You're not wrong. The way to build a legal emulator (as proposed by legal experts for basically ever, and what Nintendo said recently) is to make it so that the key can only be supplied from original hardware.
One of the key goals when the DMCA was written with the goal of making emulators illegal, which is why the "digital key" clause 1201(a)(1)(A) is so vague. If you circumvent a digital protection in any way, you violate the DMCA. Doesn't matter what the protection is, doesn't matter how you circumvent it. So your emulator has to leave the digital protection completely intact or it violates that statute.
I can't hazard a guess as to why Nintendo does anything. Maybe they are in talks with Dolphin? Who can say. But based on the letter they sent out, they do not consider Dolphin "legal".
Legal emulators are possible though. Nintendo MAKES a legal Switch emulator. It's included with the Dev kit so you can easily test your builds on the same PC you are coding them on, but it can't run pre-released games. You could, in theory, make one that used an external connection (like USB) to have the bios validated by original hardware.
Now that the gates are open, I'm sure a lot of people WAY smarter them me both on the technical and legal side are on it, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw commercial emulator-like products in the next few years.
I completely agree with you, but it's important to note (as Nintendo recently pointed out in a open letter from their legal team) .. the ball is in the emulator developer's court. Don't include a BOIS key, or a way to read a BOIS key supplied by the user, they will not seek legal action against your emulator.
So just like the armchair legal experts have been saying for decades, you CAN do literally everything EXCEPT play pirated games with a emulator, the emulator just has to be built from the ground up to not allow pirated games to play. And I think it's very telling to how valid the "people use emulators for legitimate reasons" argument is that, despite there being a completely legal option to release an emulator that locks out pirated games ... no one really has. They either make that the key selling point or include backdoors that allow for easy modification to allow for it.
Maybe now that Nintendo has clearly spelled out what makes emulation, in their opinion, illegal someone will finally make a legal emulator for legitimate users.
What you're talking about is very real. Sony has a history of reacting to success with open hostility towards it's customer base. When Microsoft was kicking their butt all over the Xbox 360 era, they made it their single point of marketing pride that they didn't charge, and would never charge, for online services. THE DAY they first outsold Xbox in a quarter, not only did they start charging, but they started charging for the free service ... they didn't upgrade it with dedicated servers like Xbox live had.. Now that they are dominating the space, we get a $30 piece of plastic if you want the privilege of putting your console vertical, 14 live service games in development, and an interview where they confirmed doubling down on live service after "Concord" because the problem isn't live service games, it's that gamers don't understand how live service is what they really want.
On the flip side, Microsoft was very customer hostile the entire time they were on top, then all of a sudden they lost markets share and we get "Play Anywhere", ID@XBOX, world class accessibility commitment, and dozens of other customer friendly changes that they COULD have been doing the whole time, but didn't. Will these go away if they claw their way to the top again? History says "probably".
But that said, I don't think we have anything to fear from Nintendo. Nintendo has a history of winning. They won the 8bit and 16bit era, and the 1st "console war" in general. They had the Wii. They have the Switch. But they also have known huge failure, and that's always kept them humble. The virtual boy, the Wii U, the Nintendo PlayStation (which didn't even get a release). At no point has Nintendo drastically changed there identity ... Wii U and Switch Nintendo are basically the same company, and that company is no different then t was in the Virtual Boy ear or when the DS was printing money faster then the US mint.
So I'm not afraid that Nintendo will "change". This is what they have always been. Huge ups, huge downs, but generally "winning".
If anything, Nintendo of America has been emboldened by the market share in the US increasing so much, and that's been awful for us as they toss their weight around to force changes to bring games inline with Western values. I see that getting worse if the Switch 2 is also a huge success outside of Japan, and that makes me sad.
Yakuza - That one where you have to teach a shy girl how to be a better dominatrix.
Also Yakuza - That one where a child asks you to buy them pornography.
Also Yakuza - The one where you have to protect a Michel Jackson impersonator from thugs dressed up like zombies from "Thriller", doing the dance from "Thriller".
Wait, are they from Zero and not Kiwami? I can't remember. If so, they are technically not on Switch yet, but still ... you can just pick any Yakuza quest.
It looks like Ryza's combat, which is active time based, not an action game. You don't move your characters around or have complete control, you issue commands that are executed in order. There is a complex web of chains and reactions, which is why it looks so ... busy.
Personally I think Ryza has some of the best and most gratifying combat in an RPG, so if this is building on that system it should great.
It's not unheard of. If you're game is targeting 60fps on PS4/Xbox One but only 30fps on Switch, what's being rendered on the Switch might look "better" and still be less resource intensive.
It's also important to note that "better" is extremely subjective. A lot of Switch ports turn off global illumination, SSR, and / or complex shadow mapping, which can free up resources for other rendering techniques. Depending on your eye for detail and personal preference, that might look "better" to you. Like how a game with obviously messed up reflections and low polygon shadows might look "worse" then a game where they are both just turned off., or how a game with really bad texture pop in might look worse then a game that just has lower res textures.
DOOM is another edge case. Screen shots of that game look horrible and nowhere near Xbox One, plus it's lower resolution, but they completely reworked the motion blurring for the Switch. It so much more advanced then the Xbox One version that you could argue it looks better being played.
Graphics are complicated, and at the end of the day, it's really the choices the devs make and the resources they devote to finding creative solutions that determine the quality of the port.
Just to chime in on some relevant legal realities. What's going to happen is pure speculation, so speculate away! I just hope I can frame that speculation in fact.
The film will be subject to the copyright and IP law of the country the film is being made in, even though the IP and movie rights are both owned by a Japanese company. That's good news for the movie, because it looks like it's being made in the US, where they can argue "fair use". Japan offers no such exclusion.
It's a double edge sword though. Nintendo (A Japanese game publisher and developer) generally turns a blind eye to things like this IN JAPAN, because Japan has no enforcement clause in copyright or IP law. In the US, you can lose the right to enforcement if you knowingly allow infringing works to be made. That's why Nintendo of America (a US company that handles Nintendo's distribution as well as legal issues in the US) sues the crap out of anyone for any reason. In Japan, you can allow cool things like this to happen and focus on shutting down things that might tarnish your brand, but in the US you can't. You have to go after everyone as soon as there is reasonable exposure.
Fan films are not unheard of. It's possible they might be able to make this, but the timing is bad. It's a petty reasonable argument that it's being made now to knowingly take advantage of the hype around "a Zelda movie", and from there to argue brand confusion. My prediction is this gets shut down, but anything could happen.
Japan's worker protection is much better then what you would find in the US, but lags behind most of the UK and the EU, and can't hold a candle to places like Germany and Norway.
Like most countries, they have The Labor Standards Act that sets the foundation for working conditions while regulating wages and working hours, and they have the Labor Union Act to protect the right to organize and bargain collectively. About 17% of people are in a union, which is high ... but not top tier.
With that said, no law or no union I am aware of offers protection to people who have committed sexual assault. You can fire people for doing crimes, especially contracted workers who will have standards of behavior worked into their contract. Idols, for example, get fired all the dang time for dating, which is often forbidding in their contract.
The complication here is that he settled, so the accusations where never proven in court. That's why he wasn't flat out fired.
People are upset with Fuji TV because the socially accepted "correct" thing to do would have been to:
1) Immediately disclose the accusation. 2) Start a private investigation into the accusations,. 3) Publicly disclose the results of that investigation 4) Take appropriate action based on the findings. 5) Disclose that he settled out of court, and the settlement was unfavorable for him.
Instead they went with don't tell anyone, hide the whole thing and hope no one ever finds out. That's the problem. It's not really that this guy might have done a crime, it's that Fuji TV covered it up and betrayed the public trust.
To me, I found the teams to be ... odd. Unless you sleep on it like a dragon, the only reason you like "money" is the experiences you buy with it, and if you like presents guess what? You like the experience of getting a present. Team superset vs two of it's own subsets?
Mah, still had a blast. And like I always say, we're all winners today.
It's interesting to reflect on and contract the almost universal success and profitability that comes from taking these 80s and 90s properties that where made for children and containing to make them for children's today against the almost universal failure that comes from attempting to "update" them to be popular with the same fans that enjoyed them when they first came out.
Props to whoever ignored the loudest voices on the internet and saved us from the gritty sonic-verse made to appeal to a 40+ demographic that I'm sure was almost greenlit at some point.
Not saying I find these movies great. Or good. Or ... watchable ...
But they are not for me, and I think not making them for me was the right decision.
Sorry to disappoint, but this is outside my wheelhouse. I know about IP and patents because I own and have defended them, not because I have a background in law.
This seems like a simple contract dispute, and as such there isn't much to speculate about unless we can see the exact terms of the contract. It's not a dispute about what is legal and what isn't, it's just a dispute over if SEGA did what they said they would do in the contract of if they didn't.
Haha, Leanbox is Xbox, Vert is a huge breasted "audit" who is heavy into "gamer" culture and shooters, Lowee (Wii) is Nintendo, which is why Blanch if always worried about how she looks like a child. Lastation (PlayStation) is Sony, and Noir is a closeted nerd who always has to look "cool". Neptune is literally the Saga Neptune. Even the colors line up!
The sisters are the portable systems. The DS is Ram and Rom who are twins and really childlike, Uni is the PSP and always trying to be just like her big Sister, Vert has no sister and is really jealous of the others, and Nepgear is the Game Gear.
I have a friend who is CRAZY into this series and played it for over a decade without realizing any of that, so if that wasn't a sarcastic post, don't feel bad.
While I very much apricate what you are saying, I think the disconnect here comes from how "right wing" and "right wing Christian Nationalism" are not the same thing.
Christen Nationalism is ideology that believes we should be beholden to Christen values, but only our national values (rather then ruled by the central Christian authority). "Right Wing" means support of a King or traditional rule. So "right wing Christian Nationalism" is the idea that a single interpretation of Christian ideas should be imposed universally by the established leadership. Left wing Christian nationalism, which is totally a thing, would instead suggest that Chastain values should be imposed by local leadership, not a central authority.
The type of changes you are talking about are based on inclusive vs. non-inclusive ideology, and are not the "opposite" of Christian nationalism. Both can happen at the same time, you don't have to pick on or the other.
The main disconnect seems to be people seeing the words "right wing" and thinking that means a right wing political ideology vs. a left wing political ideology, rather then the accurate way of using the English language to differentiate between a group that seeks central authority over a group that seeks distributed authority.
It's also important to note that the decisions to make changes to the content of Nintendo games and what is part of a Nintendo direct are made by the Japanese game developer "Nintendo". They had no hand in the decision not to allow these game on the e-shop in the US or the UK, and these games are currently available on the e-shop run by that company. "Nintendo of America" is the one blocking these games.
That was actually my key point; it's important to understand what NINTENDO does, and what Nintendo of America does, to better understand who is behind this decision.
Your reasoning is sound, but I think I might not of expressed my core argument as strongly as I would like.
My argument is that BECAUSE content more questionable then this exists on the E-shop already, it suggests their might be a shift in NOA's guidance towards this type of content. This would be consistent which a broader shift in US, where books that were fine to publish 5 years ago are now being pulled from shelves.
The terms "Christian Nationalism" doesn't single out a political party, it simply means that the most common reason that books and other media are facing increased scrutiny is that they violate national Cristian values.
I don't consider that statement contraveral, but I understand that might be because as someone not from or invested in the US, I see things from a much farther removed paradigm.
Edit: Honestly, I hope you're right and I'm completely off base here. I very well may be. I really appreciate people like you who take the time to attempt to inform my opinion. Thank you!
As someone not from the US, I think I used the words "Far right Christen Nationalism" not fully appreciating the emotional response they would invoke. Christian Nationalism is a thing that is present in all countries, and is independent of pollical system or leadership. In Japan, it was Christen Nationalist that imposed censorship on the porn industry, for example, even though Japan has never really had a (self imposed) Christian leadership.
It simply refers to a group pressuring other groups to adopt strong Christian values. In some places in the world, this movement is weak and unable to influence policy making, but in the US it is extremely strong right now, and able to influence policy making of both parties.
5 years ago, the most common reason a book was banned in the US was that it encouraged anti-establishment ideas, and very few books were banned. Today, 1000s of books are banned a year, and the most common reason is that they are Anti-Christian. This is a clear indicator of a strong Christian Nationalist voice, even though that time frame was one where the democrats were in power.
Strong state laws mean you always have outliers. Utah vs California. But Nintendo of America is making decisions based on national trends.
But I think the idea that NOA has updated their content guidelines to reflect this growing shift is not unlikely, and is a pretty reasonable explanation as to what is happening here.
Thanks for calling out my other posts as insightful. I really appreciate that.
I can understand how difficult it can by to shift a paradigm, but both the publisher and the developer have confirm that this is due to a NOA and NUK rejection the game based on content. If you had some theories on what content you think causes they games to unacceptable for release in the US, while already released in Japan, I would be very interested in hearing it.
Correct, They didn't have it for a long time. Now they do again. That's how democracy works, thing shift over time. That's why it's often described as a pendulum.
If you are interested in a more informed decision, you could look at resources that track things like rejected Media content and see what's been happening over the last few years. The number of banned books in the US had increased by at least 50% a year for the last 5 years,. taken them for the G7 nation with one of the least number of banned books to the MOST, by far, in half a decade.
For reference, last year over 2000 books where challenged in Canada by Christen nationalist groups, covering 650 unique titles. Of them, less then 50 were restricted in any way.
In the US, 4,240 unique titles where targeted by Christian groups, and while it varies by state, virtually all of them face a complete or near complete ban.
So as a marketing company, you have to ask yourself if you want to publish a hyper sexual games that promotes homosexuality into that environment. You don't ask yourself if it would have been okay 5 years ago, you ask yourself if it's going to be okay next year, when the game comes out.
Because when they were published, Nintendo of America was working under different standards. There has been a DRASTIC shift over the last few years towards Christian nationalism in the US, and games that would have been completely fine only a few years ago are unpublishable today.
As a huge fan of the series, I can guess that the content in question here isn't that panty shots or the outfits ... it's that most of the girls in these games are EXTEMELY and openly gay. They molest each other constantly. In the game in question, one is contently talking about marrying one of the other girls.
It's hard to publish something like that in a country that removes books from libraries if they are written by gay authors, even if the books contain no sexual content.
Remember, Nintendo (a Japanese hardware manufacture and game developer) has NOTHIGN to do with decisions like this. They are all made by a completely independent entity in the US or the UK.
Super important to understand that it's Nintendo OF AMARICA and Nintendo UK which made these decisions, not NINTNEDO.
Nintendo, the Japanize game developer and console maker, is not involved in deciding which games are allowed on the NA/UK e-shop. That's up to a completely separate entity, a marketing and distribution company called Nintendo of America (or UK).
Market regulation means that while Nintendo owns this entity, they can not be part of it's day to day operations. They can't step in and override or even influence this decisions. They could technically fire the high level management that allowed it to happen and hire someone they thing would make a better decision, but that level of micromanagement is never a good thing.
It's important to understand because decisions like this are often due to the increasing right wing Christian nationalism in the US that says sex is bad (but graphic violence is fine) and not Nintendo trying to protect their "kid friendly" image globally. The Japanese Switch e-ship has extremely sexualized games, and many don't even contain the warning tags we see in the US ... because in Japan, that content is generally not seen as "dangerous" to children.
Nintendo doesn't change the price. Exchange rates make everything a bit confusing, but I'll do my best.
Right now, Nintendo sells the Switch to retailers in Canada and retailers in the US for the same price, let's say 37,000 Yen. Right now retailers sell the OLD unit for $300 USD or $450 CDN.
Now let's see what happens if you add a 50% tariff. None of these numbers change. Nintendo still sells the device for 37,000 Yen to retailers in both the US and Canada, but every time a retailers buys one in the US, the US government will demand 14,500 Yen or around $100 as tax. That's the tariff. An import tax paid by the retailer to the US government.
So now the retailers has paid $300 USD for the unit instead of $200 USD. In Canada, the retailers still pays around $350 CND.
In Canada, the unit will still sell for $450 CND, and the retailer makes $100 in profit. But if the retailer in the US was to continue selling it for $300, they wouldn't make any money because they had to pay a $100 tariff to import the device. So they increase the price to $400 to preserve profit.
So buying the device in the US now costs $400 USD, while buying it in Canada would cost around $320 USD.
This gives you two choices. You can buy the unit at the increased price from a US retailer, or you can buy it from a Canadian retailer and, thanks to free trade agreements, get around the tariff. This wouldn't work is the price was a bit higher, because that would put it over the exclusion and the buyer would need to pay the import tax themselves.
It should be clear that either way, no one in the US is better off. Either they pay more money for the unit, or the money leaves the US and goes to Canada, costing retail jobs. It also doesn't impact Nintendo, they didn't change their price and still make just as much money as they did before, because the tariff is an IMPORT tax, paid by the importer (the retailer), not the exporter (Nintendo).
This is why tariffs are generally never used in the way the incoming US administration plans on using them. They just don't work like that.
Nintendo will always seek to manufacture where it's least expensive to do so.
The important part is that a 100 billion billion billion percent tariff on good from China doesn't increase the cost to manufacture in China by a single penny.
it just makes it more expensive to buy goods from China in the US. Tariffs have no impact on Nintendo unless they are so prohibitive people can't afford to buy a Switch in the US. But that reality is insane; first, people would be outraged, and second, it would effect all goods equally. In a world were the Xbox and PS5 are both $1500, does the $500 Nintendo cnosole sell less? Or more?
But If anything, it's just great news for Canada, as people will simply take day trips and buy a Switch there if it's cheaper then buying in the US. That's also great for Nintendo, given both the Xbox and PS5 will be subject to import tax if bought in Canada, but Nintendo's console will likely be under the exemption for short trips. Other counties have no such exemptions, so you would be on the hook for import tax in the 25% range, not to mention logistics and shipping.
As for people in the South, Aamazon.ca delvers to the US. The "F" in NAFTA was no joke, and even under USMCA almost nothing has changed on the consumer side.
It's unlikely most of the contributors read the comments. Heck, I've written articles for websites I have legit never even been too. Slightly more likely the staff writers check them from time to time, but even that I wouldn't count on.
If you have information or a correction to an article, you might want to instead try the contact form or send it directly to the editor, Gavin Lane.
Game Pass doesn't require you to be online. On PC, you can pick a single device to work in "offline mode", and that device only needs to go online once every 30 days. Microsoft is aware that gaming laptops are a thing, and that people like to game offline.
This question is an example of the "Pepsi Fallacy".
It's this extremely prevalent belief among people who are not part of the business world that PepsiCo must cry themselves to sleep every night because they ONLY have 20% market share. That every conversation ever had by any executive is about "beating" Coke.
That's obviously ridiculous. They swim around in a giant pool of money from their 40 billion a year in profits, and have conversations around lowering overhead and increasing profitability. Even when they speak to market share, Coke doesn't come up, they simply talk about how to make their own products more attractive.
So the question should be can Sony and Microsoft be profitable in the handheld space. Nintendo isn't a factor. It's just about them getting a product to market that people are going to be interested in.
Sony has in the past; while PSP and PSV sales were never as high as they wanted them to be, they were profitable. The Q sold well despite being ... just awful, and using streaming code that was inferior to what they used to give away for free a decade ago. They are kinda like apple at this point. They could make a $900 device with a 1.5 inch screen that plays Game and Watch clones and a small demographic would eat it up. Could they make a handheld with a 8 year life span that was profitable throughout? Hell no. Could they sell the masses a hunk of crap and make a quick buck? Absolutely.
As for Microsoft ... hard to say. A Microsoft Handheld would just be a steam deck linked to Game Pass instead of Steam, and I can see that having a huge market. Also Microsoft generally makes incredible hardware ... but they also generally stop supporting it almost immediately. That's the big question; if MS commit to something, I think it could be huge. But if they treat it like every other venture into hardware, it will end up ... well, like every other Microsoft venture into hardware.
Would have to be. I mean, basically ever expert, analyst, and media outlet has ensured us that the Switch successor will be released by the end of the year.
You basically only really know how many consoles you made, and even that is "give or take".
Logistics is hard. You take a lot of short cuts. For example, if you make 20 million units and your quality console rate is 5%, you just assume you shipped 19 million. You don't actually "count".
Around 10% of units sold well be returned as defective, but only around half of them will actually be defective. You re-box them and send them back out, while you fix what you can and send them back out as well. Rather then trying to track all that you just assume you "sold" the number you shipped and adjust it later based on service tickets. There is a lot of room for data to get lost.
Then there is just shrinkage. If you ship 10,000 and the track gets highjacked, you still get paid via insurance. So are they ... sales? I mean, you sold them to a vender and got paid! And by the nature of shrinkage, you don't really have solid numbers. Anyone who's worked retail can tell you the number of any given stock item you have get miscounted and misreported all the time, even in small stores.
Sometimes it's even as simple as mixing up, both internally and in what you tell the press, sales TO, which is what you sold to venders, and sales THROUGH, which is what vendors sell to customers.
All and all, it's not unreasonable to only have a rough idea what you total sales numbers are at any given time and be off by a percentage point or two.
But in this case ... it's pretty fishy. You generally adjust your numbers and finalize them after 5 years or so. The idea that they are still actively updating sales numbers decades later and the adjustments always seem to be positive and just enough to keep it the number one selling console is ... unlikely.
Sadly, at the end of the day, there is literally nothing stopping them for just making the numbers up. It's illegal to mislead your shareholders about futures, but it's not a crime to lie you butt off to the public about historic sales.
What I said doesn't exclude people from being hateful and evil, nor am I suggesting such people should be tolerated. But the free flow of correct information in the first step to a solution.
There are people who believe that tariffs are something they absolutely are not, and have been brainwashed into thinking that without them the US is doomed! That jobs will be lost, that economic dominance will shift, and everything they love will fall apart. This is a case of a potentially good person making a bad decision because they were lied to.
There are also people who just hate China and want nothing more then to see the people who live their suffer, wither away, and die for having the audacity to not be born American. They support tariffs because they have been told they "hurt" China, and they like to hurt people. It makes them feel good knowing they are a small part in causing someone else's suffering. That's an example of an evil, hateful person making the same bad decision based on misinformation, just different misinformation.
I can't stop people from being evil and hateful. But I can teach them that tariffs don't hurt anyone but themselves, and maybe that will cause them to make some good decisions for the wrong reasons, instead of bad ones for the wrong reason.
And, critically, if all I know about someone is that they support tariffs, I don't know which of these two groups they belong to. That doesn't mean I support or accept both groups.
While I appreciate what you are saying and don't disagree, for me it's just about the knowledge gap, not any political reality. The very (very) little I can do is try to inform people's opinions, so that maybe they can see past the gaslighting and start to understand how things like this actually work, and the impact they have.
I try to concern myself as little as possible with the beliefs that people end up forming, but as much as possible with how they formed those beliefs. We only know what we know. I do my best not to view people as "bad" because they see the world in a given way, but rather as victims of propaganda causing them to make self-distractive decisions based on misinformation.
Nintendo doesn't pay squat, you pay the tariff ... or in general, a tariff on goods never hurts the people making the goods, it hurts the general public of the country imposing the tariff (as they will pay more for goods), while benefiting a very select group of suppliers and manufacturers.
Let's break it down.
A tariff is an import tax. It is paid by the importing party to the government. This means that the importing company has two options; they can pass the increased cost on to the consumer, or they can absorb it. Guess which one they go with 100% of the time!
But, you say, everything I hear from my perfectly fair and balanced new source says tariffs are basically us winning at trade! Wont they mean everyone will buy and manufacture in the USA!
Well, a company is always going to make products where it's the cheapest to do so. Tariffs don't make it any cheaper to manufacture in the US, they just make it more expensive to manufacture in China. So consider:
Right now, something costs $100 to make in China and $130 to make in the USA. it sells for $150.
If you add a tariff of $25, then it's still made in China, only now it sells for $175, to offset the tariff.
If you add a tariff of $35, then it's made in the USA, but now it sells for $180, to offset the increased cost of manufacturing in the US.
There is no possible scenario where the customer wins. The only "winner" is the manufacturing companies that might pick up new contracts because they no longer have to compete on a level playing field.
So what impact with a US tariff have on Nintendo? None. It might raise the price of the next console in the US, and the US only. No other countries will be impacted, nor will Nintendo's overall logistics policy.
They couldn't turn 20 minutes of watching guards to learn their movement patterns, waiting 10 more minutes until they get into the right positions, until finally moving into a new area to repeat the process into a compelling and engaging screenplay?
Can you point on this doll to where Microsoft touched you?
But all seriousness, Microsoft never said they would put COD on the Switch. In fact, they were very specific in saying they wouldn't. So ... why hold the fact that it's not on switch against them? If anything, it not being on Switch is an example of them keeping their word!
And if they can't get it running on Nintendo's next console, they need to put out a cloud version on the system.. The deal they signed allows them to do that, but they have no wiggle room beyond that. It HAS to come to that system, or both Nintendo and the US government can sue them. I mean, the deal is a matter of public record. You don't need to make things up, you can just go search the FTC files and read it, given it was disclosed in a public hearing.
Also the 10 years already started. It's not 10 years from the first release, it's 10 years from Nov. 2022.
Well, let me give you the good news! Unless you're really into the zx spectirm games, while you're not likely to see Rare Replay, there is good chance most of the games that Microsoft or Nintendo own publishing rights for will see re-release. We might even get a NEW collection of all those games as a joint MS / Nintendo project. That would make up most of the games people generally want when they are talking about Rare Replay.
Microsoft doesn't own he publishing rights to half the games on the collection. This was a one-shot, made to celebrate Rare's anniversary and sold at a loss.
It is extremely unlikely this will ever see a re-release. It even says so in one of the features on the disk. I give a much strong breakdown on the last thread talking about this if you want to search my comments for even more information. But the TL/DR is publishing rights for pervious games and IP rights are not the same thing.
If you read the article you'll notice that they mention they have no details on the deal, other then it exsisted. They speculate that the deal will not start until the release of the next Nintendo console.
Since this article, it's been confirmed that the deal starts with the first COD game fully developed after the next Nintendo hardware is made available to MS. Makes sense really, given BO6 was already in development for 3 years when Microsoft took over.
The new hardware at the end of the year is a refresh, but they have also confirmed that they have a new console on the way and are hoping to share details by the end of the year. Some developers already have specs.
And while they haven't used strong language or made commitments around a handheld, Phil said to "expect" one.
Publishing rights and IP rights are not the same thing.
MS own the Perfect Dark IP, but not publishing rights to the first game, only the one that was on 360 ... so that would be hard to re-release.
Same with Banjo-Kazooie. Nintendo owns publishing rights for that, but would need MS's permission. It's already on NSO at least.
I assume you mean Conker's ... THQ owns publishing rights to that outside NA.
Call Of Duty is coming to Swtich 2, so good news there. Anyone's guess as to if they keep Fable 4 exclusive or release the old ones. I could totally see a collection to build hype.
Just an FYI that both of these are already on PC with some pretty forgiving minimum specs. I totally get if you want it on console or physical but ... KI is free to play. Might as well! And Battle Toads often goes on sale for $5 to $8.
I totally don't get tribalism of "loyalty" to corporations, and every time people start talking about how there "team" is better then the other team it blows my mind.
But the discourse around exclusive games is on a whole new level.
This year, 5 PlayStation exclusives came to PC or Console. And if you look at the last few years ... Last of Us, New Horizon, God of War, final fantasy 16 ... all no longer exclusive to PlayStation. Spider Man and FF7 are coming to PC next year. Several Atlus titles previously exclusive to PlayStation are on Game Pass.
Dose anyone care? Nope. Anyone talk about it? Nope. A single article on this site about any of them? Nope. And this is the correct reaction. It doesn't make Sony "weaker". It makes them richer.
But when it's Xbox, the console that literally has no exclusives (seeing every 1st party game is on PC), if someone's Mom's friends daughter's cousin's hair dresser hears a rumor, that a game that I can not stress enough isn't exclusive and already is on PC, might be coming to console ... that gets 5 articles.
I just don't get it.
Personally I think it's great that exclusives don't tend to stay exclusive for long. I'm lucky and in a position where I have owned all 3 consoles every generation, but I know a lot of people have to pick one. I hate to think they are missing out on great games, and I'm always so happy when i find out a new group of people get to try out some of the games I love.
Halo on PlayStation? Metroid on Game Pass? Yes please. Just make sure to include cross play.
Palworld entertainment has no connection to the game. They just make merchandise (and a possible movie). As such, it is not competing with Nintendo in any way, given they are not making Palworld merchandise.
It's very similar to the deal Nintendo has with Sony to develop the Zelda movie.
At this point I'm going to stop replying to you. Not because I don't respect you or you opinion, it's why I took the time to write a comment in the first place!
But you don't see interested in learning new things or information your opinion, but instead only in "defending" your previous statements, even when it means tossing inaccurate and incomplete information or strawman arguments at me. As such, I have nothing to gain from this.
Sorry to waste your time! I though you might be interested in additional information.
That's not relevant. The important part is that if Nintendo put Pokémon on NSO, people would play it and "sales" would be inflated if they included everyone who played it as a "sale".
Palworld did great and sold fantastic, but that's not an indication that the people who played it are not looking for a new game. This is especially true given it's huge drop off in players. There also is no indication that the people who played it are Pokémon players. This was my core argument as to what was possibility inaccurate about your premise, not this strawman.
If a lot of people buy breakfast, it's not an indicator that people are not going to buy lunch in the future. What you need to look at is the number of people still eating breakfast at lunchtime.
It's also not true that Game Pass can't be free,. Combined with Microsoft rewards, Game Pass can be 100% free, forever. Every 3 months, you can earn enough points to get 3 months of Game Pass. There are even more options to get it for free if you have other Microsoft products.
I've personally had it for 2 years and never paid. There are people who choose to pay for it by not participating in the rewards program, but they could get it for free if they wanted with minimal to no effort. Again, not relevant to my argument in any way given all I'm saying is 25 million people had the ability to pay Palworld at no additional cost to them, but I thought you should know before you "well actually" someone with this again.
Again, I'm just pointing out your premise is very difficult to justify. I respect your arguments, but I'm not actually that interested in them. Just though you might want to reconsider them based on what I said. If you don't ... okay.
Comments 2,060
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Caution, Unpopular Opinions, Easy Games - Nintendo Life Letters
@JohnnyMind
You're not wrong. The way to build a legal emulator (as proposed by legal experts for basically ever, and what Nintendo said recently) is to make it so that the key can only be supplied from original hardware.
One of the key goals when the DMCA was written with the goal of making emulators illegal, which is why the "digital key" clause 1201(a)(1)(A) is so vague. If you circumvent a digital protection in any way, you violate the DMCA. Doesn't matter what the protection is, doesn't matter how you circumvent it. So your emulator has to leave the digital protection completely intact or it violates that statute.
I can't hazard a guess as to why Nintendo does anything. Maybe they are in talks with Dolphin? Who can say. But based on the letter they sent out, they do not consider Dolphin "legal".
Legal emulators are possible though. Nintendo MAKES a legal Switch emulator. It's included with the Dev kit so you can easily test your builds on the same PC you are coding them on, but it can't run pre-released games. You could, in theory, make one that used an external connection (like USB) to have the bios validated by original hardware.
Now that the gates are open, I'm sure a lot of people WAY smarter them me both on the technical and legal side are on it, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw commercial emulator-like products in the next few years.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Caution, Unpopular Opinions, Easy Games - Nintendo Life Letters
@JohnnyMind
I completely agree with you, but it's important to note (as Nintendo recently pointed out in a open letter from their legal team) .. the ball is in the emulator developer's court. Don't include a BOIS key, or a way to read a BOIS key supplied by the user, they will not seek legal action against your emulator.
So just like the armchair legal experts have been saying for decades, you CAN do literally everything EXCEPT play pirated games with a emulator, the emulator just has to be built from the ground up to not allow pirated games to play. And I think it's very telling to how valid the "people use emulators for legitimate reasons" argument is that, despite there being a completely legal option to release an emulator that locks out pirated games ... no one really has. They either make that the key selling point or include backdoors that allow for easy modification to allow for it.
Maybe now that Nintendo has clearly spelled out what makes emulation, in their opinion, illegal someone will finally make a legal emulator for legitimate users.
Re: Mailbox: Switch 2 Caution, Unpopular Opinions, Easy Games - Nintendo Life Letters
To the "fearless ambition" letter ...
What you're talking about is very real. Sony has a history of reacting to success with open hostility towards it's customer base. When Microsoft was kicking their butt all over the Xbox 360 era, they made it their single point of marketing pride that they didn't charge, and would never charge, for online services. THE DAY they first outsold Xbox in a quarter, not only did they start charging, but they started charging for the free service ... they didn't upgrade it with dedicated servers like Xbox live had.. Now that they are dominating the space, we get a $30 piece of plastic if you want the privilege of putting your console vertical, 14 live service games in development, and an interview where they confirmed doubling down on live service after "Concord" because the problem isn't live service games, it's that gamers don't understand how live service is what they really want.
On the flip side, Microsoft was very customer hostile the entire time they were on top, then all of a sudden they lost markets share and we get "Play Anywhere", ID@XBOX, world class accessibility commitment, and dozens of other customer friendly changes that they COULD have been doing the whole time, but didn't. Will these go away if they claw their way to the top again? History says "probably".
But that said, I don't think we have anything to fear from Nintendo. Nintendo has a history of winning. They won the 8bit and 16bit era, and the 1st "console war" in general. They had the Wii. They have the Switch. But they also have known huge failure, and that's always kept them humble. The virtual boy, the Wii U, the Nintendo PlayStation (which didn't even get a release). At no point has Nintendo drastically changed there identity ... Wii U and Switch Nintendo are basically the same company, and that company is no different then t was in the Virtual Boy ear or when the DS was printing money faster then the US mint.
So I'm not afraid that Nintendo will "change". This is what they have always been. Huge ups, huge downs, but generally "winning".
If anything, Nintendo of America has been emboldened by the market share in the US increasing so much, and that's been awful for us as they toss their weight around to force changes to bring games inline with Western values. I see that getting worse if the Switch 2 is also a huge success outside of Japan, and that makes me sad.
Re: 15 Best Sidequests In Switch Games
Yakuza - That one where you have to teach a shy girl how to be a better dominatrix.
Also Yakuza - That one where a child asks you to buy them pornography.
Also Yakuza - The one where you have to protect a Michel Jackson impersonator from thugs dressed up like zombies from "Thriller", doing the dance from "Thriller".
Wait, are they from Zero and not Kiwami? I can't remember. If so, they are technically not on Switch yet, but still ... you can just pick any Yakuza quest.
Re: Atelier Yumia Dives Into Motorbike Riding And Base Building In New Trailer
@jesse_dylan
It looks like Ryza's combat, which is active time based, not an action game. You don't move your characters around or have complete control, you issue commands that are executed in order. There is a complex web of chains and reactions, which is why it looks so ... busy.
Personally I think Ryza has some of the best and most gratifying combat in an RPG, so if this is building on that system it should great.
Re: Atelier Yumia Dives Into Motorbike Riding And Base Building In New Trailer
@Indielink @ArcticEcho
It's not unheard of. If you're game is targeting 60fps on PS4/Xbox One but only 30fps on Switch, what's being rendered on the Switch might look "better" and still be less resource intensive.
It's also important to note that "better" is extremely subjective. A lot of Switch ports turn off global illumination, SSR, and / or complex shadow mapping, which can free up resources for other rendering techniques. Depending on your eye for detail and personal preference, that might look "better" to you. Like how a game with obviously messed up reflections and low polygon shadows might look "worse" then a game where they are both just turned off., or how a game with really bad texture pop in might look worse then a game that just has lower res textures.
DOOM is another edge case. Screen shots of that game look horrible and nowhere near Xbox One, plus it's lower resolution, but they completely reworked the motion blurring for the Switch. It so much more advanced then the Xbox One version that you could argue it looks better being played.
Graphics are complicated, and at the end of the day, it's really the choices the devs make and the resources they devote to finding creative solutions that determine the quality of the port.
Re: Nintendo Joins 'Fuji TV' Commercial Boycott Following Sex Scandal
@PtM
Thanks. It's really great to get a shout out like this, and I appreciate it.
Re: Zelda Fan Film Kicks Off Fundraising Campaign With First Live-Action Trailer
Just to chime in on some relevant legal realities. What's going to happen is pure speculation, so speculate away! I just hope I can frame that speculation in fact.
The film will be subject to the copyright and IP law of the country the film is being made in, even though the IP and movie rights are both owned by a Japanese company. That's good news for the movie, because it looks like it's being made in the US, where they can argue "fair use". Japan offers no such exclusion.
It's a double edge sword though. Nintendo (A Japanese game publisher and developer) generally turns a blind eye to things like this IN JAPAN, because Japan has no enforcement clause in copyright or IP law. In the US, you can lose the right to enforcement if you knowingly allow infringing works to be made. That's why Nintendo of America (a US company that handles Nintendo's distribution as well as legal issues in the US) sues the crap out of anyone for any reason. In Japan, you can allow cool things like this to happen and focus on shutting down things that might tarnish your brand, but in the US you can't. You have to go after everyone as soon as there is reasonable exposure.
Fan films are not unheard of. It's possible they might be able to make this, but the timing is bad. It's a petty reasonable argument that it's being made now to knowingly take advantage of the hype around "a Zelda movie", and from there to argue brand confusion. My prediction is this gets shut down, but anything could happen.
Re: Nintendo Joins 'Fuji TV' Commercial Boycott Following Sex Scandal
@PtM @Erigen
Japan's worker protection is much better then what you would find in the US, but lags behind most of the UK and the EU, and can't hold a candle to places like Germany and Norway.
Like most countries, they have The Labor Standards Act that sets the foundation for working conditions while regulating wages and working hours, and they have the Labor Union Act to protect the right to organize and bargain collectively. About 17% of people are in a union, which is high ... but not top tier.
With that said, no law or no union I am aware of offers protection to people who have committed sexual assault. You can fire people for doing crimes, especially contracted workers who will have standards of behavior worked into their contract. Idols, for example, get fired all the dang time for dating, which is often forbidding in their contract.
The complication here is that he settled, so the accusations where never proven in court. That's why he wasn't flat out fired.
People are upset with Fuji TV because the socially accepted "correct" thing to do would have been to:
1) Immediately disclose the accusation.
2) Start a private investigation into the accusations,.
3) Publicly disclose the results of that investigation
4) Take appropriate action based on the findings.
5) Disclose that he settled out of court, and the settlement was unfavorable for him.
Instead they went with don't tell anyone, hide the whole thing and hope no one ever finds out. That's the problem. It's not really that this guy might have done a crime, it's that Fuji TV covered it up and betrayed the public trust.
Re: 'Team Presents' Unwraps A Win In Splatoon 3's 'Frosty Fest' Splatfest
I hope everyone had a great time.
To me, I found the teams to be ... odd. Unless you sleep on it like a dragon, the only reason you like "money" is the experiences you buy with it, and if you like presents guess what? You like the experience of getting a present. Team superset vs two of it's own subsets?
Mah, still had a blast. And like I always say, we're all winners today.
Re: GameStop's Internal Database Lists Multiple 'Switch 2' Accessory SKUs
Removed
Re: Sonic The Hedgehog Will Be Back For A Fourth Movie
It's interesting to reflect on and contract the almost universal success and profitability that comes from taking these 80s and 90s properties that where made for children and containing to make them for children's today against the almost universal failure that comes from attempting to "update" them to be popular with the same fans that enjoyed them when they first came out.
Props to whoever ignored the loudest voices on the internet and saved us from the gritty sonic-verse made to appeal to a 40+ demographic that I'm sure was almost greenlit at some point.
Not saying I find these movies great. Or good. Or ... watchable ...
But they are not for me, and I think not making them for me was the right decision.
Re: Crush 40 Musician Is Suing Sega Over Sonic Adventure 2 Theme, 'Live And Learn'
@martynstuff
Sorry to disappoint, but this is outside my wheelhouse. I know about IP and patents because I own and have defended them, not because I have a background in law.
This seems like a simple contract dispute, and as such there isn't much to speculate about unless we can see the exact terms of the contract. It's not a dispute about what is legal and what isn't, it's just a dispute over if SEGA did what they said they would do in the contract of if they didn't.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@MeloMan
Haha, Leanbox is Xbox, Vert is a huge breasted "audit" who is heavy into "gamer" culture and shooters, Lowee (Wii) is Nintendo, which is why Blanch if always worried about how she looks like a child. Lastation (PlayStation) is Sony, and Noir is a closeted nerd who always has to look "cool". Neptune is literally the Saga Neptune. Even the colors line up!
The sisters are the portable systems. The DS is Ram and Rom who are twins and really childlike, Uni is the PSP and always trying to be just like her big Sister, Vert has no sister and is really jealous of the others, and Nepgear is the Game Gear.
I have a friend who is CRAZY into this series and played it for over a decade without realizing any of that, so if that wasn't a sarcastic post, don't feel bad.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@PikaPhantom
While I very much apricate what you are saying, I think the disconnect here comes from how "right wing" and "right wing Christian Nationalism" are not the same thing.
Christen Nationalism is ideology that believes we should be beholden to Christen values, but only our national values (rather then ruled by the central Christian authority). "Right Wing" means support of a King or traditional rule. So "right wing Christian Nationalism" is the idea that a single interpretation of Christian ideas should be imposed universally by the established leadership. Left wing Christian nationalism, which is totally a thing, would instead suggest that Chastain values should be imposed by local leadership, not a central authority.
The type of changes you are talking about are based on inclusive vs. non-inclusive ideology, and are not the "opposite" of Christian nationalism. Both can happen at the same time, you don't have to pick on or the other.
The main disconnect seems to be people seeing the words "right wing" and thinking that means a right wing political ideology vs. a left wing political ideology, rather then the accurate way of using the English language to differentiate between a group that seeks central authority over a group that seeks distributed authority.
It's also important to note that the decisions to make changes to the content of Nintendo games and what is part of a Nintendo direct are made by the Japanese game developer "Nintendo". They had no hand in the decision not to allow these game on the e-shop in the US or the UK, and these games are currently available on the e-shop run by that company. "Nintendo of America" is the one blocking these games.
That was actually my key point; it's important to understand what NINTENDO does, and what Nintendo of America does, to better understand who is behind this decision.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@LavenderShroud
Your reasoning is sound, but I think I might not of expressed my core argument as strongly as I would like.
My argument is that BECAUSE content more questionable then this exists on the E-shop already, it suggests their might be a shift in NOA's guidance towards this type of content. This would be consistent which a broader shift in US, where books that were fine to publish 5 years ago are now being pulled from shelves.
The terms "Christian Nationalism" doesn't single out a political party, it simply means that the most common reason that books and other media are facing increased scrutiny is that they violate national Cristian values.
I don't consider that statement contraveral, but I understand that might be because as someone not from or invested in the US, I see things from a much farther removed paradigm.
Edit: Honestly, I hope you're right and I'm completely off base here. I very well may be. I really appreciate people like you who take the time to attempt to inform my opinion. Thank you!
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@ottoecamn
As someone not from the US, I think I used the words "Far right Christen Nationalism" not fully appreciating the emotional response they would invoke. Christian Nationalism is a thing that is present in all countries, and is independent of pollical system or leadership. In Japan, it was Christen Nationalist that imposed censorship on the porn industry, for example, even though Japan has never really had a (self imposed) Christian leadership.
It simply refers to a group pressuring other groups to adopt strong Christian values. In some places in the world, this movement is weak and unable to influence policy making, but in the US it is extremely strong right now, and able to influence policy making of both parties.
5 years ago, the most common reason a book was banned in the US was that it encouraged anti-establishment ideas, and very few books were banned. Today, 1000s of books are banned a year, and the most common reason is that they are Anti-Christian. This is a clear indicator of a strong Christian Nationalist voice, even though that time frame was one where the democrats were in power.
Strong state laws mean you always have outliers. Utah vs California. But Nintendo of America is making decisions based on national trends.
But I think the idea that NOA has updated their content guidelines to reflect this growing shift is not unlikely, and is a pretty reasonable explanation as to what is happening here.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@LavenderShroud
Thanks for calling out my other posts as insightful. I really appreciate that.
I can understand how difficult it can by to shift a paradigm, but both the publisher and the developer have confirm that this is due to a NOA and NUK rejection the game based on content. If you had some theories on what content you think causes they games to unacceptable for release in the US, while already released in Japan, I would be very interested in hearing it.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@dskatter
"due to the contents of the Re;Birth series and Death end re;Quest: Code Z not complying with the Nintendo Guidelines."
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@ottoecamn
Correct, They didn't have it for a long time. Now they do again. That's how democracy works, thing shift over time. That's why it's often described as a pendulum.
If you are interested in a more informed decision, you could look at resources that track things like rejected Media content and see what's been happening over the last few years. The number of banned books in the US had increased by at least 50% a year for the last 5 years,. taken them for the G7 nation with one of the least number of banned books to the MOST, by far, in half a decade.
For reference, last year over 2000 books where challenged in Canada by Christen nationalist groups, covering 650 unique titles. Of them, less then 50 were restricted in any way.
In the US, 4,240 unique titles where targeted by Christian groups, and while it varies by state, virtually all of them face a complete or near complete ban.
So as a marketing company, you have to ask yourself if you want to publish a hyper sexual games that promotes homosexuality into that environment. You don't ask yourself if it would have been okay 5 years ago, you ask yourself if it's going to be okay next year, when the game comes out.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
@PessitheMystic @CrimsonDragoon
Because when they were published, Nintendo of America was working under different standards. There has been a DRASTIC shift over the last few years towards Christian nationalism in the US, and games that would have been completely fine only a few years ago are unpublishable today.
As a huge fan of the series, I can guess that the content in question here isn't that panty shots or the outfits ... it's that most of the girls in these games are EXTEMELY and openly gay. They molest each other constantly. In the game in question, one is contently talking about marrying one of the other girls.
It's hard to publish something like that in a country that removes books from libraries if they are written by gay authors, even if the books contain no sexual content.
Remember, Nintendo (a Japanese hardware manufacture and game developer) has NOTHIGN to do with decisions like this. They are all made by a completely independent entity in the US or the UK.
Re: 'Hyperdimension Neptunia' & 'Death End' Switch Releases Scrapped For "Not Complying With Nintendo Guidelines"
Super important to understand that it's Nintendo OF AMARICA and Nintendo UK which made these decisions, not NINTNEDO.
Nintendo, the Japanize game developer and console maker, is not involved in deciding which games are allowed on the NA/UK e-shop. That's up to a completely separate entity, a marketing and distribution company called Nintendo of America (or UK).
Market regulation means that while Nintendo owns this entity, they can not be part of it's day to day operations. They can't step in and override or even influence this decisions. They could technically fire the high level management that allowed it to happen and hire someone they thing would make a better decision, but that level of micromanagement is never a good thing.
It's important to understand because decisions like this are often due to the increasing right wing Christian nationalism in the US that says sex is bad (but graphic violence is fine) and not Nintendo trying to protect their "kid friendly" image globally. The Japanese Switch e-ship has extremely sexualized games, and many don't even contain the warning tags we see in the US ... because in Japan, that content is generally not seen as "dangerous" to children.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@MrCarlos46
Most people think that, because it's how they are being sold to the public. We're going to "hurt" China by IMPOSSING a tariff on their goods!
Sounds cool, but if you were being honest you would say "We are going to tax YOU if you try and buy anything we don't want you to buy".
Probably get a lot less votes if you say that.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@MrCarlos46
Nintendo doesn't change the price. Exchange rates make everything a bit confusing, but I'll do my best.
Right now, Nintendo sells the Switch to retailers in Canada and retailers in the US for the same price, let's say 37,000 Yen. Right now retailers sell the OLD unit for $300 USD or $450 CDN.
Now let's see what happens if you add a 50% tariff. None of these numbers change. Nintendo still sells the device for 37,000 Yen to retailers in both the US and Canada, but every time a retailers buys one in the US, the US government will demand 14,500 Yen or around $100 as tax. That's the tariff. An import tax paid by the retailer to the US government.
So now the retailers has paid $300 USD for the unit instead of $200 USD. In Canada, the retailers still pays around $350 CND.
In Canada, the unit will still sell for $450 CND, and the retailer makes $100 in profit. But if the retailer in the US was to continue selling it for $300, they wouldn't make any money because they had to pay a $100 tariff to import the device. So they increase the price to $400 to preserve profit.
So buying the device in the US now costs $400 USD, while buying it in Canada would cost around $320 USD.
This gives you two choices. You can buy the unit at the increased price from a US retailer, or you can buy it from a Canadian retailer and, thanks to free trade agreements, get around the tariff. This wouldn't work is the price was a bit higher, because that would put it over the exclusion and the buyer would need to pay the import tax themselves.
It should be clear that either way, no one in the US is better off. Either they pay more money for the unit, or the money leaves the US and goes to Canada, costing retail jobs. It also doesn't impact Nintendo, they didn't change their price and still make just as much money as they did before, because the tariff is an IMPORT tax, paid by the importer (the retailer), not the exporter (Nintendo).
This is why tariffs are generally never used in the way the incoming US administration plans on using them. They just don't work like that.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@MrCarlos46
Kinda? The price will always show in CND, but they can process US credit cards and bank payments and apply the exchange rate automatically.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@MrCarlos46
I did an edit that explains it in more detail.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@MrCarlos46
Nintendo will always seek to manufacture where it's least expensive to do so.
The important part is that a 100 billion billion billion percent tariff on good from China doesn't increase the cost to manufacture in China by a single penny.
it just makes it more expensive to buy goods from China in the US. Tariffs have no impact on Nintendo unless they are so prohibitive people can't afford to buy a Switch in the US. But that reality is insane; first, people would be outraged, and second, it would effect all goods equally. In a world were the Xbox and PS5 are both $1500, does the $500 Nintendo cnosole sell less? Or more?
But If anything, it's just great news for Canada, as people will simply take day trips and buy a Switch there if it's cheaper then buying in the US. That's also great for Nintendo, given both the Xbox and PS5 will be subject to import tax if bought in Canada, but Nintendo's console will likely be under the exemption for short trips. Other counties have no such exemptions, so you would be on the hook for import tax in the 25% range, not to mention logistics and shipping.
As for people in the South, Aamazon.ca delvers to the US. The "F" in NAFTA was no joke, and even under USMCA almost nothing has changed on the consumer side.
Re: A Handful Of "Hidden" Splatoon 2 Tracks Have Been Removed From Nintendo Music
@Polley001
It's unlikely most of the contributors read the comments. Heck, I've written articles for websites I have legit never even been too. Slightly more likely the staff writers check them from time to time, but even that I wouldn't count on.
If you have information or a correction to an article, you might want to instead try the contact form or send it directly to the editor, Gavin Lane.
Re: Talking Point: Can Sony And Microsoft Really Compete With Nintendo In A New 'Handheld War'?
@TheBigK
Game Pass doesn't require you to be online. On PC, you can pick a single device to work in "offline mode", and that device only needs to go online once every 30 days. Microsoft is aware that gaming laptops are a thing, and that people like to game offline.
Re: Talking Point: Can Sony And Microsoft Really Compete With Nintendo In A New 'Handheld War'?
This question is an example of the "Pepsi Fallacy".
It's this extremely prevalent belief among people who are not part of the business world that PepsiCo must cry themselves to sleep every night because they ONLY have 20% market share. That every conversation ever had by any executive is about "beating" Coke.
That's obviously ridiculous. They swim around in a giant pool of money from their 40 billion a year in profits, and have conversations around lowering overhead and increasing profitability. Even when they speak to market share, Coke doesn't come up, they simply talk about how to make their own products more attractive.
So the question should be can Sony and Microsoft be profitable in the handheld space. Nintendo isn't a factor. It's just about them getting a product to market that people are going to be interested in.
Sony has in the past; while PSP and PSV sales were never as high as they wanted them to be, they were profitable. The Q sold well despite being ... just awful, and using streaming code that was inferior to what they used to give away for free a decade ago. They are kinda like apple at this point. They could make a $900 device with a 1.5 inch screen that plays Game and Watch clones and a small demographic would eat it up. Could they make a handheld with a 8 year life span that was profitable throughout? Hell no. Could they sell the masses a hunk of crap and make a quick buck? Absolutely.
As for Microsoft ... hard to say. A Microsoft Handheld would just be a steam deck linked to Game Pass instead of Steam, and I can see that having a huge market. Also Microsoft generally makes incredible hardware ... but they also generally stop supporting it almost immediately. That's the big question; if MS commit to something, I think it could be huge. But if they treat it like every other venture into hardware, it will end up ... well, like every other Microsoft venture into hardware.
Re: Poll: After Three Quiet Months, Will We Finally Get A Nintendo Direct In December?
Would have to be. I mean, basically ever expert, analyst, and media outlet has ensured us that the Switch successor will be released by the end of the year.
They can't ALL be wrong?
Right?
Re: 'Nintendo Music' Adds New Switch Soundtrack, Here's Every Song Included
Haha, YES, finally a world wide release of "#$@$* Dudes Be #$@%* Sleepin'"
Re: As Switch Closes The Gap, Sony Officially Confirms PS2 Has Sold "Over" 160 Million Units
@NFrealinkling
You basically only really know how many consoles you made, and even that is "give or take".
Logistics is hard. You take a lot of short cuts. For example, if you make 20 million units and your quality console rate is 5%, you just assume you shipped 19 million. You don't actually "count".
Around 10% of units sold well be returned as defective, but only around half of them will actually be defective. You re-box them and send them back out, while you fix what you can and send them back out as well. Rather then trying to track all that you just assume you "sold" the number you shipped and adjust it later based on service tickets. There is a lot of room for data to get lost.
Then there is just shrinkage. If you ship 10,000 and the track gets highjacked, you still get paid via insurance. So are they ... sales? I mean, you sold them to a vender and got paid! And by the nature of shrinkage, you don't really have solid numbers. Anyone who's worked retail can tell you the number of any given stock item you have get miscounted and misreported all the time, even in small stores.
Sometimes it's even as simple as mixing up, both internally and in what you tell the press, sales TO, which is what you sold to venders, and sales THROUGH, which is what vendors sell to customers.
All and all, it's not unreasonable to only have a rough idea what you total sales numbers are at any given time and be off by a percentage point or two.
But in this case ... it's pretty fishy. You generally adjust your numbers and finalize them after 5 years or so. The idea that they are still actively updating sales numbers decades later and the adjustments always seem to be positive and just enough to keep it the number one selling console is ... unlikely.
Sadly, at the end of the day, there is literally nothing stopping them for just making the numbers up. It's illegal to mislead your shareholders about futures, but it's not a crime to lie you butt off to the public about historic sales.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@Dr_Corndog
What I said doesn't exclude people from being hateful and evil, nor am I suggesting such people should be tolerated. But the free flow of correct information in the first step to a solution.
There are people who believe that tariffs are something they absolutely are not, and have been brainwashed into thinking that without them the US is doomed! That jobs will be lost, that economic dominance will shift, and everything they love will fall apart. This is a case of a potentially good person making a bad decision because they were lied to.
There are also people who just hate China and want nothing more then to see the people who live their suffer, wither away, and die for having the audacity to not be born American. They support tariffs because they have been told they "hurt" China, and they like to hurt people. It makes them feel good knowing they are a small part in causing someone else's suffering. That's an example of an evil, hateful person making the same bad decision based on misinformation, just different misinformation.
I can't stop people from being evil and hateful. But I can teach them that tariffs don't hurt anyone but themselves, and maybe that will cause them to make some good decisions for the wrong reasons, instead of bad ones for the wrong reason.
And, critically, if all I know about someone is that they support tariffs, I don't know which of these two groups they belong to. That doesn't mean I support or accept both groups.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
@Bolt_Strike
While I appreciate what you are saying and don't disagree, for me it's just about the knowledge gap, not any political reality. The very (very) little I can do is try to inform people's opinions, so that maybe they can see past the gaslighting and start to understand how things like this actually work, and the impact they have.
I try to concern myself as little as possible with the beliefs that people end up forming, but as much as possible with how they formed those beliefs. We only know what we know. I do my best not to view people as "bad" because they see the world in a given way, but rather as victims of propaganda causing them to make self-distractive decisions based on misinformation.
Re: Mailbox: The Death Of GameCube, Mario Party Matchmaking, Tariffs - Nintendo Life Letters
Tariffs are not what you think they are.
Nintendo doesn't pay squat, you pay the tariff ... or in general, a tariff on goods never hurts the people making the goods, it hurts the general public of the country imposing the tariff (as they will pay more for goods), while benefiting a very select group of suppliers and manufacturers.
Let's break it down.
A tariff is an import tax. It is paid by the importing party to the government. This means that the importing company has two options; they can pass the increased cost on to the consumer, or they can absorb it. Guess which one they go with 100% of the time!
But, you say, everything I hear from my perfectly fair and balanced new source says tariffs are basically us winning at trade! Wont they mean everyone will buy and manufacture in the USA!
Well, a company is always going to make products where it's the cheapest to do so. Tariffs don't make it any cheaper to manufacture in the US, they just make it more expensive to manufacture in China. So consider:
Right now, something costs $100 to make in China and $130 to make in the USA. it sells for $150.
If you add a tariff of $25, then it's still made in China, only now it sells for $175, to offset the tariff.
If you add a tariff of $35, then it's made in the USA, but now it sells for $180, to offset the increased cost of manufacturing in the US.
There is no possible scenario where the customer wins. The only "winner" is the manufacturing companies that might pick up new contracts because they no longer have to compete on a level playing field.
So what impact with a US tariff have on Nintendo? None. It might raise the price of the next console in the US, and the US only. No other countries will be impacted, nor will Nintendo's overall logistics policy.
Re: Splinter Cell Movie Is Reportedly Dead, Producer Admits Team "Just Couldn't Get It Right"
They couldn't turn 20 minutes of watching guards to learn their movement patterns, waiting 10 more minutes until they get into the right positions, until finally moving into a new area to repeat the process into a compelling and engaging screenplay?
Who would have thought.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@rjejr
Can you point on this doll to where Microsoft touched you?
But all seriousness, Microsoft never said they would put COD on the Switch. In fact, they were very specific in saying they wouldn't. So ... why hold the fact that it's not on switch against them? If anything, it not being on Switch is an example of them keeping their word!
And if they can't get it running on Nintendo's next console, they need to put out a cloud version on the system.. The deal they signed allows them to do that, but they have no wiggle room beyond that. It HAS to come to that system, or both Nintendo and the US government can sue them. I mean, the deal is a matter of public record. You don't need to make things up, you can just go search the FTC files and read it, given it was disclosed in a public hearing.
Also the 10 years already started. It's not 10 years from the first release, it's 10 years from Nov. 2022.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@Don
Well, let me give you the good news! Unless you're really into the zx spectirm games, while you're not likely to see Rare Replay, there is good chance most of the games that Microsoft or Nintendo own publishing rights for will see re-release. We might even get a NEW collection of all those games as a joint MS / Nintendo project. That would make up most of the games people generally want when they are talking about Rare Replay.
Re: Talking Point: Will Xenoblade Chronicles X Finally Tie Into The Wider Series On Switch?
@xenobladexfan
Haha, awesome.
Re: Talking Point: Will Xenoblade Chronicles X Finally Tie Into The Wider Series On Switch?
I want a crossover DLC with Hideo Kojima. Future Revengeanced!
This is the only game series in the world where he could join and the plot would get more grounding and down to earth.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@Don @fenlix
Microsoft doesn't own he publishing rights to half the games on the collection. This was a one-shot, made to celebrate Rare's anniversary and sold at a loss.
It is extremely unlikely this will ever see a re-release. It even says so in one of the features on the disk. I give a much strong breakdown on the last thread talking about this if you want to search my comments for even more information. But the TL/DR is publishing rights for pervious games and IP rights are not the same thing.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@rjejr
If you read the article you'll notice that they mention they have no details on the deal, other then it exsisted. They speculate that the deal will not start until the release of the next Nintendo console.
Since this article, it's been confirmed that the deal starts with the first COD game fully developed after the next Nintendo hardware is made available to MS. Makes sense really, given BO6 was already in development for 3 years when Microsoft took over.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@Not_Soos
The new hardware at the end of the year is a refresh, but they have also confirmed that they have a new console on the way and are hoping to share details by the end of the year. Some developers already have specs.
And while they haven't used strong language or made commitments around a handheld, Phil said to "expect" one.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@Samalik
Haha, I feel you man. LOVE that game. Also the only fighting game my Wife ever really got into.
I have the physical complete as well, but I prefer playing on PC (where I have the complete game though Game Pass).
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@The-Chosen-one
Publishing rights and IP rights are not the same thing.
MS own the Perfect Dark IP, but not publishing rights to the first game, only the one that was on 360 ... so that would be hard to re-release.
Same with Banjo-Kazooie. Nintendo owns publishing rights for that, but would need MS's permission. It's already on NSO at least.
I assume you mean Conker's ... THQ owns publishing rights to that outside NA.
Call Of Duty is coming to Swtich 2, so good news there. Anyone's guess as to if they keep Fable 4 exclusive or release the old ones. I could totally see a collection to build hype.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
@Coolmusic @Samalik
Just an FYI that both of these are already on PC with some pretty forgiving minimum specs. I totally get if you want it on console or physical but ... KI is free to play. Might as well! And Battle Toads often goes on sale for $5 to $8.
Re: Xbox Chief On Bringing Games To Other Platforms, Says There Are No "Red Lines"
I totally don't get tribalism of "loyalty" to corporations, and every time people start talking about how there "team" is better then the other team it blows my mind.
But the discourse around exclusive games is on a whole new level.
This year, 5 PlayStation exclusives came to PC or Console. And if you look at the last few years ... Last of Us, New Horizon, God of War, final fantasy 16 ... all no longer exclusive to PlayStation. Spider Man and FF7 are coming to PC next year. Several Atlus titles previously exclusive to PlayStation are on Game Pass.
Dose anyone care? Nope. Anyone talk about it? Nope. A single article on this site about any of them? Nope. And this is the correct reaction. It doesn't make Sony "weaker". It makes them richer.
But when it's Xbox, the console that literally has no exclusives (seeing every 1st party game is on PC), if someone's Mom's friends daughter's cousin's hair dresser hears a rumor, that a game that I can not stress enough isn't exclusive and already is on PC, might be coming to console ... that gets 5 articles.
I just don't get it.
Personally I think it's great that exclusives don't tend to stay exclusive for long. I'm lucky and in a position where I have owned all 3 consoles every generation, but I know a lot of people have to pick one. I hate to think they are missing out on great games, and I'm always so happy when i find out a new group of people get to try out some of the games I love.
Halo on PlayStation? Metroid on Game Pass? Yes please. Just make sure to include cross play.
Re: Nintendo's Lawsuit Against Palworld Is "A Clear Case Of Bullying", Says Analyst
@Glasso
Palworld entertainment has no connection to the game. They just make merchandise (and a possible movie). As such, it is not competing with Nintendo in any way, given they are not making Palworld merchandise.
It's very similar to the deal Nintendo has with Sony to develop the Zelda movie.
At this point I'm going to stop replying to you. Not because I don't respect you or you opinion, it's why I took the time to write a comment in the first place!
But you don't see interested in learning new things or information your opinion, but instead only in "defending" your previous statements, even when it means tossing inaccurate and incomplete information or strawman arguments at me. As such, I have nothing to gain from this.
Sorry to waste your time! I though you might be interested in additional information.
Re: Nintendo's Lawsuit Against Palworld Is "A Clear Case Of Bullying", Says Analyst
@Glasso
That's not relevant. The important part is that if Nintendo put Pokémon on NSO, people would play it and "sales" would be inflated if they included everyone who played it as a "sale".
Palworld did great and sold fantastic, but that's not an indication that the people who played it are not looking for a new game. This is especially true given it's huge drop off in players. There also is no indication that the people who played it are Pokémon players. This was my core argument as to what was possibility inaccurate about your premise, not this strawman.
If a lot of people buy breakfast, it's not an indicator that people are not going to buy lunch in the future. What you need to look at is the number of people still eating breakfast at lunchtime.
It's also not true that Game Pass can't be free,. Combined with Microsoft rewards, Game Pass can be 100% free, forever. Every 3 months, you can earn enough points to get 3 months of Game Pass. There are even more options to get it for free if you have other Microsoft products.
I've personally had it for 2 years and never paid. There are people who choose to pay for it by not participating in the rewards program, but they could get it for free if they wanted with minimal to no effort. Again, not relevant to my argument in any way given all I'm saying is 25 million people had the ability to pay Palworld at no additional cost to them, but I thought you should know before you "well actually" someone with this again.
Again, I'm just pointing out your premise is very difficult to justify. I respect your arguments, but I'm not actually that interested in them. Just though you might want to reconsider them based on what I said. If you don't ... okay.