‘Skyrim’ comes to the Nintendo Switch with motion controls and more

By Jayce Wagner June 11, 2017

skyrim nintendo switch e3

It’s official, Bethesda is bringing the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to the Nintendo Switch with a host of new features. Or well, something like that. The core gameplay appears to be the same, but there are a couple important tweaks that lend the game an undeniable Nintendo vibe.

First up, you’ll now be able to use compatible Amiibo to unlock in-game rewards like a full outfit that turns the Dragonborn into a different sort of hero. Spoiler alert, it turns you into Link. Yeah that one, the one from Zelda.

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Further, Skyrim will now feature full-on motion controls, compatible with actions like firing a bow — also like a certain Hylian hero — and smashing dragons. So what else did we find out about the Switch release of now-venerable Skyrim? Precious little.

Previously, we learned that Skyrim would be hitting the Nintendo Switch just after the console’s initial announcement. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the forthcoming release, including some important details.

For one, it’s unclear whether or not the Switch version of Skyrim will feature all the bells and whistles released in the most recent Skyrim remaster, or if it will have any support for mods. We can assume the content released in the expansions for Skyrim will be included in the Switch version, but it’s unlikely we’ll see anything new beyond some Nintendo-themed add-ons.

Bethesda also announced a few games alongside some big changes to its mod community for Skyrim and Fallout 4, but there’s no confirmation that those changes will trickle down to the Switch version.

More likely, you’ll see “mods” added to your game via collectable Amiibo figurines. It’s not much, and there are certainly details we’d like to see in the future — like a definite release date and performance specs — but the upcoming Skyrim release illustrates the strength of the Nintendo Switch as a versatile gaming platform.

Digital Trends will continue bringing you the latest news from E3 throughout the week.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.

Gaming

10 minutes of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay is coming. Here’s how to watch it

Link fights a giant golem in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

After years of trailers that only tease bits and pieces of what we can expect from the next mainline Zelda game, Nintendo has announced a 10-minute deep dive into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hosted by Eiji Aonuma. As this gameplay presentation will likely feature the most info we've gotten about Tears of the Kingdom since its 2019 announcement, Nintendo fans will want to tune in. If you haven't heard of this new gameplay video before or are just wondering when and where you should tune into it, we've rounded up all of that info here for you.
When is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's gameplay presentation?
This gameplay showcase for Tears of the Kingdom will be released at 7 a.m. PT on March 28. The presentation will last "roughly 10 minutes," according to Nintendo, and it should be available to watch for free afterward.

How to watch
This deep dive into Tears of the Kingdom gameplay will be released on Nintendo's official YouTube channel. We'll embed the video below once it is live. Of course, you can also expect an article highlighting any of the big reveals during the gameplay presentation here on Digital Trends.
What to expect
Nintendo will release 10 minutes of Tears of the Kingdom gameplay in a presentation hosted and narrated by Eiji Aonuma, producer of The Legend of Zelda series. While the game was announced over three-and-a-half years ago and has received several trailers, we still don't quite know how its moment-to-moment gameplay works and just how much it differs from Breath of the Wild.
https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1640353190414565378
As such, it seems like the main purpose of this presentation is to give players a clear idea of what to expect from Tears of the Kingdom ahead of its May 12 release on Nintendo Switch. Hopefully, we'll learn more about the floating islands in the sky that players can explore and the vehicles we saw Link controlling in the game's last trailer. Regardless, this gameplay showcase is shaping up to be quite revealing and exciting.
Though the announcement only mentions gameplay, there's always a chance we see some special edition hardware revealed at this too. A special Switch OLED model or Joy-cons designed around the game seem likely and we could see something like that here.

Gaming

Nintendo confirms that it won’t be part of E3 2023

Pikmin and Bulborb in Pikmin 4.

Nintendo has confirmed reports that it won't be participating in E3 2023, meaning the gaming trade show will be missing one of its key vendors when it returns in-person this June.
"We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans," a Nintendo spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. "Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA [Entertainment Software Association] and E3."
After taking 2020 and 2022 off and being digital-only in 2021, this year was supposed to mark the grand return of E3, which was once a dominant game industry trade show that attracted every big video game company. Although Sony hasn't participated since 2019, it still came as a shock in January when IGN reported that both Nintendo and Microsoft would not be attending E3 this year as well. It appears that the report is true, as Microsoft has not confirmed any E3-related events outside of its independently run Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase.
Nintendo skipping E3 2023 not only takes away a vendor that dominated the show floor in previous years, but also raises questions about whether or not the company will hold an exciting Nintendo Direct around then. While Nintendo typically holds a big showcase with lots of first-party game announcements around June every year, in 2022 it only held a third-party driven Partner Showcase in June. Now that we know it won't be at E3 2023, we're left to wonder when exactly then next big Nintendo Direct will be.
E3 2023 will take place between June 13 and June 16, but don't expect Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft to have a big presence there.

Gaming

Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo

Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years.
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward.
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis."
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision?
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened.