@killercereal Most chips, including the Steam Deck's 7nm "Aerith" SOC from AMD, are "taped out" (design finalized for manufacturing) at the chip foundry around a year to ≈1.5 years before launch.
Otoh, not releasing your product for another FOUR ENTIRE YEARS after final tape out is basically UNPRECEDENTED in the entire history of computer electronics! (Let alone just video games!) 🤷
And lol the only time that Switch 2 in handheld mode will definitively outperform even the OG Steam Deck (let alone the slightly faster current 6nm SOC one) is when ray-tracing is being used as Nvidia Ampere (RTX 3000) is SIGNIFICANTLY better at RT perf than AMD RDNA 2 (RX 6000).
Otoh, anytime a game is specifically CPU bottlenecked the Deck's 4-core/8-thread x86 Zen 2 CPU will absolutely freaking ROFLSTOMP the utterly ancient ARM A78 cores in the Switch 2!
Aka, they are roughly equivalent in handheld performance, with some differing pros & cons in each direction. (Which perfectly tracks with when both of these chips were actually designed. Aka ≈2020-2021.)
All this being said the Switch 2 will absolutely DEMOLISH the Steam Deck's performance when you dock it thanks to a MUCH higher TDP (aka power draw and thus clock-speeds) by basically splitting the difference between Switch 2/Steam Deck and Xbox Series S, but that's really an apples to oranges comparison tbh... 🤷
"The chip is also over 40mm2 larger than the chip in the Steam Deck's launch model, coming in at 207mm2."
This is because the Steam Deck's original "Aerith" SOC from AMD was made on TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process, which despite what the names would have you believe is basically a full "node" (aka generation) ahead of the Samsung 8nm process that basically every single Nvidia Ampere (RTX 3000) based product, inc. the Tegra T239 Switch 2's uses, in both transistor density (hence the smaller chip) and to a lesser extent power efficiency (although Switch 2 using an ARM based CPU block vs x86 should close basically all of this gap).
Thus despite the two chips having roughly the same performance level in "handheld mode" (w/ slight pros & cons in both directions, ala Switch 2 having DLSS support [aka higher quality upscaling] + better ray-tracing performance, or Deck having the more powerful CPU component w/ it's 4-core/8-thread x86 Zen 2 [Ryzen 3000/4000] block utterly TROUNCING the S2's utterly ancient ARM A78 cores), the Deck's original chip is significantly smaller than Switch 2's.
(Let ALONE the Deck's current 6nm die-shrunk "Sephiroth" chip which is nearly HALF the S2 SOC's size!)
And the reason Nintendo went with Samsung's significantly inferior chip manufacturing tech vs TSMC's is actually pretty simple (beyond SF 8nm being the node Nvidia designed Ampere for). Price & capacity.
TSMC charges significantly more than Samsung for a wafer on a roughly equivalent node, in addition to having SIGNIFICANTLY more congested supply for everything from 7nm on down (aka "modern nodes"). Super desperate for literally any customers Samsung Foundry otoh can basically supply as many 8nm wafers as Nintendo ever needs/is ever willing to buy, which is SUPER important for a device that Nintendo hopes sells over 100 million units. 🤷
@Arawn93 Tell everyone you're a brianwashed Nintendo fanboy who has never held a Steam Deck in their life without telling everyone that xD.
News flash for ya, despite being notably heavier, the Steam Deck is way, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more comfortable to hold, carry, & use, even long term vs the full-size Switch's. And I even have super small hands for crap's sake!
Compared to the "designed to be basically as unergonomic as possible with a totally flat design w/ ridiculously tiny, mediocre buttons & sticks" Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck's ergonomics are in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UNIVERSE! As in it can weigh like a third more and STILL feel easier to hold and better to play! And considering the Deck's breadth of input options available that even the Switch could only dream of makes that even MORE impressive!
And this isn't just my opinion here either, it's almost universal for people that regularly use both devices. The OG & OLED Switch's ergonomics are just absolutely freaking GOD AWFUL! So tbf, beating THAT pathetic comfort standard prolly wasn't all that hard to do.
@Arawn93 When playing Switch level games & under (ala 7th Gen games & prior) Steam Deck gets just as good, IF NOT BETTER battery life than the current Switch's (it can be easily tweaked to get at/over ≈7 hours in indie games). It's only for the latest & greatest AAA games that the Switch can't even play, WHATSOEVER, where the Deck's battery life is notably worse.
And why would being sold in retail stores atm do anything but serious damage to Valve's efforts? O_o They would be even further diluting the extremely demand limited supply and making it vulnerable to god awful scalpers/resellers. Until they can ACTUALLY clear out the reservation list they're STILL WORKING THROUGH (again, demand for the Deck is stupid high considering what kinda product it is), going big box retail would be nothing but business suicide.
Lol so that was just a very roundabout & misleading way of saying "the Wii U didn't have the CPU & RAM performance to fully drive two GamePad's at once" (aka the ACTUAL answer for why this never happened, regardless of what Reggie says).
Hell, it BARELY even had enough CPU grunt with its ridiculously ancient, underpowered, & underclocked IBM PowerPC 775 based CPU (aka, basically just a slightly beefed up [bigger & faster caches] GameCube CPU, but then lazily copypasta'd together 3x times to match the Xbox 360's 3x CPU core count w/ the absolute littlest effort, though w/ ONLY HALF as many CPU threads bc no SMT support!) to drive a SINGLE GamePad while also running a late period, AAA 7th-gen HD game on the main display! (And usually running worse than on said Xbox 360 despite the Wii U's WAAAAY faster/newer GPU + 4x the RAM). Let ALONE having to do the former part LITERALLY TWICE!
Reggie can lie out his ass by deliberate omission by pretending this was a core feature that was only never used because of the system's popularity (aka total lack thereof), but anyone with even HALF of a basic technical understanding of how the Wii U works would immediately know this is COMPLETELY technically unfeasible while running a modern HD game. 🤷♂️
Having to drive even ONE GamePad during a AAA HD game was hard enough on the drastically underpowered Wii U hardware and barely even worked as is, let alone trying to drive two GamePads!
@6ch6ris6 ... Just an FYI, the Series S is a thing... That exists...
The only area where it's significantly inferior to the X for backwards compatibility & retro gaming is that it runs the One/S versions of last-gen titles, NOT the beefed One X ones where available.
(This is bc the Series S has 2GB less RAM [10GB vs 12GB], which IMO was a VERY dumb decision on MS part. 12GB would not only have made One X games work [as their GPU's are almost exactly as fast as each other's thanks to RDNA's MASSIVE >25% IPC/perf per TFLOP gains over the older GCN] , but also have let them switch to a slightly wider but most importantly UNIFIED memory bus for a bit better bandwidth & more consistency.)
For emulation with RetroArch in Developer Mode the CPU is basically identical in the X & S, meaning until you start cranking up the resolution games perform basically IDENTICAL on both machines. As far as rendering games at higher than normal resolutions go, the S will tap out more in the 1440p zone in the most intensive emulators, but even it can still do full native 4K in less intensive ones (aka like PS1).
For the money, there is no better retro emulation AND modern gaming device for the TV than a Series S. And it's kinda not even remotely close either... (Good look doing any emulation on a PS5 Digital Edition or modern gaming on a Raspberry Pi, lol).
@Kyloctopus They'd likely have to make a brand new, exclusively USB unit, as the 2nd Gen Kinect for Windows hasn't been actively produced in absolutely AGES...
That said, they COULD make one that's a WHOOOOOLE heck of a lot smaller & cheaper than back in the day. Infrared cameras & dot projectors have gotten so small & cheap that they've been integrated into literally every iPhone + all Windows Hello compatible PC's for yeeeeears now. This thing could be absolutely freaking TINY and cost just ≈$50 (aka vs 4x that in the 360 era & 2x in the One's).
That vs back in the mid-late 360 days, when Microsoft was literally forging totally untouched ground in the development of 3D motion tracking cameras (FaceID likely wouldn't exist [or at least as early as it did] without the Kinect lol. Now isn't that a kinda bizarre thing to think about? Hahaha), which is also why the Kinect ended up getting adopted in some form in MANY disparate industries & professional use cases at the time. (Nothing else like it existed yet. At the very least nowhere NEAR that price point).
Who put Minecraft on everything? Who put Ori on Switch? Who put Banjo & Steve in Smash? Who kept PROPER backwards compatibility alive when NO ONE ELSE gave a rats ass about it (until the PS5 supporting PS4 games [but ONLY PS4...] Sony just said "Screw you!" while Nintendo otoh was more like "No, DOUBLE screw you with our meager selection of ridiculously priced Virtual Console games that totally differ from console to console!"). Who forced Microsoft to FINALLY open up the Microsoft Store? Who gave the greenlight on "Developer Mode" for Xbox One/Series which let's you code & run homebrew, INCLUDING EMULATORS (via RetroArch)? Who LITERALLY saved the entire Xbox (and potentially gaming as a whole) division at Microsoft?
Yeah, that would all have been Phil... -_- ... You're welcome, ya ungrateful dingus.
Phil Spencer is just too damn good for this world...
I very, VERY much dread the day when he finally retires and Microsoft loses him... (This is also exactly why MS is bugging the absolute freaking HELL out of him right now to officially decide on/choose his successor.)
Steph was one if my absolute FAVORITE characters from "LiS: Before the Storm", so I am absolutely STOKED she is both back AND a proper romance option this time around in True Colors! Fingers crossed for another kickass game of Dungeons & Dragons w/ her DM awesomeness!
@jsty3105 For sure. He made absolutely some freaking STUPID & indefensible decisions in the site's later days. The second he put up a paywall, he was doomed. And only an IDIOT would have not seen that one coming. But it's still sad regardless to see one another of the old guys go down to the Nintendo banhammer shrug.
Damn... Another one of the true OG ROM repositories bites the dust...
Say what you will about game piracy, but these OG sites were absolutely INSTRUMENTAL in making practical game preservation a reality for basically ALL of the major commercially released titles of the modern era (mid 70's onwards) & boatloads upon BOATLOADS of more niche tiles & software that likely would have been completely lost to history otherwise.
We saw the same thing happen with anime when they shut down the OG KissAnime. A metric CRAP-TON of "uploaded literally NOWHERE ELSE on the internet obscure & non-mainstream anime & fan-subs" instantly disappeared from the world that day, because the "pirates" were LITERALLY the ONLY people that cared enough about the medium to actually archive & maintain all that stuff for modern use!
Same thing happens when the super old/big ROM repositories go down. There's still a bunch of unique stuff that was once on say EmuParadise that to this day basically doesn't exist on the internet at all anymore.... Why? Because Nintendo doesn't care... Sony DEFINITELY doesn't care... the big game publishers sure don't care... Valve obviously doesn't care... And Microsoft? Thankfully they actually DO mostly care, but still more on PC/Windows than on Xbox.
@NOALink So are you SERIOUSLY saying that gameplay length is the ONLY determinant of value??? If so, I've got crap-loads of garbage JRPG's to sell you for a fortune....
This take is arguably even worse than the "games with only 2D gameplay are worth less than those that aren't" one, and THAT'S already one ridiculously freaking bad take.
Quality is ALWAYS more important than quantity, and I cannot BELIEVE I have to actually tell people something so seemingly obvious/self-evident... -_-
@Heavyarms55 It's not even that game prices haven't increased in pace with inflation. Even if comparing raw dollar to dollar pricing, 1st party N64 games back in the day were WELL over $60 (and again, that's in mid-late 90's money), and the pricing of the prior 16-bit games to that could be even MORE extreme (as game sizes & complexity increased faster & further than the size of currently available ROM chips, meaning more had to be used, as well as outstripped the power of the hardware inside just the console & thus requiring pricey on-board co-processors).
Converting the original retail prices of large size (meaning the game ROM itself) cartridge games from the 8-bit through to the N64 eras to take inflation into account will likely SERIOUSLY shock some of these whiny & overly privileged Gen Z'ers complaining about Dread's pricing.
"The games might be (mostly) great, but system-sellers they are not and historically they simply can't compete (in worldwide sales terms) with Nintendo's evergreen heavy hitters."
This just simply is NOT universally true. Sure it's true for MOST Metroid games, but it's definitely not true for all of them. In particular, the original "Metroid Prime" was a HUUUUUUGE & hugely unexpected sales/financial success on the original GameCube, and most definitely DID help move hardware in the GCN's earlier days.
Not only is it the highest selling Metroid game to date at nearly 3 million copies sold, but MUCH more importantly, it managed to do that on a super unpopular console that finished dead LAST in its generation & couldn't even sell 22 million units...
That basically means that 1 IN EVERY 6 GameCube owners bought a copy of "Metroid Prime"!!! And those kinds of sales numbers have it
LEGITIMATELY competing with Nintendo's biggest franchises in terms of GCN game sales.
Ergo/TL:DR - When advertised properly behind a properly good game, Metroid most definitely CAN be a hugely important "system seller".
Comments 18
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Hardware Chip Was Potentially Finalised As Early As 2021
@killercereal Most chips, including the Steam Deck's 7nm "Aerith" SOC from AMD, are "taped out" (design finalized for manufacturing) at the chip foundry around a year to ≈1.5 years before launch.
Otoh, not releasing your product for another FOUR ENTIRE YEARS after final tape out is basically UNPRECEDENTED in the entire history of computer electronics! (Let alone just video games!) 🤷
And lol the only time that Switch 2 in handheld mode will definitively outperform even the OG Steam Deck (let alone the slightly faster current 6nm SOC one) is when ray-tracing is being used as Nvidia Ampere (RTX 3000) is SIGNIFICANTLY better at RT perf than AMD RDNA 2 (RX 6000).
Otoh, anytime a game is specifically CPU bottlenecked the Deck's 4-core/8-thread x86 Zen 2 CPU will absolutely freaking ROFLSTOMP the utterly ancient ARM A78 cores in the Switch 2!
Aka, they are roughly equivalent in handheld performance, with some differing pros & cons in each direction. (Which perfectly tracks with when both of these chips were actually designed. Aka ≈2020-2021.)
All this being said the Switch 2 will absolutely DEMOLISH the Steam Deck's performance when you dock it thanks to a MUCH higher TDP (aka power draw and thus clock-speeds) by basically splitting the difference between Switch 2/Steam Deck and Xbox Series S, but that's really an apples to oranges comparison tbh... 🤷
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Hardware Chip Was Potentially Finalised As Early As 2021
"The chip is also over 40mm2 larger than the chip in the Steam Deck's launch model, coming in at 207mm2."
This is because the Steam Deck's original "Aerith" SOC from AMD was made on TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process, which despite what the names would have you believe is basically a full "node" (aka generation) ahead of the Samsung 8nm process that basically every single Nvidia Ampere (RTX 3000) based product, inc. the Tegra T239 Switch 2's uses, in both transistor density (hence the smaller chip) and to a lesser extent power efficiency (although Switch 2 using an ARM based CPU block vs x86 should close basically all of this gap).
Thus despite the two chips having roughly the same performance level in "handheld mode" (w/ slight pros & cons in both directions, ala Switch 2 having DLSS support [aka higher quality upscaling] + better ray-tracing performance, or Deck having the more powerful CPU component w/ it's 4-core/8-thread x86 Zen 2 [Ryzen 3000/4000] block utterly TROUNCING the S2's utterly ancient ARM A78 cores), the Deck's original chip is significantly smaller than Switch 2's.
(Let ALONE the Deck's current 6nm die-shrunk "Sephiroth" chip which is nearly HALF the S2 SOC's size!)
And the reason Nintendo went with Samsung's significantly inferior chip manufacturing tech vs TSMC's is actually pretty simple (beyond SF 8nm being the node Nvidia designed Ampere for). Price & capacity.
TSMC charges significantly more than Samsung for a wafer on a roughly equivalent node, in addition to having SIGNIFICANTLY more congested supply for everything from 7nm on down (aka "modern nodes"). Super desperate for literally any customers Samsung Foundry otoh can basically supply as many 8nm wafers as Nintendo ever needs/is ever willing to buy, which is SUPER important for a device that Nintendo hopes sells over 100 million units. 🤷
Re: Hands On: Bluey: The Videogame, In Real Life
Removed
Re: Soapbox: 'Switch 2' Doesn't Really Need Backwards Compatibility
I'll take "S**t Takes" for $100 Bob.
Re: Nvidia Employee Comment Confirms Chip Rumoured To Be Used In 'Switch Pro' Is Real
@Arawn93 Tell everyone you're a brianwashed Nintendo fanboy who has never held a Steam Deck in their life without telling everyone that xD.
News flash for ya, despite being notably heavier, the Steam Deck is way, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more comfortable to hold, carry, & use, even long term vs the full-size Switch's. And I even have super small hands for crap's sake!
Compared to the "designed to be basically as unergonomic as possible with a totally flat design w/ ridiculously tiny, mediocre buttons & sticks" Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck's ergonomics are in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT UNIVERSE! As in it can weigh like a third more and STILL feel easier to hold and better to play! And considering the Deck's breadth of input options available that even the Switch could only dream of makes that even MORE impressive!
And this isn't just my opinion here either, it's almost universal for people that regularly use both devices. The OG & OLED Switch's ergonomics are just absolutely freaking GOD AWFUL! So tbf, beating THAT pathetic comfort standard prolly wasn't all that hard to do.
Re: Nvidia Employee Comment Confirms Chip Rumoured To Be Used In 'Switch Pro' Is Real
@Arawn93 When playing Switch level games & under (ala 7th Gen games & prior) Steam Deck gets just as good, IF NOT BETTER battery life than the current Switch's (it can be easily tweaked to get at/over ≈7 hours in indie games). It's only for the latest & greatest AAA games that the Switch can't even play, WHATSOEVER, where the Deck's battery life is notably worse.
And why would being sold in retail stores atm do anything but serious damage to Valve's efforts? O_o They would be even further diluting the extremely demand limited supply and making it vulnerable to god awful scalpers/resellers. Until they can ACTUALLY clear out the reservation list they're STILL WORKING THROUGH (again, demand for the Deck is stupid high considering what kinda product it is), going big box retail would be nothing but business suicide.
Re: Valve's Steam Deck Might Be The Closest We'll Get To A Switch Pro In 2021
Removed
Re: Reggie Explains Why The Nintendo Wii U Didn't Utilise Dual GamePad Support
Lol so that was just a very roundabout & misleading way of saying "the Wii U didn't have the CPU & RAM performance to fully drive two GamePad's at once" (aka the ACTUAL answer for why this never happened, regardless of what Reggie says).
Hell, it BARELY even had enough CPU grunt with its ridiculously ancient, underpowered, & underclocked IBM PowerPC 775 based CPU (aka, basically just a slightly beefed up [bigger & faster caches] GameCube CPU, but then lazily copypasta'd together 3x times to match the Xbox 360's 3x CPU core count w/ the absolute littlest effort, though w/ ONLY HALF as many CPU threads bc no SMT support!) to drive a SINGLE GamePad while also running a late period, AAA 7th-gen HD game on the main display! (And usually running worse than on said Xbox 360 despite the Wii U's WAAAAY faster/newer GPU + 4x the RAM). Let ALONE having to do the former part LITERALLY TWICE!
Reggie can lie out his ass by deliberate omission by pretending this was a core feature that was only never used because of the system's popularity (aka total lack thereof), but anyone with even HALF of a basic technical understanding of how the Wii U works would immediately know this is COMPLETELY technically unfeasible while running a modern HD game. 🤷♂️
Having to drive even ONE GamePad during a AAA HD game was hard enough on the drastically underpowered Wii U hardware and barely even worked as is, let alone trying to drive two GamePads!
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Industry-Wide Support Of Game Preservation Via Emulation
@6ch6ris6 ... Just an FYI, the Series S is a thing... That exists...
The only area where it's significantly inferior to the X for backwards compatibility & retro gaming is that it runs the One/S versions of last-gen titles, NOT the beefed One X ones where available.
(This is bc the Series S has 2GB less RAM [10GB vs 12GB], which IMO was a VERY dumb decision on MS part. 12GB would not only have made One X games work [as their GPU's are almost exactly as fast as each other's thanks to RDNA's MASSIVE >25% IPC/perf per TFLOP gains over the older GCN] , but also have let them switch to a slightly wider but most importantly UNIFIED memory bus for a bit better bandwidth & more consistency.)
For emulation with RetroArch in Developer Mode the CPU is basically identical in the X & S, meaning until you start cranking up the resolution games perform basically IDENTICAL on both machines. As far as rendering games at higher than normal resolutions go, the S will tap out more in the 1440p zone in the most intensive emulators, but even it can still do full native 4K in less intensive ones (aka like PS1).
For the money, there is no better retro emulation AND modern gaming device for the TV than a Series S. And it's kinda not even remotely close either... (Good look doing any emulation on a PS5 Digital Edition or modern gaming on a Raspberry Pi, lol).
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Industry-Wide Support Of Game Preservation Via Emulation
@Kyloctopus They'd likely have to make a brand new, exclusively USB unit, as the 2nd Gen Kinect for Windows hasn't been actively produced in absolutely AGES...
That said, they COULD make one that's a WHOOOOOLE heck of a lot smaller & cheaper than back in the day. Infrared cameras & dot projectors have gotten so small & cheap that they've been integrated into literally every iPhone + all Windows Hello compatible PC's for yeeeeears now. This thing could be absolutely freaking TINY and cost just ≈$50 (aka vs 4x that in the 360 era & 2x in the One's).
That vs back in the mid-late 360 days, when Microsoft was literally forging totally untouched ground in the development of 3D motion tracking cameras (FaceID likely wouldn't exist [or at least as early as it did] without the Kinect lol. Now isn't that a kinda bizarre thing to think about? Hahaha), which is also why the Kinect ended up getting adopted in some form in MANY disparate industries & professional use cases at the time. (Nothing else like it existed yet. At the very least nowhere NEAR that price point).
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Industry-Wide Support Of Game Preservation Via Emulation
@ATaco This is absolute f**king nonsense...
Who put Minecraft on everything? Who put Ori on Switch? Who put Banjo & Steve in Smash? Who kept PROPER backwards compatibility alive when NO ONE ELSE gave a rats ass about it (until the PS5 supporting PS4 games [but ONLY PS4...] Sony just said "Screw you!" while Nintendo otoh was more like "No, DOUBLE screw you with our meager selection of ridiculously priced Virtual Console games that totally differ from console to console!"). Who forced Microsoft to FINALLY open up the Microsoft Store? Who gave the greenlight on "Developer Mode" for Xbox One/Series which let's you code & run homebrew, INCLUDING EMULATORS (via RetroArch)? Who LITERALLY saved the entire Xbox (and potentially gaming as a whole) division at Microsoft?
Yeah, that would all have been Phil... -_- ... You're welcome, ya ungrateful dingus.
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Industry-Wide Support Of Game Preservation Via Emulation
Phil Spencer is just too damn good for this world...
I very, VERY much dread the day when he finally retires and Microsoft loses him... (This is also exactly why MS is bugging the absolute freaking HELL out of him right now to officially decide on/choose his successor.)
Re: New Life Is Strange: True Colors Gameplay Is 13 Minutes Of Flirting And Choices
Steph was one if my absolute FAVORITE characters from "LiS: Before the Storm", so I am absolutely STOKED she is both back AND a proper romance option this time around in True Colors! Fingers crossed for another kickass game of Dungeons & Dragons w/ her DM awesomeness!
Re: Court Orders Popular ROM Website To "Destroy" All Of Its Unauthorised Nintendo Games
@jsty3105 For sure. He made absolutely some freaking STUPID & indefensible decisions in the site's later days. The second he put up a paywall, he was doomed. And only an IDIOT would have not seen that one coming. But it's still sad regardless to see one another of the old guys go down to the Nintendo banhammer shrug.
Re: Court Orders Popular ROM Website To "Destroy" All Of Its Unauthorised Nintendo Games
Damn... Another one of the true OG ROM repositories bites the dust...
Say what you will about game piracy, but these OG sites were absolutely INSTRUMENTAL in making practical game preservation a reality for basically ALL of the major commercially released titles of the modern era (mid 70's onwards) & boatloads upon BOATLOADS of more niche tiles & software that likely would have been completely lost to history otherwise.
We saw the same thing happen with anime when they shut down the OG KissAnime. A metric CRAP-TON of "uploaded literally NOWHERE ELSE on the internet obscure & non-mainstream anime & fan-subs" instantly disappeared from the world that day, because the "pirates" were LITERALLY the ONLY people that cared enough about the medium to actually archive & maintain all that stuff for modern use!
Same thing happens when the super old/big ROM repositories go down. There's still a bunch of unique stuff that was once on say EmuParadise that to this day basically doesn't exist on the internet at all anymore.... Why? Because Nintendo doesn't care... Sony DEFINITELY doesn't care... the big game publishers sure don't care... Valve obviously doesn't care... And Microsoft? Thankfully they actually DO mostly care, but still more on PC/Windows than on Xbox.
Re: Talking Point: Why Metroid Dread Will Be Worth $60
@NOALink So are you SERIOUSLY saying that gameplay length is the ONLY determinant of value??? If so, I've got crap-loads of garbage JRPG's to sell you for a fortune....
This take is arguably even worse than the "games with only 2D gameplay are worth less than those that aren't" one, and THAT'S already one ridiculously freaking bad take.
Quality is ALWAYS more important than quantity, and I cannot BELIEVE I have to actually tell people something so seemingly obvious/self-evident... -_-
Re: Talking Point: Why Metroid Dread Will Be Worth $60
@Heavyarms55 It's not even that game prices haven't increased in pace with inflation. Even if comparing raw dollar to dollar pricing, 1st party N64 games back in the day were WELL over $60 (and again, that's in mid-late 90's money), and the pricing of the prior 16-bit games to that could be even MORE extreme (as game sizes & complexity increased faster & further than the size of currently available ROM chips, meaning more had to be used, as well as outstripped the power of the hardware inside just the console & thus requiring pricey on-board co-processors).
Converting the original retail prices of large size (meaning the game ROM itself) cartridge games from the 8-bit through to the N64 eras to take inflation into account will likely SERIOUSLY shock some of these whiny & overly privileged Gen Z'ers complaining about Dread's pricing.
Re: Talking Point: Why Metroid Dread Will Be Worth $60
"The games might be (mostly) great, but system-sellers they are not and historically they simply can't compete (in worldwide sales terms) with Nintendo's evergreen heavy hitters."
This just simply is NOT universally true. Sure it's true for MOST Metroid games, but it's definitely not true for all of them. In particular, the original "Metroid Prime" was a HUUUUUUGE & hugely unexpected sales/financial success on the original GameCube, and most definitely DID help move hardware in the GCN's earlier days.
Not only is it the highest selling Metroid game to date at nearly 3 million copies sold, but MUCH more importantly, it managed to do that on a super unpopular console that finished dead LAST in its generation & couldn't even sell 22 million units...
That basically means that 1 IN EVERY 6 GameCube owners bought a copy of "Metroid Prime"!!! And those kinds of sales numbers have it
LEGITIMATELY competing with Nintendo's biggest franchises in terms of GCN game sales.
Ergo/TL:DR - When advertised properly behind a properly good game, Metroid most definitely CAN be a hugely important "system seller".