Jeronan

@Medic_alert That is very suprising and maybe its in the US, as I don't know what its being sold for over there?

But here in Europe the XBox Series X costs the same as the PS5.
I paid 600 euro for my XBOX Series X at launch and the same again 3 years later for my PS5.
Before that I paid 450 euro for my XBOX One X Scorpio Edition.

So if the reported production cost of the XBox console was $500, which always goes down after 2-3 years. They must at the least break even (or at least a small profit) with sales in Europe, but definitely not at loss.

And now, because of global market situation and continuing inflation, the price of both Series X and PS5 have gone up to almost 700 euro.

But yeah, if they sell the XBOX Series X for under 500 bucks in US, then they would sell at a loss with the Series X.
Which surprises me, as after PS3/XBOX360 era, both Sony and MS wanted to stop selling their consoles at a loss and at minimum break even.

@OldGamer999 What isn't home about XBOX Series S/X ?

It's as home console as the Sony Playstation 5 digital/5.

I have both XBOX Series X and Playstation 5. They are both traditional home consoles.

@Medic_alert Microsoft has one huge advantage with XBox and that is that they dominate the PC market with their Windows OS.

PC GamePass is doing well too and with GamePass Ultimate (which I have), you can play games on both XBOX and PC.

So Microsoft doesn't need to sell as many consoles like for example Sony with Playstation, to make a profit.

You also need to remember that both MS and Sony's strategy with consoles has changed a while back. They no longer sell consoles at a loss, like they did in the past. They sell now with a profit. They already stopped with that with the previous generation.
PS3 and XBOX360 were the last consoles that were sold cheap and at a loss.

@Axecon Ehh not really. After playing both Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royal..... Persona 4 Golden isn't holding up well at all.
It looks really rough and low res. Especially on anything larger than a PS Vita screen. Even in handheld mode on the Switch 1 screen it's barely passable. The port to PC and other consoles was a zero effort direct port without any optimizations.
It also misses a lot of the excellent QoL features that both Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royale have.

@Vyacheslav333 I just checked the Persona 3 Reload info.

Voice Direction:
The voices of the Japanese dub were recorded from scratch.
The English version features a mostly entirely new voice cast.

So yeah, at least the English voice actors were new.

I mean. It's been 20 years and voices change over so many years and it might be hard to get the entire original cast together again.

As I don't think they used the same voice actors for the Persona 3 remake either?
I think it was an entirely new cast of younger voice actors.
It still turned out to be an amazing game with excellent voice acting!

So I wouldn't be surprised they will do the same with the Persona 4 remake.

I am not really sold on Legends Z-A either. I never managed to finish Legends Arceus, as it just became so repetitive and boring very quickly.
What I have seen so far from Legends Z-A, it seems to have the same repetition with singular focus on night time battles.
So you either throwing pokeballs ad nauseum during day time and then fighting ad nauseum at night.

And that is the difference with the mainline games. They have so many different activities, to break up the repetition.

Well here in Scandinavia ( Norway, Sweden, Denmark ), the Nintendo distributor is doing the scalping!
Base console 650 euro and Mario Kart World bundle at 750 euro!

So I have absolutely no desire to buy a Switch 2 any time soon.

Wow. Instead of 10 meter draw distance (grass/pokemon), we now get 20 meter draw distance on the Switch 2.

Must have been a huge undertaking by Game freak to update that one line of code.

@TheExile285 It could never have been for storage reasons, as the old games aren't that big in size at all. Especially 1.5 and 2.5HD/remix.

More than likely that it was too much work to get them to run on the Switch 1.

@WhiteUmbrella
Valve's whole core business model is Steam. A digital only PC game store platform!
They themselves started the whole digital only race back in 2003 and when it became so successful, others took note and wanted a piece of the cake and started their own digital storefronts.
GoG is one of the earlier competitors at that time and launched back in 2008.

And much later Ubisoft and EA started releasing their own launchers with Digital Store, with Epic Games coming late to the party.

Then we had Google's failed misadventure with Stadia, which was sadly just released too soon and internet not being ready for Cloud only gaming at the time (Many countries, including large parts of the US, have bad internet services).
Now both XBox Cloud and Sony PS5 Streaming are actually working really well and I use it often.

PS. Just because you are able to side-load games on a Steam Deck (which is just a pet side project for them), doesn't mean that Valve very much locks you into Steam's ecosystem and all games bought on Steam, only work on Steam.
So lets not kid ourselves. Valve's core business "IS" Steam and they want you to buy games on Steam and lock you into their platform! Which they have been doing since 2003.

When it comes to Nintendo, the first eShop released on 3DS back in 2011.

TDLR; Buying games digitally has been fully embraced and accepted on PC for the past 15+ years or so and you are very hard pressed to even find a physical PC game copy in a store these days.

But somehow on Game consoles it's super duper evil, even though most of it is completely out of the hands of Console manufacturers Sony and MS (for example) nowadays, when major game publishers push for Live service games and games that require a constant internet connection and don't even work offline. A lot of these games stop working, when they shut down these game's servers. Especially Ubisoft has gotten major critique for this, with many older games no longer playable! But other major publishers like 2K, EA and ActiVision are no better.

@WhiteUmbrella We don't know yet. Everything is pure speculation at this point, since Nintendo refuses to release the full specifications of the Switch 2.
Hell, they never did for the Switch 1 either and tech sites had to wait till they got hold of the official console and run bench tests themselves to get the actual numbers.

So we have to wait for the same with the Switch 2, till tech sites get hold of the actual console in June and manage to run bench tests on them (and take the console apart and analyze everything).

Either way. The Switch 2 SoC has double the Core count and almost 3x the GPU specs of the AMD Zen 2 SoC in Steam deck.
So if we cut this in half in handheld mode (similar to Switch 1 performance benchmarks), the Switch 2 should in theory still be able to outmatch the Steam deck in handheld mode.

Again! All speculation at this point, until someone posts some real benchmark results of the Switch 2.

@WhiteUmbrella Oh my.......

You do know that the Steam Deck has an AMD Zen 2 SoC?
AMD Zen 2 was officially released in 2019.
Which means that the design specification for this SoC "on paper" was probably finalized around 2014-2015.

This custom AMD Zen 2 SoC for the Steam deck isn't coming anywhere near the SoC specifications of the Switch 2.

6 nm AMD APU
CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.6GHz (1.6 TFlops FP32)
APU power: 4-15W

Especially the GPU capabilities of the Steam deck are serious weak point now and why none of the major game releases of the last 2 years even run on the Steam deck and the few that do, run extremely poorly with terrible resolution and other compromises.

The AMD Z1 / Z1 Extreme are way more capable SoC's, but they are quite power hungry and need serious cooling. The fan noise on the Rog Ally and other PC handhelds is crazy. I thought the fan noise on the Steam deck was already annoying.
So I understand why Valve skipped the AMD Z1 SoC line and wait for a next generation that is hopefully more power efficient and able to deal with a lower fan noise.

Since they are using Unreal Engine and it having multi-platform support, a port to the Switch 2 should be a pretty straightforward process.

People are so wrong. It's not even funny!

A lot of you don't understand the CPU / GPU design and manufacturing process and release pipelines.

Intel, AMD, Apple, Nvidia silicon. The design specs of a new generation CPU and/or GPU are often already finished on paper 4-5 years before actual release.
It takes a hell lot of time, going from a technical specification to actual mass-production and release of a new CPU/GPU/SoC.
Especially if they are also switching to a new nM manufacturing process. This takes a lot of time in preparation, testing, validation, certification, etc.
This is a very deliberate process and they are doing it this way for a good reason.

So when it comes to the Switch 2 SoC, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the Technical Specification "on paper" was finalized in 2021.

@TAndvig That is on Nintendo, as they try to keep everything secret for as long as possible and are notorious for not giving out any technical details on their products.

So people are forced to wait till after they get hold of the physical product and take it apart and then pray, when they report on it, they not getting CoD'd by Nintendo's overzealous lawyers.

Meanwhile, both Sony and MS freely report all the technical details and capabilities ( SoC, RAM, Storage, etc. ) of their consoles for everyone to see.

@macaron35 Seeing that the Switch 2 here will be 40% more expensive than the Switch OLED, I have a feeling that the Switch OLED will sell well a good while longer.

It might actually be legit, since if the Switch 2 cartridges are MicroSD Express. It's very much possible the smallest available memory module is 64GB.

The vast majority of SD cards are used in video/photo cameras and some Android phones that have a slot for it.
And these days no one is buying small cards anymore, so it makes no sense to develop and produce anything smaller than 64GB these days.

@elpardo1984 It's really a shame they seem to have seemingly abandoned Super Mario Maker.

It was such a cool concept and would love to see a Super Mario Maker 3 with 3D map features.

@BriskSunrise So a game gets invented, designed, developed and released all within a single year? Right!

I am done here. You people can´t be reasoned with and will defend Nintendo no matter what. Its crazy.
Even all that happened with Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. /sigh

@Toastmaster Exactly! You hit the nail on the head.

The old Nintendo we knew and love, under Satoru Iwata, no longer exists. It passed away along with him (may he rest in peace).

Nintendo today is as anti-consumer as it can be, outright hostile and more busy filing frivolous patents on game mechanics.

Games like Zelda: ToTK and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet would never have released in the state they were in, under Iwata's reign.

@Mgalens I have both XBox Series X and PS5 and had a lot of problems with Remote Play on my Wifi mesh network.

I solved it, by connecting both my XBox and PS5 with network cable to my Wifi router.

I think it has to do with the poor WiFi hardware (and perhaps also poor WiFi drivers) on these consoles.
So when I connected them by wire to my WiFi router, it instantly solved my problems with Remote Play on both my consoles.

I use my PS Portal regularly, playing from my bed in the evening and have zero issues with input lag or latency.

@sanderev Here in Norway (and rest of Scandinavia) we have to pay 650 euro for the base Switch 2 console and 750 euro for the Mario Kart World bundle.

New Switch 2 games, like Mario Kart World are priced at 110 euro and the Pro 2 controller costs 120 euro.

Since both my son and me have our Switch console ( I have the OLED ). Buying a Switch 2 is completely out of the question with this kind of pricing.

Here in Scandinavia, the Switch 2 will now be the most expensive console on the market, with most expensive games and accessories.
While before Nintendo was always the lowest priced console and always be considered the most family friendly option. But no more.

@sanderev Wrong again. PS Portal does not require to be on the same WiFi as the PS5.

You were complaining about the price of PS Plus Premium and that you need it to use the PS Portal.

Yes it offers a lot of benefits and makes the PS Portal way more usable with that subscription, because you can stream from anywhere with decent internet connection with no input lag issues than when you would use Remote Play from a long distance.

But you did not account for the fact that PS Plus Premium gives you access to a huge game catalog of games! Now also including old gen games from PS, PSP, PS3 and PS4 plus many amazing PS5 games.
A year of PS Plus Premium cost less than buying two PS5 games. So you only need to play two PS5 games a year to fully recoup your costs.

@sanderev Unless you have been living under a rock. Every console requires a subscription these days. Including Nintendo. Nothing is free anymore.

PS Premium is pretty much the same as XBOX Gamepass Ultimate. You get access to a huge catalog of games and able to Stream it from any device.
So it offers a hell lot more than just Cloud gaming option.

@sanderev That was at launch. Sony released a firmware update back in November already that added Cloud gaming ( PS streaming ).

I thought exactly like you when the Portal initially released and thought Sony was mad to just release a Remote Play handheld that depended on your PS5, while PS Premium includes Streaming (cloud gaming), but the Portal not supporting this.
It was the perfect dedicated Playstation Cloud streaming handheld, yet it did not support it.

But to Sony's credit, they listened to all the critique and feedback and released a steady stream of firmware updates, including adding Cloud streaming, which doesn't require your PS5 to be on and connected anymore.

@Ploppy Yeah that's a shame. Not every country is up to par with their internet offerings.

Here in Europe, especially up here in Scandinavia, we have excellent internet and almost full 5G mobile coverage now.

So that makes the Playstation Portal and excellent buy now. I am super happy with it.
To the point, that with how Nintendo is behaving recently and the whole crazy Switch 2 pricing. I am not even remotely interested in the Switch 2 now.
Way too expensive and my Switch OLED is still working perfectly and looking like new.

@Toastmaster This is just a bullying / scare tactic by Nintendo to scare the average person that doesn't know their rights.

Here in almost any country in Europe, that part of the terms of service won't hold a candle in any court!
It's a blatant consumer right violation and Nintendo knows it.

@KociolekDoSyta Not anymore. Sony messed up the launch of the Portal, as it only supported Remote Play at launch.
But Sony have since giving it steady firmware updates, actually listened to feedback and it now supports cloud gaming ( streaming ).

I actually bought the PS Portal recently and its amazing! Gorgeous 8inch screen with full blown built-in dual shock controller. Great battery life and super light weight!

For 200 bucks it's a bargain. Especially when you factor in the 90 bucks price tag of a PS5 dual shock controller.

@BTB20 Again! You mixing up modding and pirating.

There is a whole Switch modding community out there that doesn't mod to pirate, but mod to improve the experience.

There are youtube videos in how they add a larger battery, with larger housing, better fan and 3D print a custom dock with air cooling.
Then with the custom firmware they fully unlock the Tegra X1 chip, as the SoC is heavily underclocked on the Switch.
It only utilizes about 25-30% on handheld mode and 50% in docked mode.
So people managed to run Zelda: ToTK at a stable 60fps on their fully modded Switch console. Just with some extra cooling and modded firmware.
In comparison. Zelda:ToTK can't even manage a stable 30fps on a retail console! Lets not even talk about the disaster that is Pokemon Scarlet/Violet!

They are not stealing property nor pirating any games!

I don't think people complain about the lack of innovation with the Switch 2.

People complain about the high price of the console and the much higher price of games and accessories.

Here in Scandinavian countries we have to pay 650 euro for the base console and 750 euro for the Mario Kart World bundle.

New Switch games are 100-110 euro (current Switch 1 games are 60-70 euro).
The new Pro 2 controller is 120 euro as opposed to 90 euro for the Pro 1 controller.

Absolutely bonkers! I can buy the PS5 for 640 euro and Dual Shock controllers for 90 euro.
Sony received a huge backlash and critique for the high price on PS5 games that are 80-90 euro average.
People complained you had to pay a 10 euro upgrade fee to upgrade a PS4 version to PS5 version.

But here comes Nintendo that sells their games for 10-20 euro more than PS5/Xbox games, sells the Pro 2 controller for 30 euro more and ask 20 euro for Switch 2 game upgrades.

Nintendo was so succesful with the Switch, since the console was way cheaper than XBox and Playstation, their games fairly priced and lower than XBox and Playstation counter parts.
It was the family friendly go-to console for many with their accessible prices.

But right now, they raced to the top as the most expensive console, accessories and games on the market with the Switch 2!
They made Sony look like a saint now.

@DominionGamma How is modding stealing property?

Stealing property is called Piracy! You mixing up these two things.

That there are people out there modding console to then pirate games illegaly. Is a totally different thing.

Right now, now the DS/3DS system is no longer supported, I am actually thinking about modding one of my 3DS consoles, so I can rip all my game cartridges to the microSD card, so I can play all my games directly from my console, without having to constantly swap cartridges and so extend the life of both the console and the cartridges itself.
Believe it or not, this is actually one of the main reasons people mod console systems like these.
I am not stealing property nor pirating, since it's all games I already paid for and are in my possession!

@AmanPikon Anyone even pretending to accuse Digimon as being a response to Pokemon, are crazy and don't even understand the time it takes to design and develop a game, yet alone an entire physical TCG.

Both franchises were created and in development at the same time.
The TCG was their main focus, as an actual response to the success of Magic: The Gathering TCG and saw it as an opportunity in a new emerging market with great potential at that time.

What people don't even seem to understand, even today, is that the video games are still just a side business for both franchises.
For The Pokemon Company, the video games and TV series are just products to support their main product: Pokemon TCG!

If you look at the profit numbers. The amount of money TPC makes with the Pokemon TCG is obsene compared to the video games and TV series combined. It complete dwarfs their numbers.

People had a reason to be upset and outraged against Nintendo / TPC after the horribly botched release of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet!
A company that sits on billions of dollars in profit, unwilling to give Game Freak enough support to make a good Pokemon game!

That whole debacle is what actually caused the huge success of Palworld! And Nintendo only made it worse in the way they responded and their lies, deceit and utter refusal to fix their own damn Pokemon games! Up to this day!

TPC put more effort in their live service games, Pokemon Unite and the new Pokemon Digital TCG apps, then they do on their mainline Pokemon games. As it clearly makes them more money. That's all you need to know where their priority lies and that they only care about your wallet.

This just more and more reinforces my decision to not buy the Switch 2.

My Switch OLED is still working perfectly fine and looks like new. Nintendo's more and more both hostile and anti-consumer actions in recent years is just starting to wear me down and leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

@N00BiSH That is not even a challenge. Wind Waker HD is better.

@BTB20 All games, including Digimon ( 1996/1997 ) and Tamagotchi ( 1996 ) had years in development.
Especially a physical product takes a long time in development, testing iterations, certifications, manufacturing, etc, before the final product releases.

Both Digimon and Pokemon were trying to mimic and ride on the success of Magic:The Gathering TCG.

Pocket monster concept is also not new and not invented by Game freak. It's borrowed from old children's stories.

And that is perfectly fine. Like I am trying to say all this time. Everyone is copying/borrowing from someone else.
It's called creative freedom and why we can enjoy so many games in different genres.

So lets just call a spade a spade shall we and just call out Nintendo for what they are! A bunch of hypocrites and the new top management is just horrible for the companies reputation.

They are just petty and insidious. They feel insecure and threatened, because Palworld was a bigger success than Pokemon Scarlet&Violet. Rightfully so, as many people were pissed off at Nintendo / Pokemon Company for that garbage of a release with horrible performance problems, they never bothered to fix. Even with Nintendo coming out with an official apology and promise of fixing it was their top priority back then!
But nope, all a lie and they just focused on shoving the paid DLC (with even worse performance issues) down our throats instead!

And that is the whole crux of the matter here. The Nintendo of old we all knew and love, no longer exists. It died with Satoru Iwata!
Today, Nintendo is just a greedy, selfish corporation now, bending to their shareholders like any other company out there.
The way they mishandled Pokemon Scarlet&Violet and lied to us with false promises. They way they handled the whole Switch 2 release debacle and insidious pricing. ( They make Sony look like a saint at this point. )
Filing patents of generic game mechanics and try to file it under an old existing parent pattent! So they can go after already released games!

That should all be proof enough to anybody in what kind of company Nintendo is today.

@Dr_Lugae Digmon also started in 1996 but was eventually released in 1997.

It doesn't really matter. They all started around the same time.
Both Digimon TCG and Pokemon TCG are based on the success of Magic the Gathering TCG, riding on that game's success and it's TCG gaming, collecting, trading RPG concept.

The point I am trying to make is that everyone has been copying/borrowing from each other for decades, when a product, game, setting is highly successful.

World of Warcraft MMORPG in 2004 was nothing unique and copied / borrowed heavily from EverQuest and Ultima MMORPG franchise, but somehow became a huge success.
Soon after, every other game studio on the planet tried to copy WoW to try mimic and bank on it's success.

What Nintendo does know, is trying to get the sole right on making Pocket monster games.
They are now trying to get patents on various mechanics, like Catching animal pets, summoning animal pets and animal mount gliding.

Then they are even more insiduous by trying to file this new patents under an existing old patent. So they can now try go after already released games, like Palworld.

This is not about Plagiarism and I really don't understand how in earth people try to defend Nintendo's actions in this.

I don't care what you think about Pocketpal Inc and Palworld.
That is completely beside the point here and you have to look at what Nintendo is actually trying to do here, which is just petty and insiduous!

If they get away with this and succeed in their lawsuit, then there is no stopping them for going after others next.

@antlion Again, if that were the case, they can sue on Plagiarism charges.

but what Nintendo does now, is just nuts and sets a very dangerous precedent, if they get away with getting game mechanics patents approved.

People seriously don't understand the concequences of this as before you know it, actual behemoths like TenCent, 2K, EA, etc will start patenting game mechanics too and then we really screwed.

It would be the end of Indie development and independent game studios and overall creative freedom in general.

@sanderev But Pokemon mechanics aren't that unique either.

Digimon was invented a year before pokemon and uses similar mechanics with pocket monsters.
Or how about LEVEL5 with Yo-kai Watch for example?

Like I said. Nintendo needs to stop being such hypocrites.
They borrow/copy/use plenty of existing game mechanics themselves, but then throw a hissy fit when others do the same.

This has been going on for decades in game design and development. Everyone is borrowing/copying from each other.
It's called creative freedom.

There is a difference when it comes to IP in that someone uses the exact same characters, character looks, names, story, etc.
That falls under plagiarism and can be sued on everywhere and in every industry.

@Cathalm Then they should do that. Try sue them for plagiarism!

Instead of trying to patent friggin' game mechanics that have been used for decades!

@Dr_Lugae LOL? You must not have played many games then, if you really think that Pokemon's mount gliding mechanic is somehow unique and warrants being patented.

It's not.

Nintendo should stop being such hypocrites, as if they haven't copied/borrowed game mechanics themselves? Come on now!

Pokemon stats and skills. Water, Fire, Grass, Fairy, Fighting, Steel types. Just a different flavor on Magic elements.

All core staple RPG mechanics invented by Gary Gygax with Dungeons and Dragons back in the 70's.

@Dr_Lugae LOL! What about TemTem then?

That game is far more of a 1:1 copy than Palworld. The only difference is that they use flat discs instead of spheres.
TemTem has 3 starters, 6 limit, gym battles, etc, etc.

Palworld is a ARK survival kind of game at it's core, just with Pokemon mechanics. So yeah, maybe they should have just changed the shape from spheres to cubes or something.
Would that have been better?

@Dr_Lugae The way gliding works in Legends/Scarlet/Violet is not unique. Many other RPG and MMORPG games have/had that kind of animal mount gliding before it.

Gliding is gliding. Not that many different ways you can go about it.

How in earth can Nintendo get away with this?

Gliding on animal mounts? There are so many games out there with flying / gliding mounts!
This is considered a standard mechanic in many games for decades and not something that should be allowed to be patented! Absolutely nuts!

This is ridiculous and getting out of hand, no matter what you think about Pocketpal Inc. and Palworld itself. The fact that Nintendo is trying to patent game mechanics, including ones that have been used in games for decades, is just crazy and disturbing.

This current Nintendo CEO has completely lost the plot. Just look at the whole Switch 2 reveal and pricing debacle!

Instead of focusing on making good games, Nintendo is just slowly turning into a horrific Patent troll company! Ruining and stifling creative freedom.

@Olmectron It was literally advised to download and patch all your games before the eShop closure.
I bought a larger microSD card to download all my purchases and patch them up on my 3DS console.

I can no longer open the eShop. It clearly says its closed down.

Do you mean its still possible to access your digital game list via the System menu or something and redownload from Nintendo?
Been 2 years I last used my 3DS.

@Anti-Matter How is this any different than using Steam or GOG?

Two of the most popular digital platforms on PC.

When it comes to XBOX/PC GamePass. It's incredible value for money.
You can play and try out so many games, without having to put down full retail price. Especially for games you not sure about.

I have GamePass Ultimate for years now and its great. Especially now XBox Cloud gaming works really well too, I can stream (XBox) games to my laptop or iPad Pro from anywhere, with full controller support.

@MSaturn This only works, when all future consoles keep being backwards compatible with the same eShop store, so you can continue to download these "key on card" games, when you buy it 2nd hand.

If the 3DS for example had "key on card" games, then those physical games will be worth nothing anymore! As the 3DS eShop has been closed down. So you can no longer download any digital games you purchased. No longer download any patches for games.
AND! If you had this "key on card" game, it would be worthless now, since you can't download the game anymore.

So again, these "key on card" games only keep being valid and offer any resell value, as long as Nintendo keeps the Switch eShop alive in the future.

@FortniteJ Again, you comparing old(er) games being ported to the Switch compared to brand new AAA game releases, where each one of them had a big day 1 patch.

Of course it makes sense when you port an old(er) game, which has already had it's fair share of fixes and patches back in the day, will now run well straight of the cartridge (unless its a bad port).

@FortniteJ Astrobot is just a small game.

You cannot compare that to a major AAA release with data size of 80-120 GB.
A lot of these games have a huge day 1 patch at release.

I have both XBOX Series X and PS5, but also a top-end Gaming PC with tons of games on Steam.

So I know. Every single major game release I have played the past 10+ years had a large Day 1 patch. With very few exceptions.