Rumor: Dark Souls 3 Running on Switch, Potential Trilogy Re-Release
Dec. 6, 2016Rumor: Dark Souls 3 Running on Switch, Potential Trilogy Re-Release
We don’t normally cover rumors on the site, because of difficulty of determining accuracy of sources but this is something potentially big forDark Soulsfans. Take this with an EXTREME grain of salt however.
moo
Report: Dark Souls 3 Running on Switch, From Software Considering Trilogy ReReleasehttps://t.co/HI8Krpq5LZpic.twitter.com/Kd30VSdgE2
The author of the article has connections to Switch sources and shared the following image on Twitter:
We already know that From Software is a registered partner with the new console. Could this be what they are planning ?
Emergence
Editor at Fextralife. I look for the substantial in gaming and I try to connect video games to the emotions and stories they elicit. I love all things culture and history and have an odd fondness for the planet Jupiter. I think my dogs are pretty awesome too.
Actually the majority of the gaming market are gamers who would be labeled casual, those who prefer mobile, user friendly or family friendly experiences. When Nintendo captivates them with a message they have shown they can dominate the console industry in sales.
Lifetime sales units:
And that was with poor developer software support for AAA titles. I promise you that both Microsoft and Sony are paying attention to the Switch, especially if they can approximate enough power to run AAA titles. That’s the thing. The Switch won’t even have to run these games at 4K. If they can get these same experiences on the Swith, even at a lower graphics quality, they’ll be able to start tapping into those “core” demographics that Sony and MS are fighting over.
My point was that Nintendo hasn’t released a console in the past 10 years without a gimmick instead of strictly relying on providing a console that can actually compete with the other two leaders. This is part of why their sales has suffered, among other things, because the gimmicks seem cool at first but then are overlooked by developers who don’t care about them.
Sony and Microsoft will be glad to let Nintendo not tap into the market of gamers that they have because that’s the vast majority of the market, which is much older than you’d think actually. The average gamer is 31, yet still buying Madden, Assassin’s Creed, and COD every year. Those are franchises the other two consoles focus on supporting because it makes them financially stable, and Nintendo either ignoring or overlooking this is half of their problem.
Well, there isn’t that much of a gimmick to the Nintendo switch. You can make it portable, uuhuh, but that’s it. I could imagine running a version of DS1 with half the resolution on a specialised mobile platform, that should, should, be manageable even though battery life really makes me wonder.
I think Nintendo is trying to market their new console towards the older generation of gamers, who’ve grown to have kids of their own. Combine 2 very segregated types of gamers (very young and mature adult) into one family friendly platform, leave the main market of young adults to be fought over by the 2 big players Sony and Microsoft. It makes sense to me. If they provide parent-child friendly games, they could create a very interesting niche and prosper within it.
Let’s be realistic. An as powerful mobile system isn’t going to happen. We may not know the details, but the size of it and the price are more than enough information to conclude that it’ll be lucky to be as powerful as the normal PS4, let alone the PS4 Pro. The driving force of the Switch is its portability, and its downside will definitely be the fact that it won’t be as powerful as other current systems. Whether devs take advantage of that or not we’ll see, but if the system isn’t powerful enough to run games optimally without considerable development work then it won’t get anywhere.
The fact of the matter is, when developers have the options of PC and consoles that have sold tens of millions of units, they’ll gladly take that over yet another Nintendo gimmick whose game development will fizzle out after a year.
I think this actually makes sense. The Switch is poised to really shock some people if it can deliver on horsepower enough to power games on current gen consoles. Mixing AAA 3rd Party with their typically stellar first party Nintendo titles PLUS a portability factor as well as a return to local multiplayer could make a big splash, not to mention any surprises the Nvidia guts still have in store.
If that’s the case, and it moves a ton of units, devs and publishers are looking at millions of new customers who haven’t been in their present ecosystems. I know it sounds shocking but there are millions of gamers who haven’t played any of the Souls series, and serving that market through Nintendo would be a boon for the company. There may be plenty of Nintendo die hards who would consider themselves hard core gamers, and only own a Nintendo console who would be all over a Dark Souls release, as well as families without a console at present who may be looking at the Switch as a please all in the house option.
Anecdotally I have 2 close friends who fit into both, one a Nintendo diehard who wants to play more AAA 3rd party games and a couple who don’t own a console but want to get something that would make sense for their very young children and themselves at the same time. Both households are pretty enthusiastic about the Switch as a result. Perhaps that’s a significant enough demographic to make this thing go.
I would by a Dark Souls Trilogy in a heartbeat if it came out on the Switch. In fact, confirmation of this rumor would guarantee my purchase of a Switch. I’m already a huge Mario and Zelda fan, so a Switch is probably in my future at some point, but highly portable versions of Dark Souls games would be incredible.
Assuming their unnamed source is real, this could also be something else. Getting Dark Souls 3 to run satisfactorily on the Switch could have been a test to see if Fromsoft’s engine works on the system, which would allow them to create games for Nintendo faster than if they had to do it from scratch. Rather than being evidence for the Dark Souls trilogy finding its way to the Switch, this could be evidence for a future From Software game being released for Nintendo (which we already knew), and that the future game would be a kind of Souls (which we didn’t, but can be inferred from the engine working at all).
Considering the abysmal failure of the Wii-U, and the enormous success of the PS4, and even Xbox One to a lesser extent, I’m not sure why From would place their eggs in that basket? The only way I see this happening is if Nintendo pays From Software a lot of money. We’re talking about a pretty limited gaming demographic here. The demographic that owns Nintendo consoles exclusively. They’re a casual gaming market. Anyone who owns multiple systems would prefer to play on PS4 or Xbox. Just because there would be a larger community on those systems.
A lot of 3rd party developers took a risk and put games on the Wii-U and ended up getting burned. From a corporate/profits angle, releasing games on Nintendo systems isn’t worth the risk. Especially when there are safer, more profitable systems to release games on. The only way Nintendo changes this is if they pay up, and those companies make a profit regardless of the game sales. And since Nintendo is under new leadership, maybe this is the route they’re going?
well this would be a smart move and send a strong message to the gaming crowd out there, that the ghettoïsation of nintendo is over…but then again, what makes sense and strategic choices for Nintendo are not always in agreement…
