A look at the next twelve months of Nintendo Switch, which are loaded with exclusive games, hardware and great news for the platform.
New Year New Life. Yesterday's achievements are no longer worth it. It's time to look to the future and see what Nintendo Switch has prepared for the next twelve months. We go through the list and review all the exclusives that the platform prepares, the possible hardware revisions and even what we can expect from Nintendo Switch Online. Without going to fortune tellers or throwing a crystal ball, we have compiled the most exciting games, dates and news of 2020. If anyone thought that Nintendo was going to stay idly by the arrival of PS5 and Xbox Series X, I was very wrong. Fasten the belt that we started and we do it with a collection of exclusives to cope with the first months of the year:
Dr. Kawashima Brain Training
Release Date: January 3, 2020
Nintendo Switch starts this 2020 celebrating the return of Brain Training. The saga of Dr. Kawashima, one of the greatest successes of Nintendo DS, will allow us to re-test our mental agility from January 3. This new (and twelfth!) Installment of the franchise, which will come at a reduced price, includes online bookmarks, mini-games and an alarm function that we can configure so that the console reminds us to do daily tests, even when in standby mode. A title for the whole family that brings its own stylus and checks our information processing speed, short-term memory and self-control capability. All to end up ruling the shameful age of our brain.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
Release Date: January 17, 2020
Originally launched in 2016, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is considered one of the great exclusives of Wii U. It is a game that unites the Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei universes in a role-playing adventure at the height of its developer, the very Atlus. This new and improved version "Encore" will transfer the title to Nintendo Switch with some new features. Along with the improvements in its graphic finish, one of the biggest hits that was attributed to it in its day, we will also find a new EX Story, an unpublished dungeon, more alliances to forge in combat and themes and music tracks composed exclusively for the chance. In addition, each character will have new outfits, some from games as recent as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It will be released on January 17, although as read on the eShop page, it will only be translated into English and French.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Release Date: March 20, 2020
More than a game, Animal Crossing is a lifestyle. And although its new installment has been made to beg, its launch is already around the corner (we wait for it on March 20). Without counting his spin-off for mobile phones (Pocket Camp), eight years have passed since the last chapter of the main saga (Animal Crossing: New Leaf) and in this time Nintendo has been able to devise and prepare great changes. For the first time in the series there will be photo mode, self-saved, skin color and free gender, possibility of putting furniture outside and living in the southern hemisphere, option to jump rivers with poles and move our house site, an island like setting and crafting objects with their resources, a renewed local and online multiplayer, more clothes, hairstyles and noses than ever, and two new types of currency with which Tom Nook wants to rip us off like never before. This is one of the most important releases of Nintendo Switch this year and the plumber's company, aware of this, has congratulated everyone on New Year's Eve with a new trailer. He will have to pack up!
Sports story
Release Date: Mid 2020
Sports Story is the sequel to Golf Story, an indie that came as a cover to Nintendo Switch and soon revindicate itself as a unique experience, one of the best on the platform within the RPG genre. It has become one of the best-selling games of the eShop and for many it is the spiritual successor of the legendary Mario Golf of Camelot Software. An adventure in which we do much more than play golf tournaments. From getting excited with his story about self-improvement and life itself, to touring his scenarios knowing all kinds of characters, improving our equipment, expanding the skill tree and playing crazy mini-games and challenges. This sequel, with its characteristic and sweeping retro graphic appearance, proposes us to immerse ourselves again in such a vibrant universe, now inhabited by more sports than ever: football, tennis, volleyball, fishing, cricket … Although it has no fixed launch date, In the last Indie World (event that opened and starred in) we were invited to wait for Sports Story by mid-2020.
No More Heroes 3
Release Date: 2020
Travis Touchdown was born from the hand of Nintendo and will die from the hand of Nintendo. The irreverent Grasshopper Manufacture anti-hero will land on Switch this 2020 to close his story and give us a good handful of laughter and memorable moments. More than ten years have passed in Santa Destroy since No More Heroes 2, and now the city has become a gigantic metropolis on top of which a mysterious and malevolent floating object flies over which aliens begin to descend. Travis will have to return to Santa Destroy after a voluntary exile and will do so to save the city facing, in the words of Suda 51, "Thanos level opponents." The creator of the game has promised his greatest open world to date and a story "like that of Rocky 3", in which Travis begins to take its age. The game will have multiple tributes to the previous ones, such as motion controls in memory of Wii deliveries, and wants to overcome its high ribbon of mischief, nonsense, bad drool and fun.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Release Date: 2020
Ten years after it came out on Wii, the epic of Shulk and Fiora will resonate again on our consoles thanks to this “definitive version” for Nintendo Switch. An ambitious remastering with which the tenth anniversary of the saga is commemorated, which is only missing a delivery in the Nintendo hybrid: Xenoblade Chronicles X. For those who do not know the original, this edition is a golden opportunity to dive in an essential JRPG, a good example of the genius behind the figure of Tetsuya Takahashi and the moving strength of Yoko Shimomura, author of her unforgettable soundtrack. His first trailer reveals a more bright and colorful aesthetic, with new textures and cartoon-looking characters, more in line with what was seen in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It has the Monolith Soft quality seal and although it does not have an exit date Exactly, it is planned for this same 2020.
Bravely Default 2
Release Date: 2020
And if JRPG is essential, we have to talk about Bravely Default 2, one of the most recent additions to this list. Become one of the surprises of The Game Awards 2019, the proximity of its date (2020) has generated as much impact as its presentation. Developed by the same Square Enix team that Octopath Traveler gave us a couple of years ago, this continuation regains the spirit of what for many is the best JRPG that went through Nintendo 3DS. The game will feature Revo in charge of the soundtrack (who already surprised the world with the first one) and will be set in a new world with its own adventures and Heroes of Light. Curiously, the saga already had a sequel, Bravely Second, which repeated the cities and protagonists of the first. He was accused of being very continuous and not presenting just playable and visual news, precisely what is intended to correct this new installment, with which we will travel to the golden age of Squaresoft.
Deadly Premonition 2
Release Date: 2020
Or you love it, or hate it. Deadly Premonition is one of those cult games without fear term. A survival horror to which the critics stoned and which, to everyone's surprise, still achieved considerable sales and repercussions. His gameplay, which made us want to throw the command out the window, a framerate not to watch and more worthy performances of the B series and Tommy Wiseau that otherwise, did not prevent many from falling in love with Deadly Premonition. From him, from Agent Dale Cooper (sorry, we meant York Morgan) and from the town of Twin Peaks (sorry again, we meant Greenvale). An even more surreal story than Lynch's third season and from which we would never have expected a sequel … and even less from Nintendo. Under the title "A Blessing in Disguise", Rising Star Games will let us plunge back into its madness this 2020, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the saga. On this occasion we will visit the hand of "our friend" Zach a small town in New Orleans where he seems to stalk a new serial killer. Will we be able to catch him before losing his head? Wait a minute, does it matter to lose it?
The bright future of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
The first year of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's life has been incredible. Sakurai's work has taken twelve months to become the best-selling fighting game in history, above Street Fighter II, who held the record with 15.5 million units sold. A historical achievement that has helped the continuous updates of the title, which has not stopped receiving events, modes and fighters during this time. Nintendo has reserved for 2020 the last character of its Fighters Pass, which has already incorporated into the contest Joker (Person 5), the Hero of Dragon Quest, Banjo & Kazooie and Terry Bogard (Fatal Fury). The company has something fat in hand as a final touch and, far from complying with that, he announced at the end of 2019 that there will be more fighters in the future. Will the character grid go up to 85 with a second fighter pass? Who would you like to see? Of course, one of the most exciting things of 2020 on Nintendo Switch will continue to be Smash Bros, who does not plan to take his foot off the accelerator.
More Nintendo DLC
The new Smash Bros. fighters will not be the only downloadable content that Nintendo publishes throughout 2020. Do not forget your support for two of the great releases of 2019: Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Luigi's Mansion 3, who will receive new expansions and DLC from summer to summer. The fourth content of the Fire Emblem season pass will arrive in April and will be the largest to date, with an extension of the story, unpublished locations and new playable characters. As for Luigi's terrifying hotel, it will extend its stays with two multiplayer DLC planned for summer. To them should be added the continuous updates of Tetris 99 and all the third party material, where today the free content for Blasphemous and the enormous expansion of Cuphead, The Delicious Last Course, resonates, to which we have to keep track now The game is also on Nintendo Switch. It will include a new island, "even more extravagant and monstrous" bosses, unpublished weapons, objects and mini-games, and a new playable character, Mr Chalice, who will accompany Cuphead and Mugman and have a special ability: the double jump. A priori, the most striking of the course as far as DLC is concerned.
Nintendo Switch Pro in 2020?
Much was said in 2019 of a Nintendo Switch Pro, a “more powerful” version of the console that repeated the strategy of New Nintendo 3DS and raised the graphic roof of the platform a little more. In fact, there was talk so much that even the new president of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser, had to go out to deny the rumors and discarded the idea … temporarily. This hypothetical Pro version would not be born with the intention of fishing between the third party games of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but to give an important boost to the loading times, performance and resolution of the current catalog and the one to come . Although the runrun on it has been shutting down since the departure of Nintendo Switch Lite and the battery expansion of the original console, it would not be far fetched to see Nintendo's new hardware in 2020. Perhaps the biggest problem that can result is that such a model starts the catalog and makes some games not compatible with the original systems. In other words, the controversy that was once in 3DS would be resumed with releases such as Xenoblade Chronicles 3D or Fire Emblem Warriors. But knowing the company's history, we better not discard anything. Even less after the recent round table among market analysts organized by Games Industry, in which many claim to expect a Pro model at $ 399 and with support for 4K. We will have to pay attention to next summer and the months after E3, Nintendo's favorite date to make these types of announcements.
A model with more internal memory?
A new console does not have to be the only hardware that Nintendo launches this course. After retouching the battery of all the switches that have been sold since September, there are many rumors that Nintendo could also put a hand in the internal memory of the original model. It would be evaluating an extension of it, which is currently only 32 GB (and 6.2 of them are reserved for the operating system). There are some digital games that cannot be downloaded completely unless we have a micro SD card. This is the case of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition, which occupies 28.73 GB. Nintendo could study an improvement that ends these problems … and aside from it, the Japanese company wants to undertake an even greater change in the cartridges of its games, which from 2020 may be up to 64 GB. A news that will end all games in physical format that, even bringing a card, require us to make an additional download because they did not fit everything in it. Cases like Bayonetta, NBA 2K and several Capcom titles. This will also allow to make "bigger games" and will cause the standardization of 32 GB memories, which would be lowered in price and used by more developers. Or what is the same, more indie studios could launch their games in physical format, because they would only need smaller cartridges and these would be cheaper. In short, it seems that we have a year of constant changes and improvements ahead.
The future of Nintendo Switch Online
Nintendo Switch Online has just begun its second year of life (started on September 19, 2018) and is gradually marking its own road map. Cheaper than PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold, it also offers less features than these in terms of “gifts” and “free games”. If the Nintendo subscription service followed the pace shown so far, by 2020 we could expect between 4 and 6 titles to be added every month to the NES Online catalog, which now make up 48 different games. And we must remember that since September 2019 we also have SNES Online, with 20 different names in its library. However, Nintendo's latest statements suggest that from now on it will add “irregularly” games, which leads us to think that, rather than increasing or maintaining production, it will be reduced. The company talks about approximately three retro games per month and without a fixed date. A reduction that we would totally ignore if, again in September, the expansion of the service with the catalogs of Nintendo 64, GameBoy or even GameCube was announced. Wet dream of fans and followers, a year ago there was evidence that Nintendo Switch Online was ready to house up to four different emulators. Seeing that the same information also leaked the name of the SNES games and it was right, we played wood so that this September the online game of Nintendo continues to grow and brings a new joy with retro flavor to the more than 10 million subscribers it has the service. You can only go to more.
The support of the third party
As we all know, consoles don't just live on exclusives. Thanks to its proposal and portability, Nintendo Switch has emerged as a very interesting alternative for games that also come on PC, PS4 and / or Xbox One. That is why its 2020 catalog is packed with different studios that provide support and projects to the platform. There are many genres to which Switch seems to draw special luster, such as dungeon crawler, isometric view action, local cooperatives, remakes and remastering. This year we will find third party of the size of The Outer Worlds (the role of Obsidian in portable format); the great alternative to Pokémon, Temtem; the remakes of Panzer Dragoon and Trials of Mana; or even the spin off in musou version of Persona 5, The Phantom Strikers. An increasingly wide catalog and it rains to everyone's taste. Here is a brief selection of titles that will come to the console in the coming months (and whose dates we will be updating in our launches section, as they are revealed):
- Biomutant
- Darksiders Genesis
- Digimon Survive
- Doom 64
- Fairy Tail
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition
- Gods & Monsters
- LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
- Minecraft dungeons
- Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: The Official Video Game
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4
- Panzer Dragoon: Remake
- Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
- Samurai Shodown
- Temtem
- The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance – Tactics
- The Outer Worlds
- Trials of Mana
The perfect console for the indies
But if something beats the third party support the console receives, that is the indie support. The platform has become the great bastion of small productions. In love with her, almost all new indie releases are planned for Switch and many of the successes of the past are gradually incorporated into the system. Some even dare to go out exclusively for her. The love is reciprocal and Nintendo wants to continue hosting throughout the year a good number of Nintendo Indie World, a series of Direct specials that focuses on this type of titles. An endless list of which we also want to leave you with a small, very small selection that surely houses some of the great jewels of 2020:
- Axiom Verge 2, by Thomas Happ
- Bake'n Switch, of Streamline Media Group
- Boyfriend Dungeon, from Kitfox Games
- Afterburner Studios Dreamscaper
- Gleamlight, from D3Publisher
- Hollow Knight: Silksong from Team Cherry
- John Wick Hex of Mike Bithell's Games
- Liberated by Atomic Wolf
- Little Nightmares 2, from Tarsier Studios
- Murder Numbers of Mediatonic
- Sail Forth, from The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
- SkateBIRD, by Glass Bottom Games
- Streets of Rage 4, by Lizardcube
- Super Meat Boy Forever, by Team Meat
- SuperSmash, from Digital Continue
- The Survivalists, from Team 17
Metroid Prime, Bayonetta and Breath of the Wild
We could not finish this report without mentioning three of the names that stop anyone's heart. Not one, not two. There are three aces under the sleeve that Nintendo keeps. Metroid Prime 4, Bayonetta 3 and the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A triumvirate of continuations for some of the most acclaimed and beloved deliveries and sagas in history (with two in FreeGameTips). Perhaps the least likely to see in 2020 is the return of Samus, who in January last year announced that he was restarting his development and starting from scratch. Nintendo admitted that the project had gone through convulsive phases and that it was not reaching the quality standards planned for it. The company decided to stop for the healthy, start over and put everything in the hands of Retro Studios, which after making the original trilogy, is a guarantee of quality. The twelve months it has been underway seem few to talk about its launch, but perhaps it will be seen in a fair or Direct to give us a first brushstroke of those waiting for us. Because two and a half years after its announcement, Metroid Prime 4 returns to excite.
As for the new "Cherry" adventure, Platinum Games has ensured that "the development is going very well" despite the silence in which they have mired fans. Although the game has only seen its presentation trailer (of 2017), the latest work of the studio (Astral Chain) talks about how comfortable and skilled they already feel on Nintendo Switch. It is likely that, by deadlines, it is the one with the most ballots to see the light in 2020. Let's touch wood because it is so and because the queen of hack and slash can claim her crown at once. And as for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, what are we going to tell you. Converted into the megaton of E3 2019, the title will pick up the graphic engine and mapped the previous one to reduce development times, but that does not mean that there will be no news, much less. Conceived as the Majora's Mask of Breath of the Wild, Aonuma and Fujibayashi want to take the opportunity to “offer new experiences” (after their trailer some pointed to a cooperative mode or Zelda as protagonist), and both have been dropping that this time there will be dungeons classic and that the tone will be darker than the previous one. Expanding the legacy of the GOTY of 2017 seems like the best possible response from Nintendo to the Christmas premiere of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, or why not, at the beginning of 2021. All three have the reins of the next twelve months in your hands.
Any of them would put the icing on the cake in the 2020 of Nintendo Switch. An exciting year, with many names and few dates to mark on the calendar, something that we are sure that Nintendo will fix very soon. That no one gives up because Switch is going to put very high cruising speed and we still don't know half of it.
