Now see I kind of wish we did, if only so that someone could tell me what the hell an Apple TV was.
Every streaming device vendor took a shot at gamers. Roku had angry birds and their motion controller, Nvidia had the shieldTV and its gamepad, Amazon had the FireTV1/2 with their gamepads, and Apple has the AppleTV which they claimed was great for games but didn’t even bother to release a gamepad.
The attraction is obvious; mobile gaming is super popular, casual little games costing a buck or two on a device you already have. Why wouldn’t that transfer to the set top boxes? Well, every single one of them failed. People simply don’t want it.
I always said it: people want to play mobile games while they watch TV, not play mobile games ON their TV.
A number of games have shipped with a $10 “Switch Tax”, priced higher than the same release on other consoles. It’s also worth noting you do not get the frequency a quality of digital sales in the eShop that you see week after week on PSN and Xbox Live.
If portability is a consideration, then I would highly recommend getting one of the New 2DS handhelds. I picked one up and it is just fantastic - so many great Nintendo games for it especially if you have nostalgia for your old SNES or N64 or Wii (seriously worth it just to have Zelda: OOT, SMB3 and Xenoblade Chronicles, although MarioKart 7, New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Pokemon Sun/Moon are also great). Since the 2DS is relatively cheap, you have extra funds to splurge on an Xbox or a PS4.
I want examples, because while I can’t think of any games that arbitrarily cost more on Switch than another console, I can think of plenty of games that either launched for less on Switch (Disgaea 5, which also included all the DLC on Switch) or launched at the same price (Fate/Extella, which…also included all the DLC on Switch), and that’s without getting into the various ports of Wii U games with all the DLC included.
If you’re talking about Puyo Puyo Tetris, it only costs $10 more for a physical Switch copy that also includes a physical bonus not available with the PS4 version, and the eShop release is the same $30 as on PS4; whether or not a couple of keychains are worth $10 is entirely up to the buyer.
I believe there has been a couple, like Rime and maybe LA Noire. They blame the price hike on the costs of putting stuff on cartridge. Or in LA Noire’s case, needing a bigger than usual cartridge.
Though now that I check, LA Noire seems to be the same price on all current platforms here.
I see the sales on PSN and Xbox Live and most of what’s on sale is the same stuff month after month, much like what happens on the eShop. Nintendo has regular seasonal sales (they’ve been doing that on 3DS and Wii U for a long time now) as well as weekly ones too. The Switch isn’t even a year old yet and it’s selling like crazy. They aren’t going to drop prices on things when they can sell them for the full value, but even then there have already been sales on games like Puyo Puyo Tetris, Graceful Explosion Machine and Tumbleseed among others. There’s really no difference other than you don’t put things on sale when people are paying full price.
As @WarpRattler noted already, the “Switch Tax” that some would like to turn into a narrative isn’t true.
It’s open for 12 days. If I decide to purchase the X Box One S, I’ll grab this at the same time.
There’s also a deal on Game Pass, first month is $1. If you do get an Xbox and you’re new to the system, I highly recommend taking advantage of this. It’s like a Netflix subscription to a bunch of games you can install and play.
This is one reason i brought it up. I have an Apple TV and a Steel Series controller, so have some real experience, not theoretical experience, with Apple TV gaming.
The only significant difference between the Apple TV and the other ARM cpu in a box solutions is that the Apple TV can ride the coattails of iOS gaming, and iOS gaming is by far the most successful mobile platform. This means the Apple TV does actually get some really decent games. I would actually look forward to playing Does Not Commute or Proun+ or AG Drive (all three of which have great soundtracks best heard on media center sized speakers) coming home from work. Pixel Cup Soccer really is the NES era soccer game you never knew you needed. OK Golf really is a lot of fun in a casual way on Apple TV, way more so than the iPad/iPhone tbh.
Some larger ports don’t work with controllers; the Ubisoft GO games (Lara Croft, Deus Ex, ect) only use the remote as a pointer.
Apple clearly wants the Apple TV to succeed, but like everything Apple, have a very ambivalent attitude with the creators of the content their hardware platforms depend upon. They got thatgamecompany to make Sky a timed exclusive though, so they’re still throwing money at the problem.
The biggest problem (imo) with the Apple TV as a game platform, other than their notorious indifference to discoverability in their stores, is their stubborn insistence on keeping the Apple TV remote as the main input device. Apple likes to double down on their hardware even when it’s bad, and their remote is measurably worse, even ergonomically, then even their own last gen remotes. They keep throwing new hardware at the Apple TV. The A10x CPUs are like 2x faster than PS3 level graphics in pure gflops. The Apple TV could be a good thing, one day. They also appeal to me in how energy efficient they are, it’s like the ultimate SFF gaming box.
But the other problem - or benefit - is these sorts of games aren’t “core” games, so you don’t get that dopamine hit you get from those “other” games that are timesink, dopamine generators. Like 10, 15 minutes of Apple TV gaming and you’re done. So they feel “unsatisfying”. But maybe, if you’re trying to scale back your gaming addiction, this is a good thing?
Like everything else apple makes, it’s overpriced, and the peripherals are absolute shit.
If you have any use for DirecTV NOW, you can get an AppleTV for free. And if you don’t, it’s $40 off.
I didn’t bite, myself. Happy with a FTV2 in the bedroom and a ShieldTV in the living room. If it wasn’t such a huge pain in the ass to sideload Kodi I would have considered it, but it is.
Your competitor sales blindness aside, we have plenty of time with the eShop on 3DS and WiiU to see the quality and number of discounts that tend to be offered on Nintendo’s digital stores are meager, to put it lightly. Unless maybe you have a fetish for that special class of eShop shovelware of mobile ports and cheaply made sudoku games.