How much is too much? (Nintendo)

The Wednesday letters page is worried about Sony’s first party games on PS5, as a reader is unsurprised Microsoft hasn’t made any new live service games.

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Middle-core audience
So, it seems the best guess for the price of the Nintendo Switch 2 is around £350. I’m not sure what I expected but that doesn’t seem too bad. Although that is £100 more than an Xbox Series S I doubt Nintendo will have too much trouble shifting them, especially at the start when it’s more the hardcore that is buying them.

I’m not sure middle-core is really a word but that’s where I’d place myself, so while I could imagine myself going for one early on I’d need quite a bit of convincing. I’d need to know it was noticeably more powerful and still had good battery life, and there’d ideally be something new and clever about it – I’m not sure if the secret button is really going to cover that.

In terms of games, I need to see a significant roadmap before I bite the bullet. A Sony style one-reveal-per-year routine is not going to cut it here. Although that’s one mistake I doubt that Nintendo will make. Overall though, I’d say I’m interested but not committed, so let’s see what the April Direct has to say for itself.
Fang

Creeping closer
It is a fair point about Fallout 5, I really don’t know why Bethesda hasn’t farmed that out to another developer, other than they always seem to be salty about how everyone prefers Fallout: New Vegas to their games. I’d like to think they weren’t that petty but I wouldn’t bet on it.

At least we’re finally getting some news about The Elder Scrolls 6 though, even if it is just this charity thing, but hopefully they wouldn’t start that kind of talk if it wasn’t due out within at least two years. Right? Or am I being too optimistic?

The idea that it could be 20 years, or anything even close to that, between Skyrim and its sequel is crazy to me. I wonder how much of that is due simply to the fact that Bethesda is still making money from it. Like how Rockstar didn’t need to make GTA 6 because GTA 5 was already making infinite money.
Lonnie

Problem solved
I think the only real headwind that Nintendo have to deal with is convincing casual gamers that it’s worth upgrading to Switch 2. I’m sure that Nintendo will continue to be jaw-droppingly popular in Japan and that the hardcore Nintendo fans are ready to give their creaking Switch consoles a rest, but I’m less certain that the Fortnite crowd will see a good reason to upgrade.

In that sense I can see Nintendo having a similar issue to PlayStation with the PlayStation 4: if it’s still playing the games that people want, why bother with the upgrade? In any case I think we’re talking about the difference between a 3DS style success and a DS style success.

Personally, outside of the two Zelda games my Switch hasn’t been used as much as I’d like, so I will try to hold-off on the shiny new hardware until I can clear my backlog a bit (or until a new 3D Zelda releases).
Magnumstache
PS: The Inbox has been in the correct place for the last week or so, fingers crossed that’s it sorted!

GC: Yes, hopefully. That was an odd one, that we were unaware of at first, so many thanks to everyone that wrote in to pinpoint exactly what was happening.

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Been there, done that
To answer the question of why Xbox hasn’t been pursuing live service games growth like Sony… they already have them.

You can start with the behemoth Minecraft and add on the smaller Halo, Sea Of Thieves, and both Forza franchises.

But then you get to Call Of Duty and World Of Warcraft and they pretty much own half the live service games successful today.

Let’s just not mention Redfall, OK.
DarKerR (gamertag)

GC: Sea Of Thieves was released before the current industry obsession with live service games and Microsoft has barely owned Activision Blizzard for more than a year, so it is surprising that they never jumped onto the current bandwagon in the period between – at the time when Sony and Ubisoft became so obsessed.

Au contraire
I can’t say I agree with Lefty’s criticisms of Returnal. For a start, I thought it was a great looking game, especially in motion with bullets flying everywhere.

Returnal also didn’t have randomly-generated levels. The layout was randomised for each run, but each individual area was hand-crafted. I’m not sure of any solution that would work better for a roguelike.

The story was pretty intersecting too and importantly remained largely in the background, so as to allow the focus to remain primarily on the fantastic gameplay.
Drlowdon

World of crime
Rockstar going big on user generated content for GTA 6 is something I can very easily believe in. Not that I want it or anything, but I’m certain it’ll be hugely popular with fans and will start to turn GTA into more of a Fortnite style ‘everything game’.

It’s not just going to be the single-player and then GTA Online anymore, it’s going to be tons of modes and weird asides just like Fortnite, except aimed at edgelord gamers who will try and fill the game with the sort of stuff that would make Mary Whitehouse blush.

How this is going to affect the teenagers that will be most drawn to it I don’t know, but I do know that I would never allow my children to play it. Even if I know that means they’ll probably just end up playing it at someone else’s house.

I’ll be honest, I’m disturbed by the idea of GTA 5 with near photorealistic graphics and tons of user generated content. The games make a virtue out of all the worst aspect of humanity and I really don’t think the world needs that right now. Unfortunately though, I know the world is absolutely desperate for it.
Corsec

America first
So, according to Xbox, Avowed releases worldwide today. I live in the UK, it is currently 4pm in the afternoon and my Xbox Series X still says ‘releasing later today’. WTF.

Phil, just say it like it is… if you live in America you can play today, if you live anywhere else on the planet then stuff you, play it tomorrow.
Lawrence Pick

Making the list
Very interesting list of what Sony’s internal developers are up to at the moment but I have to admit being underwhelmed at the options on show. So few seem to be doing anything new or interesting, with Bend and Bluepoint some of the only ones where we don’t know what they’re doing and it probably (maybe?) isn’t a sequel.

There’s Media Molecule as well, and Firesprite, but I don’t know much about them and it doesn’t seem likely they’d make anything I like. Hopefully the Naughty Dog Intergalactic game will be good but it wasn’t a very encouraging reveal trailer, so I’m struggling to be excited by it.

I don’t want to be a downer but I think it was better off imagining Sony was hiding all these secret, exciting projects out of sight and yet when you look into it there’s not really much of interest at all.

My biggest hope is that Santa Monica Studio is not working on another God Of War game but instead something new. I really don’t feel the series or the characters have anywhere to go after Ragnarök and any more games would be purely for the money.

I know it always was for Sony, but I think it’s clear the developers were invested in the two reboot games and I can’t believe they wouldn’t want to try something new now.
Croftie

Inbox also-rans
I don’t know if GamegCentral and its readers have seen this, but the Gold Points reward system on Switch is ending on Tuesday March 25th 2025. Perhaps they are going to have a new points system for Switch 2?
Andrew J.

GC: We would imagine so, here’s our story on it.

The golden rule of any Civilization release is when the new one arrives, buy the previous one, along with the DLC, for a lovely price. Civ 6 will have to go some to beat Civ 5 though.
r-s-w

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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