Posted on 06/30/2021 at 10:40 PM
| Filed Under Feature
Show notes:
I actually buy most third party games on Switch when available. The Switch is my favorite system, in part for the "intimacy," as Mike put it, and in part because while I did buy it for Nintendo franchises, third party stuff is a nice bonus, especially when I think how starved for games the N64 was. My thinking is that it's legit cool that stuff like Doom, Witcher 3 and Outer Worlds works on it, and is portable when I want to take it on planes. As far as the downgrades that were necessary, we're hardly talking about a functional or visual difference between, say, the PlayStation and the Game Boy, which was still sold throughout the 5th gen. There are legit third-party gems like Dragon Quest XI S and the upcoming SMT V. Right now, the PS5 doesn't really have anything that justifies a $500 purchase, so I'm content to wait for Final Fantasy XVI to drop. As for Xbox, I'll just say that I'm not very fond of Microsoft itself, and leave it at that. So yeah, I'm all for "bring it to Switch." I'll probably pick up the upcoming Switch port of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, just for kicks. I'm also having to travel out of state a lot due to my father's illness, so I appreciate being able to play full-fat console RPGs and action games in portable form.
The Amico, though... I'm not really sure what Tallarico is thinking there. I just don't see it succeeding against Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft on one end and the mobile market and Apple TV 4K on the other end, especially at a price point higher than a Switch Lite. Some versions of the Amico retail for $300, which is the price of the full-sized Switch or a Series S. There was some drama over the Amico last night, which I assume was after you got this podcast in the can, where Ars Technica got ahold of the Amico's specs and leaked them, comparing the chips to those of low-end smartphones. Needless to say, Tallarico was wasn't happy and threatened to lawyer up against AT for copyright infringement. That, plus the lack of any concrete information on Amico just three months before it's supposed to launch, doesn't seem to bode well for the Amico, and I'm not at all sure than Earthworm Jim will be enough. Tallarico seems to want to bring back couch multiplayer, but Mario Kart 8 and Smash Ultimate fit that bill pretty nicely. Astrosmash looks kind of neat. I used to play the 2600 version when the 2600 was the big thing. Maybe they could bring it to Switch at some point?
That said, they're a lot more reasonable than Atari. The VCS costs as much as the PS5 Digital Edition. I have been playing since the Atari days, and I don't have that much nostalgia.
I believe that the handheld cartridge system you talked about is called the Evercade.