Nintendo whale and fanboy reporting in:

Physical games work great, obviously. If you have the paid subscription, it shares saves across systems rather well.

Digital games (I'm 100% digital) share less elegantly. On the base switch where the purchasing account exists, any account can play any game anytime. On other switches, accounts check in online (and require online access to start games) to see what games they have access to. This basically means that only the account purchaser can play digital games on that 2nd switch.

It's not great, IMO. We have a 2nd switch and nobody uses it other than me when I'm on a work trip, and even then I have to carefully manage when/where I start games as it requires internet access. If the kids are at home playing Kart/Party using "my" account, I can't play anything.

Games were $60+ 20-30 years ago. Game development costs have gone up significantly since then. Consumers not being able to move past the $60 price point is one reason why DLC, season passes, and free to play offerings are now so big. I'll happily pay $70 for a new Zelda game that will offer 50+ hours of high quality story based gameplay versus the same price for a yearly Call of Duty release with a 4 hour campaign and a rinse / repeat multiplayer offering.

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Great info, thanks for sharing. I was able to get Switch running rather well on my Steam Deck, so I'll probably pass on another Switch. I was at least a little tempted by the TOTK edition OLED..

Can confirm it is a nightmare. You have to set a main and secondary switch. The secondary switch requires an internet connection to play any digital games purchased on the the original switch. It gets really funky. Physical is much easier but transferring save files can be annoying. Also, I don't think you can play the switches at the same time if logged into the same account.

Nobody paid full price there. Nobody. You had Toys-R-Us cash and all kinds of other shi*. When they were that price, I could get them for $40 to $45 sometimes less. Not so today. Though that digital voucher thing is a pretty good deal. In a week or 2 they'll be all over Marketplace for ~$50 physical, so I guess there is that.

Don't do it, lots of talk on the net of TOTK OLED has bad run of screens. I don't know what the percentage is but a lot of them have green tint to the screen.

I paid full price for basically every 1st or 2nd party N64 game. Sure 3rd party shit was had for cheap but the only dropped a couple of big titles a year and everyone was starving for the next game. Preorder and Launch day was a big thing even back then. Zelda, Mario or anything Rare was top dollar.

I forgot how close we are to the release of the new Zelda game....Breath of the Wild was the best game ever made IMHO. I don't mind paying $70 for the sequel to the best damn game ever made. If it was $150 I'd still buy it. TAKE MY MONEY.JPG

I can’t wait, grabbing it the 11th at 11:00pm, I tried to grab a collector’s edition as well. They sold out in seconds.

Id like to see a Zelda pinball machine by Jersey Jack, all gold cab, the modes could be dungeons or palaces etc.

While waiting for Zelda next week, I highly recommend the "Portal Companion Collection" from the Nintendo online store. Brilliant games and a fantastic port for Switch.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/portal-companion-collection

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I would love that, but Mario Kart is the correct title to start a line of "Nintendo Series" machines. Then Pokemon, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, IMO.

We already have cosmic cart racing; rather, it's time for a real Metroid pinball machine...

100% accurate. Development has also gotten easier with the multitude of tools available - but the amount of post-implementation tweaking, testing and remediation has skyrocketed after games have gotten so complex. Also, HUUUGE waste at the companies when they change direction 100 times. Nintendo has a completely different development approach to most other companies, and the deep pockets (at least on Zelda) to make the games absolutely perfect.

Lot's of good points made here on physical vs. digital.
However, I would add that you absolutely CAN play the same digital game at the same time when connected to the internet. We do it all the time here.
What you can't do, is play digital games offline with the non-account switch. I've bought a couple physical copies to play while RVing for instance.
1)Buy the games on main Switch.
2)Log into other switch and redownload the digital purchase
3) Both switches can play same game or others at same time, as long as the internet is working.

Does the same account need to be logged into both switch consoles to do that? My 2 kids and myself each have our own switch and profile. Can I buy a digital copy on my switch, and then they can play that game using their profile on another switch?

Yes.
I use my Switch to buy all the games. I log onto my wife's Switch and re-download. Then she plays the game under her profile.
We have played Animal Crossing for example, on different TVs at the same time. Can visit her island etc...

That shouldn't work unless she is playing on your switch and you are playing on hers?

Basically the person who owns the game, has to play online-only on the "other" switch, and anyone on the primary purchasing switch is allowed to play on their accounts.

In my experience this DOES NOT work. You can only be logged in and playing on a single account on a single switch at a time.

You can buy a digital copy on your account, on your switchA. Anyone can play that game on that switchA.

YOU, the purchaser account, can play on any other switchB, so long as you can check in online when the game starts. Anyone else on this OTHER switchB cannot play your games.

If both switches(A+B) are on and someone is playing on your purchasing account on the original switchA, you will not be allowed to start a game on the secondary switchB. When you start a game, switchB will do a mandatory check online to see if you can, and will put up an error message telling you that someone is already using your account and no games will start.

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Well, all I know is that I've got 2 TVs set up in our room each with a separate cradle, and we regularly play the same game at the same time.
Spent 6 months playing AC together, visiting each other's islands.
I'd see myself over on her TV and vice-versa.
Have at least 50+ digital games and each one I purchase, I then go onto her switch under my identity and re-download it.
Then she plays under her identity, as long as there's internet of course.

My 2 kids both use my account to play digitally purchased games on their machines. It's a bit of a nuisance, but there's a definite workaround and if my 6 and 4 year old can manage, I'm sure you guys can too.

Everyone has to use the main account profile to access the games on their machines EXCEPT the primary machine. Whoever uses that machine can log into whatever account they want and still access the downloaded games. The others have to check in online when they start a new game. Easy enough as long as you have wifi. Once the game starts, you can turn on airplane mode and the game will continue to play for another 3 hours before having to checking in again. Our primary account is on my youngest kid's Switch Lite because he takes that thing with him everywhere so we know he can play without wifi. The other 2 rarely leave the house and so it is quite manageable.
If you have save sharing, it can be annoying, but you can also turn off cloud saves for individual games on each machine (or just off entirely). However, some games have unlocks based on use time, etc so those can be beneficial to grind together

This was my experience. My son was trying to play Fortnite on his Switch Lite which was is the secondary Switch. I was playing Metroid Prime on the primary. If I was playing, he could not play Fortnite. Maybe because it's an always online game? I'll try it with other games and see what happens.

Just got my TOTK shipping notice. We'll see how long the post office takes to get it here.

My boys (11 and 9) and I are eagerly awaiting the TOTK drop this weekend. They've announced their plans to beat it before I can. And I'm sure they will since I'm too busy at work these days to pull a bunch of all-nighters and prove them wrong. But it'll be fun trying!

I bought TOTK for my brother for his bday, and he just bought me a copy for mine. The perfect crime.

If anyone is thinking about the Zelda collectors OLED, be very careful. Here is regular OLED VS Zelda OLED. I suspect a lot of people are going to be trying to cash in, dump the collectors and the screens are shit.

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Seems its been an issue since launch OLED ones. Your post had me compare my wife's "old" OLED and the zelda upgrade I got her and both are identical with the blacks not being rich (green tint). Read up on it and issue around for a while, but guess the lottery is worse now than at the beginning. Not sure what to do with it at this point.

Thanks for the heads up. I was debating on “upgrading” to one of these from an original Switch but not now. Will wait for a true successor to the Switch which hopefully is only a year or two away.

A Switch 2 or whatever has to be a year or two a way at this point right? The hardware in the current Switch is rather old.

Man, that is a bummer and it's very unNintendo. Their stuff normally has really great build quality, I would reach out and see if they will replace the unit. I can see why people are angry, the biggest draw of the new version is the screen.

At this point too much trouble trying to get a better one. Couple of threads I've run into they had issues trying to get one with the proper parts. Not big of an issues since she wont notice considering its the same screen as her other one. Nintendo has been a bit..."newbish" with some of the last few consoles when it comes to image quality. Look at the Wii and the issues with component output, and lack of proper settings adjustments to get good quality 480p. Wii U mostly fixed those issues playing the previous games.

More like 5. Nintendo does not move fast. Although the appearance of a second Zelda game on a platform usually means it’s nearing the end. But console lifetimes are a lot longer than they used to be

But BOTW was originally made for the Wii U then adapted for the Switch. Maybe that means the Switch might see another Zelda before a new console launches?

They announced there will be no new hardware for the next fiscal year so that is April at the earliest but realistically the best we could hope for is it to be on shelves for black friday after that.

Crap, I forgot about that. I even have the Wii U version somewhere!

I still think it’s super unlikely - the Switch sales are starting to dip, and Nintendo STILL can’t keep up with demand due to supply chain issues. They wouldn’t want to repeat the PS5 debacle. That may have worked out for Sony eventually due to FOMO, but that would be a big ass risk

My guess end of next year. 2025 at the latest. At that point 8 years is pretty long. It was 7 years between PS4 and PS5. 5 years between wiiu and switch.

It's a shame that Nintendo doesn't want to dip into online competitive play. They even backtracked the support they were putting into in person tournaments. The lack of random matching for online games made it easy for me to ditch my console's regular use and modded it. I have a good backlog of games to play now.

True, but WiiU was Nintendo’s biggest bomb ever and Switch has sold tons. Less of an incentive to upgrade if they’re still making bank with the existing hardware.

Snap. hadnt looked at sale numbers for that before. Only reason I really see for an upgrade, or newer system, is to keep up with some of the cross platform games. As it is, outside of Switch only games, my library is mostly indy-ish and ports/remasters of previous gen games.

Virtual boy says "hold my beer..."

Mario Smash was the shit, wish I still had mine.

It was ahead of its time, perhaps too far ahead, haha.

Looking at other sales histories, crazy how bad Gamecube did. Excluding the Switch in my Nintendo rankings for now, GameCube was my favorite console after the SNES.

No kidding? That console had some astonishingly god games. Great for emulation too

Picked up an OLED for tomorrow. Kinda wish I hadn’t bothered since I rarely remove it from the dock!

Everyone forget about links awakening. Lol
For the multiple Zelda talk.

Went to Gamestop to pick up a regular copy and found out that I was accidentally there about an hour early. There were a few people in line waiting for the store to open. They were waiting on the collectors edition that I didnt even know existed. I ended up getting one before they sold out.

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Mine just showed up from Amazon, regular edition. What’s in the collectors box?

Looks like $130 gets you the game plus a steelcase, art book, set of pins, and poster.

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Given been 6 years for Zelda to come out I also intended to buy regular version, but at 2am I was on bestbuy website and saw Collectors edition for sale.

Hell yeah! Did not hesitate and happy I did not as not much longer after they sold out.

Bummer part is I have to wait until Monday to start playing.

I like what I’ve seen so far!!

I booted up my digital copy at midnight ET and got in an hour of playtime -- so far it feels just like BOTW, which is cool with me. My impression is they ease the new mechanics in as you play so there's more to come.

On another note, has anyone tried amiibos yet? Do you have to wait until a certain point to unlock them?

The poster is made from steel and I think you can use those pins like cufflinks if you ever wear a dress shirt. Not bad for 50 bucks more.