I am trying to choose between buying a Nintendo Switch or a Nintendo DS.
This may not be the perfect community to ask - but I can't think of any better place.
The reason for my question: I don't want to own obsolete hardware in 10 years. Lately most games seem to depend on a "phone home" feature, which is not really an issue for my pc because it is always connected, but a console is something I want to play always and everywhere.
I already did some searching and found that games can be played offline fine (most of them, some exceptions are there like Multiplayer and Mortal Kombat), but:
- There is something like the paid Nintendo Online Account. I am not planning on having a paid account. How much of the system depends on the account?
- Can I have progression in a game (let's say: one of the Zelda franchise) and will my Wife and Kids all have their own progression, without having to pay for X accounts?
- People who own a Switch, let's take this to extremes, do you feel like in 20 years from now you can still do the same things on your hardware as you can do now? (No multiplayer is fine)
Also, feel free to rant about "paying is not owning", the state of the gaming industry is horrible.
edit: Thank you all for the comments! I don't post a lot, so it was kinda overwhelming :)
For clarity:
- I meant I want to "buy for life" (not really "life", but, if the hardware survives you can play on pre-internet consoles forever - you can even buy more games if you can find them)
- I want to buy a physical copy of the games, not download them
I've decided to go with the Nintendo DS for now (I have a DSi - this week I bought a couple of games, 2nd hand). Reasons:
- I already had it
- Joycons on switch. Multiple people mentioned having problems with them. I don't count on being able to buy them new in 10 years, meaning they will have to last.
Again: thank you all for the useful input!
What i find to be cool about the switch is that you can still buy hardware game cardridges. I don‘t see a reason why these cardridges wouldn‘t work in 20 years anymore. I also never had issues playing the games offline.
Yes, your wife and your kids will be able to have seperate game progressions. I think you are able to create up to 8 of these „profiles“.
The problem is, several publishers don't want to pay Nintendo for the larger storage cartridges. Many Switch games only have part of the game physically and you have to download the rest.
Diabolo III made a point of saying the whole game was on the cart for example.
Because, just like discs, they're a crappy pre-launch build that relies on day one patches or additional content to actually work correctly.
Nintendo is actually one of the better companies regarding this in my experience. It doesn't happen nearly as often with them as it does with PS5/XSX
For first party stuff, Nintendo launches finished games (though Sony does too).
For third party, cartridges are expensive enough that it's not uncommon at all for companies to straight up make a bunch of content download only. A lot of "multiple game" collections only put some of the games on the cartridge (not counting the ones that tie some to keys).
This wasn't true for several Nintendo games. Mario Kart 8, Animal Crossing and Zelda:Tears all required day one downloads.
Nintendo is really shitty , I would not trust them that a device or a game will work after 10 years. They will do something to make you buy the new thing.
Just because you don't like a company doesn't mean you need to make up random bullshit about them.