A new version of the Switch has been announced! No, it’s not the Super Switch, or the Switch Pro, or Switch 2. Instead, it’s the Nintendo Switch… OLED Model. Because it’s got an OLED panel.
But that’s not all! There are a few other features thrown into the mix, and we break down everything we know so far in this video, from what’s new to what’s the same to what you’re getting for its $350 price tag. The Nintendo Switch OLED release on October 8th.
Nintendo’s announcement of a new Switch OLED model was met with more of a whimper than a bang, judging by the reaction of many on the internet. Perhaps expectations had been bloated by the months of reports and rumors suggesting that this new model would be a significant power upgrade. Maybe after four years with the Nintendo Switch, fans are just itching for a bigger splash. For whatever reason, the modest feature upgrade isn’t the game-changer that many Switch users (or prospective owners) hoped for. But as a handheld player who has never felt comfortable committing to the Switch Lite, it looks to be the perfect fit for my use-case.
The Switch OLED’s upgrades are undoubtedly minimal. The simple fact that Nintendo is naming it after its biggest new feature–the new, slightly larger OLED screen–should show that this is more of a step than a leap. It packs some other improvements, like a better kickstand, more internal storage, and a LAN port built into the dock. None are exactly earth-shattering, especially when compared to expectations that a new Switch would bring performance upgrades including the ability to output to 4K. A real “Switch Pro” upgrade with 4K support and a faster processor may still be coming, but this isn’t it. And while a technical upgrade would be welcome as some games have shown poorly against the hardware’s limitations, the OLED model feels like a welcome upgrade until that theoretical newer model shows up.
I’ve always treated the Nintendo Switch as a handheld system. I can probably count the number of times I’ve docked it on both hands, and it’s never stayed docked for long. This habit made the Nintendo Switch Lite a tempting proposition: A smaller form factor and bright colors looked like a fun way to keep playing my Switch library in a method more akin to my long history with Nintendo handhelds.
At the same time, I was always held back by a nagging doubt. Would I miss the option to dock the system on the rare occasion that I want to? What if my kids want to play multiplayer games on the big screen with me? Would I be missing out? I never did pick up a Switch Lite because those questions made me perpetually afraid to take the plunge. I didn’t want to cut off access to the Switch’s namesake feature. I wanted an upgrade that catered to me as a handheld player but didn’t lock me into it.
I will admit to a certain degree of tech lust. I’m the type of person who happily followed Nintendo through various DS and then 3DS upgrades. This probably makes me Nintendo’s ideal customer–the 30-something with disposable income, childlike affection for Mario and Pikachu, and a high degree of temptation toward the shiny and new. So part of my lingering desire for a Switch Lite was simply that I wanted the newest thing, but what held me back was that it didn’t really suit my needs.
The Switch OLED, by comparison, appears to find that balance much more cohesively. It’s slightly larger and heavier, but by such a small margin that I doubt I’d ever notice. The screen upgrade will be appreciated, and I love the new white/black color scheme. The built-in LAN port is a nice-to-have for when I want to dock the system, but more importantly, the upgrade doesn’t negate my ability to dock the system. I still have the option to switch with my Switch.
I wanted an upgrade that catered to me as a handheld player but didn’t lock me into it.
The Switch OLED isn’t right for everyone. Obviously, if you treat it as a console first and foremost, the major marquee new feature is essentially meaningless to you. This system is targeted toward handheld players, and more precisely, toward ones like me who still want to dock their systems. Nintendo’s account data from 2017 showed that 30% of Switch owners played in handheld mode more than 80% of the time. By comparison, 20% played in dock mode 80+% of the time, so there’s a relatively small but still significant difference in system use. And naturally, this is old data, so the breakdown may have changed since then–especially with the flurry of new adopters last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, if we assume the numbers are still roughly accurate, it’s easy to see why Nintendo is putting out this new model. With more than 80 million Switch systems sold, an upgrade that appeals to roughly 30% amounts to tens of millions of potential customers. In fact, that 2017 data may have influenced Nintendo’s decision to release the Switch Lite in 2019. By all accounts, the Switch Lite is doing fine for itself, but Nintendo must see an open market opportunity that it didn’t reach with the handheld-only model. The internet’s reaction to the Switch OLED may have been muted, but the impact on sales almost definitely will not be–particularly when considering the higher price tag.
So, assuming I can find one–an open question if there ever was one, given recent trends in hardware shortages–I’ll be satisfied with a modestly upgraded Nintendo Switch. It feels aimed squarely at me, as a handheld player who never felt fully comfortable committing to handheld-only forever and ever.
Armored Batman has finally arrived in the Fortnite Item Shop after months of teases and a few leaks. The new skin is the fourth for DC’s Caped Crusader to come to Fortnite, joining earlier versions such as Batman Zero, Nolan’s The Dark Knight Batman, and a traditional Batman made in the style of classic Fortnite characters.
The new skin comes as a bonus item for no additional charge for any players who entered their in-game codes that have accompanied the last six issues of Batman X Fortnite: Zero Point, a tie-in comic written by DC brass in collaboration with Epic’s chief creative officer, Donald Mustard. The Armored Batman cosmetic set the Exo-Glider, the Batarang Axe, and the Exo-Glider Cape. In total, the set sells for 2100 V-Bucks, or about $16.
Other characters in the tie-in series include Harley Quinn modeled after her 2016 Rebirth self, a new Catwoman Zero outfit to match the Fortnite comics, and Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, one of Batman’s most combat-efficient foes. This new tie-in outfit is surely not the final DC Comics crossover that will be featured in Fortnite. We’ve already seen others, such as Beast Boy, The Flash, and Aqua Man, come to the game, and there seems to be no slowing the Fortnite train, so it’s safe to assume more will come in time. We don’t even need to speculate about Superman in Fortnite, as he’s coming later this season.
The Week 5 challenges and Week 5 Alien Artifacts are just around the corner, so get a head start on those and show off your new Armored Batman in the process. For more exciting Fortnite skin’s don’t miss the LeBron James leak too.
GameStop opened a Discord server, and to no one’s surprise: It is currently utter chaos. The server and its bot–and poor moderators–are likely overwhelmed by the influx of new users.
As of writing this, the only channels presently available are the LFG ones, separated by game titles. So far, the accessible LFG channels include Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Fortnite, Overwatch, Rocket League, and World of Warcraft.
In the future, once the server is no longer getting bombarded by new users, there will also be three other channel sections available. The GameStop section will include announcements, role-selection, media, and streams channels. The second one, Community, will have a general video game discussion channel, as well as a tabletop games, off-topic, and feedback channels.
GameStop will also set up an Esports section with a general esports chat channel. When the role section function is up and running, users can select which esports they follow and get access to those specific channels.
Needless to say, nobody is currently using the game channels for what they’re meant to be. There’s a lots of memes and of course, discussions of stocks in every channel.
GameStop unintentionally became a meme and possibly, a counter-culture symbol for some people in early 2021. Individuals part of WallStreetBets heavily bought the videogame retailer’s stocks, driving GameStop’s stock value to soaring heights. WallStreetBets members viewed it as a win against professional traders, the “fat cats of Wall Street.” For a full rundown of the situation, you can read our explainer on the GameStop stock situation.
The people making The Suicide Squad want you to know that it’s going to be a very different movie. Different how? Well, it certainly won’t be anything like the financially successful but overall lambasted 2016 Suicide Squad. Like other recent DC films, including Birds of Prey, Shazam, and Aquaman, it will stand apart from the “DC Extended Universe” of movies, if such a thing even exists at this point. The Suicide Squad isn’t even similar to James Gunn’s previous big screen superhero movies, Marvel’s largely beloved Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. The reasons why are plentiful and compelling, as we learned on a visit to The Suicide Squad’s set in Atlanta, Georgia back in 2019, before the global pandemic, when the movie was still scheduled to premiere much earlier than its current August 2021 release date.
“Basically DC came [to me] and said, ‘Hey, what do you want to do?'” recalled Gunn, who took a few minutes out of his busy shooting schedule to chat with the reporters who had flown out to set. After being reactively fired by Disney over a series of uncouth old tweets, Gunn wasn’t in the wind for long, and he quickly brought his pitch for The Suicide Squad to DC and Warner Bros. That pitch was apparently quite something.
“He had a complete vision,” Production Designer Beth Mickle told us. “From day one, James was able to sit there and go through everything in the movie and knew, exactly, in his head how he wanted to cover each action, how he wanted the dialogue to be delivered. To have that kind of clarity and that sort of vision–we’ve been doing this for a long time, and Jesus, that is just so rare, to have somebody come in and just be such a true visionary.”
“It happens never. It happens zero percent of the time,” echoed Peter Safran, one of the movie’s producers. “Sometimes you just get that perfect match between filmmaker and property.”
The Suicide Squad centers on a Nazi-era research base called Jotunheim. After freedom fighters overthrow the local dictatorship, Amanda Waller (once again played by Viola Davis) sends in a ragtag team of villains and scoundrels to defeat the rebels and destroy the base before its secrets emerge–a job your average DC superheroes would likely have some issues with.
The filmmakers emphasized that this is “a war movie,” with massive practical effects and sets. Indeed, they took journalists on a tour around the island of Corto Maltese, including the dense jungle through which our anti-heroes will approach the Jotunheim compound, as well as the base’s partially destroyed entrance, presumably following their arrival. They compared the film’s opening scenes to Saving Private Ryan.
“It’s a 1970s war movie, war caper, melded with the characters and comedy that James Gunn brings to everything that he does,” Safran described.
“It’s a much, much, much rougher film than Guardians of the Galaxy. Everything is almost completely practical–the biggest sets I’ve run in almost any film,” said Gunn. “People might be expecting it to be like Guardians. They might be expecting it to be like the first Suicide Squad. They might be expecting it to be like, whatever, but it’s not like any of those things.”
It’s also going to come with a big, exciting R rating. Gunn described his Suicide Squad as “gory.”
“[The] movies that it’s somewhat based on, those 1970s war movies, those are hardcore movies,” Safran explained. “So I think it’s a lot of fun for James to be able to flex some of those muscles that he can’t do on a PG-13 Guardians movie. He’s pretty hardcore with it.”
“I don’t think most people think that Star-Lord’s head is going to explode in the middle of [a Guardians] movie,” Gunn said, uttering one of the greatest sentences that the director of said films could possibly say. “But any of these characters, their heads could explode in the middle of the movie.”
That’s not to say any character will be shortchanged, a criticism leveled at the 2016 Suicide Squad, in which, for example, a character named Slipknot appeared suddenly with no introduction and was immediately killed in the same scene. Even with such a massive ensemble cast–John Cena as Peacemaker, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Idris Elba as Bloodsport, and many others–every character supposedly has time to shine.
“There is no wasted space. There’s no fat in the script at all,” Safran said. “We keep waiting for an easy day where there’s some filler, some exposition, and there isn’t. James wrote a really, really tight script. Each of these characters, he’s got a way of, just with one or two lines, of giving them something really tangible to do and say that becomes incredibly memorable.”
When Cena spoke with reporters about Peacemaker, he emphasized that good villains are usually righteous from their own perspectives. “I think the driving force behind any character, anyone you see [on this team], is they have to have some sense of belief in their purpose,” the actor and pro wrestler said. “And I think that’s what’s great about these movies. That’s what keeps us all charged up going to these movies. We either know these characters so well, or we want to know about these characters.”
David Dastmalchian, who superhero fans might recognize from roles in The Dark Knight, the Ant-Man movies, and even TV shows like The Flash and Gotham, plays Polka-Dot Man–a character so obscure that even the actor, a massive comics collector, barely recognized him. In the movie, PDM is covered in pustule-like growths that have to be regularly discharged. “They could be looked at in two ways, either as an ability or as a disability–as something that can cause excruciating amounts of pain and embarrassment,” Dastmalchian told us. “That absolutely helped shape how I was going to move and fight and sit, and do all the things that I’ll do in the film. And then again, how a disability or something that you’re embarrassed of, or that hurts you, finding a way that you can then suddenly do something with it that’s more than just suffer–maybe it even could have a purpose. Then that changes the way you move, the way that you sit, the way you talk.”
Contrast that nuanced character with King Shark, whose motion capture was performed by comedian and actor Steve Agee. “He looks really funny, but also if you really walked into a room at night, you would fully get diarrhea, if you saw that thing,” Agee described. In other words, this is not your average ensemble.
Of course, you might have said the same thing about the 2016 Suicide Squad, and despite the fact that it made money, we all know how that turned out. But Gunn, Safran, and the rest of those involved have done their best to set this apart. “The reaction [within Warner Bros.] was, ‘We want Suicide Squad from the mind of James Gunn.’ That’s what it is,” said Safran. “So, not a sequel. It’s not a reboot. It’s just ‘James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.'”
This not-sequel, not-reboot, its-own-thing-but-also-somehow-connected-to-the-last-movie may prove initially confusing. Several characters, including Flag, Wallace, Quinn, and even Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang, return from that movie, yet according to Safran, they will make no references to it whatsoever. But it also might be the film that Suicide Squad fans deserve–regardless of what has come before.
“I just fell in love with this particular story that we’re telling right now. and I fell in love with some of the characters and the way we could do it,” Gunn said.
The Suicide Squad is due out in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6.
While it feels like yesterday that Pokemon Go became popular, the mobile AR version of the gotta-catch-em-all game is now turning five years old.
Niantic will celebrate Pokemon Go’s fifth anniversary with in-game events from July 6 to July 15. Notably, a Flying Pikachu held up by balloons will be obtainable, and there’s an increased chance of encountering Darumaka and its Shiny counterpart.
We’ve included a summary of what you can expect from Pokemon Go’s fifth anniversary below. Trusty Leek Duck also put together a useful infographic, which is included here as well.
Pokemon Go has made a lot of money since launch, to the tune of an eye-watering amount of 5 billion. 2021 appears to be one of more successful years Pokemon Go has had too, with a 34% increase in revenue the first half of the year when compared to 2020’s revenue. The game is also the darling of Nintendo designer, Shigeru Miyamoto. He commented that the Pokemon Go experience is a “dream come true of playing a game with my whole family.”
When The Legend of Zelda was released for the NES back in 1986, it sold at retail for $49.99. A sealed copy of that game today has already broken past $100,000 in an auction that’s currently live.
You can view the online auction happening right now at Heritage Auctions where the current bid at the time of this writing is $110,000. That’s probably the equivalent of over 1 million Hyrulian rupees for a Wata 9.0 sealed copy of the original Legend of Zelda.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/18/13-awesomely-rare-nintendo-artifacts”]
“Truly, the term ‘grail’ only begins to scratch the surface of describing this game,” Heritage Auctions writes in the lot description. “Of all of the games we’ve offered in our auctions, this sealed early production copy of the first game in the groundbreaking Legend of Zelda series is no doubt the apotheosis of rarity, cultural significance, and collection centerpieces.”
Heritage Auctions says none of the copies of The Legend of Zelda it offered in the past can “even attempt to hold a candle to this one due to its incredibly rare variant that holds early production status.”
This variant copy of Zelda nicknamed the “NES R” was produced for just a few months in late 1987 before it was replaced by a “Rev-A” variant in 1988, according to Heritage Auctions.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2016/08/08/igns-top-10-zelda-games-of-all-time”]
“Only one other variant precedes the offered ‘NES R’ variant and that is the ‘NES TM’ variant, which is the true first production run,” the description continues. “However, it is widely believed that only a single sealed ‘NES TM’ example exists, and there is no telling whether or not that copy will ever come to market.”
All of that is to say that the copy of The Legend of Zelda in the Heritage Auctions auction is the earliest sealed copy of the game one can actually obtain.
This auction is set to end in two days and only time will tell how high the sale price goes from here.
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/02/extremely-rare-nes-game-becomes-most-expensive-video-game-collectible”]
This copy’s auction bid of $110,000 is certainly nothing to scoff at, but elsewhere, Nintendo rarities have sold for much more. The Nintendo PlayStation prototype console sold for $360,000 in an auction held last year while an incredibly rare plastic-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $660,000 back in April.
When that copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for over half a million dollars earlier this year, it became the most expensive price ever paid for a video game collectible.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. He loves The Legend of Zelda but can think of a lot of other things to spend over $100,000 on. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy