Comments 595

Re: Limited Run's Atlus Switch 2 Collector's Edition Is A 'Game-Key Card' Release

ElkinFencer10

Is this ideal? No. Are 90% of the people in these comments making a mountain out of a molehill? Yes. As has been mentioned, it will be DECADES before you stop being able to redownload games you've bought. The Wii came out 19 years ago, and you can still redownload games you bought there. These game key cards will be no different.

As for "Limited Run is built on a mountain of lies" or whatever...This isn't one of their games. They're just the distributors. The games they publish are always fully playable on the cartridge or disc. They're not publishing these games, though, so they don't control what is and isn't on the game cartridge. There's plenty of things to criticize LRG for legitimately without inventing reasons that aren't grounded in reality.

Re: Limited Run's Atlus Switch 2 Collector's Edition Is A 'Game-Key Card' Release

ElkinFencer10

@beltmenot This. It's not really any different than the Switch games that required mandatory downloads or the PS5 and XSX games that require you download the rest of the game in order to play. It doesn't matter if 0% of the game is on the card or 95% of the game is; if you have to download any part of it in order to play, it's not different than these game keys. I'm certainly not happy about the game key cards, but it's better than just buying it digitally; at least with a key card, you can lend it to a friend to resell it later. Plus collectors can put it on a shelf for the aesthetic.

Re: Digital Foundry Delivers First Impressions Of Switch 2 - "It Stands Alone In What It Does"

ElkinFencer10

@Stegiand Handhelds, especially with Nintendo, traditionally lag about a gen behind in terms of hardware power. The Game Boy was weaker than the NES and Master System. The Game Boy Color was about on par with. GBA was about on par with SNES and Genesis. DS was roughly on par with N64 and PS1. 3DS was roughly on par with Gamecube and PS2. Switch was was a little stronger than Wii U and PS3. So it makes sense that Switch 2 will be somewhere in the PS4/XB1 neighborhood.

The mistake, in my view, is holding Switch to home console standards because, at the end of the day, it's a handheld with an HDMI-out cradle.

Re: Digital Foundry Delivers First Impressions Of Switch 2 - "It Stands Alone In What It Does"

ElkinFencer10

I am super hyped for this console. It sounds like first party games are around PS4 Pro levels (which isn't terribly surprising given that Nintendo is always better at squeezing power out of its hardware than other devs) with third party games around PS4 levels, and that's totally fine in my book. I have a lot of friends who haven't even made the jump to PS5/Series X yet because they're still content with the games and visuals on PS4/XB1, so I really don't consider "only PS4 visuals" to be that big of a ding.

Re: Opinion: The Switch 2 Is A Powerhouse For The Price

ElkinFencer10

@HeadPirate I would absolutely pay an extra $150 for access to first party games. That's why people buy Nintendo platforms. PS5 and XSX have dozens of exclusives, but they'll also been on the market for nearly five years, so I'd argue that that's a little apples-and-oranges a comparison for exclusives for a five year old system vs a system that hasn't even released yet.

Re: Opinion: The Switch 2 Is A Powerhouse For The Price

ElkinFencer10

@mikejs78 Excellent points made here. Also worth noting that the games we have seen are either launch games or cross gen games, and those always look the worst relative to games later in the life cycle. If all you saw was Resistance: Fall of Man and Red Steel, you'd be grossly underestimating the potential capabilities of the PS3 and Wii, respectively, because those early launch games weren't showcasing the system's full range of abilities.

Re: Opinion: The Switch 2 Is A Powerhouse For The Price

ElkinFencer10

@HeadPirate Options. On the rare occasions I'm on a plane or stuck in a doctor's office waiting room, I have the option of playing handheld. Beyond that, it offers Nintendo games. Short of criminal piracy, where else am I going to play Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Fire Emblem, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, etc?

Re: Opinion: The Switch 2 Is A Powerhouse For The Price

ElkinFencer10

@Overzeal All really good points. Nintendo's generations are weird with the Wii U's short lifespan, so I would personally call the Switch a second 8th gen console and the Switch 2 their actual 9th gen console (Wikipedia has them labeled the same way, for whatever that may be worth), but that's really splitting hairs; generations haven't meant what they used to since the PS4/Wii U/XB1 days with the bizarrely long lifespans the Switch, PS4, and Xbox One had. Either way, the console's price is completely reasonable even if the upper end (I personally guessed $400 with $450 as my back-up guess), but as @goldgriffin360 said, people forget what games used to cost. This standardized thing has only been since the 6th gen consoles. It used to be the wild west. And as I've stated ad nauseum in other comments sections, $60 in 2017 is literally the same thing as $80 in 2025 once you realize inflation is a thing that exists; even with the few $80 games, you're still getting games for the same value or cheaper than Switch games were when it launched.

Re: Japanese Charts: Not Even The Impending Switch 2 Can Stop This Mario Party

ElkinFencer10

@Darthmoogle So apparently they're NOT the Switch 1 game and a code. Nintendo explicitly said in a Vooks interview that the Switch 2 editions will have the full Switch 2 version of the game and all content on the game card. But still, at the price I paid, it was cheaper to get the Switch version and buy the upgrade pack. I may still do that with Legends ZA and Metroid Prime 4 just to have them on my Switch shelf instead of the markedly less attractive Switch 2 boxart.

Re: Opinion: The Switch 2 Is A Powerhouse For The Price

ElkinFencer10

I think the console price is completely reasonable. For that matter, I think the games' prices are fairly reasonable, although I teach economics and therefore understand concepts like inflation and overhead. As for the debate about the power, as has been mentioned above, the Series S maybe a bit more powerful than the Switch 2 in some areas, but it's also lacking a physical drive to allow for backwards compatibility like Switch 2 has, it's not a handheld form factor (miniaturizing technology is always expensive; look at gaming laptops vs equivalent gaming desktops), and the Series S doesn't have a screen. The screen is also 1080p and 120 hz. That is NOT cheap for a screen that size. Additionally, the Switch 2 can play games in 4K; the Series S can't do that. Roughly equivalent (even if slightly lower) hardware power, the small form factor, the impressive screen, AND the stellar lineup of exclusive games all make an aggregate that makes the $450 price tag extremely reasonable once you factor in a profit margin. Sony and Microsoft may sell their consoles for a loss, but that's no reason to expect Nintendo to do the same. Those companies sell things other than video games; Nintendo doesn't. Beyond that, it's ridiculous to demand any company sell any product at a loss regardless of context. Corporations - including Nintendo - literally exist to make a profit.

Re: "We MUST Resist Buying These Game-Key Releases", Says GamesMaster Host

ElkinFencer10

So I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, vote with your dollar. I see their point. On the other hand, the digital-only future is inevitable. Collectors like me are pushing to hold it off as long as possible, but there will inevitably come a day in the next ten to twenty years when all video games are released exclusively as digital downloads. It's inevitable. To that end, let's say you boycott these key cards. More power to you, that's your prerogative. But what's the alternative? Never playing these or buying them digitally. For the games I really want to play, I'm not just gonna not buy them. And the collector in me says "If I'm going to pay for the game as it is, I might as well have something to put on my shelf." There are a fair number of Switch games that don't have the entire game on the cartridge and require a download, and this is effectively no different; if you can't play the game with just the cartridge, it doesn't really matter if the cartridge has 3/4 of the game or none of the game on it. You still can't play it. This at least lets me trade, give away, or sell as used the games since the cards aren't going to tie to a specific account.

tl;dr the outrage over this is ridiculous, and the belief that boycotting or resisting it will change literally anything is naive.

Re: Ex-PlayStation Boss Comments On Switch 2's "Hefty" Price Hikes

ElkinFencer10

The price is fair. It's not fun - I hate paying $70 let alone $80 - but I'm not going to sit here and pretend it isn't fair. $80 in 2025 is literally the same value as $60 in 2017. All they're doing is not eating a drop in profit margin on their biggest system sellers, and they'll still be bringing in less for each "regularly" priced game at $70 today than they did at $60 in 2017. The laws of market economics don't stop existing just because gamers don't understand or refuse to acknowledge them, and Nintendo doesn't stop existing first and foremost to make a profit for its investors - not to make cheap for the sake of gamers' expectations - just because we adore the company's products.

Re: Reggie Fils-Aimé Weighs In On 'Switch 2 Welcome Tour' Controversy (Sort Of)

ElkinFencer10

Definitely should have been a pack-in, but I don't think it really matters. People won't buy a Switch 2 for Welcome Tour (people did buy a Wii specifically for Wii Sports), so they wouldn't have profited, per se, from making it a pack-in, and most people probably wouldn't play it for more than five or ten minutes if it were. Most people won't buy it, but they'll have at least some miniscule revenue coming in from selling it separate. So yeah, it definitely should have been a pack-in, but I don't think it's as big a missed opportunity as having 1-2 Switch be a pack-in was.

Re: Talking Point: Does Switch 2 Have Nintendo's Best Launch Line-Up Ever?

ElkinFencer10

@Jeronan All launch lineups are a "Your mileage may vary" situation depending on an individual gamer's preferences, but Switch was a great one for me.

1-2-Switch, Fast RMX, I Am Setsuna, Snipperclips, and Breath of the Wild remain among my favorite games on the system. Five games on day one that I still adore playing eight years later? Yeah, for me, that's a stellar lineup.

Re: Feature: "We Really Want To Future-Proof" - The Nintendo Switch 2 Interview

ElkinFencer10

@Ramouz lol not wanting to take a loss with rising manufacturing costs, inflation, and tariffs is greedy? No, that's just business. The only prices in what you listed that is, in my opinion, debatably excessive is Welcome Tour, and that's debatable. $400 to $500 is what pretty much everyone expected for the console, and tacking on an extra $50 for a game that sells for $80 separately is hardly a ripoff. $70 - $80 is standard for a new controller, and while I could see $90, I think $80 is far more likely. Extra Joycons? There's a lot of tech in a small package there, so $80 for a new pair is fair since that's essentially a controller. As for $60 for the camera, that might be a bit high, but given that we don't have specs for the camera, we really don't have enough information to make that determination yet. Yeah, DK is $70 like most AAA games on every platform. $10 to $15 upgrade packs? Hardly unreasonable, and while not as nice as Xbox's Smart Delivery free upgrades, Sony's PS5 has done the same thing for five years.

I'm really not seeing the outrage aside from entitled gamers who think they have some bizarre inalienable right to having Nintendo consoles, games, and accessories stay cheap forever. Everything gets more expensive over time, and that's especially true when your last console refresh was eight years ago.