Dr_Lugae

@KayFiOS I think this release is pretty strange Playtonic made their own publishing company Playtonic Friends... and yet this game is being published by PM Studios.

Like why make their own publishing company if they aren't going to publish their own games?

I'm pretty sure he hyped it up so this is prolly just saving face.

@rjejr Id disagree w/ the idea Nintendo are only going to produce 15m Switch 2s this year. Nintendo's a public company so they'll want to impress stockholders out of the gate w/ a new system.

They would never forecast their sales to be the number of systems they expect to produce because that would mean they would either fail to meet the target or in the best case scenario, just meet it which wouldn't build much confidence in the company with investors.

I'll predict Nintendo can produce a lot more than 15m systems this fiscal year and do expect to sell more than 15m. but have put 15m a number high enough to be impressive but low enough that they're confident they can reach or in the best case scenario beat by quite a large margin.

So when Furukawa reveals they've sold more than 15m next year, the stock will rise and his approval ratings will increase with shareholders.

@DonnieTACO It's sold 100-150k each week in Japan alone in the last 3 weeks, where are you getting 200k in July from?

More than 6million doesn't mean 6million on the dot you know?

@DonnieTACO You're talking nonsense. The Switch had constant shortages for the first few years. Initially there were more copies of BOTW's Switch version sold than Nintendo Switches sold due to that.

@DonnieTACO Yeah you definitely aren't an analyst if you don't realise how pre-orders result in a big spike of sales at the start. 3.5m in 5 days is not sustainable.

We're you expecting it to have sold 42million units and outsold systems the N64 and Sega Genesis in two months? Because that's what 3.5 every 5 days would mean

@Coversnail I bought the unbundled version and Mario Kart World separately because I like physical games. I didn't want it digital.

Based on Nintendo's forecasting they'll only be selling ~7million Mario Kart Bundles but forecast 15million systems suggesting just over half of the systems they expect to sell won't have Kart. So the majority would have to buy it separately if they want it.

I'm sure they started skyrocketing even higher when they put microtransactions in games that didn't use to have them like Resident Evil 4, eh Capcom?

@Axecon Was the same with Mario Kart Wii I'm pretty sure it sold several millions during the following generation and, as much as MK8 did on WiiU (8million) after MK8 came out.

New Super Mario Bros Wii was similar and matched NSMBU's sales during the 8th gen.

Speaking of 3D platformers I've noticed last year's game of the year has been mysteriously missing from the charts for a month.

@CJD87 I got it MKW £75 so I could get it physical and I think it was worth it.

IMO considering the prices if everything is higher these days and £50-£60 is already a lot to spend on a game that £75 isn't really some unfathomable amount of money to spend. It's not like its crammed with DLC, it's just a bit more expensive upfront.

I beg your pardon! Doronko what?!

@Jeronan Legends actually is a mainline game. Just in the sense That Super Mario Bros Wonder is mainline Mario but Odyssey is the flagship entry.

Pretty good for Donkey Kong. I thought it'd beat Mario Kart World. But Mario Kart basically sells inline with the system sales so the jump to 150k system sales likely propelled Kart to #1.

I don't think anything will beat MKW in Japan until the bundles run out or Pokemon Legends ZA releases.

Well it definitely sold over 500k in Japan since the 1st week. If its done a further 500k in Europe and the rest of the world it might have sold around 5million in June.

Which is massive for a system launch. Nintendo are only forecasting 13million sold by next April and they may be well over a third of the way there.

@Mariotag Which Toad do you even mean? Because there's like 3 VAs for Toad during the N64 era.

It was OK when they replaced VAs back then though right? It's only bad now.

Odyssey moved about 9million copies in its 1st quarter.

There won't even be 9million Switch 2s sold yet to have matched that even if every Switch 2 owner bought Bananza.

Yeah it's fun to smash stuff especially once you get that first Bananza. Personally I'm apprehensive over combat systems in platformers and was of the opinion they usually feel tacked on or detract from the platforming.

But Bananza is very satisfying to play with strong feeback and feels very natural part of gameplay. So far I liked stuff such as the sections where you have to essentially burrow to dodge lasers. Tearing bits from from the ground to surf on, chunk jumping, etc. It's all very intuitive and feels very unique.

@9_10DOH64 Eh I feel that's like saying Super Mario 64 isn't a Mario game because it doesn't play like Super Mario Bros or World.

Bananza isn't Donkey Kong Country, but its still a Donkey Kong game. But I think there's room for more than one formula especially when dealing with a 3D game rather than 2D.

@Orwellian87 Well Samantha Kelly wouldn't have had her role if she didn't replace Lesley Swan.

So you can't really call her the original voice actor lol.

@PikminMarioKirby A bit weird considering Xenoblade X had worse performance on Switch but they gave that 10/10.

@NinjaWaddleDee The side projects obviously aren't a waste whether you like them or not. Considering they've produced stuff like the TCG and Pokemon GO.

A net cast wide catches more fish, I don't bother with many of them myself but they have their audience beyond the mainline entries.

Just pouring money into mainline mega projects is the Square Enix mistake with Final Fantasy, where they put inordinate amounts of cash and ~up to 10 year dev cycles in the main games and many of the spin-offs rely on having played the mainline entry. It all comes crumbling down if the mainline entries aren't liked because the wait between entries is long and it leads to the series becoming irrelevant.

@the_beaver It's the voxel terrain destruction that impacts the performance. Not the environment graphics.

That's why they're saying it runs at a solid 60FPS except when lots of terrain is being destroyed.

It doesn't look too much worse, but I'd suspect the environment destruction would be an absolute frame rate killer on Switch based on that 2x2x2 explanation by the dev.

It's not exactly Minecraft graphics lol so it probably be intensive.

@CapAmerica Ah yeah the PS5 and PC home of Monster Hunter Wilds the game that's getting review bombed for... performance issues lol.

I think there's a saying about stones and glass houses.

@johnedwin I wouldn't trust half the 3rd party publishers releasing key cards to use the smaller carts even if they fit their games

@IOI Do something for me, open up BOTW on the original Nintendo Switch. Go to Kokiri Forest and look at the frame rate. Or if you've got one get your N64 and stick in Mario 64 and tell me how often it maintains its 30FPS lol.

Its the same for other platforms play Knack on PS4, Demons' Souls on PS5, etc.

Then come back and tell me a launch title with destructible terrain having a slight frame drop is unexpected. Either this is your first console launch ever or you're just concern trolling.

@Pat_trick By that logic they should have removed the destructible terrain completely just to save some frames and then the game would behave been limited, more restrictive and less innovative.

I think when the games been shown to run perfectly well otherwise, a slight dip where lots of terrain is being changed at once is fair for what gameplay opportunities it provides.

@johnedwin People represent piracy as a hydra that heads grow as each one is cut. But in reality its people running these sites.

As the consequences for hosting pirated games escalate, who exactly is willing to put their neck out to the chopping block?

Really nice tribute, though it speaks for just how young Sakurai was when he entered the games industry considering he'd been there since the NES era and was 10 years younger than Iwata who had been at HAL while at College.

@Dom_31 I'm sure it will be better. Kid Icarus Uprising gives me a lot of confidence in his non-Smash games.

(Also I sort of wish there's Kid Icarus Uprising 2 or atleast a HD remaster)

@Kingy Yeah I was re-reading Ask Iwata recently and one thing that Iwata covered was the frustration of his early games not being as popular as Miyamoto's despite being mechanically advanced.

He'd point out one thing that Miyamoto did often very early on in development of a game, even before he was a big name, is pick people from the company who hadn't played the game already and watch them play. Get feedback and observe if they enjoyed the game or got stuck and didn't understand something.

Then if they didn't understand or appeared not to enjoy certain parts, Miyamoto would view that as a mistake/failing on his part and then go back to try and change the game to help make it more enjoyable or easier to understand. Which lead to Miyamoto's games being able to be understood and played by wider audiences, I think especially in the NES/SNES-era Miyamoto lead games tend to be a lot more approachable.

Whereas Iwata recognised that sometimes developers/programmers can have an idea they think is very clever and implement it without feedback, become attached to it and be unwilling to change it, even if players don't understand or enjoy it.

That kind of player-centric feedback/adjustment cycle Miyamoto was doing is more conducive to a product and not art. Whereas for art if someone says "I don't get it" the artist isn't going to pull out the paint brushes and start adjusting their art until someone likes it. But for a product, a game, those kind of adjustments are going to happen if the creator actually wants more than a few people to enjoy it.

I searched up the director Kazuya Takahashi because I didnt recognise his name, very weird gameography (SEGA and Square Enix).

I think there's a very good chance Babanza isn't being developed in place of a new 3D Mario if they aren't getting one of the typical directors to direct Bananza. So we might have both 3D Donkey Kong and 3D Mario not too far from each other.

@HugoGED He probably will show up.as supervisor in this case tbh.

@GammaPhonic He directed Super Mario Run back in 2016

I recall Iwata said the same thing.

Tbh makes sense since their aim is to make games as many people as possible can enjoy. Not specifically to win some sort of award.

I think anyone who's paid attention to the game awards that a lot of "games as art" end up feeling engineered to dominate award shows rather than be something that can be played with over and over.

@EarthboundBenjy You want the cake? You can't handle the cake!

He just got harassed by a group of idiots who thought because he was a studio head and Hellena Taylor was a VA and threw the accusation that she was in the right and Kamiya is wrong.

People are too quick to go on moral crusades for clout, pick the side they want to in 3 seconds based on hearsay or prejudice and then argue it out for days.

If they used half the time they spent arguing about it actually considering the situation they probably wouldn't have been trying to run the wrong person off the Internet and trying to destroy a game's reputation for no reason.

It's the consequence of Microsoft (and arguably Sony) just trying to buy up the gaming industry rather than building up self-sustaining studios.

It's fine as long as MS is throwing money about but the moment they close their wallet it all just comes crumbling down.

@wiiware So if you went to a restaurant and the chicken was a little too dry.

You'd be fine rating the restaurant 0/5 even if you liked everything else and the service was good?

If you want to tell them what you thought then put that in the text. Rating something lower than you actually believe isn't making a point, its just being an inconsiderate jerk.

It makes Fistbump from Sonic Forces sound like Open your Heart from Sonic Adventure.(It's bad )

@SalvorHardin Yeah, the DLC slots being half the cast and being voiceless. The DLC tracks like Spongebob looking low quality. The Crowds being 2d animated sprites and seemingly just random animals created from the Sonic Forces character creator.

I feel if they're going to charge £60 or $70 premium for a game they should be delivering a premium experience across the board, they can't get away with the usual Sonic Team roughness/corner cutting when they're asking more than ever for the games.

Makes sense, the Cyber Sleuth games hit its 1m, 2m and 2.5m milestones only after being ported to Switch despite having been out for 5 years before.

I think not having a Switch 2 release would have just risked undoing the growth the series had.

Nintendo make both key cards and regular carts an option.

They can't control whether a third party chooses them other than making them an option, and if they weren't an option it's very possible the 3rd parties would just do the code in a box nonsense instead.

Preferably regular cart sales outselling key cards should make third parties think twice about key cards if they're only using Key Cards to cheap out.

Have my doubts lol. A lot of Sonic's resurgence was on the movie. But presumably SEGA under his watch gave the nod to the ugly Sonic version.

I speculate their biggest problem, outside of Atlus, SEGA often it doesn't seem like they actually care whether they have a good or a bad product. Which while they can release good games, they very often sabotage built up goodwill.

@markusmachado Yeah I think you can tell the difference in philosophy where Mario Kart 8 takes N64 Royal Raceway and blocks off the path to Peach's castle.

While Mario Kart 8 is fun it's very laser focused on one kind of fun and IMO I think the Waluigi Wild Wigglers, the guys in MKW who were before the patch were content in forcing 3-lap races.

I think Mario Kart World does well to think outside the box that Mario Kart leading up to 8 put itself in and it ultimately creates more ways to have fun with the game and far more variation.

@wiiware I think people like @Bonapetit_nintendo revelling in it and hoping DK Bananza gets review bombed too is evidence why review bombing can't be taken in good faith.

People who like the games are fans too you know. Giving it an 0/10 for the sake of making a point means you have zero respect for the people who do like the game and you think you deserve to be listened to above other fans which is unfair. And worse you don't need to even own the game to review bomb metacritic, so there could be people who never even played the game attempting to pressure Nintendo into changing it.

If the update is such a bad thing the game would just naturally settle at a low score and the average feedback would result in changes for future updates or games. Note that Mario Kart 8 got rebalanced without a wave of review bombing.

Really give the game what you sincerely think it's worth. Put the reasons you feel that way, and if the random choice of tracks actually being random is a problem for the majority it would naturally become the overwhelming piece of feedback.

@KoopaTheGamer I think with the update its may be a solid 50%. Beforehand I think random was always 3-lap unless it randomly selected one of the adjoining tracks to the previous race in which case it wasn't 3 laps.

Random previously may have had about 90% chance of 3 laps beforehand. Given there was typically 3 adjoining tracks out of the games ~30 tracks.

@Crimson_Ridley if 5 or 6 people like it for every one person who doesn't then you kind if only have to go thise extremes because you're trying to make the opinion seem more significant or widely held than it actually is.

If your review bombing isn't actually reflective of the overall opinion of the game then any change made towards it would be favouring a vocal minority at the expense of the majority. Its just selfishness.

@johnedwin Some more than others. I think the main problem is that since the mid 2010s the metacritic user score become a method of platform/fanbase warring.

@RupeeClock Yeah just like the review bombing campaign of BOTW despite the fact it became the most important, well-liked and influential games of the last generation.

Personally stuff like this makes it impossible to accept the sincerity of review bombing as it comes off as manufactured outrage. Its like those influencers who said they wouldn't buy the Switch 2 becauseof the price, and then bought it at launch, it doesn't feel like a real opinion.

I recall the same thing happened with BOTW at the Switch's launch to the point it was like 6/10 userscore on metacritic. Until reviews were being removed.

Its kind of pathetic that whenever Nintendo have a big success it drives a bunch of spiteful haters to come out of the woodwork try to do or say anything they can to make their games look bad.

@SuperRetroArt Yeah, the world doesn't revolve around you.

Neither does Mario Kart World lol