Comments 25

Re: Poll: Six Months of the Switch - What Do You Think of Nintendo's Console Hybrid?

Hawkstream

I know this is going off topic but when I see people like BlueOcean say things like it "cost you thousands of euros/dollars" to build a PC better than an Xbox One X it really bothers me. And honestly I blame Apple for giving kids such uniformed impressions of modern electronics. They are the ones that started making laptops, phones, and tablets where you couldn't even remove the battery or add a SD card. This makes people think there is some kind of magic going on inside and its unthinkable to ever open or alter it. This is the only explanation I can think of as to why kids don't understand how easy and cheap it is to build or upgrade a PC with a good video card that will far outperform a "secret, unopenable box running magic inside" ...console. (sadly rolls eyes).

Re: Poll: Six Months of the Switch - What Do You Think of Nintendo's Console Hybrid?

Hawkstream

I bought this console because they were hard to get. My plan was to play Zelda a little and resell it for a small profit. Because of the portability I have found it to be a life changer in regards to gaming. I love that I can play it on the go, in the subway, on breaks at work and in home in the dock. I have no plans to sell it now and am looking forward to all the games coming out soon!

Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards

Hawkstream

@ThanosReXXX Ha yeah. I'm not sure i would be too upset if games I bought digitally (if it would have been possible back then) on original Xbox were no longer available. I see that as a moot point 10 years out. And if I really wanted to play Spaltoon 2 in 2027 I'm sure I could pretty darn cheaply one way or another. But chances are I would be a lot more interested in Splatoon 9 by then.

Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards

Hawkstream

@ThanosReXXX

I can give you another positive example of digital. I bought the Bioshock trilogy bundle a year or two ago on Steam for a very good price, like $29 or something. Earlier this year when they came out with the remastered version of those games they gave them for FREE to all Steam users who owned them. I think they were charging full price for people who didn't. So its the opposite of losing games and functionality, you can actually get upgrades for free sometimes.

I'm not sure that's the kind of think Nintendo would ever do... but they should.

Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards

Hawkstream

@electrolite77

I'm making the educated guess from this -
"Developers will tend to use the game card best suited for their product. So if your game clocks in at 3GB it would be stupid to ship on anything bigger than a 4GB game card. While the actual cost of the varying game cards is not public knowledge, it is known in industry circles that the price of Nintendo providing an 8GB game card (with associated packaging costs on top) to a third-party publisher is roughly the same as the costs which Microsoft and Sony charge for a Xbox One and PS4 Blu-Ray discs (again, including platform fee and packaging costs). 8GB is therefore "the sweet spot" for third parties, as it means they can sell at a cost which matches the Sony and Microsoft versions, in the case of multi-format releases."

But even if they sold games on 4 - 8GB carts that would not be unheard of. LA Noire, GTA V, Forza 6 / GranTorismo 5 and several other games all came on 4 disks on 360 and PS3.

Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards

Hawkstream

@ThanosReXXX As far as I know even if a game maker stops support and sales of a game due to license changes your digital copy will continue to work ... forever. I can give you 2 examples of this. Dirt 2 and Alan Wake. Both can no longer legally be sold but will always be perfectly playable in single player mode from Steam. No matter how many times you delete it and reinstall it. You can install it on a PC 10 years from now and it will still work.

Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards

Hawkstream

As primarily a PC gammer who owns more than 170 games on Steam I don't understand why people still want physical. They should have just given the Switch a lot more internal memory (like 128GB or more) with an additional 2 micro SD slots (if that's possible) and just made ALL games digital downloads. If you run out of room just delete a game as it will always be re-downloadable from your digital library. This seems silly to me.