Nintendo of America President On the Future of the Switch, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and More

QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz to Gaming@beehaw.org – 43 points –
Nintendo of America President: “Everyone Has the Right To Form a Union”
inverse.com
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They gonna fix sharing digital games with family members? Or do I have to keep cartridges around so my 4yo can pop them out and lose them?

Crazy to think that when I bought a lot of my digital games, I wouldn’t have expected a second kid who wants to play them on a separate switch. Now my saves are all fucked because he’s gotta play them on my profile on the second switch. I bought that switch because my wife and I both wanted to play ACNH, which was also bullshit. And then I got stuck with the Lite because we couldn’t migrate her island over, which was also bullshit.

There’s no reason we can’t share digital libraries with households. Amazon does it.

This is Nintendo we're talking about, doing common things that other tech companies do isn't exactly their way of playing. Also, make your kids share!

Sharing isn’t the problem. 4 year olds aren’t the most responsible or capable of keeping track of small objects.

I can’t tell you the places I’ve found Odyssey, and that’s his favorite game. And 3D All Stars is completely missing, which I’m still really upset about.

I didn't consider cartridge size as an issue, at least back in the day they were large enough that it was harder to lose them!

ACNH means animal crossing, for anyone else reading this who didn't know. Quite the acronym

Sorry thought it was well-known enough without additional context (talking about switch in gaming community). I was going to mention this was 2020 for added context because ACNH launch was exceptionally huge because of Covid lockdowns.

Literally just a rant on Zero Punctuation about "AC" games - Assassin's Creed, Animal Crossing, Armored Core, I forget the list. (Also Asheron's Call I guess)

Well, first I can't comment — or I won't comment, I should say — on the rumors that are out there. But one thing we've done with the Switch to help with that communication and transition is the formation of the Nintendo Account. In the past, every device we transitioned to had a whole new account system. Creating the Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players if and when we make a transition to a new platform, to help ease that process or transition.

Our goal is to minimize the dip you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another. I can't speak to the possible features of a new platform, but the Nintendo Account is a strong basis for having that communication as we make the transition.

Is this him indirectly confirming backwards compatibility?

Why would Nintendo do anything as customer friendly as back compatibility? It's just not who they are.

Because the GBA never played Gameboy games, and the Wii never played GameCube games, and the Wii U never played Wii games, right?

Like others have said, but I will repeat:

  • GB->GBC->GBA->DS->DSi->3DS->n3DS
  • GCN->Wii->Wii U

It's very much something they have a strong history of doing where it can work.

The two lines you mention do cut off at some points, though. The DS no longer had backwards compatibility with the GB and GBC, the DSi with the GBA, although the 3DS re-added GB and GBC, just digitally. The Wii U also doesn't support GCN discs. All of these, however, work pretty well with homebrew like mGBA and Nintendont, they're just not available officially.

Yea, but all the consoles I listed at launch had nearly full BC with the previous gen. DSi wasn't compatible with Rock Band for DS, or fully compatible with the DS pokemon games that used the GBA slot for pal park, but beyond that, they've been pretty good for not starting any generation without a clean slate before Switch.

Yeah, I agree with that. I was just trying to point out how Nintendo's BC has never been as complete as it could be, for whatever reason it may be, but yeah, they've been pretty good at guaranteeing last-gen compatibility so far. Let's see how it goes with whatever will succeed the Switch.

Because they've done it many times in the past? Wii, WiiU, Gameboy series, DS series all had backwards compatibility.