The Switch's 2019 lineup is what Xbox should try to replicate every year

2019 was not exactly the best year for games, in fact it was abysmal compared to 2018 and 2020 especially. However the Switch absolutely killed it and hilariously bodied everyone else in 2019

Why? Because even though they didn’t have any big AAA games like Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild or Smash, they absolutely killed it by releasing a plethora of quality games that fit in the AA range.

Lets be honest, most of these games minus Luigi’s Mansion 3 look like they could of ran on a 3DS but who fking cares? The games were damn good and I’ve beaten Fire Emblem Three Houses twice now and still haven’t touched the DLC yet.

I watch David Jaffee’s podcast a lot and I recommend everyone watch it, and even as a former Sony employee David has stated that he’s fatigued with these big, 100+ million dollar AAA games and that he appreciates games from the design perspective. A game that’s well made, well designed and doesn’t have to fit a certain quota ei it needs to be x amount of hours long

Now one criticism I do have is that a lot of the 2019 Nintendo games don’t warrant a $60 USD Price tag…although I bought every one of these games so I am part of the problem. I hope Xbox can match the quality releases but not have to charge so much. In fact I don’t believe Gears Tactics should of been $60 and more importantly it had waaay too much filler and padding in it (great game overall though) also the Hivebuster DLC shouldn’t have been $20. I don’t want Xbox to use the excuse of its in Game Pass because quite frankly some people just want to buy the games outright and not subscribe to a subscription service.

Xbox is clearly going to have to keep first party content coming and if we don’t include DLC like the Hivebuster DLC that just came out or updates like Horizon’s Super 7. I imagine that Xbox will at the very least have to pump out something every 2 months which makes at least 6 first party games per year although they’ve already blown past that this year and I imagine with so many devs

TLDR: Nintendo killed it in 2019 by releasing a lot of high quality games that weren’t AAA games but were still amazing. I hope Xbox focuses on smaller scale games in addition to bigger AAA games. I hope we get more smaller scale high quality releases from first party. Tunic is a great example. Other examples, Hellblade, Plague’s Tale. Outer Worlds, Control etc. Imagine dropping something like Hades from first party.

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I’d argue that’s exactly what they did this year but even better.

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they released 2 90+ metacritic games this year (Ori 2 is also the highest rated switch game this year, let that sink in, that’s over AC:NH, Xenoblade and literally all of the games from 2019 listed here) alongside Grounded early access (AA) that is doing excellent, Tell Me Why (AA), Wasteland 3 (AA turned AAA) which greatly benefitted from MS budget halfway into development and realized full VA, yet all of this didn’t matter, that’s why I don’t pay attention to posts like this. Xbox DID have a year like 2019 Nintendo, it’s just not acknowledged by the media and the larger gaming audience.

But yeah, in that vein, I would agree with OP that they should have consistent good output every year and I suspect that is gonna start with 2020, and by 2022, the fruits shall start ripening and we’ll be getting these. Xbox simply didn’t have the kind of support and first party strength until 2018, when PS and Nintendo were releasing games like God of war, Zelda, Mario Odyssey, etc. I think Xbox is bound to have great output from now on, but what I am skeptical of is it even making a dent in public discourse. Xbox has great AA support, and 2021 seems like there’s more AA support than AAA to begin with. The amount of small devs and publishers Xbox has partnerships with is crazy. I’m talking Devolver, Annapurna Interactive, Finji, Raw Fury, Focus Home, No More Robots, etc

In short, 2021 AA lineup from Xbox looks better than ever.

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In what universe 2019 wasn’t a great year for gaming? last year we got Gears 5, Sekiro, DMC5, Metro Exodus, Resident Evil 2, Katana Zero, Control, Disco Elysium, Star Wars: Fallen Order, Bloodstained: RotN, Outer Worlds. Outer Wilds, Void Bastards, Ace Combat 7, Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Samurai Shodown, Mortal Kombat 11 e.t.c.

Add to the games above the great 2019 Switch line-up and you have one hell of a year for gaming.

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I agree in regards to the quality aspect but that’s it. LMAO. Out of those 7 games, I only played and completed 1 of them (Link’s Awakening), quit Astral Chain and the other 5 were of no interest to me. Coincidentally, after completing Link’s Awakening, I traded in my Switch and im done with Nintendo so please, let’s no see Microsoft follow and copy Nintendo. Quality wise, yes. Game itself wise, hell no.

Side note: My best gaming years for PlayStation 4/Xbox One/Nintendo Switch -

2018 > 2017 > 2019 > 2020 > 2016 > 2015 > 2014 > 2013 launch.

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Ah…

MetaCritic scores are a huge lie. They do not mean you will have the same amount of fun as the person scoring them. A lot of the large name games are artificially rated high just for Metacritic purposes when in reality should be scored far lower.

Take for instance the simple game Carrion. It only has a MC score of 75 for PC and 76 for Xbox. Take another simple game, Journey to the Savage Planet. It only has a MC score of 76 PC and 76 for Xbox. I’ve had far more enjoyment out of either of those single games than most of the GameOfTheYear titles from TheGameAwards, some of those scoring over 90.

None of those games in the OP were of any interest to me. So from my perspective, I hope Microsoft never has a launch lineup like the 2019 Nintendo Switch.

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Even if I think Metacritic is toxic for this industry, I’ll take OP’s point to say that I’d take a bunch of 85-ish games over a single 90+ any day of the damn year.

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Same. I would much rather have say 5+ games that are 8.0/10 or 8.5/10 for me as opposed to only one 9.0/10 or 9.5/10 for me in any given year.

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Fun fact: most of the line-up shown in the OP are not from first-party studios: Game Freak, Grezzo, PlatinumGames…

That just shows that Microsoft does not need to buy every studio out there :stuck_out_tongue:

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Early switch lineup (2017-2019) is the result of a dead console launch (wii u) and several projects delayed to be released alongside switch in order to boost sales for a prolonged time (big launch every one or two months -> bump increase on console sales with each release). We are starting to see in 2020 that Nintendo’s pipeline is starting to dry out, hence time between releases is starting to be too long for their audience (you just need to see nintendo fans asking for more nintendo directs that never happen or just don’t deliver enough material). My fear is that Nintendo is also purposefully delaying more projects to boost switch sales by the end of its lifetime, or to boost their mid-gen console (“switch pro”).

Not sure we want xbox to replicate that.

My (more deep) opinion on the topic (title). Xbox should NOT replicate what others are doing. Xbox needs their own identity. Both in the type of games, and the business model. If xbox just replicates what others are doing, xbox will never grow because gamers are already loyal to the original brand.

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Facts

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Or, we can just allow Xbox to have their own identity instead of copying off of Sony and Nintendo. Let them find their way.

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You don’t buy a high-end 12+ TF XSX to play such games. Games like these should be a nice bonus, addition to the AAA games XGS should be releasing. Oh and games like Control and Outer Worlds are nothing like these Nintendo games, these are basically AAA games or very close to it.

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You know what’s cool. If memory serves correctly only 5 of those games haven’t been on game pass

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I believe that these two posts should be combined into one in regards to Xbox.

Xbox has 22 studios (some with multiple teams and thus multiple projects) and Global Publishing. As the generation progresses, they need to deliver the AAA bangers that Sony releases, meaning third person action adventure story driven games that outsell the vast majority and dominate year in and year out. They should have at least 3 or 4 studios developing these games.

Add 2 more studios for the same type of game but in first person. You then have Rare doing whatever they’re doing with Everwild. You have a bunch of action RPG’s, first and third person. They have the FPS genre covered. They also have racing covered.

They need to have a few “kids” games. I would love Jet Force Gemini return as a Ratchet & Clank clone which was suggest by Shpeshal_Ed on a recent XboxEra podcast. I didn’t realize that I needed or wanted that until he said it. Such a damn good idea. Also, have either Double Fine (or acquire PlayTonic) to develop a Banjo-Kazooie game and the kids stuff with Rare included is done.

At that point, all they would need to do is have a fighting game (my suggestion would be Killer Instinct 2 as I would try to acquire Iron Galaxy and whatever commitments they have, just pay them off. I would also try to acquire Splash Damage from Tencent. Highly unlikely but doesn’t hurt to ask. If not them, I would go after The Bearded Ladies Consulting development studio as they made Mutant Year Zero which was great and Corruption 2029. This strategy turn based RPG genre gets solved and just imagine Halo Tactics and other franchises in this style.

World’s Edge gives you Age of Empires and those strategy type games so that’s covered. I mentioned RPG’s and FPS earlier which would also include immersive sims like hopefully a Dishonored 3. Tango and Undead gives you hopefully The Evil Within 3 (or whatever survival horror game Mikami wants to do as his swansong) and State of Decay 3 which covers that genre.

That’s what I want to see. A few teams/studios working on literally every fucking genre which despite a few of them (fighting, racing, AOE strategy, etc.) not being for me personally, I would still go and get them done because it would basically give them a total and complete overall package of every genre and game you can imagine and all of them would be in Game Pass so the variety that would be available would be insane.

Overall, everyone wins because even if you ignore/pass on some of the games because they don’t interest you, it doesn’t matter because there’s still a ton of other games across multiple genres that would.

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