It's actually zero. Says on the website. I was kinda making a cheeky comment with the copium and all. I just really, really wish the series would give us English VA again. I mean, my Japanese is descent, but I can't keep up with the constant banter while running around the map, and it's even harder to do with subtitles IMO.
Unlikely. DX versions aren't performance updates, they are complete remasters including content updates, new PCs with full story lines, and all the pervious DLC. They've been sold at full retail in the past.
It's 3 complete remasters. The past DX collections have included new areas, new recipes, sometimes a completely new post game, enhanced textures, new characters and enemy modals and complete English voice acting. They also had goodies like 4k and widescreen support, although in this case that's already present. Most also come with all, or at least all the story based, DLC. They sold for about $40ish each, the bundle is just a way to save an additional 10$ or so if you want all 3.
Not a lot of remasters I can think of outside this series that sold for LESS then the base game did on release.
Oh wow, I wonder if it will have English voice acting. I mean, nothing against the Japanese crew, but it can be hard to keep up with the all the banter. Every DX but Lydie & Suelle added English voice, but that game was kind of a black sheep. I'll just ignore the fact that the trailer and the event are in Japanese only and huff this big old bag of copium I have for occasions like this.
Also where the heck is Atelier Lulua DX? It's the only game I haven't played because I figured they would DX it at some point and I don't want to buy it twice.
It's a weird word. People use it with very little consistency (same with AAA!)
Indie means "independent". We're borrowing the word from film and music industry, where being "indie" meant that you were free from studio interference. At first, that meant self published, but over time "indie studios" where formed that would publish works but were committed to offering no input or influencing the product in any way.
So, in spirit, an "indie" game is a game developed without the publisher or a parent company influencing the development team. Streets of Rage 4 would totally count, given it's publisher was also it's co-developer. It's essentially self published.
Like Daggot points out, it doesn't really have anything to do with the size of the team. And f you want to get really into the weeds, there are games like "Hi-fi Rush". The team was over 100 people, published by Bethesda Softworks, which is owned by Xbox Studios. But it's totally an indie game! The team worked in secret with no interference from Bethesda, and even after the Microsoft acquisition, they were left completely alone. On the other side of the coin, Stardew Valley, made by ONE DUDE, was not an indie game when it came out because Chucklefish imposed conditions on the final product and it's post launch support. It is now though, because Concerned Ape bought back the publishing rights.
But expecting people to have that level of understanding and do homework before using the word is just unreasonable. Indie is just a vibe in the minds of most people, and that's how the word is going to be applied in common usage.
I also agree with the key point. Self publishing a game 10 years ago was extremely hard. Doing it in a way that you could offer post launch support with things like automatic patches was basically impossible. Now with things like ID@XBox, open source engines, and even AI coding assistance, the idea that you can grab a few friends and make a video game on a small budget has never been more reasonable.
That game, a top down action / adventure, was directed by Takeo Mogi and developed by Kemco. It was never released in NA.
John Romero was not involved in it's development in any way, nor was his studio.
The game he made was a first person shooter. It sold 40,351 copies on a budget of around 30 million, making it one of the largest flops in gaming history.
Game Pass makes around 3 billion a year. Microsoft spends around a billion a year putting games on the service and running the backend, according to Phil. Bloomberg estimates cannibalization (lost sales) of first party titles is at most $500 million, although likely much lower, meaning Game Pass brings in over 1.5 billion a year profit.
That margin is insanely high. In 2024 Electronic Arts made 1.7 billion in Profit, while PlayStation's average profit over the last 5 years is around 2.4 billion.
This is some back of napkin math given Microsoft doesn't publicly state Xbox's revenue or profit on it's own (outside of the larger context of Microsoft), but it's reasonable to assume Game Pass alone generates around the same profit as all of EA, and more then half of all PlayStation hardware, software, licensing fees, PSN and merch put together.
Game Pass isn't costing Microsoft money. It is their biggest cash cow, and likely one of the most profitable products in the gaming industry.
Again, you're trying to convince me of something that the developers themselves have said is not true, and choosing to believe it yourself. I can't stop you if that's what you want to do, but it doesn't really leave me any room to respond. Google (and AI) simply return the most popular option, which is not always the truth.
The game lists 420 people in the credits. That means the game was made by 420 people. It's really that simple. Contracting out also costs money. You saying just get 30 people together, and then spend $20+ million on contractors like they did like that's no big deal. The actual budget for games made by teams in the 20 to 30 range is rarely over 5 million. Not everyone gets blank checks from Microsoft like Expedition 33 did.
Skyrim lists 800. Cyberpunk lists 3500. GTA isn't a team of 300+ ... it's being worked on by over 1000 developers (software engineers), over 4000 additional coding and core support (sound/graphics/QA), and 1000s more for testing, marketing, publishing, and logistics.
With respect, I think you vastly underestimate the amount of work that goes into making a video game.
While still a bit reductionist, I think a better line to draw is Western studios vs. studios in Japan. When compared to Microsoft or Sony (which, while a Japanese company, has their Western leadership make decisions about PlayStation almost exclusively) Nintendo really stand out. But when compared to other Japanese companies like Capcom (who gave everyone a 25% raise last year and had no mass layoffs), they are pretty normal. The culture of capitalism in Japan is just different. It's more of a contract between workers and management, where firing an employee is seen as a last resort. In the West, and the US specifically, workers are expendable servant who deserve no respect or consideration and have absolutely no rights.
Companies fire people one day just so they can hire someone the next day at a lower salary. EA fired 3000+ before a earnings call just to make their balance sheet look favorable, and rehired a week later. And sadly, a lot of small companies do it too. That's why I don't like the small "good guys" vs. the big "bad guys" narrative. There are all bad guys. There are no white hats in late stage capitalism.
As for Microsoft, I kinda feel silly "defending" a evil corporation who I detest on principal, but it comes down to engagement, sadly. Sony closed 4 Studios sense 2024, only one less then Microsoft. PlayStation greenlit 14 live service games and cancelled 6-8 of them, resulting in a 8% reduction of their workforce off the bat, then 210 more at Bungie , and 200 more when they closed Firewalk and Neon Koi studios. That's just in the last 24 months! But we don't hear about that much because engagement is what drives revenue for sites like this, and you don't get engagement unless you're talking smack about someone people HATE. You also don't hear a lot about how Expedition 33, the highest rated game of the year, wouldn't have happened without Microsoft finding it and overfunding it ... for the same reason. Or how many indie darlings wouldn't have happened without ID@Xbox and the tools it provides small developers at no cost.
Don't get me wrong, they suck. But everyone sucks. You just never hear about the good and always hear about the bad when it comes to Microsoft because that's what leads to a healthy comment section.
Again, this is simply a misconception. I totally get why you might think that, it's been repeated dozens of times at pretty much every level.
The "core team" working on the game was around 80 to 90 people. They outsourced almost all the sound design. Very little of the graphics and art was done inhouse. They only have ONE writer on staff, she worked with a outsourced team. That's not grunt work, they are core roles, and the people working on them were part of the team from almost day one until the project was complete. It's incidental that the studio only has 30 employees, in the same was no one would ever say that Xenoblades 2 was made by a small team of 80 people just because only 80 people from Monolith Soft were working on it, supported by 200+ people that worked for Nintendo.
The game had a budget of $30 million. That's a far cry from "cheap". Sandfall Interactive didn't have anywhere near that much cash on hand, and could only afford to make the game because evil, soulless Microsoft pumped millions into the project, which list 412 people in it's credits. Super Mario Wonder, for contrast, lists 435 people.
Expedition 33 is a success story. But it's not a story of a small, independent upstart team that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. It's a small team that took 10-20$ million from the second largest company on earth and used it to pay 100s of people to make a bloody fantastic game. Like I said, the developers themselves are telling people to stop spreading the narrative that this was a game made by a small team on a tight budget. It's not really up for debate.
And when you think about firing 100s of people ... there are over 370 people who made the game who are no longer getting any income from Sandfall Interactive. The only difference is they never hired them in the first place. Is that really any better?
I totally get why it looks that way. But in 2024, among the high profile layoff and studio closings, as well as AI replacing entry level jobs, the total number of people working in game development ... increased. By around 8%.
No one ever posts the "studio hires 30 people" article, because that's not going to make people angry and get engagement. But it's happening all the time. Even in some of the high profile cases, a studio will fire 200 people on Monday and turn around and hire 500 people on Tuesday. It's only the firing that you're ever going to hear about though.
Also the developers of Expedition 33 have posted, again and again, begging people to stop spreading the complete and total lie that it was made by 30 people. Over 300 people worked on that game. The studio only has 30 employees, but they outsourced development, QA, sound design, art design and localization to dozens of other teams. The voice actors, performance capture artists and specialists, musicians, and choir singers alone are more then 50 people, and none of them work for Sandfall Interactive.
I mean I totally agree with your overall point, but this isn't a small studio shutting down. At a point they had 200 employees. As for "creativity" and "unique, fresh games" ... the studio produced 4 games and 2 of them are literally mods of the 1996 game Doom 2.
Compare that with the vile, evil, worse then 100 Satans Microsoft owned Compulsion Games, which has 90 employees and produced the extremely creative and stylized "Contrast" independently (which bombed), then made "We Happy Few" with Microsoft cash, which was universally praised for it's creative art style and storytelling ... and also bombed. They were allowed to try again and made the mind-blowing "South of Midnight". Which I think is also bombing? And yet they are still open and making games. If it wasn't for big daddy MS poring in funds and trusting Guillaume Provost's vison they would have shut down in 2018.
It's reductionist to say "small studio good, big study bad" or that being owned by a large company means you can't make anything experimental.
It really comes down to the talent. Romero has spent 30 years trying to make DOOM clones, regardless of the size of the team he's working with. He's infamous for firing anyone who disagreed with him or challenged his vision in any way.
Contrast that with people like Hideo Kojima and Tetsuya Takahashi who work with teams of 300+ to create unique and fresh games pretty consistently.
The last time Romero worked on a DOOM game was 1996. He left ID to form his own studio, which failed spectacularly. He then formed a second studio, which also failed.
I mean, they didn't really "sit on" it. They spent 7 years and millions of dollars developing a reboot for Prefect Dark. It just didn't get finished. Ubisoft isn't "sitting on" Beyond good and evil just because they haven't be able to release the sequel despite working on it for ... OMG it's been 18 years.
Come on man, I get that you hate Microsoft. That's fine. Hate them all you want, they are very hatable. But this isn't the hill you should die on.
Think about your Metroid Prime example for a second. Team Ninja didn't shut down when Nintendo pulled funding for Metroid Prime and gave it to Retro Studios instead, because Fumihiko Yasuda knowns how to run a game development studio, and had cash on hand to continue to pay his workers until they found a new project. And in this case, if Microsoft had done what you are saying they should have done, which is move the game to another studio for a reboot like Nintendo did, Romero studio would still have to shut down! They still would have lost funding. You are literally saying that it's okay when Nintendo cut funding to Team Ninja, but not okay when Microsoft did the exact same thing here.
Paradox Interactive had planned to to make a sequel to Empire of Sin, but pulled out when the game bombed harder then a compressed diamond. They also pulled millions in funding for planned updates. So this isn't even the FIRST TIME the studio has had funding pulled from them by a publisher. They survived that time because John hadn't burned all their capital on a 6 year project that never got made ... yet.
The studio made bad games that lost them money for 5 years before Microsoft even showed up. They spend 6 years developing a game they didn't release, without any involvement from Microsoft. Romero's first go at game development without John Carmack was arguably the single greatest disaster in gaming history, and Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
Just go find another reason to hate Microsoft or another thing to blame them for. It's not going to be hard. But this is 100% John's fault, and he should be held accountable.
He's not a newbie. Nor is his studio. They have produced 4 games, and 3 of them were critically panned and bombed. There only profitable game was "Gunman Taco Truck". You remember Gunman Taco Truck right? The team was working on a FPS for 6 years. John cancelled it last year, all on him lonesome. Microsoft was in no way connected to it.
And like I said, if he DID have a strong prototype or alpha of the game Microsoft pulled funding from, he could have easily shopped around for other investors or tried to secure additional funding via Kick Starter or other means. As a the head of a studio, this is something you should plan for an have a contingency for, because it happens all the time.
I'm not in any way defending Microsoft. I'm defending evaluating facts. And in this case, the story here is that John and Brenda Romero don't seem to be very good at running a game studio, and that the director and project lead behind Daikatana might be better at programing games then he is at leading game development.
John Romero is not at Xbox. None of the staff that lost their jobs are at Xbox. They work for John Romero at an independent studio, and John Romero fired them.
John Romero is blaming the layoffs on Microsoft, saying that they "pulled funding" from a game they were working on. However the fact that he was in a position that if a SINGLE investor dropped out, the studio was left with no cash on hand, no assists, and no plan to seek funding though other means like Kick Starter is 100% on him. Horrible management. Not to mention that if MS is pulling funding, there is likely a reason they no longer believe the game is going to show any ROIC, like him not hitting milestones or meeting deliverables. The Studio recently canalled another project, and none of there pervious games have been overly successful, so this isn't that shocking.
Losing a publisher or a investor while a game is in development is pretty common. But if you have a solid product you can shop around and find a replacement pretty quickly, especially if you have the name power of John Romero. This really shouldn't be an issue.
He is hoping that by name dropping Microsoft, a soulless and hated company, people will not investigate the facts and will not hold him accountable for his horrible leadership and decision making. Looks like it's working.
Publishing rights are with Sony exclusively. Owning an Intellectual Property means you can decide what to do with sequels, merch, and anything else that uses the Helldivers name. Those are decisions that Arrowhead make.
What consoles the game is published on, how much it costs, what the box art looks like, how many (if any) physical copies are made and anything else around selling the game Helldivers 2 is exclusively and independently made by Sony. That's why the game briefly ended up requiring PSN and Arrowhead had to ask nicely for Sony to backtrack, rather then simply being able to make that decision themselves.
The decision to publish this game on PC was made by Sony. The decision to publish the game on Xbox was not only made by Sony, but the port was coded by Sony's first party Nixxes Software without any input from Arrowhead. This is a Sony port.
In that future, Arrowhead could not remake, remaster, or re-release the game Helldivers 2 without Sony's permission.
Publishing rights are big deal, and are one of the worst ways the gaming industry is stacked against smaller developers. For example, Concerned Ape needed to BUY BACK publishing rights to Stardew Valley from Chucklefish to be allowed to keep patching it after they had decided to sunset the game. The publisher can pull your game from stores, lower the price to the point where you don't make any money, stop offering bug fixes, or launch a highly offensive marketing campaign and you have absolutely no control over that.
Arrowhead owns the concept of the Helldivers series, but for all effective purposes and in every way that matters, Sony owns the game Helldivers 2.
It's important to remain objective, especially on the internet. You're likely referring to the podcast The Game Business by Chris Dring, that got picked up by a lot of gaming sites, in which he suggested developers were asking "why bother" making a game for Xbox.
First off, it's completely hearsay. He said he "heard" developers saying that, but gave no examples and no one has come forward to collaborate his story. Second, it wasn't about sales numbers. HIs argument was that if Microsoft is going to publish games on Sony hardware, developers are going to stop making games for Xbox. That argument, you might notice, is completely insane and illogical.
In reality, the Xbox Series systems have an install base of around 35 million. That's a lot of costumers. It's also insanely easy (almost automated at this point) to make a Xbox port of a game that's already on PC. By contrast, when Ubisoft and EA started to question if they should make games for the Wii U, it had an install base of less then 10 million AND required extremely specialized coding for ports, with most developers saying it was harder to port a game to the Wii U then it was to make a Wii U game was scratch. (1)
It is absolutely not the case that Xbox games are losing developers money. Even Chris Dring never made that argument.
Switch 2 only has an install base of 5 million right now, and while that number is sure to increase (a lot!) over the next few years, if it's worth making games for a potential audience of 5 million, it's absolutely worth making games for an audience of 7 times that number.
1 - And this is likely true, as several Wii U "ports" where actually full remakes for the system, built from the ground up.
I think this is just the reality of live service games. You're simply leaving too much money on the table by limiting your player base that the theoretical benefit of having an exclusive just isn't worth it. Sony canceled at least 6 live service games (that we know of), shuttered another after a week, and has indefinitely delayed another. They need to milk their hit for everything it's worth.
The "console war" is a thing that only exists in the minds of commenters and internet warriors. Sony just wants to make as much money as possible, and doesn't care how they make it. Microsoft saw Xbox revenue go up 61% last year despite hardware sales being down 42%, largely due to games they published on PlayStation. This year, Xbox is set to release more games on PlayStation then Sony is. That's obviously going to get Sony questioning if the "exclusive" model is still the best way to go in every case.
As for a Switch 2 port ... the thing people keep forgetting is that as they were not actively working on a Switch 2 launch title or part of Nintendo's partner program they got a Switch 2 dev kit, at best, a month ago.
You're talking about the theoretical performance of the platforms as a whole. That is not, and never had been, at issue.
I'm talking about the individual choices made by the teams optimizing the games for Series S and PS4, which in this individual case, resulted in a PS4 port that focused more on frame for frame image quality, and a Series S port that focused more on looking good "at speed".
It's important to remember that rasterization is always a choice. It's not always about raw power, it's how you choose to optimize based on what's important to the game.
With the Series S, the decision was made to lock the frame rate at 60 and the resolution at 1080p, given that's probably what's most important in a fighter. That was never an option on the less powerful PS4, so it runs at 30fps. The lower framerate and lower processing load allows the PS4 to run higher res textures, more defined background objects, and better post processing then the Series S, even though it's a less powerful machine.
So the PS4 has higher IMAGE QUALITY then the Series S, in that each frame uses more advanced rasterization to create a "better" looking image ... just like the author points out. As a game, however, most would argue the Series S is "better" because of the higher frame rate.
The whole reason sites like DF exist is that it's not always simple to understand how one version is different then another. There is nuance that is not always obvious.
"Full res textures" isn't really a rasterization issue. It's almost completely dependent on VRAM and how fast the card can move information from storage to that RAM. They are not being rendered in real time, it's like a "sticker" being applied to objects in game. So a Switch 2 upgrade to support the Witcher 3's high res textures would be pretty simple, and the Switch 2 with it's dedicated decompressor could easily handle them. I would expect any "Switch 2" version of the Witcher 3 to be a much beefier update, and I would be surprised if it's not currently in development.
People in general, especially in the age group most likely to post here, hate experts. Experts say things that they don't understand, and that makes them feel uncomfortable. Experts build on established knowledge and information thy don't have, and that makes them feel inadequate. That's why if you break down almost every negative comments, it's about how "non expert" YouTube influencers or just people with common sense understand things better, and these so called "experts" with their fancy tools, big words and unfamiliar acronyms are "frauds."
It's always been like this, it's just recently in the West hating and ignoring excerpts is being encouraged from multiple forces, so the same people who would have just ignored a post about DF in the past now feel embolden to make comments. This isn't really "hate for DF" as much as it's hate from a growing group of people who think all information should be disseminated, unquestioned and unchallenged, from a central authority taking issue that Nintendolife would publish the opinion of "experts".
I really don't get where you are coming from. If this was an Xbox FPS dropping to 25 FPS while in 40 FPS "performance mode" they would label the game unplayable and leave it at that. The fact that they say anything positive about the port AT ALL, and don't just use the video to berate the developers while telling the audience to avoid the game at all costs is extremely uncharacteristic and shows they are currently willing to give the Switch 2 the benefit of the doubt in a HUGE way.
And just in general, there content is mostly unbias. If anything, they are lenient of Nintendo. They crap all over games for having bad or poorly implemented AA, for example, but for Nintendo games that don't use AA at all, they parse the "artistic style" rather then go hardcore into ripping apart the rasterization.
I feel like on any other system, a FPS that can't even reliably hold 30 FPS in it's 40 FPS performance mode would be universally labeled "unplayable", and exactly no one would call it "impressive". The "but it's a portable" argument only goes so far ... sub 30 frame rates don't magically become a non-issue just because I'm holding the console.
Looks like whoever it was at the NOA that bet the Japanese office that people would pay for an instruction manual and not in any way hold it against the company that such a thing exists won that bet. Gratz, man.
They are the same process. I've been using AI generation for over a decade, and it's trained the way the overwhelming majority of AI models are trained; iteratively. You train on a small data set that you create, then train it off the best examples it generates based on that data set, and so on for 1000s of generations. This works because the system isn't trying to be general; it's very specific to one task, like making a map, creating a shape, or texturing a soild.
Computer AI is anything that learns from a neural network. It has nothing to do with the data set it is training off. John McCarthy systems didn't train off large data sets, but they were absolutely AI.
The confusion here is that when most people think of AI, they think of Large Language Models, or Transformers. These are TYPES of AI that require huge datasets because they are GENERAL, and can perform an astonishing number of tasks. But AI has been a thing for 70 years, and while the newer models are all most non-professionals are familiar with, generative AI has been part of artistic workflow for 20+ years.
My point is that this article is basically making a choice to call "AI" something other there then "AI" because it understands the negative association. If EA was using trained generative models to make maps, they would have called it AI. Wouldn't matter what it was trained on.
If you live in a a part of the world where shipping and distribution isn't subject to the whims of a mad tyrant, everything went pretty well. Stock levels were extremely high for a console launch, the lotteries were handled well, and scalping is all but non-existent.
Nintendo can't do anything about cultural attitudes that decry lotteries as "unfair" and insist on a easily manipulated first come first serve system. If you live in a part of the world where that's the case, yeah, scalping is going to be a real problem ... but it's not Nintendo's problem.
Nintendo can't do anything about disruptions to shipping and supply chains that come from disruptions of decade's old trade norms. If you live in the part of the world most effected by this, yeah, it's going to be a rough ride. But again, nothing Nintendo can do about that. They have spent years preparing for this launch and the rug got pulled out from under them at the 11th hour. If anything, they are victims here, not the ones we should be looking to for a "solution".
All and all I think this was one of the best console launches I can remember, from a logistics point at least. Not everyone is going to get one day one, but that's to be expected. Any anxiety about if restocks will happen in a timely manor have nothing to do with Nintendo, but instead at subject to geo-political factors beyond their control. It's like complaining that you can't get a Switch 2 in China. Sure, you can't, and that sucks ... but Nintendo isn't the reason.
"Mouse mode" is already a thing. To activate "mouse mode" on your Xbox console ... plug in a mouse.
There are over 200 games that support mouse controls, including games like the Age of Empire series, allowing you to forgo the stick controls for a traditional PC style experience.
If it was a big deal that fundamentally changed the way gamers approached console controls, we would know that already, and the PS5 would have carried it over from PS4.
Nintendo's offering is slightly different in that it allows you to "temporarily" switch to mouse controls with the controller you already have in hand (providing you have a flat surface and are using the Joy Con), but I don't see that type of "hybrid" control system being anything good. It will be like switching to motion controls for a forced segment more often then it will be a actual rewarding experience.
So the idea of a mouse controlling a console game? Had that for years, no one cares. And the idea of having to use the Joy Con instead of a pro controller for some games because they have a tacked on gimmick that forces me to use a mouse on my knee? Sounds awful.
Because the game's settings will need to be optimized around it being on. So if the game is going to run at 60fps, the developer needs to target settings that will allow it to run at 60fps WHEN CHAT IS ON. That means even when you don't have it on personally, you are taking a performance hit in terms of visual quality so the game is still playable for people who use chat. You wont get any benefit from having the chat off.
In short, the resources for chat are still resources that developers CAN NOT USE for gameplay, but they are not included in the system OS reserves that develops also can't use. They are "reserved" resources, above and beyond what's listed.
Dynamic scaling (increasing the settings when chat is off) really an option for two reasons. The first is that Nintendo doesn't allow for the chat resources to be used for gameplay even when chat is off (just like Microsoft did with Kinect) at an API level. Second, even if they free up the resources at a later date it will likely requires a prohibitive level of coding especially when looking at ports, because the system architecture is built around those resources being "walled off".
Again looking at Kinect, even when MS stopped shopping the Kinect with the system and freed up the resources, almost no games used the additional resources because it just wasn't worth the time and effort.
A lot of comments seem to be unsure about how the resources devoted to chat work. They are NOT part of the OS reserved resources. They are above and beyond that. That's why you need a tool to test how your game is going to run when chat is active.
You wouldn't need a tool like that if they were part of the reserved resources, as gameplay wouldn't be impacted by chat being on or off. The resources would already pre-allocated.
Kinect was great! It probably wasn't worth the cost, both in dollars and system resources, but the voice and hand-wave menu controls were great, and the very few games that got "better with Kinect" right were pretty fun and novel.
Not that mention that without Kinect, we wouldn't have the single greatest piece of Media made in the Star Wars universe ...
Not only can you disable it fully with parental controls, even by default you can only connect with people using friend codes. It's not like you can fire up chat on a online game and be automatically put in a room with everyone in your "party".
It's kinda amazing how the Switch 2 design choices parallels the original Xbox One.
On the gamer side, we have a number of openly customer hostile practices around game ownership and preservation, from digital game cards to an EULA that says they can BRICK YOUR CONSOLE for any reason, at any point, if they think that maybe you're pirating games (or, for any reason at all, really).
Now on the developer side, this mirrors what happened with Kinect, with a huge amount of system resources devoted to a add on that not only doesn't benefit every game, but is unavailable to people who do not agree to pay a monthly service fee. So if you buy the console and don't use NSO, every single game you play will be taking a performance hit because the developers needed to make sure it would still run well as other people used a service you don't even have access to. Even single player games will need to account for the incredibly small percentage of uses that will use chat while playing them.
Microsoft asked gamers to log on to the internet once every 30 days, and they have still not recovered from the PR damage that did more then a decade later. Nintendo seems to be completely unaffected by a solid month of every bit of news coming from not only their new console, but changes to the EULA and to the functionality of their old console being awful, misguided, and anti-consumer.
Brand loyalty has always been baffling to me ... but I am at a whole new level of baffled.
The Switch JP is manufactured Chania is assembled and packaged in Japan. I should have been more clear on what I meant by that. Nothing is manufactured in Japan. Regardless, the core point is "The one in Vietnam costs more to make" ... which shouldn't be that contraveral. The labor cost in China are much lower as are the cost to transport parts.
The Switch 2 is not "subsidized". It is being sold at profit. I personally love the narrative that it's just Japan doing Japan and putting customers before profits, and initially I pushed that narrative. But from Nintendo's internals it's looking like that isn't the case. NOA and NUK have chosen a higher mark up, and the manufacturing costs of the JP unit are lower.
Beyond that, while I again don't disagree with you on any given point, I'm not 100% on what your core argument is. That's probably my bad, and I apologize. If you were simply trying to correct the error I made and generally inform my opinion, then thank you!
I get what you're saying and you're not wrong, but it's not relevant to any of the points I'm making.
I think the two best ways to process the price of the Japanese Switch are as follows:
Global - If you look at the price in USD, that is the price that a system could be sold in USD while still being profitable. The exchange rates cancel out. So my point isn't about it's affordability in Japan, it's about it's manufacturing cost when converted to USD. The Switch that is being manufactured in Japan (The JP locked version) is cheaper to make then the Switch being manufactured in Vietnam, because of how the supply lines work and Japans favorable trade relations with China.
Internal - If you are going to talk about the system's affordability in Japan, you should look to compare it to other systems, not the original Switch. It is currently 25,000 Yen cheaper then the digital PS5, 20,000 Yen cheaper then the Steam Deck. Compare that to the US, where the Switch 2 is $50 more then the PS5 digital or the Steam Deck.
I'm not saying the system is cheaper in Japan because of exchange rates ... My wife is literally paid in Yen. But it's much cheaper then the other options in Japan, and even more so if you compare it to the relative differences outside of Japan.
The statements "Paid in Yen, the JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap compared to other gaming consoles" and "Paid in USD, the JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap compared to the international Switch" are both true, so I would argue that the general statement "The JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap" is also true.
That's what I mean by "Japanese switch" vs. international Switch. And regardless, my point that you can sell a switch for profit at $320 in Japan because manufacturing costs in Japan are so much lower is not impacted by a region lock.
I honestly enjoy discourse and I'm very happy you replied, but in the future, please reply to the post as a whole or not at all. I'm not a huge fan of Strawmen and generally don't reply to them.
As it's been stated by me and dozens of others in the comments, almost all Xboxes are assembled in the US, with parts from China. That's reason the price increase is happening outside of the US. Microsoft imports parts from China to assemble in the US, and has to pay a tariff on those parts now, skyrocketing the production cost.
Microsoft has already said they are looking to ramp down the US assembly factory and move assembly to either Mexico or India, just like how Apple has moved all assembly out of the US and to India already.
Nintendo has no plans to move production to the US, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because just like Xbox they would still have to pay tariffs on the parts they get from China. China and Japan have a free trade agreement, so it's always going to be cheaper for Nintendo to make their consoles their. That's why the Japanese Switch costs $320! The international Switch, made in Vietnam, is almost twice the price (in Japan).
Intel is the only chip maker to make the majority of their chips in the US, so if you want to make an electronic device, you have to import from China, Korea and Japan, and you pay tariffs on all your imports. There is no "magic" way to just set up a factory in the US and start cranking out consoles using US parts, because you can't get the parts you need from the US.
You need to be careful when informing your opinions with headlines. There is a lot going on under the surface which is more important.
If you take a look at MS's P/L in it's entirety, you'll find a company mitigating a crisis. The profits are only there because they slashed investment in US data centers, slashed their external investment in AI, and made massive cost saving adjustments to payroll.
Profits do not mean a company is doing great and it's all smooth sailing. Profits means management is doing their job to ensure that for every dollar they are losing on the top line, they are slashing a dollar from the bottom line. Even in a case like Microsoft, which saw growth overall, you need to look at the details and see if that growth is due to sustainable expansion, or was simply the result of unsustainable spending. That's what's happening over at MS .. the growth is only there because they pumped a TON of money into some verticals, but the profit is only their because they have already stopped spending that money.
The stock price, which is more closely tied to outlook and a consensuses on how healthy the company is over all, is down quite a bit from the $450 it was at before tariffs.
This is not a justification of MS actions. And while you're right in your assessment that companies only exist to make money, the hardware price increase is absolutely tied to tariffs. They have NOT increased prices in SEA, the only market that is insolated against the current tariffs, nor have the increased prices on other hardware that is exempt from tariffs.
As for the software price increase, that's been in the cards for a while. While Nintendo was the first to pull the trigger, Sony was actually the first to suggest they might be selling games for $80 by 2025, all the way back in 2022.
Final assembly for almost all Xbox consoles is done in the US, according to MS's discloser, with the remainder assembled in China. They do source parts from Mexico and have a large production facility in Guadalajara which used to be the final assembly facility for the 360 and the original Xbox.
I have no idea what's being made there today, nor is it's clear from any official MS discloser that I've seen, although traditionally it has been used for outdated consoles with low production runs.
Xboxes are assembled in the US using parts from China. The price is increasing outside the US because that price of these components in increasing. Ironically, is Microsoft simply built the console where it's components are made rather then have a factory in the US, prices would not be increasing outside of the USA.
Comments 2,060
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@UltimateOtaku9
It's actually zero. Says on the website. I was kinda making a cheeky comment with the copium and all. I just really, really wish the series would give us English VA again. I mean, my Japanese is descent, but I can't keep up with the constant banter while running around the map, and it's even harder to do with subtitles IMO.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@johnedwin
No physical edition. Already says on the website.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@VoidofLight
I would be very surprised if you couldn't buy them independently. All the other DX releases have been 3 at a time, but each sold separately.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@Cronodoug
I mean they are coming to Switch ...
They are not performance updates, they are remasters of games that currently run fine on Switch.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@ottoecamn
Unlikely. DX versions aren't performance updates, they are complete remasters including content updates, new PCs with full story lines, and all the pervious DLC. They've been sold at full retail in the past.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
@FishyS
It's 3 complete remasters. The past DX collections have included new areas, new recipes, sometimes a completely new post game, enhanced textures, new characters and enemy modals and complete English voice acting. They also had goodies like 4k and widescreen support, although in this case that's already present. Most also come with all, or at least all the story based, DLC. They sold for about $40ish each, the bundle is just a way to save an additional 10$ or so if you want all 3.
Not a lot of remasters I can think of outside this series that sold for LESS then the base game did on release.
Re: Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack Announced For Switch 2 And Switch
Oh wow, I wonder if it will have English voice acting. I mean, nothing against the Japanese crew, but it can be hard to keep up with the all the banter. Every DX but Lydie & Suelle added English voice, but that game was kind of a black sheep. I'll just ignore the fact that the trailer and the event are in Japanese only and huff this big old bag of copium I have for occasions like this.
Also where the heck is Atelier Lulua DX? It's the only game I haven't played because I figured they would DX it at some point and I don't want to buy it twice.
Re: Romero Games "Is Not Closed" Following Xbox Layoffs
@Daggot @SabreLevant
It's a weird word. People use it with very little consistency (same with AAA!)
Indie means "independent". We're borrowing the word from film and music industry, where being "indie" meant that you were free from studio interference. At first, that meant self published, but over time "indie studios" where formed that would publish works but were committed to offering no input or influencing the product in any way.
So, in spirit, an "indie" game is a game developed without the publisher or a parent company influencing the development team. Streets of Rage 4 would totally count, given it's publisher was also it's co-developer. It's essentially self published.
Like Daggot points out, it doesn't really have anything to do with the size of the team. And f you want to get really into the weeds, there are games like "Hi-fi Rush". The team was over 100 people, published by Bethesda Softworks, which is owned by Xbox Studios. But it's totally an indie game! The team worked in secret with no interference from Bethesda, and even after the Microsoft acquisition, they were left completely alone. On the other side of the coin, Stardew Valley, made by ONE DUDE, was not an indie game when it came out because Chucklefish imposed conditions on the final product and it's post launch support. It is now though, because Concerned Ape bought back the publishing rights.
But expecting people to have that level of understanding and do homework before using the word is just unreasonable. Indie is just a vibe in the minds of most people, and that's how the word is going to be applied in common usage.
I also agree with the key point. Self publishing a game 10 years ago was extremely hard. Doing it in a way that you could offer post launch support with things like automatic patches was basically impossible. Now with things like ID@XBox, open source engines, and even AI coding assistance, the idea that you can grab a few friends and make a video game on a small budget has never been more reasonable.
Re: Romero Games "Is Not Closed" Following Xbox Layoffs
@Serpenterror
That game, a top down action / adventure, was directed by Takeo Mogi and developed by Kemco. It was never released in NA.
John Romero was not involved in it's development in any way, nor was his studio.
The game he made was a first person shooter. It sold 40,351 copies on a budget of around 30 million, making it one of the largest flops in gaming history.
Re: Romero Games "Is Not Closed" Following Xbox Layoffs
@Pod
Game Pass makes around 3 billion a year. Microsoft spends around a billion a year putting games on the service and running the backend, according to Phil. Bloomberg estimates cannibalization (lost sales) of first party titles is at most $500 million, although likely much lower, meaning Game Pass brings in over 1.5 billion a year profit.
That margin is insanely high. In 2024 Electronic Arts made 1.7 billion in Profit, while PlayStation's average profit over the last 5 years is around 2.4 billion.
This is some back of napkin math given Microsoft doesn't publicly state Xbox's revenue or profit on it's own (outside of the larger context of Microsoft), but it's reasonable to assume Game Pass alone generates around the same profit as all of EA, and more then half of all PlayStation hardware, software, licensing fees, PSN and merch put together.
Game Pass isn't costing Microsoft money. It is their biggest cash cow, and likely one of the most profitable products in the gaming industry.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@wiiware
Again, you're trying to convince me of something that the developers themselves have said is not true, and choosing to believe it yourself. I can't stop you if that's what you want to do, but it doesn't really leave me any room to respond. Google (and AI) simply return the most popular option, which is not always the truth.
The game lists 420 people in the credits. That means the game was made by 420 people. It's really that simple. Contracting out also costs money. You saying just get 30 people together, and then spend $20+ million on contractors like they did like that's no big deal. The actual budget for games made by teams in the 20 to 30 range is rarely over 5 million. Not everyone gets blank checks from Microsoft like Expedition 33 did.
Skyrim lists 800. Cyberpunk lists 3500. GTA isn't a team of 300+ ... it's being worked on by over 1000 developers (software engineers), over 4000 additional coding and core support (sound/graphics/QA), and 1000s more for testing, marketing, publishing, and logistics.
With respect, I think you vastly underestimate the amount of work that goes into making a video game.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@John_Deacon
That makes a lot of sense to me.
While still a bit reductionist, I think a better line to draw is Western studios vs. studios in Japan. When compared to Microsoft or Sony (which, while a Japanese company, has their Western leadership make decisions about PlayStation almost exclusively) Nintendo really stand out. But when compared to other Japanese companies like Capcom (who gave everyone a 25% raise last year and had no mass layoffs), they are pretty normal. The culture of capitalism in Japan is just different. It's more of a contract between workers and management, where firing an employee is seen as a last resort. In the West, and the US specifically, workers are expendable servant who deserve no respect or consideration and have absolutely no rights.
Companies fire people one day just so they can hire someone the next day at a lower salary. EA fired 3000+ before a earnings call just to make their balance sheet look favorable, and rehired a week later. And sadly, a lot of small companies do it too. That's why I don't like the small "good guys" vs. the big "bad guys" narrative. There are all bad guys. There are no white hats in late stage capitalism.
As for Microsoft, I kinda feel silly "defending" a evil corporation who I detest on principal, but it comes down to engagement, sadly. Sony closed 4 Studios sense 2024, only one less then Microsoft. PlayStation greenlit 14 live service games and cancelled 6-8 of them, resulting in a 8% reduction of their workforce off the bat, then 210 more at Bungie , and 200 more when they closed Firewalk and Neon Koi studios. That's just in the last 24 months! But we don't hear about that much because engagement is what drives revenue for sites like this, and you don't get engagement unless you're talking smack about someone people HATE. You also don't hear a lot about how Expedition 33, the highest rated game of the year, wouldn't have happened without Microsoft finding it and overfunding it ... for the same reason. Or how many indie darlings wouldn't have happened without ID@Xbox and the tools it provides small developers at no cost.
Don't get me wrong, they suck. But everyone sucks. You just never hear about the good and always hear about the bad when it comes to Microsoft because that's what leads to a healthy comment section.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@wiiware
Again, this is simply a misconception. I totally get why you might think that, it's been repeated dozens of times at pretty much every level.
The "core team" working on the game was around 80 to 90 people. They outsourced almost all the sound design. Very little of the graphics and art was done inhouse. They only have ONE writer on staff, she worked with a outsourced team. That's not grunt work, they are core roles, and the people working on them were part of the team from almost day one until the project was complete. It's incidental that the studio only has 30 employees, in the same was no one would ever say that Xenoblades 2 was made by a small team of 80 people just because only 80 people from Monolith Soft were working on it, supported by 200+ people that worked for Nintendo.
The game had a budget of $30 million. That's a far cry from "cheap". Sandfall Interactive didn't have anywhere near that much cash on hand, and could only afford to make the game because evil, soulless Microsoft pumped millions into the project, which list 412 people in it's credits. Super Mario Wonder, for contrast, lists 435 people.
Expedition 33 is a success story. But it's not a story of a small, independent upstart team that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. It's a small team that took 10-20$ million from the second largest company on earth and used it to pay 100s of people to make a bloody fantastic game. Like I said, the developers themselves are telling people to stop spreading the narrative that this was a game made by a small team on a tight budget. It's not really up for debate.
And when you think about firing 100s of people ... there are over 370 people who made the game who are no longer getting any income from Sandfall Interactive. The only difference is they never hired them in the first place. Is that really any better?
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@wiiware
I totally get why it looks that way. But in 2024, among the high profile layoff and studio closings, as well as AI replacing entry level jobs, the total number of people working in game development ... increased. By around 8%.
No one ever posts the "studio hires 30 people" article, because that's not going to make people angry and get engagement. But it's happening all the time. Even in some of the high profile cases, a studio will fire 200 people on Monday and turn around and hire 500 people on Tuesday. It's only the firing that you're ever going to hear about though.
Also the developers of Expedition 33 have posted, again and again, begging people to stop spreading the complete and total lie that it was made by 30 people. Over 300 people worked on that game. The studio only has 30 employees, but they outsourced development, QA, sound design, art design and localization to dozens of other teams. The voice actors, performance capture artists and specialists, musicians, and choir singers alone are more then 50 people, and none of them work for Sandfall Interactive.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/no-geoff-keighley-clair-obscur-expedition-33-was-not-made-by-a-team-of-under-30-developers-and-devs-say-repeating-the-myth-is-a-dangerous-path/
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@John_Deacon @JS_Comics
I mean I totally agree with your overall point, but this isn't a small studio shutting down. At a point they had 200 employees. As for "creativity" and "unique, fresh games" ... the studio produced 4 games and 2 of them are literally mods of the 1996 game Doom 2.
Compare that with the vile, evil, worse then 100 Satans Microsoft owned Compulsion Games, which has 90 employees and produced the extremely creative and stylized "Contrast" independently (which bombed), then made "We Happy Few" with Microsoft cash, which was universally praised for it's creative art style and storytelling ... and also bombed. They were allowed to try again and made the mind-blowing "South of Midnight". Which I think is also bombing? And yet they are still open and making games. If it wasn't for big daddy MS poring in funds and trusting Guillaume Provost's vison they would have shut down in 2018.
It's reductionist to say "small studio good, big study bad" or that being owned by a large company means you can't make anything experimental.
It really comes down to the talent. Romero has spent 30 years trying to make DOOM clones, regardless of the size of the team he's working with. He's infamous for firing anyone who disagreed with him or challenged his vision in any way.
Contrast that with people like Hideo Kojima and Tetsuya Takahashi who work with teams of 300+ to create unique and fresh games pretty consistently.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@sethfranum
The last time Romero worked on a DOOM game was 1996. He left ID to form his own studio, which failed spectacularly. He then formed a second studio, which also failed.
Re: Perfect Dark Voice Actor Calls On Fans To Help Series "Survive"
I mean, they didn't really "sit on" it. They spent 7 years and millions of dollars developing a reboot for Prefect Dark. It just didn't get finished. Ubisoft isn't "sitting on" Beyond good and evil just because they haven't be able to release the sequel despite working on it for ... OMG it's been 18 years.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@Smithicus
In fairness, he did make us all his bit&h. It's hard to get over that.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@Oldstalk
Come on man, I get that you hate Microsoft. That's fine. Hate them all you want, they are very hatable. But this isn't the hill you should die on.
Think about your Metroid Prime example for a second. Team Ninja didn't shut down when Nintendo pulled funding for Metroid Prime and gave it to Retro Studios instead, because Fumihiko Yasuda knowns how to run a game development studio, and had cash on hand to continue to pay his workers until they found a new project. And in this case, if Microsoft had done what you are saying they should have done, which is move the game to another studio for a reboot like Nintendo did, Romero studio would still have to shut down! They still would have lost funding. You are literally saying that it's okay when Nintendo cut funding to Team Ninja, but not okay when Microsoft did the exact same thing here.
Paradox Interactive had planned to to make a sequel to Empire of Sin, but pulled out when the game bombed harder then a compressed diamond. They also pulled millions in funding for planned updates. So this isn't even the FIRST TIME the studio has had funding pulled from them by a publisher. They survived that time because John hadn't burned all their capital on a 6 year project that never got made ... yet.
The studio made bad games that lost them money for 5 years before Microsoft even showed up. They spend 6 years developing a game they didn't release, without any involvement from Microsoft. Romero's first go at game development without John Carmack was arguably the single greatest disaster in gaming history, and Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
Just go find another reason to hate Microsoft or another thing to blame them for. It's not going to be hard. But this is 100% John's fault, and he should be held accountable.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@Oldstalk
He's not a newbie. Nor is his studio. They have produced 4 games, and 3 of them were critically panned and bombed. There only profitable game was "Gunman Taco Truck". You remember Gunman Taco Truck right? The team was working on a FPS for 6 years. John cancelled it last year, all on him lonesome. Microsoft was in no way connected to it.
And like I said, if he DID have a strong prototype or alpha of the game Microsoft pulled funding from, he could have easily shopped around for other investors or tried to secure additional funding via Kick Starter or other means. As a the head of a studio, this is something you should plan for an have a contingency for, because it happens all the time.
I'm not in any way defending Microsoft. I'm defending evaluating facts. And in this case, the story here is that John and Brenda Romero don't seem to be very good at running a game studio, and that the director and project lead behind Daikatana might be better at programing games then he is at leading game development.
Re: Romero Games Reportedly Shut Down Following Xbox Layoffs
@Coversnail @Oldstalk @Tendogamerxxx @Anachronism
John Romero is not at Xbox. None of the staff that lost their jobs are at Xbox. They work for John Romero at an independent studio, and John Romero fired them.
John Romero is blaming the layoffs on Microsoft, saying that they "pulled funding" from a game they were working on. However the fact that he was in a position that if a SINGLE investor dropped out, the studio was left with no cash on hand, no assists, and no plan to seek funding though other means like Kick Starter is 100% on him. Horrible management. Not to mention that if MS is pulling funding, there is likely a reason they no longer believe the game is going to show any ROIC, like him not hitting milestones or meeting deliverables. The Studio recently canalled another project, and none of there pervious games have been overly successful, so this isn't that shocking.
Losing a publisher or a investor while a game is in development is pretty common. But if you have a solid product you can shop around and find a replacement pretty quickly, especially if you have the name power of John Romero. This really shouldn't be an issue.
He is hoping that by name dropping Microsoft, a soulless and hated company, people will not investigate the facts and will not hold him accountable for his horrible leadership and decision making. Looks like it's working.
Re: Random: Of Course Helldivers Are Now Calling For A Switch 2 Port
@Serpenterror
Publishing rights are with Sony exclusively. Owning an Intellectual Property means you can decide what to do with sequels, merch, and anything else that uses the Helldivers name. Those are decisions that Arrowhead make.
What consoles the game is published on, how much it costs, what the box art looks like, how many (if any) physical copies are made and anything else around selling the game Helldivers 2 is exclusively and independently made by Sony. That's why the game briefly ended up requiring PSN and Arrowhead had to ask nicely for Sony to backtrack, rather then simply being able to make that decision themselves.
The decision to publish this game on PC was made by Sony. The decision to publish the game on Xbox was not only made by Sony, but the port was coded by Sony's first party Nixxes Software without any input from Arrowhead. This is a Sony port.
In that future, Arrowhead could not remake, remaster, or re-release the game Helldivers 2 without Sony's permission.
Publishing rights are big deal, and are one of the worst ways the gaming industry is stacked against smaller developers. For example, Concerned Ape needed to BUY BACK publishing rights to Stardew Valley from Chucklefish to be allowed to keep patching it after they had decided to sunset the game. The publisher can pull your game from stores, lower the price to the point where you don't make any money, stop offering bug fixes, or launch a highly offensive marketing campaign and you have absolutely no control over that.
Arrowhead owns the concept of the Helldivers series, but for all effective purposes and in every way that matters, Sony owns the game Helldivers 2.
Re: Random: Of Course Helldivers Are Now Calling For A Switch 2 Port
@Lord
It's important to remain objective, especially on the internet. You're likely referring to the podcast The Game Business by Chris Dring, that got picked up by a lot of gaming sites, in which he suggested developers were asking "why bother" making a game for Xbox.
First off, it's completely hearsay. He said he "heard" developers saying that, but gave no examples and no one has come forward to collaborate his story. Second, it wasn't about sales numbers. HIs argument was that if Microsoft is going to publish games on Sony hardware, developers are going to stop making games for Xbox. That argument, you might notice, is completely insane and illogical.
In reality, the Xbox Series systems have an install base of around 35 million. That's a lot of costumers. It's also insanely easy (almost automated at this point) to make a Xbox port of a game that's already on PC. By contrast, when Ubisoft and EA started to question if they should make games for the Wii U, it had an install base of less then 10 million AND required extremely specialized coding for ports, with most developers saying it was harder to port a game to the Wii U then it was to make a Wii U game was scratch. (1)
It is absolutely not the case that Xbox games are losing developers money. Even Chris Dring never made that argument.
Switch 2 only has an install base of 5 million right now, and while that number is sure to increase (a lot!) over the next few years, if it's worth making games for a potential audience of 5 million, it's absolutely worth making games for an audience of 7 times that number.
1 - And this is likely true, as several Wii U "ports" where actually full remakes for the system, built from the ground up.
Re: Random: Of Course Helldivers Are Now Calling For A Switch 2 Port
I think this is just the reality of live service games. You're simply leaving too much money on the table by limiting your player base that the theoretical benefit of having an exclusive just isn't worth it. Sony canceled at least 6 live service games (that we know of), shuttered another after a week, and has indefinitely delayed another. They need to milk their hit for everything it's worth.
The "console war" is a thing that only exists in the minds of commenters and internet warriors. Sony just wants to make as much money as possible, and doesn't care how they make it. Microsoft saw Xbox revenue go up 61% last year despite hardware sales being down 42%, largely due to games they published on PlayStation. This year, Xbox is set to release more games on PlayStation then Sony is. That's obviously going to get Sony questioning if the "exclusive" model is still the best way to go in every case.
As for a Switch 2 port ... the thing people keep forgetting is that as they were not actively working on a Switch 2 launch title or part of Nintendo's partner program they got a Switch 2 dev kit, at best, a month ago.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Technical Analysis Of Street Fighter 6 On Switch 2
@Discostew
You're talking about the theoretical performance of the platforms as a whole. That is not, and never had been, at issue.
I'm talking about the individual choices made by the teams optimizing the games for Series S and PS4, which in this individual case, resulted in a PS4 port that focused more on frame for frame image quality, and a Series S port that focused more on looking good "at speed".
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Technical Analysis Of Street Fighter 6 On Switch 2
@Andy_Witmyer @Discostew
It's important to remember that rasterization is always a choice. It's not always about raw power, it's how you choose to optimize based on what's important to the game.
With the Series S, the decision was made to lock the frame rate at 60 and the resolution at 1080p, given that's probably what's most important in a fighter. That was never an option on the less powerful PS4, so it runs at 30fps. The lower framerate and lower processing load allows the PS4 to run higher res textures, more defined background objects, and better post processing then the Series S, even though it's a less powerful machine.
So the PS4 has higher IMAGE QUALITY then the Series S, in that each frame uses more advanced rasterization to create a "better" looking image ... just like the author points out. As a game, however, most would argue the Series S is "better" because of the higher frame rate.
The whole reason sites like DF exist is that it's not always simple to understand how one version is different then another. There is nuance that is not always obvious.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Technical Analysis Of Street Fighter 6 On Switch 2
BIAS Nintendo hating DF put up another laughable "review" that's just an excuse to crap all over ...
Oh wait, it's mostly positive? Like I was saying, I've always loved DF. Completely valid and accurate breakdown, as always. Keep up the good work!
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Cyberpunk 2077 Tech Review On Switch 2
@SirLink
"Full res textures" isn't really a rasterization issue. It's almost completely dependent on VRAM and how fast the card can move information from storage to that RAM. They are not being rendered in real time, it's like a "sticker" being applied to objects in game. So a Switch 2 upgrade to support the Witcher 3's high res textures would be pretty simple, and the Switch 2 with it's dedicated decompressor could easily handle them. I would expect any "Switch 2" version of the Witcher 3 to be a much beefier update, and I would be surprised if it's not currently in development.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Cyberpunk 2077 Tech Review On Switch 2
@Blaeugh
People in general, especially in the age group most likely to post here, hate experts. Experts say things that they don't understand, and that makes them feel uncomfortable. Experts build on established knowledge and information thy don't have, and that makes them feel inadequate. That's why if you break down almost every negative comments, it's about how "non expert" YouTube influencers or just people with common sense understand things better, and these so called "experts" with their fancy tools, big words and unfamiliar acronyms are "frauds."
It's always been like this, it's just recently in the West hating and ignoring excerpts is being encouraged from multiple forces, so the same people who would have just ignored a post about DF in the past now feel embolden to make comments. This isn't really "hate for DF" as much as it's hate from a growing group of people who think all information should be disseminated, unquestioned and unchallenged, from a central authority taking issue that Nintendolife would publish the opinion of "experts".
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Cyberpunk 2077 Tech Review On Switch 2
@mikegamer
I really don't get where you are coming from. If this was an Xbox FPS dropping to 25 FPS while in 40 FPS "performance mode" they would label the game unplayable and leave it at that. The fact that they say anything positive about the port AT ALL, and don't just use the video to berate the developers while telling the audience to avoid the game at all costs is extremely uncharacteristic and shows they are currently willing to give the Switch 2 the benefit of the doubt in a HUGE way.
And just in general, there content is mostly unbias. If anything, they are lenient of Nintendo. They crap all over games for having bad or poorly implemented AA, for example, but for Nintendo games that don't use AA at all, they parse the "artistic style" rather then go hardcore into ripping apart the rasterization.
Re: Video: Digital Foundry Delivers Its Cyberpunk 2077 Tech Review On Switch 2
I feel like on any other system, a FPS that can't even reliably hold 30 FPS in it's 40 FPS performance mode would be universally labeled "unplayable", and exactly no one would call it "impressive". The "but it's a portable" argument only goes so far ... sub 30 frame rates don't magically become a non-issue just because I'm holding the console.
Re: Switch 2 eShop "Top-Selling" Games At Launch Revealed
Looks like whoever it was at the NOA that bet the Japanese office that people would pay for an instruction manual and not in any way hold it against the company that such a thing exists won that bet. Gratz, man.
Re: Poll: With One Week To Go, What Are Your Switch 2 Launch-Day Plans?
I was going to head to the beach for a picnic lunch with my wife, then hit up that really nice pub by the docks. After that, D&D with my old friends.
In fairness, that's what we do every Thursday ...
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Dev Used Procedural Generation To Manage 100,000 Different Assets
@VoidofLight
They are the same process. I've been using AI generation for over a decade, and it's trained the way the overwhelming majority of AI models are trained; iteratively. You train on a small data set that you create, then train it off the best examples it generates based on that data set, and so on for 1000s of generations. This works because the system isn't trying to be general; it's very specific to one task, like making a map, creating a shape, or texturing a soild.
Computer AI is anything that learns from a neural network. It has nothing to do with the data set it is training off. John McCarthy systems didn't train off large data sets, but they were absolutely AI.
The confusion here is that when most people think of AI, they think of Large Language Models, or Transformers. These are TYPES of AI that require huge datasets because they are GENERAL, and can perform an astonishing number of tasks. But AI has been a thing for 70 years, and while the newer models are all most non-professionals are familiar with, generative AI has been part of artistic workflow for 20+ years.
My point is that this article is basically making a choice to call "AI" something other there then "AI" because it understands the negative association. If EA was using trained generative models to make maps, they would have called it AI. Wouldn't matter what it was trained on.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Dev Used Procedural Generation To Manage 100,000 Different Assets
AI - When a developer that you don't like uses a neural network to train a system to preform a generative task
Procedural generation - When a developer you like uses a neural network to train a system to preform a generative task.
Re: Embracer Group Renames Its Lord Of The Rings-Themed Gaming Division
"Ours games are never late, nor are they early, they are precisely
canceled in pre-production, with all staff let go and the studio closed"
Re: Talking Point: The Switch 2 Pre-Order Situation Sucks, But Can Nintendo Do Anything About It?
I don't see how this is a Nintendo problem.
If you live in a a part of the world where shipping and distribution isn't subject to the whims of a mad tyrant, everything went pretty well. Stock levels were extremely high for a console launch, the lotteries were handled well, and scalping is all but non-existent.
Nintendo can't do anything about cultural attitudes that decry lotteries as "unfair" and insist on a easily manipulated first come first serve system. If you live in a part of the world where that's the case, yeah, scalping is going to be a real problem ... but it's not Nintendo's problem.
Nintendo can't do anything about disruptions to shipping and supply chains that come from disruptions of decade's old trade norms. If you live in the part of the world most effected by this, yeah, it's going to be a rough ride. But again, nothing Nintendo can do about that. They have spent years preparing for this launch and the rug got pulled out from under them at the 11th hour. If anything, they are victims here, not the ones we should be looking to for a "solution".
All and all I think this was one of the best console launches I can remember, from a logistics point at least. Not everyone is going to get one day one, but that's to be expected. Any anxiety about if restocks will happen in a timely manor have nothing to do with Nintendo, but instead at subject to geo-political factors beyond their control. It's like complaining that you can't get a Switch 2 in China. Sure, you can't, and that sucks ... but Nintendo isn't the reason.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Innovations, Localisation Dreams, "That Big Playtest Thing" - Nintendo Life Letters
"Mouse mode" is already a thing. To activate "mouse mode" on your Xbox console ... plug in a mouse.
There are over 200 games that support mouse controls, including games like the Age of Empire series, allowing you to forgo the stick controls for a traditional PC style experience.
If it was a big deal that fundamentally changed the way gamers approached console controls, we would know that already, and the PS5 would have carried it over from PS4.
Nintendo's offering is slightly different in that it allows you to "temporarily" switch to mouse controls with the controller you already have in hand (providing you have a flat surface and are using the Joy Con), but I don't see that type of "hybrid" control system being anything good. It will be like switching to motion controls for a forced segment more often then it will be a actual rewarding experience.
So the idea of a mouse controlling a console game? Had that for years, no one cares. And the idea of having to use the Joy Con instead of a pro controller for some games because they have a tacked on gimmick that forces me to use a mouse on my knee? Sounds awful.
Some people will get value out of it for sure. Full mouse support of games like Civ 7 at a café or library without needing additional hardware will be nice. But I think the usage cases will be few and far between, and it's not something developers are going to put a lot of focus on in the long run.
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed
@Willo567
Because the game's settings will need to be optimized around it being on. So if the game is going to run at 60fps, the developer needs to target settings that will allow it to run at 60fps WHEN CHAT IS ON. That means even when you don't have it on personally, you are taking a performance hit in terms of visual quality so the game is still playable for people who use chat. You wont get any benefit from having the chat off.
In short, the resources for chat are still resources that developers CAN NOT USE for gameplay, but they are not included in the system OS reserves that develops also can't use. They are "reserved" resources, above and beyond what's listed.
Dynamic scaling (increasing the settings when chat is off) really an option for two reasons. The first is that Nintendo doesn't allow for the chat resources to be used for gameplay even when chat is off (just like Microsoft did with Kinect) at an API level. Second, even if they free up the resources at a later date it will likely requires a prohibitive level of coding especially when looking at ports, because the system architecture is built around those resources being "walled off".
Again looking at Kinect, even when MS stopped shopping the Kinect with the system and freed up the resources, almost no games used the additional resources because it just wasn't worth the time and effort.
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed
A lot of comments seem to be unsure about how the resources devoted to chat work. They are NOT part of the OS reserved resources. They are above and beyond that. That's why you need a tool to test how your game is going to run when chat is active.
You wouldn't need a tool like that if they were part of the reserved resources, as gameplay wouldn't be impacted by chat being on or off. The resources would already pre-allocated.
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed
@anzzjam
Kinect was great! It probably wasn't worth the cost, both in dollars and system resources, but the voice and hand-wave menu controls were great, and the very few games that got "better with Kinect" right were pretty fun and novel.
Not that mention that without Kinect, we wouldn't have the single greatest piece of Media made in the Star Wars universe ...
https://youtu.be/lg_FoEy8T_A
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed
@SaltySpitoon957 @Clammy
Not only can you disable it fully with parental controls, even by default you can only connect with people using friend codes. It's not like you can fire up chat on a online game and be automatically put in a room with everyone in your "party".
Re: Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed
It's kinda amazing how the Switch 2 design choices parallels the original Xbox One.
On the gamer side, we have a number of openly customer hostile practices around game ownership and preservation, from digital game cards to an EULA that says they can BRICK YOUR CONSOLE for any reason, at any point, if they think that maybe you're pirating games (or, for any reason at all, really).
Now on the developer side, this mirrors what happened with Kinect, with a huge amount of system resources devoted to a add on that not only doesn't benefit every game, but is unavailable to people who do not agree to pay a monthly service fee. So if you buy the console and don't use NSO, every single game you play will be taking a performance hit because the developers needed to make sure it would still run well as other people used a service you don't even have access to. Even single player games will need to account for the incredibly small percentage of uses that will use chat while playing them.
Microsoft asked gamers to log on to the internet once every 30 days, and they have still not recovered from the PR damage that did more then a decade later. Nintendo seems to be completely unaffected by a solid month of every bit of news coming from not only their new console, but changes to the EULA and to the functionality of their old console being awful, misguided, and anti-consumer.
Brand loyalty has always been baffling to me ... but I am at a whole new level of baffled.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@westman98
I few points:
The Switch JP is manufactured Chania is assembled and packaged in Japan. I should have been more clear on what I meant by that. Nothing is manufactured in Japan. Regardless, the core point is "The one in Vietnam costs more to make" ... which shouldn't be that contraveral. The labor cost in China are much lower as are the cost to transport parts.
The Switch 2 is not "subsidized". It is being sold at profit. I personally love the narrative that it's just Japan doing Japan and putting customers before profits, and initially I pushed that narrative. But from Nintendo's internals it's looking like that isn't the case. NOA and NUK have chosen a higher mark up, and the manufacturing costs of the JP unit are lower.
Beyond that, while I again don't disagree with you on any given point, I'm not 100% on what your core argument is. That's probably my bad, and I apologize. If you were simply trying to correct the error I made and generally inform my opinion, then thank you!
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@westman98
I get what you're saying and you're not wrong, but it's not relevant to any of the points I'm making.
I think the two best ways to process the price of the Japanese Switch are as follows:
Global - If you look at the price in USD, that is the price that a system could be sold in USD while still being profitable. The exchange rates cancel out. So my point isn't about it's affordability in Japan, it's about it's manufacturing cost when converted to USD. The Switch that is being manufactured in Japan (The JP locked version) is cheaper to make then the Switch being manufactured in Vietnam, because of how the supply lines work and Japans favorable trade relations with China.
Internal - If you are going to talk about the system's affordability in Japan, you should look to compare it to other systems, not the original Switch. It is currently 25,000 Yen cheaper then the digital PS5, 20,000 Yen cheaper then the Steam Deck. Compare that to the US, where the Switch 2 is $50 more then the PS5 digital or the Steam Deck.
I'm not saying the system is cheaper in Japan because of exchange rates ... My wife is literally paid in Yen. But it's much cheaper then the other options in Japan, and even more so if you compare it to the relative differences outside of Japan.
The statements "Paid in Yen, the JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap compared to other gaming consoles" and "Paid in USD, the JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap compared to the international Switch" are both true, so I would argue that the general statement "The JP Switch 2 is insanely cheap" is also true.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@Jester676
That's what I mean by "Japanese switch" vs. international Switch. And regardless, my point that you can sell a switch for profit at $320 in Japan because manufacturing costs in Japan are so much lower is not impacted by a region lock.
I honestly enjoy discourse and I'm very happy you replied, but in the future, please reply to the post as a whole or not at all. I'm not a huge fan of Strawmen and generally don't reply to them.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@Jester676
As it's been stated by me and dozens of others in the comments, almost all Xboxes are assembled in the US, with parts from China. That's reason the price increase is happening outside of the US. Microsoft imports parts from China to assemble in the US, and has to pay a tariff on those parts now, skyrocketing the production cost.
Microsoft has already said they are looking to ramp down the US assembly factory and move assembly to either Mexico or India, just like how Apple has moved all assembly out of the US and to India already.
Nintendo has no plans to move production to the US, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because just like Xbox they would still have to pay tariffs on the parts they get from China. China and Japan have a free trade agreement, so it's always going to be cheaper for Nintendo to make their consoles their. That's why the Japanese Switch costs $320! The international Switch, made in Vietnam, is almost twice the price (in Japan).
Intel is the only chip maker to make the majority of their chips in the US, so if you want to make an electronic device, you have to import from China, Korea and Japan, and you pay tariffs on all your imports. There is no "magic" way to just set up a factory in the US and start cranking out consoles using US parts, because you can't get the parts you need from the US.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@jikflet
You need to be careful when informing your opinions with headlines. There is a lot going on under the surface which is more important.
If you take a look at MS's P/L in it's entirety, you'll find a company mitigating a crisis. The profits are only there because they slashed investment in US data centers, slashed their external investment in AI, and made massive cost saving adjustments to payroll.
Profits do not mean a company is doing great and it's all smooth sailing. Profits means management is doing their job to ensure that for every dollar they are losing on the top line, they are slashing a dollar from the bottom line. Even in a case like Microsoft, which saw growth overall, you need to look at the details and see if that growth is due to sustainable expansion, or was simply the result of unsustainable spending. That's what's happening over at MS .. the growth is only there because they pumped a TON of money into some verticals, but the profit is only their because they have already stopped spending that money.
The stock price, which is more closely tied to outlook and a consensuses on how healthy the company is over all, is down quite a bit from the $450 it was at before tariffs.
This is not a justification of MS actions. And while you're right in your assessment that companies only exist to make money, the hardware price increase is absolutely tied to tariffs. They have NOT increased prices in SEA, the only market that is insolated against the current tariffs, nor have the increased prices on other hardware that is exempt from tariffs.
As for the software price increase, that's been in the cards for a while. While Nintendo was the first to pull the trigger, Sony was actually the first to suggest they might be selling games for $80 by 2025, all the way back in 2022.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@MrCarlos46
Final assembly for almost all Xbox consoles is done in the US, according to MS's discloser, with the remainder assembled in China. They do source parts from Mexico and have a large production facility in Guadalajara which used to be the final assembly facility for the 360 and the original Xbox.
I have no idea what's being made there today, nor is it's clear from any official MS discloser that I've seen, although traditionally it has been used for outdated consoles with low production runs.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@MocawNow
Comment #61.
Xboxes are assembled in the US using parts from China. The price is increasing outside the US because that price of these components in increasing. Ironically, is Microsoft simply built the console where it's components are made rather then have a factory in the US, prices would not be increasing outside of the USA.