun of the games. 

[SozzlyJoe]

8 minutes ago, mushashi said:

 

No idea if any Switch game has system locked saves, but games on past Nintendo systems have had them. A quick Google shows that the carts don't actually have any writeable storage anyway, it's all saved onto the system itself.

 

Anyway surely extricating locked saves is the entire point of the exercise? PS4 for example has account locked saves, you just are only able to restore them back to the same account. In your post above, I don't know how you define a system locked save. Perhaps it refers to MMO type games where your 'save' is on someone else's server.

[Corranga]

3 hours ago, Tezcatlipoca said:

 

Cloud saves are free on Xbox One.

 

That's probably an overhang from their "Xbox one will be the first always online" console days, when they announced, then reneged on quite possibly the stupidest console decision / announcement ever though.

 

1 hour ago, Simmy said:

 

Fair enough, shambles is perhaps a bit harsh. I'll just say that it does nothing of what I want from an online service. I want to catch up with friends in the evening over voice chat, get them all in a party and play together. I guess I've just been spoiled for the last 15-16 years with the introduction of Xbox Live. It's definitely plenty of time for Nintendo to have done something about it and caught up IMO.

 

I think you have.  Xbox live 15 or 16 years ago didn't offer most of what you've just said you want from an online service.  No online save backups, voice chat only in same game (and I have a feeling only in games that supported it) and on the online channel, no parties, no private chat...  Ok, I accept that from the 360 launch in 2005 it's been a lot better.

 

 

 

[Simmy]

Fair enough, the last 13 years then. My point being, Nintendo didn't have to reinvent the wheel for their online service - it's been tried and tested for years now.

[Bojangle]

1 hour ago, Flub said:

 

It's still shite.

 

It is shite, it’s because they’re not mandating it and saying games have to have it, same with their video capture option. They should do it the Sony and MS way and have it as a requirement or you won’t pass cert.

[Alexlotl]

So am I right that this is £18/$20/20EUR? Glad we've moved on from the "just change the currency symbol to get the UK price" model. In fact, it's basically the same as the US price + VAT.

 

£18 a year for cloud saves, online play and what sounds like it could become a sort of Virtual Console Netflix sounds good to me. Cheap enough to set and forget.

[Simmy]

Just saw this posted on Reddit

 

Quote

Wii - Let you backup locally

WiiU - Let you backup locally

3DS - Let you backup locally

PS3 - Let you backup locally in addition to paid cloud saves

PS4 - Let you backup locally in addition to paid cloud saves

PSP - Let you backup locally

Vita - Let you backup locally in addition to paid cloud saves

Xbox - Let you backup locally

Xbox 360 - Let you backup locally in addition to paid cloud saves

Xbox One - Let you backup locally in addition to FREE cloud saves

Steam/GOG/Origin: Let you back up locally in addition to FREE cloud saves.

 

I mean... There's really no excuse, is there?

[Captain Kelsten]

I imagine/hope the cloud saves not being available for every game thing is probably related to small indie games, not big first party ones. 

[rgraves]

Could you backup locally on NES? SNES? N64? GC? MD? PS1?

 

I'm just wondering at what point it suddenly became a feature that was inexcusable. I guess from when MS started offering it. That seems to have been the 'switch' - when nobody had it, nobody cared. Now some have it, everyone cares.

 

I'll be honest, even if I could manually backup my saves right now, I'm not sure I'd bother on anything like a useful cadence. I'm fucking lazy basically.

 

20 minutes ago, Simmy said:

I mean... There's really no excuse, is there?

 

Well yeah, their 'excuse' is clearly that they obviously see it as an attack-vector for hackers that they don't want to open up. It's burned them before. They have a reason, it's not something they are doing just out of 100% pure spite.

[Simmy]

3 minutes ago, rgraves said:

Could you backup locally on NES? SNES? N64? GC? MD? PS1?

 

I'm just wondering at what point it suddenly became a feature that was inexcusable. I guess from when MS started offering it. That seems to have been the 'switch' - when nobody had it, nobody cared. Now some have it, everyone cares.

 

I'll be honest, even if I could manually backup my saves right now, I'm not sure I'd bother on anything like a useful cadence. I'm fucking lazy basically.

 

Well none of those consoles were portable and I believe the saves were on the cartridges? Unlikely they'd be nicked etc.

[Simmy]

4 minutes ago, rgraves said:

Well yeah, their 'excuse' is clearly that they obviously see it as an attack-vector for hackers that they don't want to open up. It's burned them before. They have a reason, it's not something they are doing just out of 100% pure spite.

 

That ship has long since sailed.

 

Sorry I don't mean to be on a downer - I love my switch! But I think it's fair to be a bit critical in this situation.

[Wiper]

8 minutes ago, rgraves said:

Could you backup locally on NES? SNES? N64? GC? MD? PS1?

 

I'm just wondering at what point it suddenly became a feature that was inexcusable. I guess from when MS started offering it. That seems to have been the 'switch' - when nobody had it, nobody cared. Now some have it, everyone cares.

 

I'll be honest, even if I could manually backup my saves right now, I'm not sure I'd bother on anything like a useful cadence. I'm fucking lazy basically.

I mean, local backup was pretty obviously an option for the PS1 as it was the only way to save; memory cards weren't tied to the machine in any way. Only the Saturn had internal storage, and that still allowed backup to cart. Pre-that most console games had no save system, and those that did were inevitably tied to the cartridge, so not backupable, but also not tied to the console.

 

Since the PS1 I can't think of any system that didn't offer local backup (bar a handful of copy protected games and/or oversized saves on original Xbox). 

[rgraves]

10 minutes ago, Simmy said:

That ship has long since sailed.

 

Has it - I mean that's been the initial way in for virtually every hack on Nintendo machines over the last few generations hasn't it?

[Simmy]

2 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

Has it - I mean that's been the initial way in for virtually every hack on Nintendo machines over the last few generations hasn't it?

 

What I mean is, the current hack on Switch consoles is apparently so severe that it doesn't matter really what Nintendo do.

 

But if every other console can do local saves for the last 20+ years, including their very own last 2-3 generations, I think Nintendo can stretch to doing it for the switch too.

[Not Thread Owner]

The real reason they've not offered save backups on the Switch yet is because it was used as a modding attack vector on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS.

 

And PS1 and PS2 if you want.

 

See also YouTube.

[Flub]

1 minute ago, deKay said:

The real reason they've not offered save backups on the Switch yet is because it was used as a modding attack vector on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS.

 

And PS1 and PS2 if you want.

 

See also YouTube.

 

I can understand their reasoning but frankly it's still shite.