Gaming Inbox: Will the Nintendo Switch 2 Release in 2024?

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cracking the code
I can’t say I’m too upset about the news with E3. I loved it in its prime, but putting it out of its misery now is better than dragging on for years to come. To me, by far the most interesting thing about the report is that the reason Nintendo isn’t participating is because they don’t have much to show. This reinforces the idea that Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is the last major Switch game (a concept I read about here in a Reader’s Feature before I’ve seen it anywhere else).

Logically, it also suggests that the Switch 2 will be out in 2024, and I’d assume sooner rather than later unless they want to go almost two years without major new games. That in turn also makes the suggestion that a next-gen version of Tears Of The Kingdom will be a launch game for the new console much more believable.

Dare I say it, but maybe we finally got it right in predicting what Nintendo is doing? It had to happen one day, didn’t it? Only according to the law of averages. I’d rather not take a huge gap in new releases, but if Tears Of The Kingdom is up to the standard we’ve all come to expect, I’m fine with that as long as the rest of the Switch 2 launch lineup is just as good. At this point, though, I’d be surprised if the new console didn’t arrive by May next year.
logoma

The replacement
I completely forgot that Microsoft said it had a 10-year plan for Halo Infinite. It didn’t even last 10 months without becoming an absolute embarrassment. Once again we get stories of bad management and 343 Industries as an absolute shower. It might be lions led by donkeys, but at this point and after so many other failures, I think we have to admit that everyone involved made some mistakes.

Of course, that includes Phil Spencer. As another reader said, he’s management, the problem is management…why isn’t he doing something about it? He’s been in charge for almost a decade now and the fortunes of the Xbox have hardly improved while the number of games released has steadily decreased.

At some point the fingers are pointing at him and what kind of person would Microsoft try to replace him with? Or does Microsoft even recognize that there is a problem? They never seem to do that, so either they’re really good at hiding the problems, or they think it takes 30 years of effort to get ahead in the gaming industry, unlike Sony who made it right the first time.
Great

weak power
I can’t tell you how disinterested I am in a Halo battle royale. I don’t know if I’m alone, but as an old-school Halo fan, I’m sure I know a lot of people who feel the same way. I’m also a Star Wars fan and it’s all starting to feel very familiar.

First everything Halo was top notch, then came the prequels, then more spin-offs, then the sequels, and suddenly you were looking for a needle in a haystack in terms of quality. Halo Infinite was sort of The Force Awakens of Halo games: far from perfect, but could be considered good depending on how they follow it up. And we all know how that turned out for both franchises…
dippy

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Told you so
So, once again, something that any game could have told you was proven right, and one game publisher is made to look clueless. Not the least bit surprised that Sony’s PlayStation VR2 plans have had to be scaled back. Even without the pandemic and the war and all, I still don’t know where they got the idea that 2 million people would buy one at launch.

And while all of the recent things aren’t their fault, they still made the decision to make this one of the first things they did for the PlayStation 5. That’s crazy. Absolutely nothing has happened to PlayStation VR or the wider gaming world that would make it seem like a good idea, and lo and behold, it wasn’t. In this case, Xbox proved far smarter by simply staying out of the whole thing until someone can prove there’s real demand for it.
Westron

Attorney Robber
I don’t understand why this shouldn’t be Uncharted 5 in the Sony ad. At least that’s what they want you to think it is, so I don’t know what else they could play. Personally, however, I would have been happy if the franchise had died with Naughty Dog’s interest in it.

I don’t really see where it’s going conceptually from here, and the fact that there’s a female protagonist will only reinforce the Tomb Raider comparisons. So will they make it seem as un-Tomb Raider-y as possible, or will they lean in and try to steal Lara’s lunch?

Neither seems very interesting. It would have been better if they created a whole new franchise for Nate’s daughter after she decided to take a completely different path in life. Maybe she became a lawyer or a doctor or an environmentalist or something.
cubby

Audentis fortuna iuvat
I noticed you haven’t reviewed Sports Story yet as it was released just before Christmas. I assume this is partly due to bad timing (a stealth release that backfired badly) and partly due to the lack of quality of the finished product? It’s a shame it seems to have ended so badly as Golf Story is one of my all-time favorite indie games. Mismanagement seems to have been the problem, as this barbed Easter egg suggests.

I can’t help but think that the first mistake was making an indie sequel in the first place. No matter how good the original, indie sequels rarely do well. I used to think that I was the only one who didn’t get excited about even the best titles, but sales suggest most people agree.

One of the great draws of indie games is innovation, and that’s a lot harder to come by in a sequel. Sidebar Games would have been better off following the stellar example of Lucas Pope or Subset Games and using their success to launch something entirely new. Both “Return Of The Obra Dinn” and “Into The Breach” felt more like giant leaps into something new than a botched fling that resulted in a stumble.

Fortune favors the brave!
Ryan OD

CONDITIONS: A game starting December 23rd is a huge red flag. After seeing all the negative comments about bugs, we didn’t see the point in reporting them unless there was a substantial fix.

To take a bath
Considering how much money they like to waste, I’m very surprised that Microsoft is increasing the price of their consoles, especially the Xbox Series S. Value for money is the best thing about this current gen if you ask me, and keeping it low would be a much better use of $69 billion than buying Activision (not that it’d cost a fraction of that to keep prices the same).

I know it hasn’t come into effect here yet, but it seems a matter of time before Microsoft’s job will only get that much harder.
Brosman

It’s dead, Jim Ryan
So E3 is dead. I’m sure they’ll try for a few more years, but if they can’t even get a single console maker to come in for the big comeback year, they don’t stand a chance after that. Since Activision Blizzard will be part of Microsoft by then, they are automatically out too.

A lot of people don’t seem to care but I think it’s a shame that will make the gaming industry a worse place. It’s not that it was a fun spectacle, which it was, but the fact that it provided such access to upcoming games in terms of previews and interviews from a variety of sources.

Notice how nowadays when a big game comes out, say God Of War Ragnarök, we know next to nothing about it and never hear from the developers? We get a few pieces of puff pastry from major American websites and that’s it. These games might as well fall out of the sky, fully fledged for everything we’ll ever know about how and why they were made.

Bad practices like NFTs and live service games aren’t questioned, just argued about on sites like this where all we do is convert. It’s a bad state and I don’t see them ever getting back to where they were. From now on, it’ll just be soulless livestreams, with anonymous voiceovers or developers clumsily reading an automated prompt and saying exactly what the publisher wants them to.
restaurant

inbox mitran
I somehow missed that last year was Final Fantasy 7’s 25th anniversary, and now it’s 26 years old? All I can say is I wish I still was.
double

I’m kind of shocked that Dead Space did so much worse than The Callisto Protocol. I think this is the end of this franchise again.
plantage net

This week’s hot topic
In this weekend’s inbox will be the results of the 2022 Readers Top 20. As usual, you have all week to cast your votes before we add them all up for the final reveal.

There are no restrictions on what you can vote for, other than they must be newly released in the UK in 2022. Otherwise, just tell us your top three favorites of the year and ideally send us an explanation of why you liked them.

What do you think of 2022 in general and how do you think it compares to other gaming years in recent years? And which publishers and consoles do you think have had the best 12 months?

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The fine print
New inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special hot topic inboxes on weekends. Letters to the Editor are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500-600 word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be featured in the next available weekend slot.