Fanbyte is reporting this evening that Nintendo has been working on a sequel to their Nintendo Switch launch party game 1-2 Switch though the end results have not resonated at all well with the focus testing groups. The first game was a success for Nintendo shifting 3.45 million copies, though it was one of two launch games developed for the Switch by Nintendo, the other obviously being the excellent The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Here’s the issue with the as of yet unannounced sequel which Fanbyte has heard Nintendo eventually plans to release at some point.
“It tested horribly. When playtesting groups received the game, the feedback to the development team was brutal. The target audiences Nintendo was hoping to hit — families with children — found the games boring; many didn’t even want to play through entire rounds. In the Bingo example, one player would use the joycon to mime digging out a number before reading it off the TV screen — a process that playtesters reported as tedious.
The main mode of the game, the Team Battle Mode, pit at least two teams of players against each other in various minigames. This mode prominently featured Horse, who would give color commentary during the games. During the localization process, sources started calling the game “Horsesh*t” as shorthand.
But no one expected Everybody’s 1-2 Switch to test quite as badly as it did. Different trusted employees within Nintendo were raising alarms that the game released as-is would damage the company’s reputation as a great software developer.”
Absolutely not, keep this series 6 feet under nobody wants this for real, and the play testers sounds heavily accurate the whole game looks like a tech demo anyway.
Ohhh boy, I have a lot of different responses to this.
For starters, they are quoted as saying “Different trusted employees within Nintendo were raising alarms that the game released as-is would damage the company’s reputation as a great software developer.” That didn’t stop them before when they did games like Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash and Metroid Prime Federation Farce.
Second, why would they go forward with this when reception to the original was mediocre at best?
And lastly… …huh. If only they had poured all that time and resources into something their fans actually want. Maybe a game in a franchise that they’ve been neglecting for too long, like F-Zero, or Custom Robo?
Cancel it forever.
I’ll take a Custom Robo for 60, Alex!
So many great IPs under Nintendo and they choose 1-2 Switch? They are better off remastering some GC/Wii/WiiU game than working on this.