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fxtentacle | on: Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch
You're absolutely spot-on!

I've been organizing LAN parties with my friends for 26 years now and around 2010 to 2016 was the time when games became so good that stopped making sense to upgrade in-between LAN parties.

- Left 4 Dead 2

- Killing Floor 2

- CS:GO

- Grid 2

- GTA V

- StarCraft II

plus nowadays there's stiff free competition, e.g.

- Rocket League

- Brawlhalla

- Dota 2

- LoL

but also from OpenRA, which modernizes Red Alert.

Plus, it's challenging to tell based on screenshots if you're looking at Assassin's Creed III (from 2012) or Assassin's Creed Mirage (from 2023) and there's been 7 !!! other Assassin's Creed games in between.

And looking at the Switch, I'd say the situation for new games is brutal. There's lots of evergreen games with great replay-ability and thanks to the cartridges you can easily borrow them among a group of friends. It's been a while since I last bought a new one because there just wasn't anything different enough from what I already have and like.

My biggest wish for the Switch has been that it'll one day drive my screen at 144Hz to make movement smooth. And it looks like Nintendo is going to deliver exactly that: More powerful hardware for the same old games.

I wonder if Nintendo will also eventually be forced to implement a subscription model and/or if they will start to aggressively push older games without updates out of their store (like what Apple does) because otherwise I just don't see many openings for developers to build a new Switch game and make the financials work. Currently, you're competing with a back catalogue of 4,747 games, so good luck finding anything where you can stand out by being better.

dmonitor | parent | next
Backlog doesn't seem to intimidate people off of Steam, so it's not a huge concern for smaller publishers. It's the big publishers trying to break into multiplayer that have hurdles to jump through. Just look at Concord: an "okay" game with few glitches and high quality graphics that probably would've done well had it not come out after a half dozen games did it better.
thaumasiotes | parent
> I've been organizing LAN parties with my friends for 26 years now

> - StarCraft II

I thought Starcraft II didn't allow LAN play?

arwineap | root | parent | next
You can play at a LAN party so long as your network is connected to internet

So yes, technically not a LAN game, but in practical terms any modern LAN party also probably has internet. It's not the hurdle it used to be.

LakesAndTrees | root | parent
Small SC II events still get referred to as “LAN” often because, while it requires an online connection, it’s still the same vibe/format: a bunch of boxes in a room.