Hyperbole much? 78 metacritic is universally panned? In what universe?
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Kinda crazy that Switch didn't get any major AAA third parties for launch........
- Thread starter Mikey Jr.
- Start date
Hyperbole much? 78 metacritic is universally panned? In what universe?
Rainbow Six Seige, and Titanfall 2 would've been better if pointer controls were implemented. I won't bother including Overwatch because Blizzard has made their stance clear about not supporting superior control schemes on consoles.
When the Wii U launched, there was a lot of optimism regarding its future third party support. The Wii was a huge success before it, there were several high profile titles in the launch lineup from big publishers such as CoD, Assassins creed, and even an exclusive third party title, ZombiU. Nintendo had a head start on their competitors, Iwata was making his annual "we have learned our lessons well and will avoid draughts" remarks, and this picture was usually attached as a response to doubters:
It was a fairly promising start, and that yet it turned out to be the one of Nintendos biggest flops ever. This time around, they are launching with 4 games total, 3 of them being completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Its really quite astounding if you factor in all the missing features and the fact that they are launching mid-gen against competitors who offer an incomparably larger catalogue of games on stronger and cheaper hardware. Im not sure exactly how Nintendo will turn it around and start attracting third party devs again, but I very much doubt it will happen during this generation.
It was a fairly promising start, and that yet it turned out to be the one of Nintendos biggest flops ever. This time around, they are launching with 4 games total, 3 of them being completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Its really quite astounding if you factor in all the missing features and the fact that they are launching mid-gen against competitors who offer an incomparably larger catalogue of games on stronger and cheaper hardware. Im not sure exactly how Nintendo will turn it around and start attracting third party devs again, but I very much doubt it will happen during this generation.
Quality post. I've been saying Wii U had a better launch than the Switch. I bought one day 1 because I believed in the potential it had to attract third party support.When the Wii U launched, there was a lot of optimism regarding its future third party support. The Wii was a huge success before it, there were several high profile titles in the launch lineup from big publishers such as CoD, Assassins creed, and even an exclusive third party title, ZombiU. Nintendo had a head start on their competitors, Iwata was making his annual "we have learned our lessons well and will avoid draughts" remarks, and this picture was usually attached as a response to doubters:
It was a fairly promising start, and that yet it turned out to be the one of Nintendos biggest flops ever. This time around, they are launching with 4 games total, 3 of them being completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Its really quite astounding if you factor in all the missing features and the fact that they are launching mid-gen against competitors who offer an incomparably larger catalogue of games on stronger and cheaper hardware. Im not sure exactly how Nintendo will turn it around and start attracting third party devs again, but I very much doubt it will happen during this generation.
SporeCrawler
Member
the online sure is. and 78 metacritic was not even AA a few years back. now some games just get a BYE because they are made by publisher X
Meta critic score does not determine if a game is AAA or not.
SporeCrawler
Member
yes and no. wiiu had better third party support but the first party games were lackluster in comparison (hey I love NSMBU but its no comparison to BOTW). the biggest problem was the line up after the first holiday. if nintendo had DKCTF, Pikmin3 and Mario Kart 8 in Q12013 the WiiU would have sold very differently
it certainly did in the past. but the term is now confusing as hell. it seems to indicate quality but in truth it just indicates heritage.
AAA of past was a more objective term.
i am sure zelda probably does not qualify as AAA to many
AAA is just a moniker for retail game with perceived high production values (as in complex 3d graphics, etc) and from a big publisher. Its got nothing to do with how good the game is.
What The Forest Taught Me
Member
Same here. How utterly wrong I turned out to be...
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Doom on the Switch would be amazing. I've almost bought a Xbox One so many times to play it.
And then the self defeating prophesy comes to pass, devs wait, shit all gets released for it, console doesn't sell because there's only Nintendo games on the system, devs are justified in bypassing the console altogether without ever dipping their toes and Nintendo is fucked.
Don't think I have heard of using metacritic to define what is AAA or not. It has always been about the budget + resources allocated to the project, nothing else.
PdotMichael
Banned
WiiU had better support because it could get some the last generation of games designed for the PS3/Xbox 360 generation.
The PS3/Xbox 360 support doesn't exist anymore, many Japanese devs also don't make VITA/PS4 cross-gen games anymore and getting PS4 ports aren't that easy because of the large gap between the two systems.
The PS3/Xbox 360 support doesn't exist anymore, many Japanese devs also don't make VITA/PS4 cross-gen games anymore and getting PS4 ports aren't that easy because of the large gap between the two systems.
DragonGirl
Member
The reason being cost. AAA does not refer to quality. AAA refers to how much money the game cost to make and promote. Big budget games are called AAA regardless of whether they are good or suck eggs.
SporeCrawler
Member
AAA was a term about quality before the HD era and only used in gaming forums. than publishers picked it up as a marketing line and thats where the lines started to blur.
so where is the exact line that makes a game AAA? most publishers dont even disclose their budgets on games, so how do we even know? also there are many games that have a big budget but fall short in terms of quality why are those more important than gaes with lower budget but higher quality.
so in other words they dont matter. only good games matter for consumers and not money that got into the games to produce them.
AAA was a marketing term to begin with. It denotes a game with a large development budget and a large marketing budget. Any other associations about quality don't have anything to do with what the term actually refers to.
While we may not know exactly what the budget of a particular game is, it's not hard to figure out that a game like Horizon Zero Dawn costs a lot more to make, and is more heavily marketed than a game like Nier: Automata. Think of them as the gaming equivalent of blockbuster films. The only question marks that come up are in relation to Nintendo's own games, but it's pretty safe to say that the vast majority of those aren't going to be AAA titles.
It's not like I wouldn't like to have the option to buy those games, but I can see why they didn't do that. It was a catastrophic failure to launch with ports of games everyone had already bought on the Wii U.
RE7 would have been late, even if Nintendo and RE fit pretty well. Forgot about ME and GR. I guess you're right.
I mean, one is EA and they failed with ME on the Wii U. And I also don't expect any serious effort from them until the console has proven successful for other 3rd parties, but your point still stands of course.
GR - Online Heavy Coop Open World game. No idea if that would have been possible at launch without the online service and without having fixed hardware until late in the game. It's possibly not as scalable as something like Tomb Raider or Titanfall.
That said. You're right. There certainly could have been a AAA 3rd party heavy hitter.
The Wii U launched with over 20 games most of them third party.
Power matters A LOT in the sense that power brings in a certain audience and that audience buys a fuck tonne of games and consoles, those games being the sorts of games the big AAA publishers want to sell.
Nintendo has shown all along that they want to make consoles for their games first and third parties can come along if they want. This works out when what Nintendo sells is what some new, undiscovered audience is waiting for (Wii) but fails almost every other time.
And I am asking about consoles here because that's the sort of games the big AAA pubs sell.
All those PS4 and Xbone launch games you mentioned were conversions of 360 and PS3 games. There were absolutely no compelling exclusive launch games for those consoles.
I'd even argue that Zelda is arguably one of the greatest launch games of all times looking at Metacritic scores.
The lack of any sort of "AAA" presence outside of publishers like Ubisoft with Just Dance and Activision with Skylander seems to confirm to me that this is a soft launch, especially since Ubisoft's whole MO is to get a bunch of content at every launch. If even Ubisoft is holding back on easy ports, it leads me to believe this is in the plan and Nintendo is working with bigger publishers to start bringing content at the right time. I believe Ubisoft was one of the first publishers who were told about the system and Capcom recently confirmed that they were in contact with Nintendo during development of the system and gave feedback so to think publishers like that didn't have more in development from very early on is bizarre to say the least.
That doesn't necessarily mean there is a huge amount of content that Nintendo is forcing them to hold back, but that they are working with them to prep for a bigger push, possibly for the holidays, which will not just be a crucial time for the system but a big period to move games for the system.
That doesn't necessarily mean there is a huge amount of content that Nintendo is forcing them to hold back, but that they are working with them to prep for a bigger push, possibly for the holidays, which will not just be a crucial time for the system but a big period to move games for the system.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Budget.
Also, the game is selling really well by all reports.
Quality is not a factor with "AAA" since it's a marketing term used to determine he amount of financial support a game is given.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
AAA has nothing to do with content. It's a AAA game, end of story.
Doesn't matter. Those games were some of THE biggest launches of that year, and likely what sold millions of those initial XB1 and PS4 units. They're also all bigger than Zelda and have more pull with the average gamer, which is what this is about.
This. People can trick themselves into thinking that power isn't a factor but it absolutely is and will always be. Just the fact that the Switch doesn't even stack up to the Xbox One power-wise cancels out a lot of potential third-party software.
At that point there were some large installed bases of other consoles with a similar level of performance and so there was a potential for ports (Which they got at the start). It fell apart for various reasons but Switch hasn't got that - the incumbents are still FAR FAR more powerful and therefore the games have higher expectations regarding performance and gamers who have those consoles won't really consider a Switch as their next thing.
Could be. However there are 2 issues with his reasoning
1. Target Resolution
The Switch is underpowered no question. However Rendering games at 4K or even 1080p requires considerablely more resources then rendering at 720p or 540p (1080 checkerboard) both of which are comfortably accepted by "gamers" on the Xbox One and PS4 have been deemed acceptible
2. Xbox one support
Even if Scorpio is a fully next gen machine. Microsoft and 3rd parties will likely support the Xbox one for another 18 months as a cross gen platform. That would mean that the Switch would have 18 months before a hardware revision with a better CPU was required (it could use a better GPU now)
Now that's funny.
IsntChrisL
Member
I think part of it comes down to being released in March. Most big games come out at the end of the year. I think we'll see a few major franchises announced at E3 this year.
Ninja Scooter
Member
And how well did those games (and that console) do? Would that not lead to publishers being a little cautious? Nintendo is going to need to prove that their is a legit audience for those games first before publishers are going to jump on board en masse.
The publishers have figured out that there's no point in releasing AAA games on a secondary platform and that's exactly where Nintendo positioned the Switch. As such, they're probably not going to budge until Nintendo demonstrates that there's an audience for such titles. Since Nintendo is going to do no such thing, the prospects for AAA games on the Switch are very bleak.
They are all bigger than Zelda in what way? Zelda is a system seller and one of the most popular franchises of all time in the industry.
Agreed but all I need it to do is sell just enough to keep Nintendo in the hardware business. Hopefully they find a comfortable niche to sell to for all eternity lol.
That's the point. Having loads of third party content at launch did not help Wii U one bit.
The best selling Nintendo platforms had fewer games at launch. Like the SNES and Wii.
In addition to what v1oz asked you you're out of your mind that Zelda doesn't require a large team to be made. Even more so with BOTW.
Breath of the Wild is a big game, but Zelda in general is not as big as titles like Call of Duty and FIFA.
I think that Breath of the Wild is the first Zelda game to be definitely considered an AAA title. Some of the older games were borderline cases at best.
Ninja Scooter
Member
No it's not. AAA was a marketing/publishing term that was adapted by enthusiasts when discussing games (much like 2nd party, or "killer app"). It's always referred to a big budget game that gets big financial backing from the publisher (i.e. they think it's going to sell a shit load). For Honor is a AAA game because a major publisher like Ubi Soft spent a lot of resources developing and marketing it. You are right we don't know exactly what it's budget was, but anybody with a lick of sense can tell they've put a huge marketing push behind it.
Huh? lol...
Caffeine
Member
most big titles that dont have memory issues (it has 4GBs) but that can be worked around on some titles/engines probably wont hit till fall 2018. like a treyarch call of duty. I think the dev kits were dispersed fairly late tbh for anything substantial this fall.
sure the games wont be the best versions, but they have a lot of titles that have never been portable can now be going for them.
sure the games wont be the best versions, but they have a lot of titles that have never been portable can now be going for them.
GabeTheGrouch76
Member
If you know Nintendo's overall history of third-party relations, hardware, and demographics over the past two decades; it's hardly anywhere near crazy.
Couldn't Nintendo have paid some good money x2 for two high quality third party launch titles?
Especially considering the possibilities of these accessory sales. Didn't they buy that manufacturing company last year? Could this be a reason why they are releasing so many nuanced accessories for Switch?
Especially considering the possibilities of these accessory sales. Didn't they buy that manufacturing company last year? Could this be a reason why they are releasing so many nuanced accessories for Switch?
The AAA term has exactly zero to do with the quality of the game. And For Honor wasn't "panned" and I don't see why having a "barebones singleplayer" is a issue. It's a damn multiplayer game that is 100% designed for multiplayer. Shouldn'teven have a single player to begin with tbh.
... but it does matter in this particular case? Not having good games that cost a lot absolutely hurts the platform. You're having access to less good games.
PdotMichael
Banned
Looking how they pushed Skyrim in the Fall presentation and nothing happened. It's more likely that third parties just don't care.