Home » Latest » Trending Games » GI Show – Switch Lite, Stranger Things 3, 2019 Release Calendar

GI Show – Switch Lite, Stranger Things 3, 2019 Release Calendar

10

InfoSearched 67 27 Trending Games

7.9

SaveSavedRemoved 4

Nintendo trims the Switch down to its essentials, and the Game Informer crew has a lot to say about it.

The July 18 episode of The Game Informer Show gathers the site’s editorial staff to dig into a stacked week of hardware news and new releases. The headline topic is Nintendo’s freshly unveiled Switch Lite, but the crew also works through impressions of five games that hit shelves and app stores in the same stretch, takes listener email, and closes with a competitive draft of what’s left on the 2019 release calendar.

• Nintendo announced the Switch Lite on July 10, a $199.99 handheld-only revision launching September 20, 2019, with an integrated D-pad and no detachable Joy-Cons or TV docking.
• The team reviewed five just-released titles: Dragon Quest Builders 2 (July 12), Stranger Things 3: The Game (July 4), Teppen, Streets of Rogue, and Dr. Mario World (July 10 on iOS and Android).
• The episode ends with a full 2019 release calendar auction draft, with staffers bidding against each other for the strongest remaining fall and holiday lineup.

A Handheld-Only Switch

Nintendo’s July 10 reveal of the Switch Lite gives the crew plenty to chew on. At $199.99, it undercuts the standard Switch by $100 but strips out the console’s signature flexibility — there’s no detaching the controllers, no propping it up on a table with a kickstand for two-player local play in the same way, and no docking it to a TV. In their place is a fixed, integrated D-pad, a smaller footprint, and a design built for one thing: being held.

The hosts frame the pricing and September 20 launch date as Nintendo’s clearest signal yet about where it sees the low end of its hardware lineup heading, and the conversation keeps circling back to the aging Nintendo 3DS line. A handheld-dedicated Switch at $199.99 looks a lot like the role the 3DS family has played for years, and the team weighs what that means for a console Nintendo has kept alive well past its expected shelf life.

$199.99 buys a Switch you can’t dock to a TV and can’t hand half its controllers to a friend — and that’s the entire point of it.

The New Release Rundown

Before the hardware talk, the show works through a genuinely packed release week. Square Enix’s Dragon Quest Builders 2 launched July 12, and the crew spends real time on why the block-building RPG sequel improves on the original. BonusXP’s Stranger Things 3: The Game arrived July 4 to sync up with Netflix’s third season drop, giving the hosts a tie-in brawler to size up against the show it’s riding alongside — fans of the series can catch up on the latest TV coverage for more on where Stranger Things stands heading into its next chapter.

The docket also covers Capcom and GungHo’s crossover card battler Teppen, the rogue-lite sandbox title Streets of Rogue, and Nintendo’s mobile puzzle release Dr. Mario World, which hit iOS and Android on July 10 — the same day as the Switch Lite announcement. Between all five titles, the hosts give listeners a genre-spanning snapshot of what’s actually worth their money that week, a habit that’s become a staple of the show for anyone tracking the week’s biggest game releases.

Community Emails and the Calendar Draft

After working through the new releases, the show pivots to a listener email segment before closing out with its most competitive bit of the episode: a full auction draft of the remaining 2019 release calendar. Staffers bid against one another for the strongest slate of upcoming titles through the fall and holiday months, each trying to walk away with the lineup they think will hold up best critically and commercially once the year wraps.

It’s a format built for disagreement — every pick is a bet on which unreleased game is actually going to deliver, and the draft runs long enough that it closes out the episode entirely.