Media Videogame Thread

Nintendo Direct was aight

  • Kirby Air Ride sequel directed by Sakurai was by far the thing I'm most interested in, it's one of my biggest childhood games. But no footage of City Trial is a shame though since, let's be honest here, that's what everyone actually cares about regarding that game.
  • Gamecube games coming to Switch online is good and finally seems like a killer feature to sell people on NSO Expansion. Most of the footage shown was in 4:3 for some ungodly reason, but I did see a brief snippet of F-Zero GX in widescreen so idk what's going on there (I know for a fact GX has native progressive scan/widescreen support so idk why the footage was mostly in 4:3). The fact that Air Ride is not included in the Gamecube listing also implies that none of the games on the service are getting HD ports (so no Wind Waker HD).
  • Most importantly, the Wii is a souped-up Gamecube on a hardware standpoint so it's only a matter of time till we get Sin and Punishment Star Successor :psysly:
  • New Mario Kart looks really impressive and will definitely convince me to not bother getting Mario Kart 8 as I've been procrastinating on. But i dunno, I'm iffy on MK8's physics engine (I'm a DS/Wii/7 fan) and this looks to be pretty similar.
  • I'm also one of the three people who also clapped when I saw Survival Kids getting a revival lol.
  • Other than that...direct was fine I guess? Mostly a line-up of 3rd parties showing their support for the console and implying that, on a power stand-point, the Switch can keep up with the PS4/5 and Xbox Series. That's great, but unfortunately, unlike when the Switch 1 came out, I now own a laptop that is decisively more powerful than every home console on market and has a better screen than the Switch 2, so I have a hard time justifying buying ports when I can just get them for cheaper on PC. None of the announcements really shook me to my core
  • Happy for those interested in the new From Software game, I might give it a shot considering that it's not gonna be out for a while but I've been trying out Dark Souls 1 lately and it is very much not a game for me (I imagine Bloodborne and Elden Ring actually make the gameplay functional so maybe I'll try them at some point). Daemon x Machina 2 is fine I guess, I remember being excited for the first one but it just kinda came and went.
  • New Donkey Kong was fine but seems to be taking itself too seriously (I am a much bigger fan of Rare-era DK than Retro Studios-era DK). I also have to wonder how well it'll perform considering it's not releasing at the Switch 2's launch but is going to be drowned out by a lot of other major releases once the holidays come around.
  • I'm glad Nintendo is doing original titles with Drag x Drive and the Tour, but making the Tour a paid game rather than something included with the console is unbelievably dumb, and Drag x Drive is just...sooooo sauceless and just screams of being a tech demo. Like, this seems like the Switch 2's equivalent of ARMs, but that game had so much more personality even if its popularity also cratered as time went on
  • $450 price is a lot, though admittedly it's pretty competitive with a PS5 and Steam Deck. The system is also coming out wayyyyy sooner than I expected, I thought this was gonna be a November release like Nintendo usually does to be honest.

So altogether, I'm not gonna bother getting the console at launch but I'll get one within a year from now, most likely during the holidays or early next year, or maybe during the summer if I feel like spending the money. I barely use my Switch 1 despite how much as I've been meaning to and some part of that is just that the games don't run well, so maybe the Switch 2 will close that gap even if it still can't fully compete with my PC. Ironically, this direct has also just convinced me not to play my Switch 1 because some of the games on my backlog there (Breath of the Wild, Kiry and the Forgotten Land) are getting Switch 2 upgrades, so might as well hold off till I get a Switch 2.

Finally, and most importantly, I do not give a shit about Hollow Knight.

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Today's Nintendo Switch 2 Direct was super impressive.

The Switch 1 was great, and had a hell of a run, but from the get-go the Switch 2 is looking to dunk on the Switch 1 in every way. Fantastic hardware with 1080p in handheld mode and 4K capability docked, not to mention 60 FPS and 120 hz, great launch games like Mario Kart World and a new 3D Donkey Kong game and Kirby racing, incredible 3rd Party support including Elden Ring and so many other popular 3rd party games, and Switch 2 enhancements for games like BOTW+TOTK, Prime 4, and even Legends: Z-A is icing on the cake. Not to mention voice chat and screen sharing modes integrated into it for an even more social experience, and an improved form factor with bigger and better Joy Cons and handheld screen.

This is an immediate purchase for me. The Switch 1 was fun, but the Switch 2 is gonna blow it out of the water.
 
Karxrida said:
That's because anyone who forcibly changes the aspect ratio of old games that didn't support widescreen should be shot.
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Well yeah stretching sucks, but I'm talking about games that already had native widescreen support. After some digging, it seems like there are a lot less Gamecube games with widescreen support than I thought, but as I said F-Zero GX has it (even if it's not quite 16:9) so like...why is the footage in 4:3?????

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On an aside, apparently Mario Kart World is EIGHTY FUCKING DOLLARS????????????????????????
 
Meanwhile, I'm having a hard time getting excited. I wasn't much of a fan of other series doing big open games and there isn't anything showing Mario Kart or DK will be different here. Most interesting thing is the Gamecube stuff, but that's a real big price tag for a whole lot of tech stuffed in that doesn't contribute to playing Gamecube games.
 
This direct was perfection to me. Mario Kart World looks so good, Kirby Air Riders is a dream come true, and the new DK looks amazing. Couldn’t be happier, though I can understand why some may felt like it was lackluster overall.
 
I think this Direct was objectively not good.

Because even if you have your cult classic scrimblo game covered, lowkey there is almost no reason to buy this system on launch along with it being so overpriced. Mario Kart World for $80. $80 Procon 2. Expansion Pass or buy upgrades. $450 base system.

Mario Kart isn't a good launch title because, no matter how much Nintendo fleshes it out, it's still essentially a casual party game. Not a lot of people are buying an entire new system for the Nintendo Jackbox Party Pack.

Kirby Air Riders is objectively not a good pick. It's actually one of the lowest views out of the new titles, only really winning against the wheelchair Basketball shit.

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And this is biased towards it since this is the internet and you will see 500 people on Reddit say Kirby Air Ride is amazing, and meet 0 fans of it IRL.

Hyrule Warriors is mid, and Donkey Kong I'm not sure how it will play out but it's definitely not a 3D Mario. Nicher by default. The Direct pacing was also terrible. Like 20% of the Direct was dedicated to Switch 2 games, a good 40% were third-party games (almost all old, many of which not even impressive - yeah I love Deltarune too, but I could play that on a Windows Laptop from 2014) and the fact that a three second clip of Silksong has outdone almost everything Nintendo announced today shows the lack of star power.

They spent a considerable amount of time on specs that only nerds like me care about, which isn't how it went in the Switch Presentation in 2017 lmao. Remember when they revealed Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the same presentation? Now we gotta spend like fuckin' 10 minutes on Voice Chat options.

Then we spend like 30% of the presentation on the worst gimmicks I've seen in a Mario Party + shit like a navigation app for a 8 year old title. Again: a mobile app navigation for an 8 year old videogame. And you gotta pay for this shit, since other games will be getting free upgrades to resolution or FPS and this is what they thought was worth money instead!!! T

To add onto this, the insult of them making it a pain in the ass to find out the price so we all had to learn on our owns how kinda dogshit they priced this system feels a bit insulting.

I was already sold on the Switch 2 and Nintendo is kinda de-selling me, this feels like the classic case of "Company gets a massive win -> Confidence -> Now we're gonna fuck everything up"
 
While I am mixed on the direct itself (more negative on the pricing info which came out after) I kinda disagree on some of your points?

ant4456 said:
Mario Kart isn't a good launch title because, no matter how much Nintendo fleshes it out, it's still essentially a casual party game. Not a lot of people are buying an entire new system for the Nintendo Jackbox Party Pack.
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See, I would've agreed with you before MK8 that Mario Kart was not a system seller, but this might be a gamble that pays off for them tbh. Mario Kart 8, with various updates, has been the current Mario Kart for like a decade, and not only has it sold INSANELY well (I think like at least 1 in 3 Switch owners have a copy?) it hasn't significantly dropped in price since coming out; the Nintendo Tax phenomenon didn't really start until the Switch era. So to be honest, with renewed interest in Mario thanks to the movie and Universal, I think it might actually pan out as a system seller, but I'm not totally sure.
Kirby Air Riders is objectively not a good pick. It's actually one of the lowest views out of the new titles, only really winning against the wheelchair Basketball shit.

And this is biased towards it since this is the internet and you will see 500 people on Reddit say Kirby Air Ride is amazing, and meet 0 fans of it IRL.
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I can assure you I do have irl friends who are also big fans of the game lol. Air Ride sold fine on Gamecube iirc, and a lot of people are reading this as a Sakurai Pet Project to appease him now that Smash Ultimate sold like crazy. As long as it pulls Metroid Dread numbers I think it should be a success.


As for the rest of the post, this Direct is different from the Switch 1 reveal because Nintendo is in a very different place right now than they were a decade or so ago. The Switch was meant to go all-in on Nintendo's dominance in the handheld space and carve out a niche for them in the general console space after the Wii U flopped. Now that gaming tablets are a proven market, the Switch 1's biggest problem is its feeble hardware and features so companies are having a harder time supporting it with new games like they can any other console. But the Switch 2 went all in on showing that the AAA companies were going to support it in just the same way as the PS and Xbox. With graphical fidelity in games hitting an asymptote over the past decade, I think as long as the Switch is able to compete in performance with the PS5 and Xbox Series, it should be set for quite a while.
 
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ant i think some of your points are valid but you don't need to say "this direct was objectively not good". it probably wasn't your intent but it makes you look like an ass and makes anyone who disagrees look stupid for doing so. if you didn't like the direct, and it looks like you didn't, you can just say that rather than saying it was objectively not good.

for stuff i do agree with since above post tackled everything i disagree with, hyrule warriors isn't inherently bad but i'm super ready for them to move on from botw. it's been 8 whole years since it came out and the original game ended very conclusive. the au stuff with age of calamity was a nice little thing to tide people over but then they released an unnecessary sequel and now an interquel? feels like they're milking it beyond belief, especially since i was a bigger fan of the more dungeon crawling intensive parts than the open world format. mario party stuff also sucks, it's nice they're adding this stuff but it's already been usurped by discord and i'm not sure how they're going to improve on it. and pricing stuff is awful, i'm not sure if it's in line with inflation over the past few years but my kneejerk reaction to a $500 console is not a great one, probably not going to buy it initially anymore and instead wait for lza or something else i really wanna play to come out before getting it.
 
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ant4456 said:
I think this Direct was objectively not good.

Because even if you have your cult classic scrimblo game covered, lowkey there is almost no reason to buy this system on launch along with it being so overpriced. Mario Kart World for $80. $80 Procon 2. Expansion Pass or buy upgrades. $450 base system.

Mario Kart isn't a good launch title because, no matter how much Nintendo fleshes it out, it's still essentially a casual party game. Not a lot of people are buying an entire new system for the Nintendo Jackbox Party Pack.

Kirby Air Riders is objectively not a good pick. It's actually one of the lowest views out of the new titles, only really winning against the wheelchair Basketball shit.

View attachment 728395

And this is biased towards it since this is the internet and you will see 500 people on Reddit say Kirby Air Ride is amazing, and meet 0 fans of it IRL.

Hyrule Warriors is mid, and Donkey Kong I'm not sure how it will play out but it's definitely not a 3D Mario. Nicher by default. The Direct pacing was also terrible. Like 20% of the Direct was dedicated to Switch 2 games, a good 40% were third-party games (almost all old, many of which not even impressive - yeah I love Deltarune too, but I could play that on a Windows Laptop from 2014) and the fact that a three second clip of Silksong has outdone almost everything Nintendo announced today shows the lack of star power.

They spent a considerable amount of time on specs that only nerds like me care about, which isn't how it went in the Switch Presentation in 2017 lmao. Remember when they revealed Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the same presentation? Now we gotta spend like fuckin' 10 minutes on Voice Chat options.

Then we spend like 30% of the presentation on the worst gimmicks I've seen in a Mario Party + shit like a navigation app for a 8 year old title. Again: a mobile app navigation for an 8 year old videogame. And you gotta pay for this shit, since other games will be getting free upgrades to resolution or FPS and this is what they thought was worth money instead!!! T

To add onto this, the insult of them making it a pain in the ass to find out the price so we all had to learn on our owns how kinda dogshit they priced this system feels a bit insulting.

I was already sold on the Switch 2 and Nintendo is kinda de-selling me, this feels like the classic case of "Company gets a massive win -> Confidence -> Now we're gonna fuck everything up"
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Love how you conveniently ignored that Nintendo somehow bribed freaking FromSoft into making a (timed?) exclusive "Bloodborne at home" for them to fit your narrative lmao.
 
Karxrida said:
Love how you conveniently ignored that Nintendo somehow bribed freaking FromSoft into making a (timed?) exclusive "Bloodborne at home" for them to fit your narrative lmao.
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Meh. FROM have gradually had the interesting aspects of their art whittled away by the financial pressures of being an industry titan and the browbeating of the most narrow-minded and loud portion of their fanbase. This isn't the draw for me that it would have been a decade ago.
 
adjectivenoun said:
Meh. FROM have gradually had the interesting aspects of their art whittled away by the financial pressures of being an industry titan and the browbeating of the most narrow-minded and loud portion of their fanbase. This isn't the draw for me that it would have been a decade ago.
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Their interesting aspects do not necessarily equate to good, as Dark Souls II can attest to with the Soul Level system. Hell, the PVP stuff is supremely ass in the majority of Souls games I've played.

And regardless of your feelings, it's hard to ignore how potentially big this kind of exclusive is. Does Nintendo own the game?
 
the games look fine but no way I'll buy the console new. I'll buy it used once some piracy is is enabled

I will absolutely not pay 80 dollars for any game ever and I don't support Nintendo since a few years for numerous reasons
 
I heard airship fortress is on the new mario kart, which is honestly worth buying the console for. yes I'm joking, but you would be surprised how much of that statement is a joke.
 
CryoGyro said:
Mario Kart is a rock solid launch title. While it may be a "party game" in that you don't have complete control of the outcome, its solid single player gameplay and decently high skill ceiling make it compelling regardless of your "gamer level." It's never been a frivilous experience.
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I'm not trying to say "Mario Kart isn't hardcore enough" but that I straight up just don't think any multiplayer focused title is a good fit for the launch of a console, because those are the kinds of games people tend to gravitate to in absence of other "major games" rather than their major game, and because of the nature of the system in question.

I find people citing sales numbers like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe disingenuous because sales of individual game does not = launch title success. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing New Horizons also sold better than Breath of the Wild, but I would absolutely not agree with them being the launch title for the Switch either.

I think they should've shifted Donkey Kong and Mario Kart around so that Mario Kart was a month after launch (like BotW and MK8 Deluxe) while Donkey Kong was their core "dump a shit ton of hours" singleplayer experience. This isn't to say it's because it's "hardcore" or something, but because this is a handheld system, so singleplayer games show off the hardware better, and because by the time people get tired of Donkey Kong (if it's good, presumably) then Mario Kart will come out and now that can start cooking for the rest of the system's life.

Karxrida said:
Love how you conveniently ignored that Nintendo somehow bribed freaking FromSoft into making a (timed?) exclusive "Bloodborne at home" for them to fit your narrative lmao.
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This is an annoying reply. "To fit your narrative" my brother in christ this is a silly fucking videogame thread on a silly website. Second, literally nothing about this game counters my point.

In general this game I actually think will have less overall impact than the Elden Ring port because it's a "PvPvE" title meaning it's seemingly not going to be a direct Soulslike follow up, which I think is gonna make it less impactful than a Bloodborne would've been. Elden Ring itself is IMO massive for selling the console because it's a pretty perfect fit for handheld play.
 
Karxrida said:
Their interesting aspects do not necessarily equate to good, as Dark Souls II can attest to with the Soul Level system. Hell, the PVP stuff is supremely ass in the majority of Souls games I've played.

And regardless of your feelings, it's hard to ignore how potentially big this kind of exclusive is. Does Nintendo own the game?
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I think that Dark Souls II is quite a bit better than many people give it credit for, though they were already starting to sand the edges off their formula by that point. Agree on the PVP, though. I wish they would go back to the wild west style of the first Dark Souls instead of continuously tinkering with a system that, due to its reliance on involuntary interactions (i.e. having your world forcibly broken into by an invader), can't ever really be enjoyable for everyone.

This certainly has the potential to be a big moneymaker for Nintendo — Bloodborne did big things for the PS4, of course, and FROM is coming off of the biggest financial slam dunk in their history — but as an individual consumer, I'm not really more likely to buy the Switch 2 because of this. Besides, Nintendo themselves are in a smash hit era right now, so I'm not sure that it particularly matters what they have on this thing at launch; it's gonna do numbers.
 
ant4456 said:
I'm not trying to say "Mario Kart isn't hardcore enough" but that I straight up just don't think any multiplayer focused title is a good fit for the launch of a console, because those are the kinds of games people tend to gravitate to in absence of other "major games" rather than their major game, and because of the nature of the system in question.

I find people citing sales numbers like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe disingenuous because sales of individual game does not = launch title success. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing New Horizons also sold better than Breath of the Wild, but I would absolutely not agree with them being the launch title for the Switch either.

I think they should've shifted Donkey Kong and Mario Kart around so that Mario Kart was a month after launch (like BotW and MK8 Deluxe) while Donkey Kong was their core "dump a shit ton of hours" singleplayer experience. This isn't to say it's because it's "hardcore" or something, but because this is a handheld system, so singleplayer games show off the hardware better, and because by the time people get tired of Donkey Kong (if it's good, presumably) then Mario Kart will come out and now that can start cooking for the rest of the system's life.


This is an annoying reply. "To fit your narrative" my brother in christ this is a silly fucking videogame thread on a silly website. Second, literally nothing about this game counters my point.

In general this game I actually think will have less overall impact than the Elden Ring port because it's a "PvPvE" title meaning it's seemingly not going to be a direct Soulslike follow up, which I think is gonna make it less impactful than a Bloodborne would've been. Elden Ring itself is IMO massive for selling the console because it's a pretty perfect fit for handheld play.
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I wouldn't say that multiplayer games can't be big, high-time-investment things, but I can still see the logic in not wanting them to be the big headliner at launch. Online-focused games inherently require other people to have the game and system, which doesn't really mesh with releasing at a moment where nobody has the system beforehand. The game probably won't hit full potential until a few months after the system releases anyway, especially if there ends up being a big scalper situation (and I'm not currently aware of anything preventing that from occurring).
 
adjectivenoun said:
I think that Dark Souls II is quite a bit better than many people give it credit for, though they were already starting to sand the edges off their formula by that point. Agree on the PVP, though. I wish they would go back to the wild west style of the first Dark Souls instead of continuously tinkering with a system that, due to its reliance on involuntary interactions (i.e. having your world forcibly broken into by an invader), can't ever really be enjoyable for everyone.

This certainly has the potential to be a big moneymaker for Nintendo — Bloodborne did big things for the PS4, of course, and FROM is coming off of the biggest financial slam dunk in their history — but as an individual consumer, I'm not really more likely to buy the Switch 2 because of this. Besides, Nintendo themselves are in a smash hit era right now, so I'm not sure that it particularly matters what they have on this thing at launch; it's gonna do numbers.
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I'm good friends with someone who likes DS2 a lot and he has flat out told me that the Soul Level system is the worst part of that game. He prays the game receives a remaster specifically so the Soul Level stuff gets deleted and people can just co-op normally.
 
ant4456 said:
I think this Direct was objectively not good.

Because even if you have your cult classic scrimblo game covered, lowkey there is almost no reason to buy this system on launch along with it being so overpriced. Mario Kart World for $80. $80 Procon 2. Expansion Pass or buy upgrades. $450 base system.

Mario Kart isn't a good launch title because, no matter how much Nintendo fleshes it out, it's still essentially a casual party game. Not a lot of people are buying an entire new system for the Nintendo Jackbox Party Pack.

Kirby Air Riders is objectively not a good pick. It's actually one of the lowest views out of the new titles, only really winning against the wheelchair Basketball shit.

View attachment 728395

And this is biased towards it since this is the internet and you will see 500 people on Reddit say Kirby Air Ride is amazing, and meet 0 fans of it IRL.

Hyrule Warriors is mid, and Donkey Kong I'm not sure how it will play out but it's definitely not a 3D Mario. Nicher by default. The Direct pacing was also terrible. Like 20% of the Direct was dedicated to Switch 2 games, a good 40% were third-party games (almost all old, many of which not even impressive - yeah I love Deltarune too, but I could play that on a Windows Laptop from 2014) and the fact that a three second clip of Silksong has outdone almost everything Nintendo announced today shows the lack of star power.

They spent a considerable amount of time on specs that only nerds like me care about, which isn't how it went in the Switch Presentation in 2017 lmao. Remember when they revealed Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the same presentation? Now we gotta spend like fuckin' 10 minutes on Voice Chat options.

Then we spend like 30% of the presentation on the worst gimmicks I've seen in a Mario Party + shit like a navigation app for a 8 year old title. Again: a mobile app navigation for an 8 year old videogame. And you gotta pay for this shit, since other games will be getting free upgrades to resolution or FPS and this is what they thought was worth money instead!!! T

To add onto this, the insult of them making it a pain in the ass to find out the price so we all had to learn on our owns how kinda dogshit they priced this system feels a bit insulting.

I was already sold on the Switch 2 and Nintendo is kinda de-selling me, this feels like the classic case of "Company gets a massive win -> Confidence -> Now we're gonna fuck everything up"
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Here’s the thing- Nintendo doesn’t need you to buy a Switch 2.

2025 is a lot different than 2017, and in 2017 Nintendo NEEDED you to buy a Switch. In the words of Reggie himself: it was do or die.

The Switch will continue to have an install base of 100 million people, and for most it will continue to be their main Nintendo console. This was going to be the case regardless of how strong or not strong this Direct was. Nintendo will continue to support it for the next year or so, and since its the Nintendo Switch 2 and not some wacky new thing, people don’t need to be convinced. They know whether or not they like the Switch already. For those who like it, its a matter of when, not if.

For now, Nintendo had time on their side.

$80 games sucks ass tho.
 
chimp said:
Here’s the thing- Nintendo doesn’t need you to buy a Switch 2.

2025 is a lot different than 2017, and in 2017 Nintendo NEEDED you to buy a Switch. In the words of Reggie himself: it was do or die.

The Switch will continue to have an install base of 100 million people, and for most it will continue to be their main Nintendo console. This was going to be the case regardless of how strong or not strong this Direct was. Nintendo will continue to support it for the next year or so, and since its the Nintendo Switch 2 and not some wacky new thing, people don’t need to be convinced. They know whether or not they like the Switch already. For those who like it, its a matter of when, not if.

For now, Nintendo had time on their side.

$80 games sucks ass tho.
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This ignores the problem that Nintendo ultimately needs to either

1. Get better margins than the Switch to make more money with less overall sales

2. To sell more Switch 2s than the Switch.

Investors.
 
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