Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

US raised travel advisory to highest level on Japan: "Level 4: do not travel".

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210525_06/

I was hoping for some summer olympics, because bmx freestyle is debuting, but things look shakey. I wanted to see some childish adults jump bikes.

@WoomyNNYes sounds like an opportunity to release Mario & Sonic Coivd Olympics edition, unfortunately it’s delayed though.

@WoomyNNYes At this point.I wouldn't be at all.surprised if they just cancell the 2020 Summer games completely and just move on to the 2024 games.

They could rework Mario + Sonic Olympics to add masks & tumbleweeds, remove crowds, and replace crowd cheers with a lone cough from the audience, like when a comedian bombs

Kyoto Prefecture (Nintendo headquarters) covid state of emergency extended to June 20. After a year of the pandemic, I'm not sure how this affects Nintendo productivity. If anyone does know, please share. Also included, Osaka prefecture - where Universal's Super Nintendo World is. Note: As a country Japan is only 2-3% vaccinated.

The Japanese government decided to extend the coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and eight other prefectures until June 20. That's the same day emergency measures for Okinawa Prefecture are due to expire. People are especially concerned in Okinawa and Hokkaido where infections have been on the rise.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210529_16/

How does Okinawa have to go under state of emergency; it’s a chain of islands hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Japan! All this is inevitable so no major surprises. Makes me wonder how this’ll negatively impact the game lineup this year.

@TheJGG Anywhere there are people and cases rising, straining healthcare. I suspect the people in Okinawa have visitors and also breath air. Okinawa is tropical, southernmost Japan. I think it attracts tourism.

@TheJGG Regarding how covid affects Nintendo's game line up, I've been wondering that too. I'd love to hear nintendo's productivity quantified, or put into context, while under covid restrictions. The fact that we haven't heard specifically how covid has impacted nintendo, makes me nervous, because Nintendo probably fears that discussing it will hurt sales and stock value, possibly because it's bad news for the next year+.

As a country, Japan only has about 6% of 65+ age group vaccinated. Which means, the general working populartion, Nintendo, is possibly no better now than they were last summer. On the other hand, MAYBE? they've gotten better at working remotely? I have no idea.

I'm just trying to keep my hopes in check for Nintendo's E3 presentation.

@WoomyNNYes I mean we have Paper Mario: The Origami King, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but that's about it in terms of original games. I'm excited for E3 but people need to be realistic, Nintendo's been badly hit, and their notoriously secretive nature means we won't know for sure. But they may have some decent digital infrastructure in place, who knows? But we'll find out soon whether it thwacked them this year.

Even if Okinawa's a tourist destination... shouldn't people be staying at home; what happened to that?

But I'm still glad we have games to begin with, I'd rather have ports than nothing.

i dont know what the new switch update did, but it added more stability.
at least in the horse stables

kangaroos? we aint playin dat

sheep-uhsses (thats plural for more than one sheep) dey aint havin dat

otters, sea lions or something? dey aint takin dat

@WoomyNNYes @TheJGG
I would think that a company like Nintendo would be pretty well prepared for working remotely. The kinds of infrastructure you'd have in place to collaborate on a software development project would also allow remote work. And that same infrastructure can, and would, be used to share/collaborate all kinds of assets from all sorts of artists. There'd be edge cases where it'd be a lot harder, like recording live music, but in general they'd be well prepared for this.

There would've been some early adjustment in the first couple of months. You'd need to make sure that people had the equipment they needed to work from home for example. You would also have the added complications of having to worry about people's home network and possibly having to deal with VPNs and so on. So that would've put them a bit behind at the start of last year. But once you've got it setup, speaking from experience, if anything people are probably slightly more productive.

Sure it's easier for miscommunication when everyone's WFH and it doesn't really suit intensely collaborative work. And, IMO, there's a tendency for work to sometimes devolve into a series of video calls. But with no commute you can be more flexible with your start and finish times. If there's something you need to focus on you can, IMO, more easily shut out the world and work on it.

Also now that everyone has discovered WFH is an option sick days will largely disappear. Because if you're just a bit sick instead of toughing it out, going into the office and spreading it everywhere you can stay at home. And if you're a bit on the edge of being too sick to work you can see how you go working from home rather than doing that thing were you try to figure out at 7AM in the morning if you're sick enough to take a sick day or not....

tl;dr: I would be surprised if Nintendo's productivity has been impacted much. They're software developers, they're not a tourism operator or restaurant chain

@TheJGG in June Nintendo are releasing 3 original retail games, if they are struggling that much they would have spread those releases out. It’s seems fairly safe the rest of the year will be stacked.

@skywake Very good points.

@skywake As stated very good points indeed. My comment was also a veiled way of saying "keep E3 expectations realistic considering everything," so I'm trying to lower my own!

@jump I sure hope so.

Hmm...Download festival are doing a government backed "pilot" to see how an UK music festival can work in a post-covid world. Whilst it's not the usual 100k crowd headlined by the likes of Rammstein, Muse etc like before but it's actually a tempting line up. I'm desperate to go to a festival again and apparently moshing, crowd surfing etc are allowed plus Frank Turner, Skindred and Frank Carter are quality.

@jump Ah, Donington Park. The place where the legendary lap of the gods took place. Where Ayrton Senna made up three places in half a lap in the wet, and took victory by a minute. THAT Donington Park.

@TheJGG I can’t say I’m fussed about motor racing, it’s seems too much like watching someone drive in a circle for an hour or two. ;p

The only legends I like to see at Donington are Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine doing his guitar magic in Sleep Now In The Fire, AC/DC’s 60 years old Angus Young wearing a school boy outfit or Skindred doing the Newport Helicopter!

One of the biggest factors by far is just obesity. Way bigger problem in the west than in east asia.

@jump Funny you say that because I did watch 33 drivers turn left 800 times on Sunday. Also known as the Indianapolis 500. In theory it should be the most boring thing ever but it was okay. Besides, there were 135,000 fans. I don't know how the hell the IMS pulled that off.

That rock is absolutely demonic. Wouldn't be surprised if the next DOOM game took music from this genre...

@TheJGG Hmm....I now want a bonus mode in DOOM where the demons take their shirts off and spin them over their head in time to Skindred! Skindred are properly a "lighter" metal band as they are a ragga metal group who take influence from reggae/ska/soundsystem as much as they do metal. If you want to hear proper demonic music try Napalm Death or Cannibal Corpse, that ***** is too heavy for even me.

I can't see you liking much on the line up honestly, maybe The Wildhearts as they are basicallyThe Beatles if they ever got round to doing a punk album or Frank Turner who has roots in hardcore punk but is today an indie/folk rock singer and is best described by one of his album titles as "Positive Songs for Negative People". His last album was No Man's Land a concept album about the history of cool but overlooked women although it did get some backlash for "mansplaining". I actually really respect his work ethic, since the lockdown he's done a weekly live stream gig with the profits from them having been shared with various small music venues, roadies etc who can't earn at the moment.