Oculus Quest, revisited

It probably didn't surprise you that I wasn't impressed with the Oculus Quest. I was listening to the Dad & Sons Podcast on the weekend, though, and they collectively came up with a counter-argument to my initial skepticism, which basically boiled down to a couple of points:

1. Facebook/Oculus are selling this as basically a VR game console, meaning that its US$400 price tag, with two VR controllers included, is in pretty much in line with their intended competition.
2. People who weren't interested in Oculus' Go or Rift products might just be interested in a US$400 VR gaming console, especially since it won't require them to pay for expensive PC upgrades anymore while still providing acceptable performance.

That got me thinking. The argument still felt wrong to me, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. I found myself mulling it over on the bus yesterday, though, and I think I've figured out exactly what my objections are.

As I see it, in order for FB/Oculus' latest product to succeed, it needs to clear all of the following hurdles.

Checking in with Nintendo Switch

In spite of Nintendo Switch's really good sales last year, I'm on record as being skeptical about the system's "legs." Sure, the system surged ahead in the holiday quarter of 2017, but they still didn't manage to out-sell the console sales leading PS4, and 2018 was off to a slow start. A lacklustre showing at E3 seemed unlikely to help, either, taking the wind out of the Switch's sales at a time when Nintendo should have been doubling down on their 2017 success.

Which is why I'm not particularly surprised to learn that the Switch's last-quarter sales are down compared to the same period of last year, as reported by GameSpot:

Nintendo has shared its financial earnings for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, and the Nintendo Switch continues to perform well. The company reports it has sold another 1.88 million Switch consoles worldwide during the period from April through June, bringing the system's total sales up to 19.6 million.

While that represents a slight decrease in Switch hardware sales from the same period last year (down 4.4% year-on-year), software sales grew by more than 120% year-on-year, with 17.96 million units sold during the quarter. Digital sales of packaged Switch games and DLC also grew by 68% from the same period last year.

This is noteworthy for a couple of reasons.

Creativity is officially dead and so is VR

I must have gone to bathroom, or something, when this bit popped up during Sony's E3 event last week:

It's a very pretty video, with very pretty music, and it takes just over two minutes (2:10, to be precise) before actually fading into any gameplay from the game itself. And yes, it's Tetris. Like, literally, just Tetris but with Tron's aesthetics.

According to the game's Wikipedia entry, Tetris Effect has been in development for 6 years. It took them 6 years to add Tron's glowy graphic style to the now-34-years-young Tetris. Oh, and a pause button, or "an all-new Zone mechanic that allows players to stop time," as it's gushingly called by UploadVR.

Available soon on Windows, PS4, and PSVR, Tetris Effect should be all the proof you need that creativity is dead. They spent six years making a VR version of Tetris, in an environment where you can't turn around and spit without hitting a free version of Tetris, and thirty four years after Tetris was first released. In thirty-four years, nobody has succeeded in adding anything of worth or note to the gameplay of Tetris, and I don't expect that Tetris Effect will succeed where everyone else has failed.

The fact that this utter failure of creativity features prominently on UploadVR's list of E3's Biggest VR Announcements should tell you everything you need to know about the state of VR, right now.

More wrong than right: Nintendo @ E3 2018

Polygon has a pretty decent breakdown of what Nintendo did right, and wrong, during their E3 Nintendo Direct, so let's use that to frame our discussion, shall we?

Right: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveal

OK, but seriously, you get every character! This Super Smash Bros. release comes with a wealth of content, which makes sense considering it’s basically an expanded re-release of the Wii U Super Smash Bros. It’s unlikely that fans are going to care, however. This feels like a feast. [...] All these characters, all these stages, all this content. The demos and announcements went on and on for this game, and it was all good news about the title. This is going to sell the Nintendo Switch, no questions.

Agree. Not to my taste, but that's fine. The Nintendo Switch has been all about recycling older (but still very good) content, so the fact that they're upgrading a Wii U game is not a surprise.

Right: Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is already a social system, so having party games that take advantage of players who have access to multiple system is a smart move. This is another example of how the inventive design of the Nintendo Switch helps Nintendo offer experiences that aren’t possible on any other console.

Disagree. The Nintendo Switch has sold very well, yes, but releasing a game whose major feature requires other people that you know to also have bought the same expensive game system feels like hubris to me. It's not all that inventive, either; Nintendo ported this functionality to the Switch from their DS line of handhelds, which means that it's really just more recycling.

Right: The voice chat and online features of Fortnite

There’s a lot to be happy about when it comes to Nintendo’s “surprise” launch of Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch today, but one of the more interesting details is the fact that you can use any standard 3.5 mm headset for online voice chat, which is a feature that no other game offers on the system, as far as we can tell. This makes chatting with your team much easier — remember, Nintendo’s official solution is a phone app that leaves much to be desired — and is something that should be offered in more games.

Disagree. Yes, it's nice that Fortnite gets this functionality, but why doesn't anyone else? Nintendo's hardware clearly supports it. This just throws a white hot spotlight on one of the Switch's glaring shortcomings.

So, if that's what Nintendo did right, and most of it's not necessarily all that right, what did they get wrong?

One year later: Nintendo Switch

Like a lot of people, I was rather underwhelmed by Nintendo's reveal of the Nintendo Switch.

It was clear why Nintendo was focusing on a handheld device as its future, of course, but I wasn't convinced that it would take off. I wasn't impressed by the unit itself, or its advertising campaign, and I wasn't convinced that a console/handheld hybrid would sell to anyone other to Nintendo's hard-core faithful, with PC apparently eclipsing every console except the PS4 and handheld gaming losing out to smartphones. And so, naturally, Nintendo's Switch went on to break all the records.

In spite of that record-breaking debut year, however, there are a few dark clouds on Switch's horizon, and I'm still far from convinced that the Switch is destined to be the best-selling console of this console generation. Here's why:

And the award for fastest-selling video game console in US history goes to...

It's the Nintendo Switch. Of course it's the Switch.

As reported by TechRadar:

Once upon a time there were pundits who thought the Nintendo Switch was going to be a dud, because – after all – what would be the appeal of a portable home console in this age of smartphones and iPads?

Turns out, they were very, very wrong. Today Nintendo announced that the Switch is the fastest-selling home video game console in US history, soundly thrashing the previous record held by Nintendo's own Wii console. Within 10 months, 4.8 million Switch units were sold compared to the 4 million moved by the Wii.

[...]

It's an impressive start for a console that still doesn't have a dedicated online service or even a way to store game save files in the cloud. 

Yet the Switch, in many ways, has reminded audiences (and developers) that game players seek fun above all else, which is an important lesson at a time when competing consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro are focusing heavily on graphics.

The Switch is almost laughably far from the impressive specs of those devices, but that graphical power doesn't seem as necessary when you realize you're playing Skyrim on the Switch while in the back seat on a road trip.

The Switch's blockbuster year has some trying to suss out exactly why it's doing so well, as in this piece from Polygon (their first reason: it has no competition, being the only console/handhold hybrid system on the market), and others wondering if Nintendo can keep the momentum going (the lack of 64GB cartridges until 2019, combined with a lack of onboard storage space, having been flagged as potential problems for the coming year), but there's no doubt that the Switch is a success, and will be around for a long, long time.

Now, if only there were a handheld that let me access my Steam backlog collection while on the go. That is something that I'd pay good money for; sadly, the only thing currently in the pipeline that would quality is SMACH Z, which is looking more and more like vaporware.

Nintendo Switch scores 10 million sold

As any regular reader of this blog knows (yes, all two of you, ☺), I did not think that Nintendo would pull this off.

After a whole year of production and supply-chain problems, and with no clear or specific indications from Nintendo themselves that they'd actually solved those problems in time to capitalize on the busy holiday shopping season (their CEO recently responded to questions about this XMas' Switch supplies by talking up their plans for the 1st quarter of next year, for fuck's sake), and with them only sitting at 7 millions sold by the end of October, I really didn't think they'd sell another 3 million units by the end of December, a pace which was 3.42 times faster than the 875K per month that they'd averaged all year to that point.

And, guess what? They didn't do 3M more in sales by the end of December.

They did it by the end of November.

As reported by Erie News Now (who got the story from CNNMoney):

Nintendo just confirmed what we already knew: its hybrid gaming system is a hit.

The company said on Tuesday the Nintendo Switch -- one part mobile, one part home console -- has sold 10 million units since its March 2017 launch.

The announcement comes less than two months after Nintendo increased its fiscal-year projection, ending March 31, 2018, from 10 million to 14 million units sold. Nintendo expects operating profit for the year to hit $1.06 billion, up from its original projection of $572 million.[...] By contrast, the Wii U sold just over 13 million units since its 2012 launch, before it was discontinued earlier this year.

It would seem that there were plenty of Nintendo Switches available for sale on Black Friday, after all, and that basically all of them were indeed sold. Even if this recent number is slightly padded, and even if there aren't a lot of Switches left to sell for the rest of the month (something I wouldn't bet on, anymore, BTW), it's now entirely possible for Nintendo to exit 2017 on a solid pace to hit their end of March target, after all.

With their 2DS line, the NES Classic, and the SNES Classic also selling really well, there's just no doubt about it: Nintendo are having a hell of a year, and their big gamble on the Nintendo Switch really has paid off, in a way which should be sustainable long-term. The fact that they're now seeing some solid third-party exclusive releases for the Switch, like the recently-announced Bayonetta 3, cements the situation for them. No wonder Sony finally decided to take the Switch seriously, in the form of some serious price cuts to their PS4, PS4 Pro, and PSVR.

So, congratulations, Nintendo! You've pitched me a strike already, and we're not even close to the end of the year yet.

Prognostication Scorecard: 1-1-4

One right, one wrong, with 4 as yet To Be Determined.

Nintendo Switch Prediction: 

• The Switch may move another million or so units over the holidays, but it won't hit the 10 million mark by the end of December, and will fall well short of Nintendo's 15-million-by-March target. WRONG! (See above.)

PS4 & XBOX Predictions: 

• Sony will try harder, now that they have a PlayStation head who isn't retiring, although exactly what a Cloud-based PS4 will look like, or how Sony chose to react to the challenge from Nintendo, if at all, remain to be seen. RIGHT! Price cuts count as trying harder. Cloud-based PS4 offerings are still pretty fucking vague.
• PSN/Steam crossplay is a possibility here, especially in light of Valve's recently-announced trust-based CS:GO matchmaking system -- House was against crossplay, but Kodera might change course. TBD. We might not know this one until the end of 2018.
• Microsoft simply didn't get the XBO-X to market in time; it will sell well enough this holiday season, but not well enough for them to gain ground on Sony, and Nintendo's Switch will outsell their XBOX throughout the coming year. They'll still end 2018 as the #2 console, but not by much. TBD. XBOX seems to be selling well enough, but no numbers yet.

VR Prediction: 

• No developments for at least three months, if then. VR will continue to not be a thing. TBD. We might not know the outcome of this one until the end of March.

Windows 10 Prediction: 

• No big developments for at least three months here, either. TBD. NMS's recently revamped numbers look slightly better for Windows 10, but don't show a huge swing yet.

No, VR headsets did not top 1 million units in sales last quarter.

One very convenient thing about the Nintendo Switch's year so far has been the way its total units sold have matched its total units shipped. Because Nintendo have had no end of trouble ramping up production to meet demand, the Switch has been selling out everywhere all year long, which means that the numbers of units shipped is more or less equal to the number of units sold; you don't need to parse reported numbers for the Switch to figure out whether you're talking about sales, or just about production.

The same is not true of other consumer products, which normally ship more units than they sell in a quarter (the current quarter, i.e. October through December, is when these numbers normally reverse themselves, with far more units selling than shipping). This confusion, between shipments and sales, may be why we're seeing these two stories "breaking" at exactly the same time:

VG247: "VR headsets topped 1 million sales last quarter for the first time"

VentureBeat: "VR headsets pass 1 million shipments for the first time in a single quarter"

1 Million VR headsets shipped does not equal 1 million headsets sold. Sorry, VG247, but you're wrong, and VentureBeat is right:

While the debate about whether virtual reality is just some oversold hype rages on, the nascent industry can at least boast of having crossed an important milestone.

According to a report from Canalys today, one million virtual reality headsets shipped in the three months ending September 30. This was the first time the gadgets had topped this mark in a single quarter.

[...]

During the third quarter, Sony was the market share leader, with shipments of 490,000 PlayStation VR (PS VR) sets. Facebook’s Oculus was number two with 210,000 Rift headsets shipped. HTC came in third, with 160,000 Vive VR headsets. Those three companies are dominating, accounting for 86 percent of the VR headset market share in Q3.

Interestingly, none of the Microsoft/Windows 10 "Mixed Reality" headset manufacturers are on this list; the increase in units shipped is all from the existing three players in the space, i.e. Sony, HTC, and Oculus. Canalys credits the past summer's Oculus Rift fire sale (coupled with HTC's deep discounts) with making this possible, but remember that these are shipments of VR headsets, not sales. The fact that companies are shipping more headsets would be a solid indicator of those manufacturers' optimism about the prospect for selling them, of course, but the sales haven't happened yet, and it's far from certain that they will, given that there have been no other indicators so far of increased consumer interest in VR.

It also has to be said that 1 million units shipped in a quarter is pretty pathetic performance for a VR industry that was projected to be selling that many units each month by now. We'll see if the sales materialize, but I recommend waiting for those numbers to actually happen before popping the cork on the champagne bottles. Shipping inventory which will gather dust on shelves before needing to be cleared out at deep discounts, which is what Oculus just did with the Rift, is probably not the VR success story that the industry is hoping for.

Prognostication

December is coming... and with it, what is (traditionally) a slow time for news.

In a normal year, everything that will be announced this year has been announced by now; results for this quarter won't be known until January, so there are no meaningful numbers to analyze; and everyone in the news business is only weeks away from the annual crop of year-end top story roundup articles, which normally hit just before everyone goes on holiday for a couple of weeks.

As such, I wouldn't normally be expecting to have too many new developments to blog about for the rest of the year. Of course, 2017 hasn't been a normal year, and it's always possible that the fast-evolving gacha/loot box story will continue to have legs, but I'm guessing that now's a pretty safe time to make a few predictions before taking a bit of a break myself.

So... prediction time! At least regarding the topics that this blog has mostly been about for the last couple of years.

VR:

Let's start with a nice, quick one.

Having languished all year long, VR will continue to sell poorly this XMas season. Thanks to HTC's just-announced Vive Focus, the Microsoft-backed Mixed Reality headsets have managed to be obsolete before properly hitting the market, and the original Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR are all basically dinosaurs now...  and it's not like consumers were all that interested in them before. Sales of VR should continue at this same poor level, with no new major announcements or releases until the new year at the earliest. [UPDATE: June 17th, 2018: RIGHT!] E3 has just happened, with nothing of note being announced for VR, in either hardware or software. Oculus Go's release has had no measurable effect, either.


Prediction: No developments for at least three months, if then. VR will continue to not be a thing.

Windows 10:

November and December are a high-volume time of year for most businesses, when disruptive system-wide OS rollouts are generally considered to be a bad idea; many companies don't even allow new system launches after the end of October (my employer deployed a new order-tracking and -fulfillment system on October 30th, and are coming to rather regret that decision). Basically, this means no new Windows 10 deployments for the rest of the calendar year, and this no Enterprise-driven shift away from Windows 7/Server 2008.

New deployments won't be happening at any brisk pace to start the new year, either, as companies come to realize that keeping pace with Microsoft's overly-aggressive update schedule is simply too difficult and too costly - the Windows-as-a-Service model has some serious problems that Microsoft badly need to solve. January is also not normally a big season for major system changes; many companies have synced their fiscal calendars to the taxation year, which means that the end of the year is also the end of their fiscal year, so January is normally spent on year-end book-keeping -- again, not normally a good time for a disruptive, company-wide new OS rollout.

Individual users won't be migrating to Windows 10 en masse, either. PC sales have been declining steadily for years, so I don't expect to see a wave of XMas PC purchases this year, and users with older PCs have made it very clear that they have no intention of switching unless and until they absolutely have to.

Add one and one and one, and you get no major shifts in the OS market until next February, at the earliest... which mean no big change in NetMarketShare et al's reported statistics until the first of March. Any changes that happen will be marginal, and Windows 10 won't overtake Windows 7 until next year, no matter how badly tech media bloggers want it to happen. The real test will be the period from next March to next November; if Windows 10 is going to take off, it will have to be then, when big companies with fresh budgets can do deployments with the least amount of disruption. If it doesn't happen then, it won't happen until closer to Windows 7's end-of-life in 2020.

Prediction: No big developments for at least three months here, either. [UPDATE: June 17th, 2018: RIGHT!] Or, mostly right, anyway. Microsoft parted ways with the former head of their Windows and Devices division, and broke that division up across the company, which means that they've abandoned their Windows-focused strategy entirely. The fact that this was necessary says all that needs to be said about the strategy itself; even Microsoft finally gave up hoping that it would start producing results. That OS market is still not shifting significantly, with Microsoft themselves no longer expecting that to change, confirms my prediction.

Nintendo Switch:

There's no doubt that Nintendo's having their best year in a long time, but the Switch's first year hasn't been without its problems... chief among them, of course, being the production issues which prevented Nintendo from meeting any of their production milestones, as far as anyone can tell. In a recent presentation to shareholders, Nintendo's CEO answered questions about whether Nintendo would have enough units in stores for the upcoming XMas season by talking about the quarter after that... never a good sign.

I read that as Nintendo not having nearly enough units in stores to sell this season, which is a problem since the period from Black Friday to Boxing Day is when most retailers (in NA, anyway) post up to 50% of their year's sales (October to December can be up to 70% for some retailers). Failing to have enough units in stores at this time of year is a huge misstep, one which Nintendo will not recover from until well after the post-holiday hangover -- consumers normally don't spend much in January or February, with sales not picking up again until March.

Nintendo, of course, were bullishly predicting that they'd hit 15 million units sold by March, but there are a lot of assumptions that seem to underlie that prediction, including the pace of sales remaining more or less constant in spite of supply problems at a critical point in the year, and the traditional early-year sales slowdown. Nintendo are also assuming that every Nintendo household will be buying multiple Switches, something which seems like an unrealistic expectation.

Of course, the Nintendo Switch could become a full-blown craze, just like the original Wii did, but events like that are incredibly rare, and most companies only ever get one of them. The Wii became a craze because it appealed to people who'd never gamed before, in the same way that the PS2 became the best-selling console of all time by also being the cheapest DVD player on the market when it launched; there's no evidence yet that the Switch appeals to anyone except early adopters, longtime Nintendo fans, and core gamers who spend a lot of time travelling and who are willing to buy their favourite games a second time in order to have a version to take with them.

The Switch boasts only two games with real system-selling potential, and both of them are aimed at long-time Nintendo fans who were always going to buy the Switch, anyway; if you're not a long-time Zelda or Mario fan, the platform doesn't have much to offer except the opportunity to spend more than retail (because cartridges, for fuck's sake) buying games for a 2nd time that you either already own, or can buy more cheaply on Steam without incurring several hundred dollars of additional expense. And since Nintendo's gaming handhelds have declined in popularity every year since 2009, largely replaced by the smartphone for most users... well, suffice to say that I think a full-blown craze is unlikely.

The Switch will almost certainly outsell the WiiU, but that's a low bar to clear, frankly. If the Switch is still selling 2 million units a month after it passes the 20 million mark, I'll concede that it's remarkable launch has strong enough legs to keep running; until then, I will continue to regard Nintendo's plans to double production, and then double it again, to be just so much PR bullshit -- statements aimed more at their shareholders than anything else. The Switch is probably here to stay for a while, and will certainly avoid the ignominious fate that claimed the WiiU, but it won't be equalling, let alone surpassing, the PS4's market share anytime soon. And they won't be launching in China, either, no matter how badly analysts want it to happen.

Prediction: The Switch may move another million or so units over the holidays, but it won't hit the 10 million mark by the end of December, and will fall well short of Nintendo's 15-million-by-March target. [UPDATE: December 12th, 2017: WRONG!]

PlayStation & XBox (or, XBO-X):

Sony began 2017 with a commanding position in the console gaming market. Although Steam was still dominant on PC, and had more than twice as many installed users as PS4, Sony still had 53.4 million PS4 users worldwide, and was projecting 18 million more over the course of the year; they had the best-selling non-smartphone VR headset on the market; they had pushed their updated PS4 Pro console out a full year ahead of Microsoft's Scorpio; and they had successfully crushed Nintendo's WiiU, which had launched poorly, sold worse, and finally gone out of production. Sony were winning; all they had to do, to keep winning, was keep their collective foot on the gas.

And so, naturally, they decided to spend the year coasting, instead.

Sony coasted while Nintendo announced, and launched, the Nintendo Switch, a handheld/console hybrid that outsold all other consoles combined last month, at least in the U.S., in spite of persistent supply issues; apparently still stinging from the failure of PS Vita, Sony have no plans to contest the handheld gaming space with an updated machine of their own. Sony coasted while Microsoft announced one consumer-friendly initiative after another, from Play Anywhere to backwards compatibility to cross-play, something on which Sony are still dragging their feet; they kept coasting while Microsoft debuted the XBox One X, the "most powerful gaming console ever made," which can actually outpower and outperform the PS4 Pro -- thus giving Microsoft the hardware performance edge, for the first time this console generation.

With all this coasting, one might be forgiven for thinking that the people in charge of Sony's PlayStation division had basically stopped caring... mainly because that was pretty much what had happened. Even though I'd never heard his name before this year, I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Andrew House, the head of Sony's PlayStation department, was retiring; the whole of Sony's past year felt like the work of someone playing out the string until they could finally retire and spend the rest of their time bass fishing. Sony's gaming division lost a lot of momentum in 2017.

Whether they can regain that momentum in 2018 in anyone's guess. Sony's new PlayStation head, John Kodera, plans to take Sony's gaming efforts into the cloud, a strategy which aligns well with general trends in the videogame industry, while also being something that the Nintendo Switch's damn-it-all cartridges and tiny onboard storage seem poorly positioned to do. Whether they also decide to update the PS Vita with a new, cloud-powered version remains to be seen, but it's almost certain that the PS4 will get another hardware upgrade, the name of which will also be stupid. Sony is still the dominant player in console gaming, with the PlayStation 4 sitting at 64.9 million sold worldwide (compared to the XBox One's 31.25 million, and Nintendo Switch's 7.02 million), and will continue to occupy the #1 spot for a while, but they'll need to work harder to stay on top.

Microsoft, meanwhile, will continue trying to make XBox Live relevant to PC gamers who mostly game on Steam, while pushing 4K gaming to consumers who mostly doesn't own or want 4K televisions. The XBox One X (or XBO-X) will sell well, because it's new and in stock during the XMas shopping season, but it's really only appealing to people that already own 4K TVs and are also already invested in the XBL ecosystem, which may not be as many people as Microsoft thinks it is. With Play Anywhere equalling the end of actual exclusive XBox One games (anything released for XBox is also released for Windows by default), the only remaining move is for Microsoft to (a) ramp up in-house game development, to try to make the XBL/Microsoft Store look like a more inviting place to buy games, and (b) push the development of Mixed Reality gaming. The first will yield no results at all next year, since games take years to develop, and the second will yield no results at all, period, because VR (see above).

Predictions: Sony will try harder, now that they have a PlayStation head who isn't retiring, although exactly what a Cloud-based PS4 will look like, or how Sony chose to react to the challenge from Nintendo, if at all, remain to be seen. [UPDATE: December 8th, 2017: RIGHT!] PSN/Steam crossplay is a possibility here, especially in light of Valve's recently-announced trust-based CS:GO matchmaking system -- House was against crossplay, but Kodera might change course. For their part, Microsoft simply didn't get the XBO-X to market in time; it will sell well enough this holiday season, but not well enough for them to gain ground on Sony, and Nintendo's Switch will outsell their XBOX throughout the coming year. They'll still end 2018 as the #2 console, but not by much.

Somewhat unexpected:

Wow. If you'd told at the start of this year that I'd end it having more to say about the Nintendo Switch than about Windows 10, I'd have said you were crazy, but here we are. I guess Nintendo's comeback console is just much more interesting than anything Microsoft is doing, these days.

Which goes to show the value of prognostications: more often than not, they're wrong. They're still fun, though, and worth writing down -- after all, a prediction that you can later deny having made is kind of cowardly. I'll still check in from time to time, and blog about anything that does catch my eye, including the normal OS market share check-ins on December 1st and January 1st, but that should be about it for the year. No best-of, worst-of, or top-story roundup lists here!

Unless of course, something of interest does happen. And with a year like the one we've been having, it honestly wouldn't fucking surprise me.

They're not going to make it...

Back in July, when Nintendo Switch pre-orders were selling out instantly, and supply of the units was obviously an issue, the company was sounding confident that solutions were imminent, and that there would be plenty of Switches in stores for the busy XMas shopping season. "To take advantage of this favourable momentum, we will continue to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period, which has been factored into our forecast of shipping 10 million units globally by the end of this fiscal year," was what they were saying to DigitalSpy at the time.

By September, that had changed, with Reggie Fils-Aimé transitioning the company's message from confidently predicting amply XMas supply, to cautiously explaining to the Financial Times why that wasn't going to happen:

Nintendo’s US chief has warned Switch customers to prepare for potential disappointment this Christmas, as demand for its hit games console continues to exceed supply.

Since the Switch launched in March, the hybrid console — it can be used as a handheld device on its own or plugged into a television at home — has been selling out almost as soon as new stock arrives in stores around the world.

In Nintendo’s domestic market of Japan, the shortages have been especially acute, with new machines being sold by lottery or changing hands on auction sites at double the retail price of around ¥30,000 ($280).

In an interview on the sidelines of Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit 2017 in Los Angeles, Reggie Fils-Aimé, president of Nintendo of America, told the FT that supply shortages of multiple components, coupled with higher-than-expected demand from customers, were behind the protracted shipping delays.

Well, that nearly two months ago now, and it would seem that the  situation has not changed significantly, because M. Fils-Aimé is once again hard at work, getting out ahead of the story. From The Verge:

“Broadly speaking, it’s been a strong year and a strong launch for the Nintendo Switch,” says Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé.

But even within one of Nintendo’s most important years, a lingering issue remains: supply. For many, the Switch remains hard to find in stores, even months after launch. A quick stock check at Best Buy suggests that supply and demand are finally starting to level out, thankfully. And while the SNES Classic fared much better than the original NES Classic, which was near impossible to purchase, it’s still nowhere near readily accessible to walk-in consumers at most electronics stores.

[...]

“I wish we would have more hardware. Our inability to meet demand is not something that is satisfying in any way, shape, or form. And we’re working hard to satisfy as much demand as possible.” Fils-Aimé says that the company has made changes to its supply chain to improve the situation, and notes that we’ll likely hear more on the subject next week, when Nintendo announces its financial results. “I expect that our chief executive Mr. Kimishima will comment on this,” he says.

So, to recap, the message has gone from We'll have enough, don't worry;  to This is why we might not have enough, actually; to We don't have enough, we're not going to this year, and my boss will comment further next week when he has to explain why our quarterly results are below expectations. Yikes.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Nintendo's Switch might be off to a brisk start, but they still have a lot of obstacles to get over, and they're a long way from being out of the woods. We'll have to see how the PS4 Pro and XBO-X sell over the holidays, and whether Switch sales continue to be brisk into January and February, but missing out on a significant portion of their XMas sales with a new gaming device can't possibly be how Nintendo wanted to launch the Switch.

They're not just cosmetic, and they're not harmless...

As if Activision's recently-patented process of weaponizing online multiplayer game match-making weren't bad enough, it turns out that there's an even worse level of emotionally abusive bullshit lurking beneath the scummy surface of the videogaming industry, and unlike Activision's, this one has definitely already been deployed against unwitting and willing consumers. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Scientific Revenue!

Jim Sterling gets credit for the scoop on this story, and his video piece on the subject is an absolute must-watch for anyone who's ever despaired of finding a decent game in the wasteland of shit that is the mobile gaming market.

In a nutshell, though, what Scientific Revenue does is use "best practice" techniques from other industries (specifically, the "big data" and casino businesses) to build data profiles of consumers, without their knowledge or informed consent, the better to target those with demonstrated propensities for in-game purchases and then extract as much money from each tier of punter with a variable pricing scheme.

Basically, the more addictive your personality, the more likely a "SciRev" (nice one, Jim!) is to target addiction-prone players with microtransactions that are priced higher than the exact same MT offerings as presented to players with less-addictive personalities... the idea being that players who are less likely to buy expensive MTs might pop for cheap ones, while the "whales" that are already well and truly hooked will continue to bankrupt themselves by spending money they can't afford on useless digital tat that they don't actually need, and which they probably wouldn't want if it weren't being presented to them in such an emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative manner.

SciRev's defense of this slimy bullshit is that they're just applying other industries' "best practices" to mobile games. This is rather interesting since one of the industries involved is obviously the gambling industry (they even use the casino industry's terminology for high-revenue victims customers, i.e. "whales"), a heavily-regulated industry to which the AAA video game business, anxious to avoid having their casino-business bullshit slapped with legislated regulations, has been trying very hard to avoid comparisons.

SciRev's other defenses include comparisons to auctions and surge pricing, comparisons which fail for two obvious reasons:

1. consumers engaged in an auction do so knowingly (something which SciRev's victims cannot say), and place their bids deliberately and openly, which doesn't happen under SciRev's invisible, black-box process;
2. surge pricing is applied all consumers equally depending on demand fluctuations, while SciRev's model varies prices invisibly to unfairly target individual purchasers.

Bullshit excuses aside, the most important things to know about Scientific Revenue are a) that it's already in use, and b) that is clearly shows up the most common defense of AAA microtransactions (that they're "optional," and somehow about player choice) as the lie that it has always been. This kind of abusive microtransaction-based business model is not intended to be optional; it's intended to be unavoidable, it deliberately targets the most vulnerable consumers, and it desperately needs to be regulated. There really ought to be a law. Seriously, this microtransaction bullshit needs a legislative remedy.

Incidentally, for those that are keen to see the Nintendo Switch succeed, I'd say that the existence of operations like Scientific Revenue in the smartphone gaming space go a long way to improving Nintendo's chances. Whether you're on Google Play or the iOS App Store, mobile gaming has become a wasteland of shit; Nintendo's actively-curated experience might be full of ports of games that made their mark on other platform, but those are all excellent games, and Nintendo seems to be alone among AAA videogame companies in having absolutely no appetite for this kind of abusive bullshit. Nintendo sees their customers as customers, and not as "whales" waiting to happen, and that could be a powerful selling point for their (superior) mobile gaming platform.

For those that can't watch Jim Sterling's excellent video, Heavy.com wrote a pretty decent piece (Scientific Revenue: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know) covering it. Seriously, though, if you care at all about videogames, and hate corporate bullshit, then you really should be subscribed to The Jimquisition by now.

Sony won't vie with Nintendo with a handheld gaming device

Considering how the PS Vita has failed to thrive, and how dominant the PS4 is in the console space, this probably isn't that much of a surprise, but it's still noteworthy that Sony is going to just let Nintendo enjoy a monopoly on the handheld gaming device market. Even more noteworthy is their rationale for doing so.

As reported by US Gamer:

According to a Bloomberg interview with Sony's Andrew House, the head of Sony's gaming division feels that the mobile phone market has essentially put a hold on mobile gaming. Talking about the last mobile gaming device Sony released, the PS Vita, House said, "The Vita experience was that outside of Japan and Asia, there was not a huge demand. The lifestyle shift toward the dominance of smartphones as the single key device that is always with you, was the determining factor."

Likewise, Sony is quick to point out that the Nintendo Switch, which has seen plenty of success since launching in March, is not a true mobile console. "The Nintendo device is a hybrid device and that's a different approach and strategy."

So will Sony abandon mobile for hybrids? Nope. According to the interview Sony's current strategy involves delivering more products for home consoles along with VR and non-gaming entertainment like original TV content and music.

[...]

However, analysts and developers still express hesitation for the Switch, questioning whether it has lasting potential like Pokemon Co. head Tsunekazu Ishiharu suggested earlier this year.

It's pretty much all the same points that I was making when the Switch was first launched. Outside of the diehard Nintendo faithful, smartphones have pretty much destroyed the demand for dedicated handheld gaming devices, and (again, outside of Nintendo's diehard fans) there's no proven demand for a hybrid console/handheld gaming device, either. The Switch is off to a decent start, and is certainly doing much better than the WiiU did at launch, but Nintendo haven't been able to put enough Switches on shelves yet to really test how much demand there is beyond Nintendo's most ardent supporters.

Nintendo's ardent supporters have spent years lining up to fail to buy Amiibos, NES Classics, SNES Classics, and Switches, thus proving to Nintendo that they'll suffer any indignity in pursuit of the latest Nintendo thing, but it needs to be emphasized that this is not normal consumer behaviour. The Switch may be the next Wii, with appeal that extends well beyond Nintendo's fan base into the broader consumer market, but then again, it might not be, and we don't have enough data yet to be able to say for sure, one way or the other.

For Sony to decide that they'll wait and see whether console/hybrid consoles are enough of a thing for it to be worth their while to make one, makes total sense to me. Nintendo's handheld and console sales have been declining since 2009; trying to recapture that lost ground with a single hybrid device is a huge gamble for them, a cure-or-kill approach which will either create an entirely new category of consumer device, or kill Nintendo's hardware business completely. I don't blame Sony at all for refusing to cover that action.

I think they're unclear on the concept...

It's that time again, to peruse Kotaku's 12 Best Games for the Nintendo Switch list, and see if the game's lineup has improved.

For reference, this is where we were mid-August:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! (Switch)
3. Thumper (PC)
4. Puyo Puyo Tetris (*)
5. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC)
6. Minecraft (PC)
7. Cave Story+ (PC)
8. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
9. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC)
10. Splatoon 2 (Switch)
11. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (PC)
12. Arms (Switch)

And this is the updated version, from today:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! (Switch)
3. Thumper (PC)
4. Puyo Puyo Tetris (*)
5. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC)
6. Minecraft (PC)
7. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (Switch)
8. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
9. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC)
10. Splatoon 2 (Switch)
11. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (PC)
12. Arms (Switch)

Once again, a top-12 game from August's list has dropped off the list completely, replaced with a new release; I guess Cave Story+ wasn't that good, after all? 

Seriously, this is not how best-of lists work. It's fine to decide that Mario + Rabbids is now the Switch's 6th-best game, but that new entry on the list is supposed to push the others downwards, not simply replace the previous #7 title. I get that they're all yooge Nintendo fans at Kotaku, but manipulating the list this way in order to load it with Switch-exclusive releases, or to minimize the number of PC ports, is simply dishonest.

Why was Kotaku promoting Cave Story+ as the 6th-best game on Switch last month, only to decide that it isn't even the 12th-best game this month? Why isn't it considered to be at least as good as Splatoon 2, a game that is beat by four places a month ago. What was their logic? Apart from Cave Story being a PC port in the month when there was another Switch-native release that could take its place on the list, that is. What else changed?

This dishonesty is especially baffling because isn't even effective. The list is still five PC ports, one mashup (*), and only six original Switch titles; three iterations into their best-of list, and Kotaku have yet to do anything except throw a bright, bright light onto one the Switch's glaring issues: a lack of quality games. I guess Nintendo have really dodged a bullet, by having ongoing supply issues that are far more likely to kill the console's chances than any lack of games.

Were you planning to buy a Nintendo Switch for X-Mas?

Or an NES Classic, or an SNES Classic? If so, either plan on paying "scalper" prices, or make other plans, because it doesn't sound like Nintendo are any closer to solving their supply chain problems.

From the Financial Times:

Nintendo’s US chief has warned Switch customers to prepare for potential disappointment this Christmas, as demand for its hit games console continues to exceed supply.

Since the Switch launched in March, the hybrid console — it can be used as a handheld device on its own or plugged into a television at home — has been selling out almost as soon as new stock arrives in stores around the world.

In Nintendo’s domestic market of Japan, the shortages have been especially acute, with new machines being sold by lottery or changing hands on auction sites at double the retail price of around ¥30,000 ($280).

In an interview on the sidelines of Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit 2017 in Los Angeles, Reggie Fils-Aimé, president of Nintendo of America, told the FT that supply shortages of multiple components, coupled with higher-than-expected demand from customers, were behind the protracted shipping delays. 

The problem? Multiple choke points in the supply chain, apparently, as Nintendo compete for the same memory chips and other parts that other competitors (like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft, to name a few) also need for their new devices. Everyone's paying more for everything, right now, as anyone who's tried to buy a Ryzen processor can attest, but the Switch's low price point leaves them less room to absorb extra costs in the manufacturing process, and their smaller size (compared to Apple, Sony, and Microsoft, anyway), along with the WiiU's failure, leaves them less able to simply absorb the costs and sell Switches at a loss in order to build market share.

The good news? Nintendo has apparently decided that it makes sense to manufacture whatever consumers are willing to buy, which means that they're bringing back the NES Classic, as well as promising to make enough SNES Classics that everyone who wants one can buy one, and without having to spent four times MSRP to get it off eBay. The only catch is that the NES Classic and SNES Classic are being hit by the same component shortage as the Switch, so stock levels likely won't recover properly until 2018.

For Nintendo, of course, this means that they'll miss the busiest sales season of the year in EU and NA, losing market share to Sony and Microsoft who will undoubtedly have PS4s, PS4 Pros, XBO-Ses, and XBO-Xes available for sale to any who want them. Considering how badly Nintendo need for the Switch, in particular, to reach 10M sold in order to make up for time lost to the WiiU fiasco, this is obviously bad news; it's especially unfortunate since Nintendo's supply problems seem to be due to circumstances beyond their control, this time. Whether these supply chain problems end up being disastrous, in terms the Switch's success or failure as a platform, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, however, consumers should plan to buy their Switches and Classic consoles as next year's birthday presents, rather than this year's X-Mas presents. If you must have a console this year, buy a PS4 or an XBox rather than pay scalpers' rates for Nintendo's products (even Reggie Fils-Aimé is advising consumers not to pay more than MSRP).

A more open approach to Steam

In yesterday's blog post, I mentioned Microsoft's new and remarkably consumer-friendly approach to collaborations with VALVe (Steam) and Nintendo (Switch), especially when it comes to VR and crossplay. Well, it turns out they're really not kidding about that, according to VG24:

Mike Ybarra, vice president of Xbox, told VG247 that it’s happy to talk to the likes of Valve and Nintendo when it comes to getting multiplayer games working across multiple platforms, not just between Xbox One and Windows.

“It’s more about gamer choice, more about making an IP on our platform last longer. I don’t care about where they play, I just want people to have fun playing games because that’s just better for the industry,” said Ybarra.

“The demands of consumers and developers have changed,” he continued. “People are like, ‘we want all of our gamers in one multiplayer pool together, playing’.

“We totally agree with that. If any developer wants to have that conversation… Valve is right down the street from us, Nintendo is too – they’re like a block from us. We’re having these discussions as developers come up, and we’re completely open to that.”

It needs to be said that this openness is not sourced in altruism. Microsoft lost control of PC gaming years ago, ceding a virtual monopoly to VALVe for PC game distribution; and they lost this console generation to Sony's PS4, having been outpaced in consoles sold by two to one before they simply stopped humiliating themselves by reporting their XBOne sales numbers. Crossplay between XBO-S/XBO-X and any other platform does Microsoft nothing but good, here, which is why they're suddenly a lot more open to this sort of congenial collaboration... instead of, say, trying to seize control of PC gaming from Steam with Windows 8, or with UWP. With Windows 8 and UWP having both failed, it seems that Microsoft has finally been able to pry open their ears, and hear what gamers have been telling them for years.

It also needs to be said that Microsoft's consumer-friendly XBox division isn't exactly on the same page as the rest of the organization. Microsoft have been guilty of a lot of anti-consumer bullshit when you look at their corporate activities more broadly since Windows 10's launch, and the larger organization is still showing every holding out on almost every pro-consumer measure that's been suggested to them. The company that spent a year and a half foot-dragging and fighting in court, only to grudgingly give users control over their updates again, anyway, is a very different beast than their suddenly-consumer-friendly gaming division.

Still, it's progress, and the right tone and messaging from Microsoft at a time when big game publishers are mostly moving in a direction of more anti-consumer bullshit. I guess I'll take it. Hell, if Microsoft and VALVe can work together to make the Steam Client easily downloadable on an XBox, I might even consider picking one up for my living room.

The 12 Best Games For The Nintendo Switch, revisited.

Kotaku has posted their revised list of the 12 best Nintendo Switch games, which gives us a great opportunity to compare it to their previous list, and see what's changed.

This was the end of June:

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Disgaea 5 (PS4)
3. Snipperclips (Switch)
4. Thumper (PC)
5. Puyo Puyo Tetris (*)
6. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC)
7. Minecraft (PC)
8. Cave Story+ (PC)
9. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
10. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC)
11. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (PC)
12. Arms (Switch)

And this is mid-August:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together! (Switch)
3. Thumper  (PC)
4. Puyo Puyo Tetris (*)
5. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC)
6. Minecraft  (PC)
7. Cave Story+ (PC)
8. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
9. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC)
10. Splatoon 2 (Switch)
11. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (PC)
12. Arms  (Switch)

So, what changed?

• Disgaea 5 (PS4) has dropped from the #2 spot, to a spot off the list completely. (I guess it wasn't actually the second-best Nintendo Switch game? Were Kotaku perhaps padding their top 12 list, just a little bit?)
• Snipperclips (Switch), Thumper (PC), Puyo Puyo Tetris (*), The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC), Minecraft (PC), Cave Story+ (PC), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch), and Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC) all move up one spot, thanks to Disgaea 5's sudden and total fall from Kotaku's good graces.
• Splatoon 2, the only major release since June, debuts in the #10 spot.

Basically, the Switch's game situation is unchanged. Their "best game" list includes one new Switch exclusive, but Splatoon 2 is largely regarded as being more-or-less identical to the original Splatoon, and is only the 10th best game on the platform. And all five games that were first released on the Switch are from Nintendo themselves; none are third-party titles, and only Zelda is a system-seller.

This is a crucial point. Nintendo need to sell systems; games sell systems, ergo Nintendo need system-selling games to be released for the Switch. Yes, Nintendo have sold a copy of Zelda for every Switch, but Splatoon 2 is not a system-seller; the WiiU had the original Splatoon, and still tanked. The same applies for Snipperclips (cute, but it looks like a mobile port, in spite of not being one) and Arms (widely regarded as mechanically interesting but far too light on content).

Long story short, Nintendo's Switch game situation has not improved. Granted, July and August are normally slow months for game releases, but even so.... damn.

UPDATE:

It turns out that July and August aren't all that slow a period for game releases after all, although it may still be a slow period for quality game releases.

From Kotaku:

Since Steam Direct—which allows any developer to submit a game to Steam for $100—launched seven weeks ago, Steam has added over 1,000 new games, per figures provided by Ico Partners’ Thomas Bidaux (via GamesIndustry.biz). Of those, 215 arrived in the first week of August alone. Since mid-July, the number of games releasing per week has increased precipitously:

When Steam Direct launched, Valve predicted that, thanks to games still caught up in the arcane gears of the Greenlight system, there would be “an initial surge of new submissions and then a new rate somewhat higher than what was coming through Greenlight.” The upswing in releases, then, could be a heaping helping of Greenlight leftovers, or it might be a sign of things to come.

This puts something of a spotlight on the Switch's dearth of titles. When competitors' platforms are seeing thousands of releases every couple of months, Nintendo need to see more than one notable game for their console. They're already behind; they need to avoid falling even further behind.

Is the Switch losing momentum already?

In spite of its decent launch, Nintendo's Switch is far from being out of the woods. Persistent manufacturing and supply problems, a dearth of good games, and an abundance of caution on the part of third-party game developers, all seemed to be conspiring to turn the initial rush of excitement into frustration. Which is a problem, because prolonged frustration can easily turn into boredom, and then apathy. Nintendo needed to solve the Switch's problems quickly, before that could happen.

So, how soon is soon enough? Have Nintendo already taken too long to fix their supply problems, if they really wanted to capitalize on that initial positive buzz? Those are the questions, and other people are starting to ask them.

From Dion Dassanayake at Express:

For the second week in a row, the battle between the Switch v PS4 has been won by Sony’s console in Japan.

The PS4 has been the top selling console in Japan for the past two weeks in a row, edging ahead of the Nintendo Switch, according to GamingBolt.

The most recent figures show the PS4 selling 29,771 units compared to the Switch’s 26,256.

The news comes after in May the Switch lost out to the PS4 in the latest chart wars from America.

In one sense, this isn't really news; PS4 has been outselling Switch for a while now. Also, it needs to be said that week-by-week sales numbers in July aren't normally something that retailers lose a lot of sleep over. Don't get me wrong, sluggish sales are sluggish, and retailers hate that, but fall is the big retail season, with the October-to-December period often accounting for as much as 70% of a retailer's annual sales (and, yes, I do work in retail, although thankfully not in gaming retail). There's still lots of year left for Nintendo to sell consoles, including the busiest months of the retail calendar, and they'll have more games on the shelf by the fall, too.

The Nintendo Switch's situation isn't your normal retail scenario, however. Nintendo are trying to jump-start their console and handheld sales (both of which have declined steadily since 2009) with one device, and right now, what they need more than anything else is momentum. Nintendo were forecasting 10 million units of Switch sales for this year, a number that they've since increased to 15 million, but Sony were forecasting that PS4 sales would decline slightly this year, to 18 million.... and that's on top of the 60+ million PS4's they've already sold. The Switch doesn't necessarily need to outsell the PS4 every single week, but if the ongoing sales trend ends up putting them further behind the PS4, rather than gaining ground, then skittish third-party game devs may decide to stay on the sidelines, rather than spend extra time and money downsizing their games to fit into the Switch's profoundly limited resources.

And that could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with fewer third party games coming out for the Switch because there aren't enough third-party games on the Switch to lure in increasingly frustrated, bored, or even apathetic consumers.

Nintendo really have bet the farm on the Switch succeeding. There are already signs that the Switch is eating into 2DS and 3DS sales (which, again, have been declining for years anyway), and their last console, the WiiU, flopped hard. If Nintendo's hardware business is to survive, then the Switch must succeed; Nintendo aren't a small company, but they're not Microsoft-sized, and able to write off a second hardware platform in a row, especially when it's rapidly becoming the entirety of their hardware business. Two weeks of bad sales could just be a coincidence, but a third straight week of sub-par sales numbers could be the start of a trend that Nintendo will have a heck of a time reversing.

I'm not sure how much time Nintendo's Switch will get, here, but one thing's for sure: they're running out of time a lot faster than many people expected.

Top 50 Nintendo Switch games list hilariously starts at #49, with a terrible game.

From App Trigger's list of "All the Best Nintendo Switch Games Out Right Now," I present to you the bottom of the barrel:

Best Nintendo Switch Games #49 – Vroom in the Night Sky

Developer: Poisoft

Synopsis: This is a developer-described “Magical Bike Action Game,” with features such as “Fantastic feeling” “Speedy feeling” and “Realistic feeling.”
A better way to explain it is just to tell you that you fly around a town as a Magical Girl on a motorcycle, collecting stardust and conversing with your talking pet Sailor Moon rip-off cat, Luna.

Why it’s one of the best Nintendo Switch games: It’s not.

No, really. The nature of this list in its early stages is naturally going to be that the games at the bottom half of the list are going to drop off very, very quickly. In Vroom in the Night Sky’s case, we’re ready to dump it as soon as the total entry numbers push 51. This game is just awful! It’s boring, for starters–you just fly around and pick up stardust with clumsy controls for awhile and then you’re done. Then there are the god-awful translation errors that permeate every last piece of dialogue you’re forced to endure as you zoom around the blocky town you’re stuck in. Don’t get this game. Watch it vroom its way right off this list.

Excelsior! Seriously, folks, embarrassing shit like this is why Kotaku limited their best-of list to 12 entries.

App Trigger's approach does have one advantage, though; since their list includes every single game currently available on the platform, including such bottom-feeders as Vroom in the Night Sky, it is now possible to say, for certain, that a) there are less than 50 games available for the Nintendo Switch, and also that b) some of those games are shovelware-grade crap.

Things don't really improve at #48, either:

Best Nintendo Switch Games #48 – Vaccine

Developer: RNC

Synopsis: Your friend has a deadly illness, and is running out of time. You can find the vaccine in a mysterious house, but you’ll have to hurry before they perish. Of course, it being a roguelike, they’ll just relapse every time and you’ll have to try again to survive in a new, randomly generated house.

Why it’s one of the best Nintendo Switch games: If there is a trope that the horror game genre has done away with, Vaccine probably embraced it at some point. It also does away with any semblance of good design, refusing to offer such staples as a map, or balanced combat, or sound effects for enemies or the ability to do anything reasonable with the camera. Some of these seem to be hearkening back to old Resident Evil, but without the proper combination of elements, Vaccine falls apart. Its roguelike nature means you’ll quickly be frustrated and give up, defeating the addictive point of such a game. There’s “difficult roguelike” and then there’s shoddy, awkward, and unfair.

Game #47 on the list is Othello (yes, that Othello), and #46 is currently another port titled, and I swear to God this is verbatim, New Frontier Days ~Founding Pioneers~ (yes, all those tildes are actually in the game's title), which boasts a MetaCritic score of 52%. Only four games in, three of them are shovelware, and one looks like a port from mobile (and is also available on Steam); the only halfway decent game to this point is Othello, which you can currently play for free in a browser window. If you were hoping that Kotaku's list, and the problems that it serves to illustrate, were maybe the result of some sort of sampling bias, then abandon all hope, ye that enter here, because it looks like the problem only gets worse as you work your way further down the list of available Nintendo Switch offerings.

Decent launch aside, if Nintendo don't find a way to turn this situation around, and fast, then the Switch really isn't going to make it.

Nintendo's 3rd party developer problems might run deeper than anybody knew.

From Destructoid:

Speaking to Kinda Funny, [Oddworld creator Lorne] Lanning states that he has "no faith," in the Switch, due to "experience," and having seen how the Wii and Wii U played out. To clarify the condemnation of the former he explains that both consoles weren't successful for third parties, and that Nintendo ended up making all the money at the end of their runs. He experienced this with what he claims is lackluster promotion for New 'n' Tasty on the Wii U.

While praises that it's mobile he doesn't think people are going to go through the effort to work on an "under-powered console" (a sentiment THQ Nordic shares), and that in conjunction with their alleged efforts to ignore third parties to better themselves, it'll end up hurting studios.

It's something a lot of developers are struggling with right now -- whether or not to call out Nintendo after the Wii U situation. The Switch is doing great so you don't want to burn that bridge, but some studios have claimed that even after they've tried to make games for it Nintendo hasn't reciprocated. If more developers aren't willing to speak out like this and share their opinions we'll continue to be in the dark.

Nintendo alone simply weren't able to release enough games to save the WiiU, so the general consensus is that Nintendo's Switch will either live or die depending on the amount of support it receives from third party developers. The fact that previously-burned developers are hesitant to invest heavily in developing for the new platform is basically the opposite of what Nintendo need to happen, in order for the Switch to succeed where the WiiU failed.

It doesn't help that the Switch is simply underpowered compared to competing consoles, either. In a world where the Nintendo's competition consists of Sony's PS4 Pro, Microsoft's XBO-X, and even more powerful gaming PCs, the Switch can't even keep pace with a vanilla PS4 or XBox One. Most of the Switch's 3rd-party games are ports of old PC titles, but even that well could run try quickly as developers continue to wrestle with the limitations of the Switch's underpowered hardware.

The Switch managed a decent launch, but Nintendo still have a lot of problems still to overcome in order for their new device into have the kind of legs that they desperately need it to.

The Nintendo Switch's big problem, nicely illustrated

Kotaku posted a list today of the 12 best games currently available on the Nintendo Switch. You can read their list yourself, along with the reasoning for each game's inclusion, here; for my purposes, though, I'm just going to type out the list in bullet points, along with the system that each game was originally released on. See if you can spot the pattern.

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Disgaea 5 (PS4)
3. Snipperclips (Switch)
4. Thumper (PC)
5. Puyo Puyo Tetris (*)
6. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (PC)
7. Minecraft (PC)
8. Cave Story+ (PC)
9. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
10. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (PC)
11. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (PC)
12. Arms (Switch)

Puyo Puyo Tetris is the one oddball on the list, a crossover between the Puyo Puyo and Tetris franchises. It has a gameplay mode which involves alternately playing both games side-by-side, or something? It's supposed to be quite fun, but I'd hesitate to describe it as "new," and PPT's two component games date back to 1991 and 1984, respectively, making them just slightly less old than dirt.

Of the other 11 games on the list, 6 are ports from PC, and one is a port from the PS4, leaving only 4 games that are actually seeing their first release on the Nintendo's new console. The Switch-first games are all first-party titles, published by Nintendo themselves. Of these, Zelda is the only proven system-seller, although it's unclear just how many systems it will sell, beyond the same Nintendo fanbase that wasn't enough to keep the WiiU alive. That leaves Snipperclips as the 3rd-best game on the console (and, be honest, has anyone that doesn't already own a Switch even heard of this game?), Mario Kart 8 in the obligatory Mario Kart spot (quite good, I'm sure, but still only good enough for the #9 spot on a list filled with PC ports), and Arms (at a rock-bottom #12, and again, hardly the image of a system-seller).

That's it: four games seeing their first release on the platform, all of them made by Nintendo themselves, including two gimmicky tech demos that only hardcore Nintendo fans will even care about, one game that every Switch owner already owns (and which can only drive so many console sales by itself), yet another Mario Kart game, and Puyo Puyo Tetris, which is a retread of two of the oldest game franchises still alive. That is the Nintendo Switch arsenal of system-selling titles.

And, sure, Super Mario Odyssey will probably find its way onto Kotaku's list (and other best-of lists) when it comes out this fall, but that's yet another Mario title, and another first-party Nintendo release for their own console. Nintendo only have so much money to spend making games, and we already know from the WiiU that their output alone cannot keep a platform afloat. If the Switch is to survive, then third-party developers have to buy in. So far, the new only third party title that I've seen announced for the Switch is Square Enix's Lost Sphear, which is releasing simultaneously on PS4 and Steam (although not on XBox).

This is a problem, and with Nintendo struggling just to get product onto store shelves, it's just one of many hurdles facing the Switch. Nintendo's managed a fairly successful release for the Switch, and there's quite a bit of good buzz around the console for the moment, but continued supply problems are already turning excitement to frustration, and if Nintendo kill their own console's buzz before they achieve widespread, third-party developer support, then the Switch could easily go the way of the WiiU. Nintendo are a big company, but they're not Microsoft-sized, or Sony-sized; a second failed console in a row could easily be the end of their hardware business.