Topic: Square Enix has lost a customer until they support the switch 2 properly

@Anti-Matter yes that's right. It's like selling a physical game, and any dlc you've downloaded won't work either.
I don't mind that. As I say; buy-play-trade.

@OmnitronVariant you say;
"Not reasonable for Nintendo to predict in advance which option other publishers will go for,"
But Nintendo have handed these publishers a gift on a plate. It's called a key code. They don't have to spend money on a game card, either a standard card or the more expensive ones they refuse to use, so more and more games now are going to come out as digital but on the key code. I'm not sure how much publishes are charge for a game card, but it's savings for them.

An author gets paid on the amount of books they sell. So if he has a bestseller, he will earn more than somebody who doesn't get their books to a wider audience. Cinema ticket will cost approximately the same regardless of what movie you're seeing. Blockbuster movies will earn them more money. Same as sports stadiums or concert halls. The more people you get to go, the more money you make. I would guess it's much the same with video games.

Video games have always been overpriced. That's why they've reached the price they are now. If a game gets published and doesn't sell very well, that's the risk that the publishers have to take, unless they lower the price from the start.

An idea I've had which I think would benefit Nintendo and it's to do with the new key card. Publishers don't like their games being sold off on the 2nd hand-market because they don't get a cut of that. So if we could send our key card back to Nintendo for a credit towards the next game. A kind of rental deal. 🤔

@zool I'm just curious why you think games are overpriced? Sure, compared to going to a movie (or buying a movie), games are more expensive. But you are getting 1.5, maybe 2 hours of entertainment with a film. So about $10 per hour. When a game is $70, and you spend 40 hours on it... the amount that you are spending per hour is less than $2. At least that's how I look at the cost of gaming

@Lazz You put up a good case to say why games aren't too expensive.
But let's look at it the other way for a minute. You buy a ticket for the movies and you don't like the film. You've lost the ticket price. Same with a book, you spend money on the book, don't like the book. You haven't lost that much.
Video game, you spend $70 you don't like the game, you find it too hard. You're stuck with it. If it's digital, you've lost a lot of money. If it's physical you can get some of your money back, but still a bigger loss than movie ticket or a book.

I’m almost entirely a digital gamer but I agree about resell being a positive for physical - if I’m ever unsure about a game I’ll consider physical so that I can sell it on if I don’t like it. As much as people seem to hate GKCs, they at least retain this benefit.

I think it’s about time digital storefronts update their refund policy. People rave about Steam’s refund policy, but I feel it’s only there to cover their backs as there are all sorts of PC configurations that could render their games unplayable - this isn’t usually the case with consoles.

@zool Thats where you do research before you buy there is a ton of places to go. There thousands of reviews and stuff to inform you on YouTube alone. Plus there are sites like this one. Its not the devs fault that you dont like a game. They delivered what they said they were going to. If you made and decision that you regret well, that life and no one should have ton pay for your bad decisions. You just suck it up and move on. Maybe dont buy games blindly and on emotion. If you are have second thoughts about spending that 70 dollars on a game well then you just need to stop gaming and focus on more important priorities.

@zool I'm not trying to change your mind here, I promise. I've thought a lot about this topic for years, sharing my perspective... and it's true - you can lose a pretty significant amount of $ if you buy a game that you end up not liking. Gaming isn't cheap, but overall, I find that my money goes way further with gaming than almost anything else. To me, it is probably the best value for my time. I do not resell games, I never have (since he NES days) - so I've made my fair share of poor purchases. But like @Tasuki said - I make sure to research almost every purchase I make. I also have become really good at waiting for sales and buying at all-time lows. Having fully embraced digital purchases (more because I don't want to swap out game cards), most of the games I pick up cost less than a movie ticket and provide me with exponentially more hours of enjoyment than most anything else (I think books win on best overall value, FWIW).
I also look at the cost of games over the decades that I have been gaming, and in the early 90's I bought SF2 (not turbo, but the original) brand new for $90 on the SNES. Given inflation and the value of the dollar then vs now...games have essentially held their price for almost 40 years. NES games were selling for $40 - $60 new, in the 80s. With new games mostly maxing out at $70 today - that makes new games cheaper today then they were 40 years ago. And if you choose to go digital, you can grab incredible deals. This is why I'm a big believer in gaming being one of the best values when looking at time spent.

@Buizel I suspect that Steam's refund policy only really exists because they were about to get taken to court by the EU, and felt the need to offer up something beyond the bare minimum.

At the time, I remember that there was a lot of fuss about people claiming refunds on short indie games that could be completed within the two hour window, but it turned out that that rarely happens in practice. Instead, it's mostly just the broken and bad games that get refunded. Were console makers to offer the same, I doubt there'd be an apocalypse of people abusing the system there either.

@Lazz I agree with most of your comments and I also do a little bit of research on the games. I've got three different websites whose reviews I read and take an average and I go on that average.
I don't collect games, once I played them, they're no use to me other than for their value and by trading them in I can get 50% of my money back so a $70 game has only cost me $35 (or equivalent currency). A game that has a decent amount of replay value I will keep, at least for a while.
I do like the key card idea because although you download the game it has got resale value when you finished it.

That is highly dependent on what show, or what book. Sure, movie tickets per person are very rarely more expensive than video games, but that rapidly changes if you start looking at theater, or sporting events. And as for books, as someone who likes RPGs, comics, and the occasional coffee table tome? I can attest that there are books considerably more expensive than any video game I've ever bought. Full sized comic book omnibus printings basically don't drop below triple digits, for example, not unless you are getting one one clearance somehow.

( Flip side of the coin: not all video games are $70, not even close. A rare few are more expensive, but most are cheaper to varying extents. Don't mistake a "typical price for a high profile new AAA release" as being the same thing as a universal standard. )

Reviews are a tool, yes, but man are they all over the place these days. You really need to find a reviewer you trust: Look at their review history and compare the "scores" (I say that facetiously, yes) with how you feel about some of the games, look at their most-liked genres, etc.

I actually trust the big media websites more when it comes to reviews now. The big sites tend to employ reviewers there who aren't purely trying to shock or clickbait people with an outrageous opinion to get Youtube views or visits to their tiny blog or whatever. Basically, they're not as desperate to generate views, so their reviews tend to be more even-keeled and closer aligned with what most people are going to think about a game.

Other than that, we're all just beating dead horses here. So many dead horses.

@rallydefault Usually what I do is read/watch a few reviews of said product I want to purchase and then form my opinion from there. Usually you will notice common complaints/praises pop up in each review say for example framerate drops or bugs etc and from there you can get a good idea if you like a game.

@Tasuki
Yea, watching multiple is always good. It also helps you weed out the reviewers who are clearly going for the edge lord takes lol

A particular useful sign is when multiple reviewers, both broadly positive and negative, all agree on the same properties and descriptions. Even for matters of creative judgement: if both positive and negative reviews describe a game as "stronger act 1 and 3, weak and slow act 2", that probably means they are actually describing the game as it exists.