The Nintendo Switch has been more successful than anyone could have predicted, selling faster than the wildly successful Wii did many years ago.
This is great news for Nintendo, and their stock price hit an eight-year high recently as a result.
It’s also great news for the gaming industry in general, showing that dedicated gaming hardware still has a place in a world where smartphones and tablets are ubiquitous.
But one downside to the console selling so much better than expected has been that many people out there have found it difficult to get their hands on one, especially in the US (fortunately they’re not that hard to get hold of in the UAE yet).
The good news is that Nintendo are now ramping up production, according to the Financial Times.
Consoles traditionally sell very well during the end-of-year holiday season in Europe and the US, so expect the Switch’s impressive numbers to be look even more so by the end of this year. But we may not even have to wait that long to see spike in demand, with Splatoon 2 set to launch in July and Super Mario Odyssey set to hit stores sometime before the year is out.
Far Cry goes political?
Far Cry is heading to the US for its fifth numbered outing, “inspired by angry political divides and intense isolationist passions in rural America”, according to AFP.
Its set to release on February 28 next year, and will hopefully be a return to form for a franchise which has seemed somewhat stale lately.
Ubisoft Montreal’s decision to set Far Cry 5 in the rural US has certainly been good for publicity, seemingly inspiring ire from both ends of the American political spectrum, for very different reasons.
Will the game end up alienating players who don’t another reminder of politics in the little time they have to devote to escapism? Or will the end product carefully avoid the hot-button issues that are being used to drum up publicity for it now? Time will tell. What is not debatable is that a failure to bring something fresh and exciting to a series that has become too formulaic is sure to alienate everyone, regardless of political affiliations or lack thereof.
Monstrous news
Some more Switch news: the massively successful Monster Hunter series is headed to Nintendo’s hybrid home/handheld console in the form of Monster Hunter XX. The series has always been incredibly popular in Japan, so it’s not surprising that there will also be limited numbers of Monster Hunter-themed Switch consoles up for grabs in the land of the rising sun. No news yet on if the game will be localised for non-Japanese markets, but we hope so. Expected release date is August 25.
Royal robot
Respawn continue to show other developers how it’s done, bringing regular — and most importantly, free — content and gameplay updates to its best-in-class shooter, Titanfall 2.
The Monarch’s Reign DLC is out on May 30, and brings with it a brand new titan, a new map, new execution and a bunch of multiplayer balance tweaks. More on these additions and how the community reacts to the latest series of nerfs and buffs soon.
