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@Dom_31 Free to play games haven't required NSO. And I don't think the product page for Champions mentions needing it.

@DennisReynolds It's scraped from the Internet and social media. OpenAI and Meta have already admitted that they pull every single available photo, artwork, and public post on Instagram and Facebook to train their models.

@DennisReynolds And what do you think that is generated from? It doesn't just appear from nowhere. Generative AI is fed on and outputs based on existing artwork. It doesn't "create" anything. It takes existing work, throws it into a blender, and vomits a result out. That existing work is often scrubbed from the Internet without crediting the artists involved.

@DennisReynolds AI art is theft, nevermind the fact that generating it is bad for the environment. If you need a placeholder then you should just scribble something out yourself.

Sandfall shouldn't have used it for Clair Obscur either.

@moevot138 There isn't really a one size fits all answer to this question unfortunately. All depends on the game in question and the original development process. In the case of Cyberpunk, we know from the devs themselves that Nintendo approached them about porting in the summer of 2023.

If you search Cyberpunk Switch 2 development or something similar, there is an article on IGN about that you may find quite illuminating.

@Yomv7t Pearl Abyss literally admitted to using AI assets throughout development.

@PtM It makes sense. Production costs are going up. If anything, I'm just happy they're finally breaking with retailers and keeping the costs from rising for digital releases.

@lifer @Jeff2sayshi The review states right at the top that there have been patches post review publication to resolve issues. It's been there since this article went live.

@Max_the_German Handheld mode Eternal caps at 612p and can drop to 360p, so it is still a huge improvement.

@johnedwin Might be hard to find a Switch copy when it seems that the game is only on Switch 2.

Lot of people are weirdly negative and hostile about this. Sure Discord exists, or Whatsapp, but now there is a dedicated in console option. That's nice. More options are a good thing, even if you don't use them. And it's 100% true that if there wasn't a dedicated chat option available Nintendo would've been smashed to pieces for that.

And if you don't use it then you have an extra button for remapping. Great win.

@boxyguy Nintendo did say at Switch 2 launch that they were going to be more variable with pricing this generation. I think everyone just assumed the worst and figured it was going to all be more expensive.

@cvrator There are at least a couple dozen. Including Hades 2, The Witcher 3, Fortnite, and Rocket League.

@nkarafo The game has framerate drops on more powerful consoles. Clearly there is something going on in the background that makes the game more intensive than it appears.

YESSSSSSS. So glad to hear this is good.

@BLK_4EVER Ehh. The difference there is that on PC you bought a game that was designed for fancy visuals. The code work was already there and done. Your potato computer just wasn't able to run it.

Xenoblade X wasn't originally designed to run at 4K/60. You're paying the nominal fee for the dev team to go back and do the QA testing to make sure nothing broke when the settings were adjusted.

@RiasGremory Presumably because cards are expensive and Square decided it wasn't worth the extra cost. Hopefully with smaller cards beginning to release we see less of this going forward.

@Machined Heads up, queer people exist in Japan too.

Complete banger of a game. And I will scream its praises til the day I die.

@gcunit With all the stuff on screen I'd assume it's a CPU issue, which means lowering the graphics settings wouldn't actually have much effect.

Meh. I'm whatever about Amiibo unlocks. It's just a silly unlock 99% of the time. The prices have also gone way up but the figures are much larger and more detailed. Like seriously, look at the current Zelda amiibos versus the original Smash Bros Link. The difference is night and day. I think the price is pretty justified for the massive increase in quality and current state of the world.

The one time Amiibo unlocks have been frustrating was the Ganondorf unlock for the Twilight Princess remaster on WiiU where it held back the higher difficulty mode.

Oh this does sound neat.

@Yosher The others are just huge sets. The price per piece on both Pikachu and the starters is actually on the lower end of the spectrum.

@LastFootnote There is a Switch 2 free update that will increase resolution in handheld mode.

So we've got:
1. Free content update for both platforms.
2. Free handheld resolution update for Switch 2.
3. Paid update for Switch 2 to increase docked mode resolution and QoL features like mouse mode and expanded multiplayer.

@SillyG To be fair, every version of COD is a massive download. PS5 and Xbox discs are just keys too.

@Zeebor15 They have a huge collection of very highly regarded games under their belt. Definitely more than "farts in the wind." There is also a fairly large Wikipedia page for Keplar Interactive if you want to find these answers for yourself.

@kal_el_07241 To be fair, Ubisoft also did the Star Wars Outlaws port which has been absolutely showered with praise as one of the best ports on the system.

I don't particularly like Ubisoft, but they do seem to genuinely be bringing their A game for Switch 2.

@foursider Love this call-out, thank you for the heads up!

@The_Nintendo_Pedant I think that's somewhat addressed in the following paragraph when Alanah mentions dashing the tonal expectations. But yeah, I agree. It sets him up as cool and tough and then it all hits the fan and you realize he's just a kid.

@MamaSymphonia It's using FSR1. DLSS can struggle with super fast paced and effects heavy games like this.

For 900p it still looks decently sharp. It's definitely not as clear as the S2 versions of BoTW and ToTK but it's holding up well on my 55 inch 4k TV.

They just announced that the Deluxe EX cards will retroactively apply to older packs. So that's that problem fixed.

There is something really refreshing about Hamaguchi's willingness to talk more about the actual development process. I feel like so many other interviews with Japanese developers, when asked about visuals/performance, often give a canned, "we worked our hardest so the fans can enjoy it." It's neat to get this insight on the importance of parity in character design and lighting and how that informed all of the other decision-making with this port.

@Vyacheslav333 Different version of the same engine. And Skyrim is a less intensive game, it's four years old and was designed around the Xbox 360.

It's like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Except this square peg has a bunch of little bits sticking out that have been really poorly attached to it that are otherwise integral to how it works. And trying to adjust any of them will cause the whole thing to break.

@Vyacheslav333 Dying Light wasn't built on a nearly 25 year old engine held together with spit and duct tape.

@Vyacheslav333 Bethesda could barely get a functional release on the PS4. A Switch 1 port was never gonna happen.

@The_Nintendo_Pedant I didn't think I'd like mouse mode, but I've really been digging it for Cyberpunk.

@Suketoudara We did, but the fact that it needs to be a patch at all is disappointing. This isn't a game pushing out what the console is capable of and the fact that it's such a mediocre showing performance-wise is a bad look on Atlus' part.

This certainly does seem more on the scale of the free updates that Echoes of Wisdom and Mario Odyssey received, rather than the Tears/Breath Of The Wild scale upgrades.

@FragRed The work they did on the ARK rebuild for the original Switch (not the original release, but the one a year or two back) was actually pretty solid.

@SillyG The problem is that actual carts are even more expensive. And not every developer is like CDPR and able to eat that cost. So in that regard, yes, key-cards do offer smaller publishers the ability to release physical(ish) titles.

@AmplifyMJ Footage released by Ubisoft weeks before release looked poor. Can't blame people for reporting on what the company that made the game is releasing.

I'm thrilled it turned out well. But Ubisoft held footage of the release code extremely close to the vest.

@The-Chosen-one If developers are diligent about their work there are some places in some games where the Switch 2 can outshine the Series S. But the Series S is without a doubt the stronger system overall.

@theberrage All difficulty is manufactured. The game is intended to be challenging.

@Flashlink99 I screamed in rage. And then went back and resolutely trounced them again. It was objectively funny.

@hYdeks That would still require a read/write card as opposed to the current read only cards that the Switch uses, no? And they'd need to be available in the sizes large enough for modern games, which has shown to be a problem.

At the end of the day we're still running into size and cost issues.

@MTMike87 I imagine it's a Column A Column B situation. For the smaller games like Bravely Default and Ivalice, the S2 cards are too expensive to justify, and for games like 7 Remake the cards are too small and too slow. So the existing physical cards sit in an awkward place where the only companies that can use them are ones like PlayTonic who are taking the risk in order to actively seek out community engagement and goodwill, or Marvelous who have such a distinct, dedicated, and niche fan base that they can basically print the exact number of copies they need to stay afloat.

@HammerGalladeBro Just want to throw out that the generally accepted pronoun use for someone of undetermined gender is usually , "them," rather than, "it."

@rvcolem1 Even Bastion was incredible for when it released. Seriously, the community was losing their minds over it back in the day. It's just that it hasn't aged as well as Transistor and Pyre have.

I'm glad for the option to run at a higher resolution with the quality mode, and 1080/60 is fine in terms of performance. But the visuals on display do make me think they could have been much more ambitious with those numbers.