The Future of Smash With Switch As Its Platform

[TotallyToasted]

Based on all of the footage shown from the Smash E3 Invitational, CEO 2018, as well as the opinions of some of the top Smash players, Super Smash Bros Ultimate looks to be a historic game in the making. Actually, it's very likely to be the biggest and possibly the best Smash title of all time, with a diverse character roster hosting over 68 different fighters that we know of thus far, a passionate and welcoming community of gamers who built their group from scratch, a game creator which is now keeping competitive play in mind, and of course, the Nintendo Switch as a platform.

Nintendo claims that the latest inclusion to their console reservoir is on track to sell just over 20 million total units by March of 2019, which would indicate the 2 year mark in the console's lifespan. Compared to Nintendo's previous console generation, which only sold 13.5 million units of Wii U's and over 5 million copies of its iteration of the Smash Bros franchise, this next game has the potential to do wonders for the community, in general. But another element with this upcoming game is the aspect of portability and home console play.

The Switch, being the hybrid console that it is, seems to be optimal for both encouraging casuals to join and competitors to compete. It's light enough and small enough to be safely tucked into a backpack to play with a friend on the bus, set up a tournament on several monitors, or to just have a get together of fellow handheld players, with many more opportunities to meet new people and gamers as well. The Switch as a platform has a very strong amount of potential to revolutionize the way that we play Smash together, and to bring new life into the community, which hopefully will last for a long while.

I could see the Switch as being a game changer for the fighting game community, possibly making Super Smash Bros a solid candidate for holding the reputation of the greatest fighting game franchise of all time. It would be so great if this could become a bandwagon game as well, similar to the Fortnite Battle Royale craze, but hopefully not to the extent that it reached before it began to die off. I believe that our goal is to draw passionate players into our community, players that will express the same devotion to our series as us Smashers already do, ensuring our continued growth.

What are your opinions on the potential for the Switch to bring about a larger competitive and more social player pool than ever before? I would love to hear what you all have to say, or any critiques on what I have said as well!

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read through my post, I hope you enjoyed!!

 

[Al-kīmiyā']

Smash Ultimate is less competitive than Melee. Even if it were as competitive as Melee, it still probably wouldn't get enough respect from the fighting game community to be called "the greatest fighting game franchise of all time" by anyone except Smash fans.

Also, BotW would still be a better game. misread the OP

 

[T-Donor66]

Smash Ultimate is less competitive than Melee. Even if it were as competitive as Melee, it still probably wouldn't get enough respect from the fighting game community to be called "the greatest fighting game franchise of all time" by anyone except Smash fans.

Also, BotW would still be a better game.

And BotW, a single player open world adventure game, has what to do with this post?

 

[soviet prince]

melee is vastly overrated

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The Switch and certainly most games on the Switch have definitely been selling unprecedented numbers. By contrast, I remember attending Smash 4 locals soon after the game's launch and there were some great players that didn't personally own the game and instead just played a lot of friendlies on their friend's Wii U. But the Switch is far from the ideal system.

It's pretty easy for somebody to casually walk up and remove somebody else's Switch from its dock during the later hours of a tournament. And if TOs have to invest in a locking mechanism then that puts strain on their operation.

It's also obnoxious that there's no data transfer between switches. With Melee, if somebody comes in with their setup but no memory card, you just borrow somebody else's memory card when you start up the game and bam, you've got all characters and stages unlocked. If the method of unlocking this new game's content is even more involved than Melee or Brawl then we're going to have a real problem during the first few months where people come in with setups that don't have everything unlocked.

Also, while I really like the tabletop mode of the switch where you can have an entire setup with no monitor necessary, the gamecube adapter only plugs into a switch dock. So for the sake of gamecube controllers, I think we'll have to give up on one of the most promising features of the Switch in a tournament setting. That's a shame because that'd really save physical space or at least give people a way to set up their own friendlies while waiting for their matches on the actual setups.

 

[**Gilgamesh**]

melee is vastly overrated

While Melee may be overrated it still has more viewership than Smash 4 along with it having more entrants than Smash 4 at EVO (worlds largest FGC tournament) while being 17 yrs old. It is still the most technical Smash Game of them all which the main reason their community is thriving.

 

[Al-kīmiyā']

And BotW, a single player open world adventure game, has what to do with this post?

Oops, thought he said "Actually, it's very likely to be the biggest and possibly the best Switch title of all time ... " I'll edit that part out.

 

[TotallyToasted]

It's pretty easy for somebody to casually walk up and remove somebody else's Switch from its dock during the later hours of a tournament. And if TOs have to invest in a locking mechanism then that puts strain on their operation.

I can see where you're coming from with this comment. That would appear to be a major inconvenience, but when has something like this not been the case? Now that I think about it, it's essentially the same concept as unplugging someone's system during a set, and this risk has always been present.

Later when you mentioned that every character had to be unlocked in order to be played in tournament, this definitely seems to be a viable issue. It's not a guarantee that everyone will have unlocked every character, which for sure may lengthen the tournament setup process when TOs are having to weed through everyone's setups in order to make sure that they do indeed have every character. Hopefully Sakurai ends up streamlining the unlock process for players.

A great idea that I had for this would be for Nintendo to implement something that gaming has been famous for: a cheat code. They could simply make it so that all you'd have to do is something like the Konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, Start) or something similar. They could even add an additional little something something like forcing the player to go through a fight against a particular set of characters, fight Master hand, or the like. Just an idea, don't know if Sakurai would ever consider something like this, but it would make it SOOO much easier for TOs.

Also, while I really like the tabletop mode of the switch where you can have an entire setup with no monitor necessary, the gamecube adapter only plugs into a switch dock. So for the sake of gamecube controllers, I think we'll have to give up on one of the most promising features of the Switch in a tournament setting. That's a shame because that'd really save physical space or at least give people a way to set up their own friendlies while waiting for their matches on the actual setups.

Hmm, yeah this would definitely be another potential issue. It would be such an awesome idea for Nintendo to add some sort of adaptor that just plugs right into the AC adaptor on the bottom of the device, but I honestly don't think that they'd go to such lengths, especially since most players that would utilize this feature would be in the "hardcore" group of gamers that Sakurai occasionally references. When given that Nintendo's producing yet another line of gamecube controllers for purchase, in addition to possibly doing the same for the Wii U's gamecube adaptors, this seems unlikely.

In contrast, Pro controller users would FOR SURE be able to enjoy the Switch's portable mode to its fullest.

Does anyone else have a comment on the potential for handheld mode casual tournaments? At the surface, this seems like a great way to get the newcomers to the community involved with Smash on a deeper level, or at the very least with entry level play.

 

[soviet prince]

The Switch and certainly most games on the Switch have definitely been selling unprecedented numbers. By contrast, I remember attending Smash 4 locals soon after the game's launch and there were some great players that didn't personally own the game and instead just played a lot of friendlies on their friend's Wii U. But the Switch is far from the ideal system.

It's pretty easy for somebody to casually walk up and remove somebody else's Switch from its dock during the later hours of a tournament. And if TOs have to invest in a locking mechanism then that puts strain on their operation.

It's also obnoxious that there's no data transfer between switches. With Melee, if somebody comes in with their setup but no memory card, you just borrow somebody else's memory card when you start up the game and bam, you've got all characters and stages unlocked. If the method of unlocking this new game's content is even more involved than Melee or Brawl then we're going to have a real problem during the first few months where people come in with setups that don't have everything unlocked.

Also, while I really like the tabletop mode of the switch where you can have an entire setup with no monitor necessary, the gamecube adapter only plugs into a switch dock. So for the sake of gamecube controllers, I think we'll have to give up on one of the most promising features of the Switch in a tournament setting. That's a shame because that'd really save physical space or at least give people a way to set up their own friendlies while waiting for their matches on the actual setups.

or just use another controller?

 

[TotallyToasted]

or just use another controller?

This would make sense, however using any controller other than the official GameCube controller is not ideal. Because it is a wired controller, it will have the shortest input delay relative to any other controller, so it's by far the best controller to use imo.

 

[F.D.M.P.]

This would make sense, however using any controller other than the official GameCube controller is not ideal. Because it is a wired controller, it will have the shortest input delay relative to any other controller, so it's by far the best controller to use imo.

Is this still relevant? I feel like wireless controller technology surely has come to the point where your input will be registered on the same frame as the button press.

 

[TotallyToasted]

Is this still relevant? I feel like wireless controller technology surely has come to the point where your input will be registered on the same frame as the button press.

I just did a little bit of research, and no, wireless controllers still have more delay than wired ones, though not by much but by enough. But your post made me wonder: is the delay noticeable?

For example: assuming you’re playing a game on a 1ms monitor and you compare a wired vs a wireless controller’s response times, I think the difference would be very minimal. But the question is: what’s the Switch’s undocked screen’s response time? The lag of a wireless controller plus that of the switch’s screen itself might have more of an impact in that case if the delay is noticeable.

Anybody know the undocked screen’s input delay?

 

[Thinkaman]

Bluetooth wireless latency tends to be less than 5ms for something like a controller. It's non-zero, but less than a frame and not worth worrying too much about.

As of this post, there is no LCD screen on the market that has tested below 9ms response time under realistic conditions. This remains the biggest contributor to lag, but is manageable with correct settings on modern panels of medium sizes.