I am trying to choose between buying a Nintendo Switch or a Nintendo DS.
This may not be the perfect community to ask - but I can’t think of any better place.
The reason for my question: I don’t want to own obsolete hardware in 10 years. Lately most games seem to depend on a “phone home” feature, which is not really an issue for my pc because it is always connected, but a console is something I want to play always and everywhere.
I already did some searching and found that games can be played offline fine (most of them, some exceptions are there like Multiplayer and Mortal Kombat), but:
- There is something like the paid Nintendo Online Account. I am not planning on having a paid account. How much of the system depends on the account?
- Can I have progression in a game (let’s say: one of the Zelda franchise) and will my Wife and Kids all have their own progression, without having to pay for X accounts?
- People who own a Switch, let’s take this to extremes, do you feel like in 20 years from now you can still do the same things on your hardware as you can do now? (No multiplayer is fine)
Also, feel free to rant about “paying is not owning”, the state of the gaming industry is horrible.
Nintendo doesn’t have always-online DRM. Some games won’t work 20 years from now of course, but your cartridge of BOTW or Pikmin 4 will still work as long as the hardware is in good repair. The Switch is a fine system and should last for years and years of quality game time.
Off topic but does the game cartridge slot have a known amount of cycles until failure?
I’m thinking about how phone’s charging/data ports are stress tested by simulating hundreds of connections.
The cartridges are just SD cards. So however long SD cards last for is thier life span.
I’m talking about the cartridge system not the cards themselves
It’s an SD card slot. It’ll last as long as SD cards last.
Technically it’s micro SD, actually.