The Short, Pathetic Life of Nintendo Switch Sports

as the sun sets on the Nintendo switch I got thinking what's the game people asked for the most this console many people wanted an open world Pokemon game we kind of got that a port of Persona 5 after Joker's reveal we got that one too Metroid Prime 4 is somehow both a game that's been announced that people are still asking for you got your Revival freaks f-zero Punch Out Kris all of which had a rumor at some point and of course the Wii U gems that live in undying speculation but for me I always thought that the switch had misinterpreted its opportunity for proof of concept like the other consoles had Nintendo 64 had Mario 64 the DS had nintendog the Wii U had Nintendo Land and the switch had one two switch that's like including jail time on a resume every aspect of the switch had already been redeemed a touchscreen motion controls two controllers attached really the big thing for it was portability was Zelda proving that even huge games could become a completely on thee-o experience I think this game showed more of the console's mo than this one one two switch did nothing special it literally told us to just ignore the console and then just have fun with motion control gimmicks and that sucked but if Nintendo wanted to give us a game on the go with motion control gimmicks alongside A system that splits into two controllers then perhaps this could be a perfect time to revisit the magical title that shaped the very motion control I was not alone many people were speculating and hoping for the return of wi Sports onto the switch leading up to the pandemic families had been revisiting it and falling in love all over again with maybe a few television smashes here and there a p a remake a brand new game even any of these would have made perfect sense but as this company has proven time and time again you have to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it ah yes the brutal consequences of optimism I legit never plan to talk about this game again but that April Fool's video I made last year and all the people consuming it unaware that it was an April Fool's joke and I felt that since the game was finally concluded with updates we could give a definitive look back to round it all up and judge the final product starting at the very beginning this is the story of Nintendo switch Sports my most disappointing game for the switch that originally was my Most Wanted I mean well my most realistic one with the success of the console we already knew things like Animal Crossing and Warrior Weare were bound to show up at some point the sports series was in this weird limbo where Nintendo clearly still remembered it but in the void for the switch they were like here you go but that's what made the moment of the reveal just so juicy it's a new iteration of the Wii Sports series okay so God is real he's making miracles happen all fighting in the world has stopped and everyone shares a bright future just kidding have you ever felt a quicker grounding to reality than in like the nine frames used to transition from the title screen to the main menu because holy sh Nintendo switch Sports I did not see that coming show it show it here are the sports included in the Nintendo switch sports game what the heck is that waa that's not me what is what am I looking at what the do we have here Nintendo switch here are the sports yes yes oh my what is this predicted it you predicted it what the [ __ ] is that we all had ideas about how the sports series would look on the switch or just ideas about how the sports series looks how it feels how it communicates with audiences this is not a part of that please it's a series made of mes not these gez and you remember the posts and you remember the videos I know I do to summarize this very beaten up horse the new sports mates looked corporately ill intentioned they look cheap in the sense of wanting to appeal to kids with just colors and facial expressions and cosmetic outfits do we really need all that people who did like them were quick to accuse the Mi Defenders of holding the game to unrealistic nostalgic standards which is definitely going to factor into a lot of this but putting that aside I think the Mi fandom was more about how Nintendo built an Empire using them being able to go outside the game to fully customize the me make it your own and then seeing it pop up in not just wi sports but wi Sports Resort we party tomadachi life Nintendo Land and so many others it was the Beloved recurring character that traveled across Generations where the sports mes continuity ended at just switch Sports they would never be able to fill in the carryover legacy of the original series now the future plot twist that we have the benefit of knowing in this retrospective is that none of this game does for better or For Worse definitely for worse it's carved out an identity completely of its own so I will say that in the 2 years since this revealed the sports mates have grown on me and this is probably the least of the game's Problems by the time we actually discussed the game itself another big counter claim to anyone upset with the sports mates was that Miis were from 2006 and in serious need of a facelift for modern audiences honestly they were right the Wii was two consoles behind the switch and these things had hardly gone through any evolution if only there was a game that offered some sort of way to modernize them it is hard to believe that this was just 3 seconds of the trailer and maybe harder to believe that it gets worse with each passing scene okay so the sports the first three are returning from older titles tennis bowling and S chambara these were all fantastic Sports in their original game so that makes sense now for the three new sports soccer okay yeah that looks fun maybe a little familiar but it looks like it could be a good time it's even got the ring fit thigh tape with it cool bad mitt that's a little strange I'm not here to insult the sport but don't you think that if you're going to include three new games out of six and one of which is already tennis don't you think you might want something a bit further in genetics when switch Sports is only going to have six games and Resort had 12 that were of Olympic variety don't you think you've proved the point about how motion controls work as rackets over a net hey hey hey hey hey it's no big deal just show us the final sport a [ __ ] no for real what is this selection of sports three of them involve a nette then bowling then sword fighting then soccer which isn't even complete at launch Resort had 12 Sports and I can't even get baseball or boxing back but fortunately and I use that word in a Buttery sense of irony free updates were going to come to hopefully fill in some of those spots they started by announcing golf coming in fall and who knows what other sports they could announce after that ah yes the brutal consequences of optimism do you guys want me to still give the speech of like I you've probably heard by now and so in the rest of that trailer they announced online play featuring things like a battle royale bowling mode and a release date within just over 2 months and a play test scheduled for February the descending hype through the trailer was a a nasty wakeup call to just how much Nintendo has changed over the years this wasn't a Wii Sports successor not outside the name this was just Nintendo capitalizing on fandm man the same way they did with Metroid Prime Federation force and while it seemed all was lost I did enjoy what happened immediately after the trailer in the direct when Kazumi came on screen to demo switch sports with Takahashi is there anything more reassuring to a game like this than to see two old dudes enjoying themselves playing it no that's we sport in a nutshell I love this it's goofy they're having a good time and I feel like ever since the era of the switch AAS passing and Reggie leaving Nintendo doesn't really do fun direct skits like they used to so seeing them laugh while playing this game is a reminder that maybe that Spirit they shipped the original wi is still in there pre-orders were available not long after the direct end ATA wo that's pretty cheap 40 bucks red flag number one we're talking about a company that regularly overpriced is their stuff and it's the Eternal subject of debate so if even they recognize that a game is not worth what they usually price at $60 there is a reason red flag number two the play test for me I did not play this and I don't really remember why I can't really comment on it but what okay hold on hey did you play the switch Sports uh play test there back in 2022 they de nice yeah yeah yeah did you no if Nintendo was going to go ahead and do this kind of beta thing they had to have been very confident in the game and considering that the main details of its progression were still murky I'm sure they were most people came back from the play test with a positive experience and that's why it was really strange when Nintendo made everyone agree to not talk about it and then everybody did anyway thinking back now this is probably why I avoided it Nintendo 1984 looking ass finally it is Friday April 29th 2022 12:00 a.m. and switch Sports is available in North America and switch Sports is is something really rare happened because it's somehow worse than the trailer could have depicted it to be all six sports are in the game they play mostly how they promise give me a sec the sports mates are there the option to play online is there but a option see it's easy to hate on switch sports for what it actually is but you must understand by now that there's so many ways Nintendo could have avoided the unnecessary backlash for this game starting with them being more honest about what this new game exactly was it was a sports game and that's all most people needed to make their decision yes but it also has live service mechanics a system of rotating cosmetic rewards that require online to achieve and this was never mentioned nor did they mention that the rewards are locked to accounts either it turns out switch Sports very closely resembles a live service game where to get the Cosmetic rewards you have 3 weeks to score a certain amount of points playing the online modes before new rewards would rotate in this of course means a lot of things like that to fully enjoy the game you'll need an online membership you can still get rewards offline two of them in a week and that means you'll miss out on the 10 remaining items plus the big reward every time this is vaguely talked about in only one trailer for a total of 6 seconds and on the website 3 weeks before launch when it is such a huge part of the core experience and yet things like the required online membership and offline trial mode are never mentioned I know I am also the person who says wire closing Cosmetics such a big deal so I shouldn't be the same person to be upset about this but for switch Sports and especially at launch it was like the only deal cosmetic Skins are the sole reason this entry is viable over the others turns out even with online you can get the unlockables but only for 21 days this upset people who felt 3 weeks was not a long enough window it upset people who got all the items and wanted to unlock more without waiting till the next week and it upset people who were waiting to buy the game till it had more Sports cuz they would also be locked out of the rotations from before they own the game but perhaps the crowd that had it worst would be the people without internet access at all as they could not get any of the Cosmetic rewards period in all these cases simply taking the clock offline would have fixed everything people who wanted to binge the game could time travel and grind out the rewards at their own Leisure similar to Animal Crossing people without online wouldn't be held back from content and to this day it's hard to see those 3E rotation as any reason but making sure an online membership is active and paid for long term at best the rewards will offer something seasonally like spooky costumes in October or festive ones during the holidays but spoko Square does not update with the seasons nor does anything else happen that makes the game being tied to an online clock seem like an inworld incentive alas it seems Nintendo would rather have people who bought this game pay for a Nintendo switch membership for at least 1 year to 100% complete the game and get all the rewards at least for the first year now it would be one thing for Nintendo to do this it would be another for them to do this and force everyone without a subscription into trial mode trial mode is when you try to play online but you have no membership and so you get matched with Bots and earn two items a week if one were to only play the game like this that's a lot of math a [ __ ] it I got time six years to get all 52 sets my God and why does the game still act like it needs to load and wait for players when it's just Bots because why only two items a week because why does this game not let you play with your friends over the internet in matchmaking because [ __ ] you I haven't even talked about the sports yet oh my God and I'm about to but I just can't stress how misleading this all was on Nintendo's part they got a lot of backlash for this and yeah they deserve all of it but we'll total the score later now give yourself a pat on the back for making it through all of that woo we listen to voen rant for a long time without any humor and just let him get his feelings out shout out to everybody with switch Sports I kind of feel sorry for you oh yeah yeah if you made the conscious decision to buy Nintendo switch Sports you probably bought it for the sports motion controls plus Nintendo's online gee what could Poss POS go wrong all right so let's begin with tennis which I previously said was my favorite sport and it is now my second favorite aside from being able to spam tennis really hasn't changed at all most of the sports intensity boils down to timing ball speed and whether you want to hit it from the front or the of course the simple goal is to just read and confuse your opponent by using the joy-con techniques to manipulate things like shot position and which of your two characters will be returning a common strategy is to have them die for the ball as much as possible to harness weak spots or trick their front player into smashing the ball out of bounds and attempt to block it's a fun sport for the Mind Games and one of the ones that demonstrates the superior Tech of the joycon over the Wii remote pretty well but then you have chambara and when people stereotype motion controls for being inaccurate and Nintendo's Online for being a laggy mess I believe this is the experience of which they speak chambara is the spiritual successor of Sword play with a much simpler tactical setup than tennis where you just want to hit your opponent off the platform you just want to deplatform them but the conflict here is not human to human it is controller to human because I swear this sport never works across any of the sword types when I'm blocking I get hit when I go to hit in the direction of the other player's vulnerability it is blocked sometimes I will swing and nothing will happen or somehow both attacks go through and then there's just times like KO watching some of this footage slowed back this might even be an action versus animation thing where if the attack is triggered while you are directionally blocking incorrectly but you correct it at the last second the attack will still succeed because initiated while you were open so it makes you question whether or not you were actually guarding then throw in Internet latency and the game telling you there's joycon interference even though the switch is 2T in front of me honestly I think I lost the minute I decided to put chambara in the queue switching back to Good Sports bowling bowling has returned to being my my favorite sport as it was in the first three games even though I am awful at it in real life bowling is not just what I play the most it's the only sport I really trust the only one I got a rank in and I heavily believe that's because it doesn't use the online for anything but relaying a personal score it hasn't changed a ton since the Wii days aside from forcing the player to hold the trigger which can be super frustrating to muscle memory even 2 years later because you are supposed to release the ball not protect your television I'll say though if you can get past that bowling feels pretty good online has set up elimination Style with 16 players it's fun it does take like a year to play for all the constant action you get in the other sports you got to wait extra long to find people then you got to wait forever for them to finish before moving frames even if you're going to lose and already in the elimination bracket you still have to wait for others to finish their round which was made worse after the updates plus the special bowling courses are randomly given out out for which there is a time and a place and I want to be in charge of both God uh yeah bowling is great though bad mitton I don't really have a ton to say about bad mitt for some reason it's all the unflattering parts of tennis including the invisible stamina meter send the shuttlecock to the open area and exhaust your opponent using Drop shots and fast shots or slam shots whatever they're called maybe the worst part of bad Mitten is how long some of these rallies can go only so you get like 30 points in the reward section it's not very good bang for your butt [ __ ] volleyball actually you know what it's kind of G on me first of all this sport has slightly updated in the summer after release so the footage will vary between launch and now this sport is a series of flash cards of hitting the right poses at the right time maybe you can describe them all like that but the cues are on screen for volleyball and it's pretty simple you just got to do the motion when it seems appropriate for your character in the game that's all so what's not to love about volleyball well there's something I'm leaving out and that is that this is a team sport meaning that a lot of your fate is decided by your teammates ability and skill are they going to block are they just not going to hit the ball or are they going to quit early because we're losing by a single point that my friends is an entirely separate layer of RNG and it's one that this game has never really had to be concerned with but why take a chance on one teammate when you can four of them in four versus four online action of course not four of your own teammates that would allow communic a and soccer is not a sport about communication really none of these are soccer is rocket league but with very slow players and a super wonky ball and just yeah it's lots of fun I really want to kick the other players and I don't mean that as in I want to boot them from the lobby half the time the players just leave on their own anyway and then you are just down a person I mean I would love if this game really accepted its rocket League under steady identity and allowed me to attack the other players to give my team a temporary Advantage cuz I said it before and I will say it again the player either needs to move significantly faster or the field needs to be shrunk or there needs to be something else because there is so much running after the ball that's like all soccer is on the small miracle that you actually do have the ball that's when your beautiful educated randomized teammate will come steal it from you and kick it towards the other team and those are the six Sports and the basic extent of switch Sports at launch playing locally is just that without rewards and playing with friends online is just that without rewards if you're thinking to yourself what about the side modes what side modes bowling has two types of bowling the aforementioned special bowling just an obstacle course and soccer has shootout mode which I guess is a cool demonstration of the leg strap accessory and the only reason you paid $1 extra dollar at launch you can't even play it online though like where is a 100 pin bowling Showdown target practice the would have been a great way for people to train for the sport and understand its mechanics better especially for chambara the side modes for Sword Play were so fun they were like their own games and specifically Showdown which had levels that took you around the island oh yeah that's right we Sports Resort let you do that can you do that in switch Sports no I hope you like menus and Eternal Sunshine because that's spoko Square let me just let me switch Sports has such a high amount of wasted opportunities that it hurts I don't even care if they wanted to cut sports but that focus on Rich atmosphere that wi Sports Resort introduced takes such a huge blow and it didn't need to yes the city setting is very different from the Island Resort setting so the sports being different makes sense sure I will accept that but after building this entire physical location I see no reason you couldn't have the opportunity to explore like a free roam mode around spoko Square maybe one where you could see other players and their activities or the meaver style posts like in Splatoon for all the focus on player versus player in this game there's not really a sense of community maybe with the new Cosmetics there could be crossover events similar to how other games had Nintendo themed clothing why not for switch sports but that never happened either the most the game will hand you is the occasional triple experience spoko Square never changes players are never given the chance to look at this place as anything but a transitional interface an urbanly disguised menu when people say this game is so less they are speaking from Far More Than Just rotting Nostalgia it's not just that Nintendo abandoned their old values but that they implemented these new ones how did we go from the game that was all about bringing the room together to the game that actively discourages local play and only rewards online activity a game that prided itself on anyone being able to play it to a game that Gates its progression to paying subscribers is this the cliche line where I say it's about the money because well yeah that part is clearly obvious perhaps it was the pandemic that encouraged this or maybe just the climate of modern gaming Lots has changed in the near two decades that cover the first and last points in the series I understand that a tech demo amount of content wasn't going to sell this game alone in 2006 the motion control was something everyone had to experience in The 2020s Gamers seem to despise them more and more when they show up so I really can't fault the Developers for taking alternate routes but appearances that's what we're going to go with overly animated characters cosmetics and a map menu well perhaps in this situation the worst part of switch Sports could also be its best the free update model has successfully turned games around before and it could just be the thing that takes switch Sports speeding past the Finish Line ah yes the test well by summer of 2022 the many issues that surrounded the game had been made well known to and by the public people like me were playing it consistently to get the rewards but also complaining that we had to do so which is the entire premise of the last video I made on switch Sports the game could eventually get good with more updates but if you put it down then by that time you'd have like nothing because you missed the weekly rotation so I was just suckered into playing this game that I hated that could be someday good and in July it looked like that someday was coming sooner than we thought with Nintendo reintroducing some familiar faces Ko No this this is great for real some tweaks were made to volleyball and bowling soccer got leg strap support and some quality of life options S rank and room IDs were also introduced but easily the most important thing was the return of the Legends by holding down either ZL and L or ZR and R When selecting a difficulty for local you could battle the iconic pros from The Originals and I got to be honest as someone who wasn't very confident in the sports to begin with you throw a broken CPU at me oh it's these guys oh I love it once again pouring water over our judgment maybe Nintendo hadn't forgotten say what you will about the game this right here is pure fan service they had every opportunity to emphasize the sports mates every single other CPU in the game is a sports mate but they didn't because they knew nothing is scarier than the same character coming back to bully you 15 years later at this point things were looking up for switch Sports just 3 months in for a nice little treat of an update and right around the corner we'd be able to play golf the coming fall we previously announced that the update would release this fall however we'd like a bit more time for development so the update is now planned for this holiday please wait just a little longer how long should golf take what is the prep time Pinterest I mean in the original trailer from 7 months before this you literally showed it so you must have been pretty close but now we got to wait till win hold on I hate golf why am I upset if you think about it this is like the most golf thing ever the game where you have to wait is uh is making you wait I don't even I don't even know what that is golf launched in late November 2022 which is technically still fall but before we talk about that there is important context in that the 7 months since this game's released this whole time the poor fans were like Data Mining and [ __ ] they were like yo that looks like a baseball stadium dodgeball could be in spco square is a city so basketball that could be a thing and they just fixed on an unbelievably high level of cope whatever it took to get them through summer and fall there was no way that Nintendo was going to bring anything less than their aame for the sports Series right only the best to the best basically there were two groups of switch Sports uh offenders Defender victims two kinds of switch Sports victims people who got the game and immediately realized oh Nintendo pulled a Nintendo in 2022 and understood right away what was happening and the poor souls who were just waiting and waiting and waiting for it to all make sense well here's to hoping maybe now we have the reasoning that could heal the the souls it's out of the park golf has always been my absolute least favorite sport in Wii Sports made worse in club when they force the GamePad to be integrated for no other reason than whoa he hit it off the ground oh my God I have a bit of a bias here but swe Sports doesn't do anything not a single thing to somehow make golf a more riveting experience it's got a lot of the same pros and cons as bowling does you can go at your own pace free of online lag but then you have to wait forever and I mean significantly longer for things to wrap up the joy-con doesn't work great it either gives an extremely soft tap or sends the ball flying and while I admire the emphasis on immersion here Lush greens quiet atmosphere background noises free music I just don't think this is what people needed to get back on their feet with switch Sports look this game was announced and launched within a span of 2 months but it took s whole months to release one sport a returning Sport with 21 holes none of which are new and it is the only part of this update there's no hidden Easter egg like in the previous update it's just golf something we've known about since February and have played every game since 2006 there was Zero hype and I'm not not even going to waste time entertaining the idea of what would have been better because that was it on February 28th 2023 version 1.4 dropped introducing the ability to obtain collections you had missed only one a week but that's a huge Improvement and something I complained about personally and this would have been more celebrated a if most people hadn't already moved on and B if just a few weeks later it was not announced that the 52nd collection would be the last yes version 1.4 is the version of the game still being utilized to this day well over a year later which meant it was over the weekly rotations were over the updates were over the game was finished and potentially new sports like dodgeball baseball no only blue ball when we get to this point I always try to look back on the free update titles a bit softer like with New Horizon and star allies the updates took forever but they did make the experience better depending on how you want to look at switch Sports you could say it updated faster I mean the game only lived a year and really got one and a half substantial updates but even now postmortem the game still operates on a weekly basis and has dumb rules that have prevented maximum enjoyment it's so funny usually when we do this retrospective song and dance we're diving into a game that's been long since forgotten about and switch Sports does occupy that but it's only 2 years old the game sold 10 million copies but where the heck are those 10 million people now matches take longer to find online is riddled with Bots who don't block in volleyball it was easier for me to find matches in Wii Sports Club over the weekend then in this that's not true I think the biggest crime of switch Sports is that it checked off a dream with a nightmare and I'm going to end this video by referencing the very first video I ever made on wi Sports I just wanted to play some sports on the switch on the go online switch Sports somehow manages to give me that but in the worst way possible by turning the series into a muff Game Pass whatever fine make it a live service game I don't care but maybe keep it alive longer than a year add more modes to make it the social experience it tries to be be more honest in the roll out that it pretty much requires online let the Cosmetic items be used on guests or other accounts on the console add more Sports let the Miis have customization options that aren't just a single outfit allow matchmaking on the internet with friends [Music]

Channel: voyan

Views: 204,049

Keywords: nintendo switch sports, switch sports retrospective, switch sports, wii sports, wii sports resort, matt wii, wii sports club, wii sports switch, nintendo, nintendo free updates, free update model, nintendo greedy, what happened to switch sports, switch sports update, switch sports 2024, switch sports dead, switch sports new, The next video will be much more fun, miis switch, sportsmates, switch sports miis, switch sports rewards, sportsmates vs miis, miis, spees

Id: L85IivmgrtE

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024