Even though you’ve been able to walk in and pick up a Switch for a local store for a while now, my experience is that there still aren’t a ton in stock. I generally see 2-4 on the shelves when I visit. So to echo Sadley and Dave, I would get one before Friday just to be safe.
I think it’s also notable that this IS a portable to a lot of folks. Some people will buy more than one. I know that sounds crazy, but when you have two or more children, depending on your level of affluence, it does make sense to buy a second machine. That’s going to drive sales over the short and long term in ways we haven’t seen with consoles before IMO.
Saw this earlier in the week:
Sumer, the game of divine strategy, is coming to the Nintendo Switch console.
Sumer is a digital board game for up to 4 players. As Sumerian nobles, you’ll compete with your friends to best please the goddess Inanna and be crowned the first-ever ruler of ancient Mesopotamia.
With its fast-paced, real-time platforming, Sumer puts a twist on classic board game concepts like worker placement and competitive auctions as you rush for resources during simultaneous turns. You’ll be challenged to plan strategically, execute skillfully, and adapt to opponents on the fly. And, with the portability of the Nintendo Switch console, setup is now quick and convenient!
Sumer will be available in the Nintendo eShop on the Nintendo Switch console this Winter. Following its initial release, Sumer will receive a series of free updates throughout 2018, including online multiplayer.
Tom reviewed it earlier in the year although I’m not sure whether he played it against other people. That’s where it really shines to be honest. I suspect with this announcement it will be leaving Early Access soon.
My friend and I also covered it in our local multiplayer YouTube series Side by Side. That’s one of our most recent episodes and probably our favourite in the entire series too so thought I’d share it.
Just saw this interesting graph over at ResetEra… here’s the thread/post it came from. Username jariw for the credit.
I would love to see some breakdowns for all the consoles on this sort of thing.
Personally, I feel it’s been steady steps forward. VC3 was better than VC2 in every way that I can think of. The teleporting problem was introduced in VC2 and wasn’t entirely fixed in VC3, but I don’t think there was an easy fix for it given the limitations of the PSP and the core design.
(Long version: The PSP didn’t have enough memory to render large battlefields, so each battle was split into multiple small sub-maps. In order to make this work, you could extract units that were in a base from a sub-map for free. Deploying is also free (although you take the turn with the character deployed).
So, there’s a degenerate solution to use 1 unit to knock all enemy units out of a base, capture the base, and then deploy a sniper / stormtrooper from that base in the same turn, basically teleporting them behind enemy lines and ignoring AP movement limitations. The sniper could then take as many shots as he had ammo. However, this feature was actually important for strategy on some maps so it would be difficult for them to have nerfed it significantly. (Some camps were connected so capturing a camp on one sub-map also captured the linked camp in the other sub-map. So, they couldn’t penalize extraction / deployment too much or those maps would break).
They did mitigate this somewhat from 2 to 3. I think they increased the buff imparted by crouching behind barricades, which made it slightly harder to dislodge an enemy. I also think that crouching enemies couldn’t be dislodged by grenades, they took one turn to just destroy the barricade and stand up.)
Wow, I played most of VC2, and I don’t recall using teleporting snipers. I wonder if it didn’t occur to me. :)
Glad to hear you think they’re taking steps in the right direction. Having the scope and beauty of the first VC with the portability of VC2 sounds irresistible.
Well, using snipers specifically was also mitigated by level design (grass, walls blocking line of sight, etc.) It was a way to abuse the low-movement rate classes in general, I just happen to love the sniper classes in those games. On the other hand, it almost made fencers useful (but actually, they still weren’t).
Man, the Switch is so good. I spent around 7.5 hours playing Mario on two flights over the weekend. I can’t believe that this kind of game is on a handheld.
Yea it was a good discussion from Jim on the Switch.
I can verify that Tom played it with at least one other person.
I can also verify that at least one other person totally kicked his butt at that game.
Damn, thats one awesome video.
Excellent, I’m glad to hear it! The AI really knows how to play but there’s nothing better than throwing a friend’s plans under the bus. I hope to play it with a full house one day but getting everyone up to speed with it in tandem will be tricky. I think that’s going to be the game’s biggest challenge to be honest.
You and I remember Sumer very differently.
-Tom
Just in case you’re not subscribed to the Splatoon 2 thread…
Big updates!
Went to Wal Mart this morning and they told me they were holding all of their Switch consoles for Black Friday. A-Holes. Luckily, Target had several. Picked up the Red and Blue system and Mario Odyssey. Going to sell my Wii U and games on Ebay. I’ll have to start Zelda over again but I am looking forward to that once the newest DLC comes out.
My son better know how lucky he is to have a gamer dad. He doesn’t even have to wait for Christmas to get it. This is getting hooked up tonight :).
I know it might be hard, but save it for Christmas if you can! My kids always went bonkers when they got to open a game system on Christmas Day, and it was really tough when the Wii came out, believe me. I had it packed away for over a month. :)
Counterpoint: I bought a Switch a month ago on a whim because I saw it in stock at Amazon, and figured I should get one prior to the Black Friday rush. I expected to leave it in the box, or maybe hook it up and ignore it completely.
Since then, I’ve played it almost every day and I’ve put dozens of hours into Mario Odyssey, because it’s really, really good.
If there’s kids involved though, yeah, maybe sacrifice for the greater good.
This seems like a strange strategy. If you can sell goods outside of a sale period, why wouldn’t you?
They might have minimums listed in their ads that they need to be kept to.
Or they might just figure they’re going to sell them anyway, so they might as well delay the inevitable headache on Black Friday by one unit.
Or they were vindictive retail pricks who just wanted to see a bummed customer (it happens!).
They do it because they don’t want to have none to start the day they’re advertising it for sale. When you do that, it really pisses people off, even more than it pisses them off when you say you’re holding them. The mistake by the salesperson was acknowledging they were holding them for Black Friday. All he or she had to say was, “We’re sold out. We should have more on Thursday.” Boom. Done.