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Nintendo is winning!
7 years ago
General
Last year at Anime Expo, I was formally introduced to the Nintendo Switch. And in 2 minutes I got a better handle on it than months of TV advertising. I understood the form factor, the size of it. And then got to see it go from single person to two-player and how each controller "side" was easily converted into a small but fully functional controller. I got it! You could carry it around and it was ready to go for single or double player action without any additional equipment.
I also realized how deadly a game-night system it was. Suddenly the scenes of everyone playing Splatoon in the empty classroom or the units set up on the table in the garage, it all made sense. Roll up, set up, link up and go. No cables, no network switches... no messing around.
This year at Anime Expo... I got to see just how serious Nintendo is about making sure everyone can have fun with the Switch. This year in Main Events, there were two Switches. Both with Mario Kart. So damn right we were gonna throw down some four-player karting action. The problem was, when one Switch tried to connect to the other, a message came up informing the first user that they had a different version of MK from the host. We all looked at each other and there was talk of hooking to the backstage hot-spot to get on the internet and update the deficient version.
Except when we calmed down and looked at it, the out-of-date Switch had a screen that said all Switches needed to go to that screen. Almost as soon as the question was uttered, we saw that on the message screen was a button labeled "How do I get to this screen?" It provided step-by-step instructions and then we had them both on this screen. One Switch hosted a group, the other joined it... and I swear I am not making this up...
The up-to-date Switch pushed a patch to the out-of-date Switch!
I was absolutely floored. I'm sure we've all been in version hell at a LAN party, trying to get everyone on the same version so multiplayer gaming could commence. And here Nintendo has built a system to let Switches push version patches to each other so that everyone can play. No muss, no fuss... we were multiplayer gaming in less than two minutes! And I would not be surprised at all that if you had say, four different Switches with three different versions of a game among them, that if everyone joined the same update group, the most up-to-date Switch would push to the rest and get everyone updated.
It's such a little thing... but it blew my mind completely! I think it just shows the level of thought that was put into making the Switch a machine you can have a "flash game" with fellow Switch users, on the fly.
(Now someone is going to tell me that, like, the PS Vita has been doing this for years. If so, I never knew about it. But regardless of who came up with it, it's a really sweet feature)
I also realized how deadly a game-night system it was. Suddenly the scenes of everyone playing Splatoon in the empty classroom or the units set up on the table in the garage, it all made sense. Roll up, set up, link up and go. No cables, no network switches... no messing around.
This year at Anime Expo... I got to see just how serious Nintendo is about making sure everyone can have fun with the Switch. This year in Main Events, there were two Switches. Both with Mario Kart. So damn right we were gonna throw down some four-player karting action. The problem was, when one Switch tried to connect to the other, a message came up informing the first user that they had a different version of MK from the host. We all looked at each other and there was talk of hooking to the backstage hot-spot to get on the internet and update the deficient version.
Except when we calmed down and looked at it, the out-of-date Switch had a screen that said all Switches needed to go to that screen. Almost as soon as the question was uttered, we saw that on the message screen was a button labeled "How do I get to this screen?" It provided step-by-step instructions and then we had them both on this screen. One Switch hosted a group, the other joined it... and I swear I am not making this up...
The up-to-date Switch pushed a patch to the out-of-date Switch!
I was absolutely floored. I'm sure we've all been in version hell at a LAN party, trying to get everyone on the same version so multiplayer gaming could commence. And here Nintendo has built a system to let Switches push version patches to each other so that everyone can play. No muss, no fuss... we were multiplayer gaming in less than two minutes! And I would not be surprised at all that if you had say, four different Switches with three different versions of a game among them, that if everyone joined the same update group, the most up-to-date Switch would push to the rest and get everyone updated.
It's such a little thing... but it blew my mind completely! I think it just shows the level of thought that was put into making the Switch a machine you can have a "flash game" with fellow Switch users, on the fly.
(Now someone is going to tell me that, like, the PS Vita has been doing this for years. If so, I never knew about it. But regardless of who came up with it, it's a really sweet feature)
Ah, well. Maybe one of these days...