Retiring Nintendo President Reggie Shares Heartfelt Message With Fans
After more than 15 years with the company, Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime is retiring this April. Shortly after the news broke, the company shared a heartfelt farewell message from Fils-Aime himself on Twitter.
"I wanted to reach out directly to you, the Nintendo community, because there's one thing I really want to say: thank you," Fils-Aime said in the video below. "Thank you for your never-ending support, and for your passionate love of Nintendo. And personally, for giving me a Mushroom Kingdom full of incredible memories that I will never forget, ever.
"From the first time I saw the nickname 'Regginator,' I realized that Nintendo fans share a unique sense of community, a bond that goes beyond just a love of video games. For these past 15 years, I've been honored to be included as part of your family."
Fils-Aime also shared a few words about his successor, NOA senior VP of sales and marketing Doug Bowser, who'll be formally taking over his role on April 15. "Doug is a passionate and powerful leader, and a guy who in his youth probably spent too much time in front of a Donkey Kong arcade machine. Inside Nintendo, people already know him as a driving force, and you'll come to see that too."
Fils-Aime joined the company partway through the GameCube era and has been its face in North American territories ever since, delivering press conferences and appearing in Nintendo Direct broadcasts. He'll perhaps best be remembered, however, for the countless memes he's inspired, from the time he danced to promote Yo-Kai Watch to his unintentionally iconic catchphrase.
Following the news of Fils-Aime's retirement, many other industry figures, such as Microsoft's Phil Spencer, expressed their thanks and shared memories and anecdotes of the NOA president.
Splatoon 2 News Channel Giving Out Free Drink Tickets Next Week
Remember when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would occasionally hand out free items and food if you read the survival tips on the Switch news feed? Well, Splatoon 2 will be running a similar promotion very soon.
According to the Nintendo Versus Twitter account, as of “late next week”, the Splatoon channel will be posting articles about gear abilities. If you view these articles on your Switch, you’ll receive free drink tickets which can then be redeemed in-game.
Like free loot? Check out the Gear Ability tips articles starting late next week via the #Splatoon2 #NintendoSwitch News Channel! View the article on your Nintendo Switch, and you’ll receive some Drink Tickets in-game!
Are you eager to get your hand on a free digital drink? Are you still playing Splatoon 2 regularly? Tell us in the comments.
Over the past two decades, Apple has proven capable of exercising its rapidly lithe, innovating ability to take its existing technologies and create new computing forms that retain its influence over the most commercially successful and strategically important markets. That winning strategy of the past also appears to be the best suited for the future of PCs.
Source: Statistica.com
Apple’s innovative growth during legacy PC stagnation
IDC, Gartner and other firms have valiantly tried to minimize Apple’s real position in the PC industry, building unit sales charts like the one above, which make it appear that Apple is just a bit player in the computing industry dominated by HP, Lenovo, and Dell. These are created by adding up every computer these other vendors build and comparing them only against Apple’s Mac-branded systems, notably leaving out iPads.
However, the reality is that Apple’s unique ability to take its conventional Mac platform and simplify it into the more approachable and broadly usable iPad has paid off dramatically, both in the consumer and enterprise markets.
It’s also something that PC rivals haven’t been able to successfully do. Over the past four quarters, Apple sold 61.74 million iPads and Macs, making it the leader in PC unit shipments, ahead of second-place HP’s 57.16 million PCs shipped.
Apple not only created the only commerically successful tablet, but also maintained its Mac sales while PCs shrank
But Apple also brought in greater PC revenues and profits, enabling it to invest billions to radically enhance its own macOS and iOS platforms and develop custom A12 and T2 silicon that enhances and differentiates its offerings. In the future, Apple’s higher unit sales, revenues, and profits from PC sales will keep making it easier for Apple to innovate in the computing space while HP, Lenovo, Dell and others will continue to be stuck waiting on Microsoft and Intel to chart out their futures. Over the past decade, WinTel has been failing its hardware partners, with no sign of any turnaround on the horizon.
The ARM processors that will likely power an increasing number of PC devices in the future are not held back by Intel, but no other maker apart from Apple is benefitting from the vast economies of scale that iPads are contributing to mobile chips. So while Apple will be able to leverage its existing, highly profitable production of high-end ARM processors for iPads, PC and mobile makers will be starting from scratch, fragmenting the market for PC processors and diluting Intel’s existing x86 economies of scale.
Nobody else is selling premium tablets in volume. Apple’s iPad ARM chips are erasing the economies of scale that once propelled x86 PCs
One honest thing that you can see from the chart is that demand for conventional PCs has receded dramatically in the years since iPad appeared, with industry-wide shipments falling by about 25 million units quarterly. In part, that’s because conventional uses of PCs have been replaced by smartphones and other mobile technologies. But certainly, the roughly ten million iPads that Apple ships each quarter are also eroding into that demand. Note that Apple’s Macs are not suffering the same falloff in sales, meaning that Apple is indeed successfully targeting PCs with iPads, not pursuing a strategy of weaning its Mac users onto iPads.
Apple is currently pursuing a strategy that positions iPads as its accessible, affordable entry-level computing product; iPad Pro as a higher end version of that same computing model; Macs as its familiar, yet increasingly iOS-integrated version of conventional computing; and Mac Pro models delivering the high-end version of the Mac experience. Pundits pretend to be befuddled by why they can’t plug a mouse or a hard drive into an iPad, but consumers seem to have figured out which products fit their needs best and are having no problem buying them.
Microsoft’s Surface unable to say “no”
So who is troubled in PCs as the world enters 2019? Certainly Microsoft, which has proven unable to move beyond the conventional PC in either smartphones or mobile tablets or other form factors. Its PC platform shrank twice as fast as Apple’s iPad grew, and its own Surface vision of hybrid computing has remained tepidly flat for a decade at a number that’s only about a twelfth of the revenue Apple is generating from its range of non-phone computing hardware.
Yet the Surface lineup includes so many various experiments—Microsoft seems almost unable to say no—that the cost of developing and maintaining all those SKUs is significant, crushing any hope of profitability. That makes Surface a profit sink, a distraction away from things Microsoft could be doing.
Microsoft is spending tons of money to look cool but isn’t creating a viabile business
That’s the very types of projects that Jobs canceled when he took over Apple in 1997, yet today’s pundits demand that Apple take note of the whimsical things being done under the Surface brand and follow Microsoft, rather than pursuing the strategies that Jobs used to turn Apple around. Since 2011, Tim Cook has exercised the same strategies to dramatically grow Apple’s sales even as the industries around it continue to slide sideways with distractions that were a waste of resources.
Chrome OS, Android and ARM
Google has similarly shown that it has no real insight into building a PC platform, with Chromebook and Android both failing to deliver a conventional PC, a modern mobile tablet, or some other hybrid experience that any customers want to pay anything for. All it has done is spend tons of money building devices that nobody buys: Chromebook Pixel, Nexus 9, Pixel C, and PixelBook have all been flops.
Everyone else in the PC industry is lined up behind Microsoft and Google, waiting for one or both of them to provide the software needed to drive their hardware. They’re also largely waiting on Intel to provide the silicon to power it. Efforts to move conventional computing to ARM chips, where there’s more competition, have suggested the potential of a new wave driving PC demand. However, overall interest in PCs is clearly waning despite the latest attempts at ARM laptops and netbooks, and Apple is far ahead of anyone else in developing custom ARM silicon to power the next generations of PCs.
Pretty clearly, nobody wants “Google’s best in a laptop or tablet”
It’s also worth noting that any significant movement from PCs to ARM processors will come at the cost of fragmentation of the Windows platform. Those expenses will be incurred by software developers trying to target multiple platforms, as well as two sets of chip designers—Intel and ARM—spending resources to build the future of Windows PCs. On Apple’s side, the differences between Macs and iPads are narrowing, both for developers as Apple prepares to introduce the ability to bring iOS AppKit apps to the Mac, and for chip development as Apple moves more of its proprietary tech to custom T2 silicon and as the Ax architecture nears the point where Apple’s own SoCs will have the ability to power Macs.
Isn’t it curious that in 2019, a decade after iPad launched to the howls of embittered naysayers, Apple has continued to grow its Mac sales while at the same time building iPad into an equally large enterprise? And yet all pundits can think about is how Apple desperately needs to choose between them, pontificating about how Apple should either give up Macs, or turn iPads into a Mac in order to move Mac users to iPads, or some equally bizarre advice that makes no sense at all.
Meanwhile, they saw nothing but huge potential in Google’s parallel failures of Chromebooks and Android tablets, and still see some glimmer of hope for Microsoft’s stagnant Surface hobby and a new crop of ARM Windows machines. Microsoft’s in it for the long haul, they insist, just like Microsoft said it was for Zune and Windows Phone. The reality today is that Windows has never been less important, and grows ever more irrelevant every year even as Microsoft continues to expand support for its users on iOS and Macs.
It doesn’t matter if pundits refuse to acknowledge this. It does matter, however, that Apple is lining up broad industry support behind building custom enterprise software for iOS, software that will soon be easy to port to the Mac as well.
Even if absolutely nothing were to change across the next ten years in terms of market share shifts, Apple’s Mac and iPad businesses would continue to generate nearly half a trillion dollars in revenues for Apple while supporting the development of highly advanced silicon, OS, development frameworks and apps. Windows remains in maintenance mode, getting occasional patches as the market forces driving Intel chips and Windows development slow to a crawl.
I’m happy to announce that ASP.NET Core 2.2 is available as part of .NET Core 2.2 today!
How to get it
You can download the new .NET Core SDK (2.2.100) for your dev machine and build servers from the .NET Core 2.2 download page. New Windows Server hosting, runtime installers and binary archives are also available from this page for updating servers.
This release updates .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core to version 2.2.0. The new SDK version is 2.2.100. Visual Studio requirements are as follows:
The main theme for this ASP.NET Core release was to improve developer productivity and platform functionality with regard to building Web/HTTP APIs. As usual, we made some performance improvements as well. We’ve posted about these features as part of the preview releases and you as such you can read about them by following the links below:
Health Checks integration with BeatPulse
We’re happy to announce that the BeatPulse project now supports the new Health Checks API, which means you can easily add checks for dozens of popular systems and dependencies using their great support. Here’s a message from the BeatPulse team about their support for our new Health Checks API:
BeatPulse is a community driven project that was created to provide health checking mechanisms for systems, networking and a wide variety of services that are common within the enterprise, e.g. SqlServer, MySql,Postgress, Redis, Kafka and many more . When Microsoft announced ASP.NET Core Health Checks for the 2.2 roadmap, the BeatPulse team ported all the existing liveness packages and features to work with the new Microsoft Health Checks abstractions at the repository AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks. Apart from all the health checking packages, the BeatPulse team also incorporates other features like pulse tracking (Application Insights and Prometheus), failure notifications and a UI interface were we can configure different monitored systems and have a global view of health status. This UI is available as a Docker image published in Docker Hub.
More coming soon
When we announced planning for ASP.NET Core 2.2, we mentioned a number of features that aren’t detailed above, including API Authorization with IdentityServer4, Open API (Swagger) driven client code generation, and the HTTP REPL command line tool. These features are still being worked on and aren’t quite ready for release, however we expect to make them available as add-ons in the coming months. Thanks for your patience while we complete these experiences and get them ready for you all to try out.
Migrating a project to ASP.NET Core 2.2
To migrate an ASP.NET Core project from 2.1 to 2.2, open the project’s .csproj file and change the value of the TargetFramework element to netcoreapp2.2. You do not need to do this if you’re targeting .NET Framework 4.x.
Finish by updating your NuGet package references to the latest stable versions. Note that projects targeting .NET Core (rather than .NET Framework) should not have a package version specified for the Microsoft.AspNetCore.App package reference as this will be managed automatically by the SDK. Doing so will now result in a build warning.
ASP.NET Core 2.2 is the latest release in the “Current” .NET Core train. This represents the first release since the declaration of 2.1 LTS that reestablishes a separate LTS and Current train. The Current train is where new features, enhancements, and regular bug fixes are applied and is recommended for most customers. Note that both LTS and Current releases receive servicing updates for security and critical stability fixes. It is currently expected that 2.2 will the last non-servicing release in the 2.x life cycle, and as such customers not using an LTS release will need to migrate to 3.0 GA, within 3 months of its release in the second half of 2019 in order to remain supported.
The .NET Core 2.2 SDK, runtime, and updated ASP.NET Core IIS Module are in the process of being deployed to Azure App Service regions around the world. We expect this to be completed before the end of December 2018.
Some regions may receive the updated runtime before the updated ASP.NET Core IIS Module (ANCM), which is required by default for projects targeting ASP.NET Core 2.2. It’s also a requirement for the new in-process hosting feature. If you receive startup errors after deploying to Azure App Service, try configuring your project to use the existing version of ANCM by setting the AspNetCoreModule property to the value “AspNetCoreModule”, e.g.:
Once the target region has been updated with the latest ANCM version, you can remove that property altogether and redeploy the application to have it switch to using the new ANCM.
This release also adds better 64-bit support for .NET Core in Azure App Service. If you’re running your ASP.NET Core application on .NET Core 2.2 with in-process hosting, you can simply enable the 64-bit option in the Azure Portal and the site will now run in a 64-bit process. For other information on how to run your ASP.NET Core application in a 64-bit process in Azure App Service with other configurations, see this article.
STMicroelectronics has announced a new Cortex-A SoC and Linux- and Android-driven processor. The STM32MP1 SoC intends to ease the transition for developers moving from its STM32 microprocessor unit (MCU) family to more complex embedded systems. Development boards based on the SoC will be available in April.
Aimed at industrial, consumer, smart home, health, and wellness applications, the STM32MP1 features dual, 650MHz Cortex-A7 cores running a new “mainlined, open-sourced” OpenSTLinux distro with Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded underpinnings. There’s also a 209MHz Cortex-M4 chip with an FPU, MPU, and DSP instructions. The Cortex-M4 is supported by an enhanced version of ST’s STM32Cube development tools that support the Cortex-A7 cores in addition to the M4 (see below).
Like most of NXP’s recent embedded SoCs, including the single- or -dual Cortex-A7 i.MX7 and its newer, Cortex-A53 i.MX8M and i.MX8M Mini, the STM32MP1 is a hybrid Cortex-A/M design intended in ST’s words to “perform fast processing and real-time tasks on a single chip.” Hybrid Cortex-A7/M4 SoCs are also available from Renesas, Marvell, and MediaTek, which has developed a custom-built MT3620 SoC as the hardware foundation for Microsoft’s Azure Sphere IoT framework.
As the market leader in Cortex-A MCUs, ST has made a larger leap from its comfort zone than these other semiconductor vendors. NXP is also a leading MCU vendor, but it’s been crafting Linux-powered Cortex-A SoCs since long before it changed it named from Freescale. The SM32MP1 launch continues a trend of MCU technology companies reaching out to the Linux community, such as Arm’s new Mbed Linux distro and Pelion IoT Platform, which orchestrates Cortex-M and Cortex-A devices under a single IoT platform.
Inside the STM32MP1
The STM32MP1 is equipped with 32KB instruction and data caches, as well as a 256KB L2 cache. ST also supplies an optional Vivante 3D GPU with support for OpenGL ES 2.0 and 24-bit parallel RGB displays at up to WXGA (1280×800) at 60fps.
The SoC supports a 2-lane MIPI-DSI interface running at 1Gbps and offers native support for Linux and application frameworks such as Android Qt and Crank Software’s Storyboard GUI. While the GPU is pretty run-of-the-mill for Cortex-A7 SoCs it’s a giant leap from the perspective of MCU developers trying to bring up modern HMI displays.
Three SoC models are available: one with 3D GPU, MIPI-DSI, and 2x CAN FD interfaces, as well as one with 2x CAN FD only and one without the GPU and CAN I/O.
The STM32MP1 is touted for its rolling 10-year longevity support and heterogeneous architecture, which lets developers halt the Cortex-A7 and run only on the Cortex-M4 to reduce power consumption by 25 percent. From this mode, “going to Standby further cuts power by 2.5k times — while still supporting the resumption of Linux execution in 1 to 3 seconds, depending on the application,” says ST. The SoC includes a PMIC and other power circuitry such as buck and boost converters.
For security, the SoC provides Arm TrustZone, cryptography, hash, secure boot, anti-tamper pins, and a real-time clock. RAM support includes 32/16-bit, 533MHz DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR2, LPDDR3. Flash support includes SD, eMMC, NAND, and NOR.
Peripherals include Cortex-A7 linked GbE, 3x USB 2.0, I2C, and multiple UART and SPI links. Analog I/O connected to the Cortex-M4 include 2x 16-bit ADCs, 2x 12-bit DACs, 29x timers, 3x watchdogs, LDOs, and up to 176 GPIOs.
OpenSTLinux, STM32Cube, and starter kits
The new OpenSTLinux distribution “has already been reviewed and accepted by the “Linux community: Linux Foundation, Yocto project, and Linaro,” says ST. The Linux BSP includes mainline kernel, drivers, boot chain, and Linaro’s OP-TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) security stack. It also includes Wayland/Weston, Gstreamer, and ALSA libraries.
Three Linux software development packages are available: a quick Starter package with STM32CubeMP1 samples; a Dev package with a Yocto Project SDK that lets you add your own Linux code; and an OpenEmbedded based Distrib package that also lets you create your own OpenSTLinux-based Linux distro. ST has collaborated with Timesys on the Linux BSPs and with Witekio to port Android to STM32MP1.
STM32 developers can “easily find their marks” by using the familiar STM32Cube toolset to control both the Cortex-M4 and Cortex-A7 chips. The toolset includes GCC-based STM32CubeProgrammer and STM32CubeMX IDEs, which “include the DRAM interface tuning tool for easy configuration of the DRAM sub-system,” says ST.
Finally, ST is supporting its chip with a four development boards: the entry level STM32MP157A-DK1 and STM32MP157C-DK2 and the higher end STM32MP157A-EV1 and STM32MP157C-EV1. All the boards offer GPIO connectors for the Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno V3.
The DK1/DK2 boards are equipped with 4GB DDR3L, as well as USB Type-C, USB Type-A OTG, HDMI, and MIPI-DSI. You also get GbE and WiFi/Bluetooth, and a 4-inch, VGA capacitive touch panel, among other features.
The more advanced A-EV1 and C-EV1 boards support up to 8GB DDR3L, 32GB eMMCv5.0. a microSD slot, and SPI and NAND flash. They provide most of the features of the DK boards, as well as CAN, camera support, SAI, SPDIF, digital mics, analog audio, and much more. They also supply 4x USB host ports and a micro-USB port. A 5.5-inch 720×1280 touchscreen is available.
HTC is launching the Vive Focus Plus this year, complete with 6DoF controllers
HTC Vive has announced that the Vive Focus, its business-focused standalone VR headset, is getting an upgrade through the freshly revealed Vive Focus Plus.
The Vive Focus Plus comes with the same focus on HTC’s enterprise customer base, but adds in upgrades like new controllers with 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) capability built in, a more comfortable design, and a handful of hardware improvements.
In a press release, HTC Vive notes that the changes introduced with the Plus aim to make the stand-alone device more easy and comfortable to use while the 6DoF features ultimately make it easier for devs to port their PC VR projects to the Plus.
“At Vive, the announcement of Vive Focus Plus furthers our commitment to rapidly iterate and refine the VR market for both businesses and consumers,” said HTC Vive’s American GM Daniel O’Brien. “This rollout of Vive Focus Plus leads the way for deeper immersion, more realistic training, and simulation, and easier porting of experiences from PC to the stand-alone category.”
Though the original Vive Focus launched in China before getting a worldwide release, the Vive Focus Plus is due to release in 25 countries during Q2 2019.
Valve Is Removing Steam Video Section; Retiring Non-Gaming Content
Valve has announced it's retiring the Video section from the Steam store. You'll keep any videos you've already purchased from Steam, though, so you don't have to worry about losing anything you've bought.
"In reviewing what Steam users actually watch, it became clear we should focus our effort on offering content that is either directly related to gaming or, is accessory content for games or software sold on Steam," Valve wrote in a blog post. "As part of this refocus, we have retired the Video section of the Steam Store menu with an expectation that video content is discovered via the associated game or software store page, or through search, user tags, recommendations, etc."
As part of the company's renewed focus on gaming, in the next few weeks, Valve will be retiring "a number of non-gaming videos" which "will no longer be available for purchase." As stated above, you'll still have access to these videos provided you've bought them already. Otherwise, they'll be gone from the Steam Store for good.
Steam's domination of the PC gaming marketplace has been challenged by the arrival of the Epic Games Store. Epic--creator of the popular battle royale game Fortnite--has managed to carve out a chunk of the PC gaming landscape by offering developers a larger cut of their profits in comparison to Steam. Already, Epic has managed to secure the exclusive distribution for the PC versions of several indie games, like Ashen and Journey, as well as some notable triple-A titles, such as Metro Exodus and The Division 2. Exodus, specifically, caused quite a bit of controversy, as its movement from Steam to Epic angered both Valve and fans of the Metro franchise.
Metro Exodus launched to several positive reviews, including ours--Michael Higham gave it an 8/10. If you prefer consoles, the game is also available on Xbox One and PS4.
Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (February 23rd)
Ah, Saturday. Quite possibly the best day of the week; certainly in the top five. It’s been a busy week despite the post-Direct lull. News that Reggie Fils-Aimé will be stepping down in April had us rewatching classic clips with a tear in the eye. Enough of that nonsense, though. Reggie wouldn’t want us moping around – he’d want us playing the very best games that Switch and 3DS have to offer, so that’s what the Nintendo Life team are going to do! These are our game-based plans and we’d love to hear yours, so get involved in the poll and comments. Have fun!
Austin Voigt, contributing writer
This weekend, after Reggie’s announcement, I’m honestly just looking for comfort and warmth in a world of utter darkness. I think I’ll stick to my favorites – finishing off the DLC in Breath of the Wild, unlocking some new characters in Smash Ultimate, playing a few rounds in Splatoon 2. I’ll probably pick up the old 3DS as well, and knock back some Animal Crossing & Pokémon. I’m feeling sad, people, so all I wanna do is play games that I know and love. I’ll also be rewatching “best of” clips of Reggie on repeat via the YouTube app on Switch – does that count?
Gavin Lane, staff writer
It’s been a busy week and I’ve only managed to squeeze in thirty minutes with the latest Tetris game to arrive on Switch. Those thirty minutes were enough to confirm two things: firstly, I’m absolutely rubbish at Tetris, and secondly, I need to be careful that Tetris 99 doesn’t suck away all my weekend hours.
Assuming I can avoid that particular pitfall, I’d really like to get into Ikaruga. I got the game, I got the Flip Grip but I just haven’t had the chance to play the thing, much to the chagrin of my fellow Nintendo Life staff. I’m on the case, team! Let’s just hope I’m better at shmups than Tetris…
Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer
There is so much shooting to be done this weekend courtesy of the eShop! The excellent Rock n’ Roll Racing spiritual sequel BlazeRush, the solid Cybernator-inspired mech action of Gigantic Army, becoming the aliens in X-Morph: Defense and even WW2 dogfighting and air base management in Warplanes: WW2 Dogfight. But the most shooting of all will be done in Gameloft’s surprisingly impressive Modern Combat Blackout, proof that you don’t really miss Call of Duty until Activision simply stops releasing it in your Nintendo console of choice and every other FPS out there is now some sort of F2P Battle Royale thingamajig.
Game of the week goes with little surprise to Protoculture Game’s appropriately titled horizontal shmup Devil Engine! A love letter to retro shmups where you will have as much fun testing your skills to a non-stop barrage of action while also picking up Easter eggs references to other shmups such as Thunder Force IV and Last Resort. Time to pick up a 5th microSD card I guess…
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln, reviewer
This weekend I’m going to be playing a LOT of Anthem. However, when I’m not flying about shooting grabbits in my javelin, I’ll be taking Trials Rising on Nintendo Switch for a spin. I’ve loved the series since it debuted way back on Xbox 360, so I’m hoping this port will live up to the hype. I imagine I’ll be swearing my head off when a mistime a jump for 100th time, but that’s Trials! Look out for my review on the site next week.
Liam Doolan, news reporter
This weekend I’m playing more Tetris 99, more Wargroove and more Hollow Knight. I’ve also managed to finally rip myself away from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to spend some well overdue time with Dragon Ball FighterZ. It’s another one of those games I bought in launch week and never got around to properly playing due to the busy time of year. When I’m not playing any of these titles, I might give the Trials Rising beta another go. I’ll admit the Switch version definitely isn’t the best-looking one, but it hasn’t been enough to detract from the overall level of fun I’ve had with the game so far.
What games are you playing this weekend? (311 votes)
Ori And The Blind Forest For Switch Spotted In UK Wholesale Database
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, you will have no doubt heard about the ongoing rumours regarding a possible partnership between Microsoft and Nintendo.
According to multiple sources, Microsoft has plans to bring an Xbox App, Game Pass, cloud technology and even some Xbox exclusives to the Nintendo Switch at some point this year. This rumour began when it was discovered Microsoft would be discussing its plans to make Xbox Live compatible with multiple platforms at the upcoming Game Developers Conference.
In the latest development, Gematsu is now reporting a Switch version of Ori and the Blind Forest has appeared in “at least one” United Kingdom wholesale database. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of the actual wholesaler or photographic evidence. Apparently, though, the game will be distributed by THQ Nordic, which would make sense as it has worked with Microsoft in the past to publish games on the digital distribution platform, Steam.
This isn’t the first time this game has been mentioned. Yesterday, Direct-Feed Games name-dropped the 2015 release and French gaming website Jeuxvideo supported these claims while also referencing the platforming boss-battler, Cuphead.
Are you convinced yet? Would you like to play Ori and the Blind Forest on the Switch? Tell us down in the comments.
