Not every game is a winner. While nobody wants to make a bad game, sometimes that ends up being the case and developers are forced to decide what to do. They can choose to release the game and hope to get something back for the time worked on it, rework the game internally and fix the problems plaguing it, or in some cases, shelve it altogether.
According to a report from Imran Khan of Fanbyte, that is the exact situation Nintendo is in right now with a reported sequel to the party game, 1-2-Switch. For those who might not remember, 1-2-Switch was a launch title for the Nintendo Switch meant to showcase the potential technology of their brand new console. While reviews on the game itself were mixed, most felt that it lacked content and was too expensive. As a result, it still sold really well, and reportedly, a sequel was in the works.
The problem is that when that sequel reached the hands of playtesters, it reportedly performed horribly. It is not a fun game and one group of localizers had a very choice way of describing just how not fun it is.
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 “Horseshit” as shorthand.
It’s never good when a game is performing so bad internally that members of the company are saying it would “harm their reputation” if it was released. Nintendo now has to decide how much of this game it wants to salvage and release, or if it will just shelve the sequel forever.