@Bass_X0 In various media (I’m mainly thinking about the Young Bond series) he has the name ‘James Bond’ well before taking on the 007 moniker. Even in the trailer above, they refer to him as ‘Bond’ before he has joined ‘the programme’. Admittedly, I feel this fact alone is far from conclusive, and I’m also willing to accept the argument that the ‘Young Bond books don’t count’.
Perhaps more conclusive is this gravestone from Skyfall of Bond’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. … Bond.
It seems a rather remarkable coincidence that one’s codename happens to be identical to one’s parent’s surnames, and by extension one’s own surname. As a way to conceal one’s identity, it makes Superman putting on glasses and calling himself Clark Kent look positively inspired.
I admire the sheer imagination necessary to believe that all the Bonds exist in the same universe with unbroken continuity, but I’m more inclined to believe that James Bond is just a fictional character in a story (many stories), just like Batman is fictional character in a story (many, many stories), and that the enormous scope of both franchises requires that the actors be recast, the characters reinvented, and the stories retold time and time again… thus muddling any sort of overarching continuity.
Basically what I’m saying is it’s a mess. And it’s allowed to be a mess. Because it’s a story. And stories are allowed to twist and turn and reshape themselves through the ages.
@Mommas James Bond was 41 in 1971 (Diamonds are Forever) and 38 in 2006 (Casino Royale). He grew 3 years younger over the course of 35 years.
This is to say, if you can present me with a plausible cross-media timeline of what age Bond ‘should’ be in what year, I will be very, very, very impressed.
Nitpicking over the appearance (or exact time period) of James Bond is like nitpicking over the appearance (or exact time period) of Doctor Who.
As soon as you’ve established what Bond ‘should’ look like he’s replaced with someone else entirely. That’s the nature of the franchise and how it’s managed to remain alive for so many decades.
You can’t polish a turd, but seemingly you can polish a Turtwig — and this is the result!
There’s something about the world and overall game design that still feels distinctly amateurish, but getting around that world is now at least a fair bit smoother… which is something!
@StandardMario No, this means war. As self-appointed divine leader of the Shrek Resistance, I hereby declare a never-ending holy war on Garfield and Garfield sympathisers and people who own cats and people who like lasagne and just people in general who aren’t ogres.
Also, I might not be entirely serious. And I might not have been entirely serious in my previous comment. And I might not actually be that big of a Shrek fan, although I do think the first movie still holds up.
I just call this a “walk” because I am always reflecting on confidence-boosting spiritual alignment practices that vibe expressively with my celestial chakra promoting inner and outer peace and gratitude towards all things especially myself because I’m so damn hot.
Sometimes I dress up as a Pikmin because it makes me look a bit silly which puts people at ease. Otherwise they’d feel intimidated by my hotness and spiritual alignment and very embarrassed in comparison.
@Dr_Lugae All very well made points! Still, it’s interesting that we seem to be shifting away from a ‘retail games cost this much’ kind of model to a more finely graded system. On the UK store there seem to be a few pricing ‘rungs’ that have been been established for physical Switch 2 releases.
Mario Kart sits on the top rung at £75, then the rest of the major first party releases are £67 (DK and the spruced Switch games). Then you have 3rd party games which are all over the place (and currently all on game keys).
Given that, it’s interesting that Z-A doesn’t seem to sit on any of these existing rungs. Joe Merrick’s post doesn’t mention a physical/digital pricing split. If there is one (which seems likely) then I imagine the price we’re looking at is the cheaper of the two.
@Sensible I don’t disagree! I can’t say I like that games costs more than they did a decade ago, but I won’t pretend that all of the narrative surrounding pricing is very cogent.
If anything, the fact that it’s taken this long for ‘variable pricing’ to really establish itself (for first party titles) is somewhat surprising. Mario Tennis Aces and Breath of the Wild are both $60 on the US eShop which seems a bit… wild to me.
I’m not saying Aces is bad — this isn’t really about ‘quality’ so much as development costs. Admittedly, I am completely ignorant about how much time and most each title costs to produce (so should probably shut up), but I can’t imagine they were on anywhere near the same scale.
Aces had some new mechanics over Power Tennis, but was very much in the same vein. Every character shares the same basic move-set, and the courts are all variations on a theme with some gimmicks thrown in.
Zelda was a complete reimagining of the franchise on a preposterously epic scale that took the best part of a decade to develop. Of course, it made that money back by selling significantly more copies than Aces, but the fact they’re still on the same ‘tier’ feels like having the Mr. Men books sitting next to War and Peace and priced equally at a book shop.
Splat…ppy Birthday to the game that made me get a Wii U.
Completely agree about both the lack of voice chat with randos and the under-appreciated single player.
People often argue that unrestricted voice chat should be there as an option because you can turn it off if you want to. In my head I normally think, “Yeah, but that would disadvantage those who don’t use it and also create the same icky culture that pervades most all other online shooters. Please let me enjoy my nice colourful cartoony squid game unsullied.”
…I normally just stay silent though, smug in the knowledge that I’ve basically won the argument as Nintendo almost certainly don’t want the hassle of policing the online environment. They got a taste of that with Miiverse (RIP) and look how that ended up.
And the single player is great in all the Splatoon games. After Splatoon 3 game out, the local used game shop was flooded with copies of Splatoon 2 for like ¥1000 (under £10). Even without NSO it’s definitely worth that for the single player alone.
“Anyone that thinks buying physical games for the switch 2 is a good idea deserves to be penalised for their idiocy.”
This is… a rather loaded statement. Certainly not a universally accepted position, at any rate.
We could get into the nuances between ‘ownership’ and ‘right of access’ (i.e. can I sell/trade/give away the item I have purchased?) …But I’m not sure that’s necessary. The point is that Nintendo is selling the physical version of this game for £66.99 on their official store (£64.99 on Amazon) and this is the version a lot of people will opt for. With respect, it doesn’t matter what you think those people deserve, or whether you think their purchasing decisions are ‘sensible’, this is simply a straightforward observation.
A similarly straightforward observation is that, as you’ve noted, the game doesn’t cost £70. Not on any major storefront. One could argue that the £3.01 difference is insignificant, and in a casual conversation if someone said “70 quid” I probably wouldn’t correct them, but in a widely circulated piece of journalism I’m not entirely comfortable with it. “£67”? Fine, I’m not going to quibble over a penny. “Nearly 70 quid”? Fair enough, at least degree of imprecision is acknowledged. But stating as fact that we live “in a world of £70 Donkey Kong Bananzas” (especially in an article where most prices are given to the penny/yen) feels like stretching things to the point of misinformation.
So yeah, I agree that it should be corrected; not based on the argument that “physical media is for idiots who deserve to be punished” but because… well, the game doesn’t cost 70GBP.
You can now exchange some of your previously downloaded event themes (Special Themes) for game tickets using the Customize menu. Each event theme is worth 30 tickets.
For what it’s worth, I can sympathise with the mistranslation, despite the fact that what it’s describing is… a little odd.
In English, if one says, “to exchange A for B” there is a strong implication that we identify with the party giving away A and receiving B.
Things become more symmetrical if we take an observer’s standpoint and simply note that “A and B are exchanged”. (…Though you could argue that because A is stated before B, there is still a slight tendency to think of A as the thing parted with and B as the thing gained.)
The Japanese text opens with the concept of ‘Event Themes’ and then states that (some of) them can be exchanged with (I’m using this over ‘for’ to try and express the relative symmetry of the particle と) ‘in-game tickets’. From a purely linguistic perspective, all we know is that the two things have changed places, without knowing who has given what in return for what*.
*Of course there is no actual “exchange” occurring between two parties (player and in-game store) as the latter party isn’t a party at all. From the player’s perspective, they appear to be giving something (tickets) in return for something else (themes), but it’s not like the store is actually ‘receiving’ tickets or ‘parting with’ a finite number of themes. One thing is being destroyed in return for the creation of another, but the ‘recipient’ of the player’s tickets does not exist.
Now, one might assume that the item corresponding to ‘currency’ (i.e. tickets) is given by the player, in return for the item corresponding to ‘goods and services’ (i.e. themes). Certainly, if instead of ‘exchange’ (交換) a less symmetrical word like ‘purchase’ (購入**) were used, then there would be little doubt as to who is trading what for what. However, as things stand, the wording is technically ambiguous.
**Admittedly, this could suggest spending ‘real’ money (assuming money is any more ‘real’ than tickets)
Indeed, the two machine translation engines (DeepL and Google) I’ve run the original text through make exactly the same mistake. (I invite you to try.) So yeah, it’s human error, but machines are seemingly just as susceptible.
If anything, this could be argued of an example for the continued relevance of human translators, who are more likely to smell a rat if something is grammatically plausible but semantically suspicious. Humans have the capacity to doubt (some more than others) which can lead to fact-checking before the translation is finalised.
…Or after, in this case.
Anyway, good on @OatmealDome for being the human who caught the error in this case.
We are witnessing retelling the Star Wars in which @Anakin turns to the Dark side, not through the corrupting influence of Emperor Palpatine, but instead through arguing with the Toxic Positivity side over what constitutes an appropriate degree of excitement for GameCube games on Switch 2.
Actually Mario Kart Tour is technically Mario Kart 76 because it’s the twelfth game since Mario Kart 64 which established the numbering system and you can’t count backwards even though that’s what Nintendo did but it doesn’t count so I win this argument and I put a feather in my Cappy and call it Marioni.
@sanderev I was just reading up on it, and that was one of the reasons given! It seems Microsoft also wanted to distance themselves from Windows 8 somewhat, which wasn’t particularly well received.
@Novuscourvous They made (at least) 8 ‘proper’ Mario Kart games; the last one so big it had almost 100 courses in total — nearly five times that of Super Mario Kart. We’ve not been hard pressed for ‘proper’ Mario Kart games historically.
MK8D is a tough act to follow in terms of sheer volume and I’m not personally too sad that this title isn’t just ‘more of the same’. Each to their own, though.
“I’m-a Super Mario’s Super Papi-o! I’m-a DK’s rad, bad dad! You can’t tell Miy-a-what-to do! I’m-a Miya-freakin-moto, that’s who!”
…Yelled the 72 year old game designer in a ludicrous Italian accent, raising a middle finger defiantly in the direction of an imagined PR department. He then proceeded to discuss Switch 2 at great length with an impish grin playing around the corners of his mouth and a twinkle in his eye.
Nobody calls anything 9 anymore. Remember when Microsoft released Windows 9? Remember when Apple released the iPhone 9? Nope, because that never happened, because those companies decided 9 was lame and 10 was AWESOME.
I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t call this game MAR10 Xart 10: Xtreme Xircuit to draw attention to how cool and revolutionary the concepts of 10 and the letter X are.
I design my own cards using old receipts and a Sharpie and sometimes glitter which I stick on with chewing gum or toothpaste if I don’t have chewing gum to make them extra sparkly.
That way I know they’re one of a kind and no one will steal them from my shop because I don’t have a shop and also no one else wants them.
Hold up my man, have you somehow not heard of Oresama no Nyanchan ga Kawaisugite Bakuhatsushichatte Doushiyou?
Like, seriously? Have you seriously not heard of it? What’s with modern game journos these days like seriously. I mean, yes I made it up, but you still should have heard of it.
@abe_hikura I think someone from Microsoft saw all the “DROP THE PRICE” comments in the Switch 2 chat and realised they could help make it seem relatively less expensive.
@MeloMan “Obviously it's to keep from having to physically load the game on there which keeps costs down for devs, but I'm just trying to get the biggest picture of their advantage here...”
I think this is the zero sum. The developers (EDIT: publisher) pays less per product. The consumer gets an inferior product. I don’t believe there are any advantages for the consumer over full physical, and that cost-saving on physical media storage is the only advantage for devs.
@HeadPirate The standard Japanese Switch 2 is almost exactly the same markup over the Switch 1 when compared to the US.
49,980÷32,978=1.5155… compared to 449.99÷299.99=1.50002. So roughly 52% more in Japan as opposed to almost exactly 50% more in the US.
For Japanese consumers, who are paid in yen, it’s very comparable. The reason it looks cheap for American consumers is that the yen is still weak against the dollar compared to five years ago (though things have taken a wobble in recent weeks).
This is almost certainly the main motive behind creating two consoles for the Japanese market: a Japanese language-only version and a ‘language unlocked’ version — presumably equivalent to that sold overseas. It stops foreign buyers snapping up ‘cheap’ Japanese consoles, while also ensuring that Japanese consumers don’t have to pay a significantly higher markup over the Switch 1 compared to other countries.
As someone planning to get a ‘language unlocked’ version, I’m not particularly happy about having to pay ~40% more for the privilege, but I can’t deny there’s a degree of logic.
Like, you don’t have the advantages of full physical (functioning game on the card, low memory footprint) or full digital (ease of switching games without replacing carts)?
“Boycott” and its cousin “hard pass” are very dramatic terms for something entirely unremarkable: continuing to not own something you currently don’t own.
“Boycotting” is not an action: it is an inaction. And generally, doing nothing doesn’t make much of a statement (with some exceptions).
Consider me going to a supermarket to get some orange juice. Needless to say, nearly everything in the supermarket remains unbought — everything except the OJ. Would I be “boycotting” practically the entire contents of the supermarket in this case? Not in my head, but in effect, yes.
The packet on Salt ‘n’ Vinegar crisps near the checkout? Unbought. Wild watermelon flavoured mouthwash? Unbought. XXL incontinence pants? Hard unbought. That fluid which I think has something to do with dentures but I’m not really sure? Super hard unbought. And as for all the supermarkets I didn’t go to? Well, not even the orange juice got bought there. That’s gotta be the hardest of hard passes.
Did the message get through to these companies? No. Firstly because there was never a message. But even if there was, it wouldn’t make much difference.
I’m not saying that Nintendo’s pricing will have no effect on sales, nor that I particularly like it.
The console itself I can stomach: not cheap, but more technically impressive than I was expecting. Given that it’ll get a lot of use over a long time, I’ll take that over a cheaper console that doesn’t feel like much of a step-up from the Switch 1.
The game pricing I’m less comfortable with…
Will I be “boycotting” games because of it? No, but I’ll be buying fewer games, more selectively, as each purchase feels like more of a financial hit. Realistically, I’ll probably pay stupid money for Mario Kart because I really like and want Mario Kart.
…But that’s less money to spend on something like Metroid, which I might have considered if the games in general were priced lower. I would never consider myself “boycotting” Metroid. If anything, Mario Kart would be a worthier target for “boycotting”. But I want Mario Kart a lot and Metroid only a little, so it’s the latter that will remain unbought.
Metroid fans might be irritated because my lack of purchase means the series won’t get prioritised going forwards; meanwhile buying Mario Kart only encourages Nintendo to push game prices higher.
…And they’d be right.
But I don’t buy games for Metroid fans.
I buy them for me.
Children are senselessly burning alive in Gaza and Ukraine and the world’s most powerful man has teamed up with the world’s richest man to accelerate the breakdown of the systems that sustain all life on Earth. I’m not going to lose sleep because user @SamusIsHot3627 is annoyed that I didn’t buy Prime 4. They wouldn’t otherwise know because I wouldn’t usually announce it.
“Boycott” is a satisfyingly simple label; it allows one to feel that one’s inaction isn’t entirely impotent. There are patterns to people’s purchases which are naturally influenced by pricing, but these are best thought as interconnected gradients — not as a simple ON-OFF switch.
Personally, the pricing has definitely influenced what I will buy and when, but ultimately I am only a single pixel in a much larger picture, and the difference between what I “boycott” and simply “don’t buy” broadly doesn’t matter.
Never really understood the campaign against weapon degradation. All weapons are just variations on a theme, and no one is so unique or precious that you can’t find another just like it with little effort.
Weapons are ultimately consumables just like arrows and even food. One of the core elements of survival games (a genre the Switch Zelda games heavily draw from) is using one’s resources wisely.
If I pick up a farmer’s rake and immediately chuck it at an enemy, it will shatter instantly. If I want another I’ll have to go find one, or use a different weapon (hopefully more wisely) instead.
I can’t have my rake and yeet it, too.
EDIT: Turns out I was thinking of the Farming Hoe and/or Pitchfork. There is no rake.
@DwaynesGames @Wisestfool Thanks for the responses, guys. I suppose most retailers already know they’re going to sell through their stocks in the early days, so creating some goodwill along the way is an added bonus!
Very naive question here, but what financial incentive do retailers have to combat scalping? If the only thing retailers want to do is sell consoles, then does it matter who they sell to?
@Baker1000 The Japanese Switch 2 is just over 50% (49,980÷32,978=1.5155…) more expensive than the Japanese Switch 1. The US Switch 2 is almost exactly 50% more than the US Switch 1 (449.99÷299.99=1.50002).
The yen is weak compared to the dollar, so pretty everything in Japan is currently cheap to Americans. Japanese consumers are paying almost exactly the same markup for the Switch 2 as Americans.
How much of that 10x more graphics is graph and how much is ics? Coz if it’s 5x more graph and 5x more ics then that’s actually 5x5=25x more graph-ics in total but if it’s all just ics and no graph then what’s even the point?
These are the questions Digital Flandery should be anskwering.
Comments 2,986
Re: Feast Your Eyes On The Official Switch 2 Launch Trailer
@Riff-the-Don Split Fiction.
Re: Feast Your Eyes On The Official Switch 2 Launch Trailer
@Yoshi3 Yeah but I can’t go MOOOOOOOOO about that one cuz there’s no cow innit.
I suppose it was s…MOOOOOOOUSE…th…
…Nope.
Re: Feast Your Eyes On The Official Switch 2 Launch Trailer
That Biker Cow to Split Fiction transition was sMOOOOOOOOth!
Re: 007 First Light Official Game Reveal, Launching On Switch 2 In 2026
@Bass_X0 In various media (I’m mainly thinking about the Young Bond series) he has the name ‘James Bond’ well before taking on the 007 moniker. Even in the trailer above, they refer to him as ‘Bond’ before he has joined ‘the programme’. Admittedly, I feel this fact alone is far from conclusive, and I’m also willing to accept the argument that the ‘Young Bond books don’t count’.
Perhaps more conclusive is this gravestone from Skyfall of Bond’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. … Bond.
It seems a rather remarkable coincidence that one’s codename happens to be identical to one’s parent’s surnames, and by extension one’s own surname. As a way to conceal one’s identity, it makes Superman putting on glasses and calling himself Clark Kent look positively inspired.
I admire the sheer imagination necessary to believe that all the Bonds exist in the same universe with unbroken continuity, but I’m more inclined to believe that James Bond is just a fictional character in a story (many stories), just like Batman is fictional character in a story (many, many stories), and that the enormous scope of both franchises requires that the actors be recast, the characters reinvented, and the stories retold time and time again… thus muddling any sort of overarching continuity.
Basically what I’m saying is it’s a mess. And it’s allowed to be a mess. Because it’s a story. And stories are allowed to twist and turn and reshape themselves through the ages.
Re: 007 First Light Official Game Reveal, Launching On Switch 2 In 2026
@Mommas James Bond was 41 in 1971 (Diamonds are Forever) and 38 in 2006 (Casino Royale). He grew 3 years younger over the course of 35 years.
This is to say, if you can present me with a plausible cross-media timeline of what age Bond ‘should’ be in what year, I will be very, very, very impressed.
Re: 007 First Light Official Game Reveal, Launching On Switch 2 In 2026
Nitpicking over the appearance (or exact time period) of James Bond is like nitpicking over the appearance (or exact time period) of Doctor Who.
As soon as you’ve established what Bond ‘should’ look like he’s replaced with someone else entirely. That’s the nature of the franchise and how it’s managed to remain alive for so many decades.
Re: Site News: We've Got A Switch 2
I’ve got a Switch, too.
Bet y’all hella jelly.
Re: Early Impressions Of Pokémon Scarlet And Violet On Switch 2 Are Very Positive
You can’t polish a turd, but seemingly you can polish a Turtwig — and this is the result!
There’s something about the world and overall game design that still feels distinctly amateurish, but getting around that world is now at least a fair bit smoother… which is something!
Re: Video: "It's Actually...Really Good" - Our Hot 'Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour' Preview Take
@Kingy …Why, exactly?
Re: Moo-ve Aside Mario Kart World, Garfield Kart 2 Is Racing Onto Nintendo Switch
@StandardMario No, this means war. As self-appointed divine leader of the Shrek Resistance, I hereby declare a never-ending holy war on Garfield and Garfield sympathisers and people who own cats and people who like lasagne and just people in general who aren’t ogres.
Also, I might not be entirely serious. And I might not have been entirely serious in my previous comment. And I might not actually be that big of a Shrek fan, although I do think the first movie still holds up.
Re: Moo-ve Aside Mario Kart World, Garfield Kart 2 Is Racing Onto Nintendo Switch
This game is just a cheap rip off of landmark racing title Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway.
I bet you’re thinking “Lasagna-esque Races? What’s that?”
Well, Lasagna-esque just means it has layers.
Y’know what else has layers? Ogres have layers. That’s just another thing this game is ripping off from the rightful king of kart.
Re: Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Has Been Rated By The ESRB
@Medic_alert No worries!
Re: Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Has Been Rated By The ESRB
@Medic_alert That’s the joke!
Re: Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Has Been Rated By The ESRB
It does look rather underwhelming, but I admire the sheer audacity of the title. Such a bold declaration.
Everybody’s Golf.
That’s right.
Everybody. Is. Golf.
He is golf. She is golf. We is golf. Even the artist formerly known as Kanye West and currently known as Ye is golf.
You don’t need to tell me your pronouns. I already know.
Golf/Golf/Golf
Sorry, you don’t get a choice. Everybody’s golf. That’s just the world we live in.
Re: Unleash Your Inner 'Hot Girl' With Pikmin Bloom's Latest Collab
I just call this a “walk” because I am always reflecting on confidence-boosting spiritual alignment practices that vibe expressively with my celestial chakra promoting inner and outer peace and gratitude towards all things especially myself because I’m so damn hot.
Sometimes I dress up as a Pikmin because it makes me look a bit silly which puts people at ease. Otherwise they’d feel intimidated by my hotness and spiritual alignment and very embarrassed in comparison.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A's Switch 2 And Switch 1 Prices Have Been Revealed
@Dr_Lugae All very well made points! Still, it’s interesting that we seem to be shifting away from a ‘retail games cost this much’ kind of model to a more finely graded system. On the UK store there seem to be a few pricing ‘rungs’ that have been been established for physical Switch 2 releases.
Mario Kart sits on the top rung at £75, then the rest of the major first party releases are £67 (DK and the spruced Switch games). Then you have 3rd party games which are all over the place (and currently all on game keys).
Given that, it’s interesting that Z-A doesn’t seem to sit on any of these existing rungs. Joe Merrick’s post doesn’t mention a physical/digital pricing split. If there is one (which seems likely) then I imagine the price we’re looking at is the cheaper of the two.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A's Switch 2 And Switch 1 Prices Have Been Revealed
@Sensible I don’t disagree! I can’t say I like that games costs more than they did a decade ago, but I won’t pretend that all of the narrative surrounding pricing is very cogent.
If anything, the fact that it’s taken this long for ‘variable pricing’ to really establish itself (for first party titles) is somewhat surprising. Mario Tennis Aces and Breath of the Wild are both $60 on the US eShop which seems a bit… wild to me.
I’m not saying Aces is bad — this isn’t really about ‘quality’ so much as development costs. Admittedly, I am completely ignorant about how much time and most each title costs to produce (so should probably shut up), but I can’t imagine they were on anywhere near the same scale.
Aces had some new mechanics over Power Tennis, but was very much in the same vein. Every character shares the same basic move-set, and the courts are all variations on a theme with some gimmicks thrown in.
Zelda was a complete reimagining of the franchise on a preposterously epic scale that took the best part of a decade to develop. Of course, it made that money back by selling significantly more copies than Aces, but the fact they’re still on the same ‘tier’ feels like having the Mr. Men books sitting next to War and Peace and priced equally at a book shop.
Re: Opinion: Splatoon Brought Me Back To Online Multiplayer, But Octo Valley Shines Brightest
Splat…ppy Birthday to the game that made me get a Wii U.
Completely agree about both the lack of voice chat with randos and the under-appreciated single player.
People often argue that unrestricted voice chat should be there as an option because you can turn it off if you want to. In my head I normally think, “Yeah, but that would disadvantage those who don’t use it and also create the same icky culture that pervades most all other online shooters. Please let me enjoy my nice colourful cartoony squid game unsullied.”
…I normally just stay silent though, smug in the knowledge that I’ve basically won the argument as Nintendo almost certainly don’t want the hassle of policing the online environment. They got a taste of that with Miiverse (RIP) and look how that ended up.
And the single player is great in all the Splatoon games. After Splatoon 3 game out, the local used game shop was flooded with copies of Splatoon 2 for like ¥1000 (under £10). Even without NSO it’s definitely worth that for the single player alone.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A's Switch 2 And Switch 1 Prices Have Been Revealed
@Sensible
“Anyone that thinks buying physical games for the switch 2 is a good idea deserves to be penalised for their idiocy.”
This is… a rather loaded statement. Certainly not a universally accepted position, at any rate.
We could get into the nuances between ‘ownership’ and ‘right of access’ (i.e. can I sell/trade/give away the item I have purchased?) …But I’m not sure that’s necessary. The point is that Nintendo is selling the physical version of this game for £66.99 on their official store (£64.99 on Amazon) and this is the version a lot of people will opt for. With respect, it doesn’t matter what you think those people deserve, or whether you think their purchasing decisions are ‘sensible’, this is simply a straightforward observation.
A similarly straightforward observation is that, as you’ve noted, the game doesn’t cost £70. Not on any major storefront. One could argue that the £3.01 difference is insignificant, and in a casual conversation if someone said “70 quid” I probably wouldn’t correct them, but in a widely circulated piece of journalism I’m not entirely comfortable with it. “£67”? Fine, I’m not going to quibble over a penny. “Nearly 70 quid”? Fair enough, at least degree of imprecision is acknowledged. But stating as fact that we live “in a world of £70 Donkey Kong Bananzas” (especially in an article where most prices are given to the penny/yen) feels like stretching things to the point of misinformation.
So yeah, I agree that it should be corrected; not based on the argument that “physical media is for idiots who deserve to be punished” but because… well, the game doesn’t cost 70GBP.
@JimNorman
Re: Opinion: Upgraded For Switch 2, ARMS Deserves A Second Shot At Greatness
Very glad you weren’t forced to use the ‘journalistic we’ here.
Now nobody has to picture the entire Nintendo Life team squatting around a single toilet sharing a… uhh… ‘journalistic wee’.
Well, nobody except anybody reading this comment.
Re: Whoops! Nintendo's Latest Tetris 99 English Patch Notes Contain A Misleading Mistranslation
became
For what it’s worth, I can sympathise with the mistranslation, despite the fact that what it’s describing is… a little odd.
In English, if one says, “to exchange A for B” there is a strong implication that we identify with the party giving away A and receiving B.
Things become more symmetrical if we take an observer’s standpoint and simply note that “A and B are exchanged”. (…Though you could argue that because A is stated before B, there is still a slight tendency to think of A as the thing parted with and B as the thing gained.)
The Japanese text opens with the concept of ‘Event Themes’ and then states that (some of) them can be exchanged with (I’m using this over ‘for’ to try and express the relative symmetry of the particle と) ‘in-game tickets’. From a purely linguistic perspective, all we know is that the two things have changed places, without knowing who has given what in return for what*.
*Of course there is no actual “exchange” occurring between two parties (player and in-game store) as the latter party isn’t a party at all. From the player’s perspective, they appear to be giving something (tickets) in return for something else (themes), but it’s not like the store is actually ‘receiving’ tickets or ‘parting with’ a finite number of themes. One thing is being destroyed in return for the creation of another, but the ‘recipient’ of the player’s tickets does not exist.
Now, one might assume that the item corresponding to ‘currency’ (i.e. tickets) is given by the player, in return for the item corresponding to ‘goods and services’ (i.e. themes). Certainly, if instead of ‘exchange’ (交換) a less symmetrical word like ‘purchase’ (購入**) were used, then there would be little doubt as to who is trading what for what. However, as things stand, the wording is technically ambiguous.
**Admittedly, this could suggest spending ‘real’ money (assuming money is any more ‘real’ than tickets)
Indeed, the two machine translation engines (DeepL and Google) I’ve run the original text through make exactly the same mistake. (I invite you to try.) So yeah, it’s human error, but machines are seemingly just as susceptible.
If anything, this could be argued of an example for the continued relevance of human translators, who are more likely to smell a rat if something is grammatically plausible but semantically suspicious. Humans have the capacity to doubt (some more than others) which can lead to fact-checking before the translation is finalised.
…Or after, in this case.
Anyway, good on @OatmealDome for being the human who caught the error in this case.
Re: Review: SoulCalibur II (GameCube) - One Of The Best Fighters Ever, Playable Oh-So-Soon On Switch 2
We are witnessing retelling the Star Wars in which @Anakin turns to the Dark side, not through the corrupting influence of Emperor Palpatine, but instead through arguing with the Toxic Positivity side over what constitutes an appropriate degree of excitement for GameCube games on Switch 2.
Re: Random: Marilyn Before Mario? That Time Nintendo Went A Bit Playboy
@sikthvash Now I can’t get stupid sexy Warilyn out of my head GAAAAH
Re: Nintendo Explains Why Mario Kart World Isn't Called 'Mario Kart 9'
Actually Mario Kart Tour is technically Mario Kart 76 because it’s the twelfth game since Mario Kart 64 which established the numbering system and you can’t count backwards even though that’s what Nintendo did but it doesn’t count so I win this argument and I put a feather in my Cappy and call it Marioni.
Re: SEGA Unveils New Sonic 'Racing Around The World' Campaign
Sorry Brandon Semen uk you cannot surpass Blue Blur he is way too fast and far too cool for your silly car thing #LetsNotGoBrandon
Re: Nintendo Explains Why Mario Kart World Isn't Called 'Mario Kart 9'
@sanderev I was just reading up on it, and that was one of the reasons given! It seems Microsoft also wanted to distance themselves from Windows 8 somewhat, which wasn’t particularly well received.
Re: Nintendo Explains Why Mario Kart World Isn't Called 'Mario Kart 9'
@Novuscourvous They made (at least) 8 ‘proper’ Mario Kart games; the last one so big it had almost 100 courses in total — nearly five times that of Super Mario Kart. We’ve not been hard pressed for ‘proper’ Mario Kart games historically.
MK8D is a tough act to follow in terms of sheer volume and I’m not personally too sad that this title isn’t just ‘more of the same’. Each to their own, though.
Re: Random: Miyamoto Can't Talk About Switch 2, Talks About Switch 2 Anyway
“I’m-a Super Mario’s Super Papi-o! I’m-a DK’s rad, bad dad! You can’t tell Miy-a-what-to do! I’m-a Miya-freakin-moto, that’s who!”
…Yelled the 72 year old game designer in a ludicrous Italian accent, raising a middle finger defiantly in the direction of an imagined PR department. He then proceeded to discuss Switch 2 at great length with an impish grin playing around the corners of his mouth and a twinkle in his eye.
Re: Nintendo Explains Why Mario Kart World Isn't Called 'Mario Kart 9'
Nobody calls anything 9 anymore. Remember when Microsoft released Windows 9? Remember when Apple released the iPhone 9? Nope, because that never happened, because those companies decided 9 was lame and 10 was AWESOME.
I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t call this game MAR10 Xart 10: Xtreme Xircuit to draw attention to how cool and revolutionary the concepts of 10 and the letter X are.
Re: Random: Sephiroth's Sword Can Grow And Shrink To Fit The Story In Final Fantasy
“There is a scene in which the Masamune grows longer for the first time. I would love for you to check it out.”
There are plenty of places on the internet where you can check this sort of stuff out, but it’s nice to get a friendly reminder.
Re: Nintendo's New Japan-Exclusive Donkey Kong Merch Range Goes Hard
I agree that the following dongle looks pretty dope for keeping one’s donkey prong from getting dinged, danged, or donged.
If your lil’ DK is doing A-OK then get yourself a banana bag to help keep it that way. 👍🍌👍
Re: Brace Yourselves, Upcoming Pokémon TCG Set Will Introduce A Whole New Level Of Rarity
I design my own cards using old receipts and a Sharpie and sometimes glitter which I stick on with chewing gum or toothpaste if I don’t have chewing gum to make them extra sparkly.
That way I know they’re one of a kind and no one will steal them from my shop because I don’t have a shop and also no one else wants them.
Re: Too Saucy For Xbox, 'Steam-Heart’s Saturn Tribute' Lands On Switch This May
Hold up my man, have you somehow not heard of Oresama no Nyanchan ga Kawaisugite Bakuhatsushichatte Doushiyou?
Like, seriously? Have you seriously not heard of it? What’s with modern game journos these days like seriously. I mean, yes I made it up, but you still should have heard of it.
Seriously.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
@abe_hikura I think someone from Microsoft saw all the “DROP THE PRICE” comments in the Switch 2 chat and realised they could help make it seem relatively less expensive.
Re: Xbox Is Raising The Price Of Consoles, Accessories, And Games Worldwide
The ‘X’ stands for ‘expensiver’.
Re: Switch 2 Game-Key Cards Won't Make It Easy For Physical Collectors In Japan
@NoPhysicalNoBuy Good point. Very lazy error on my part. Thank you. Corrected the original.
Re: Switch 2 Game-Key Cards Won't Make It Easy For Physical Collectors In Japan
@MeloMan “Obviously it's to keep from having to physically load the game on there which keeps costs down for devs, but I'm just trying to get the biggest picture of their advantage here...”
I think this is the zero sum. The
developers(EDIT: publisher) pays less per product. The consumer gets an inferior product. I don’t believe there are any advantages for the consumer over full physical, and that cost-saving on physical media storage is the only advantage for devs.Happy to hear if there’s more than that, though!
Re: Nintendo Won't Have Enough Switch 2 Consoles To Satisfy Demand In Japan
@HeadPirate The standard Japanese Switch 2 is almost exactly the same markup over the Switch 1 when compared to the US.
49,980÷32,978=1.5155… compared to 449.99÷299.99=1.50002. So roughly 52% more in Japan as opposed to almost exactly 50% more in the US.
For Japanese consumers, who are paid in yen, it’s very comparable. The reason it looks cheap for American consumers is that the yen is still weak against the dollar compared to five years ago (though things have taken a wobble in recent weeks).
See here: https://www.chartoasis.com/usd-jpy-forex-chart-5-years-cop0/
This is almost certainly the main motive behind creating two consoles for the Japanese market: a Japanese language-only version and a ‘language unlocked’ version — presumably equivalent to that sold overseas. It stops foreign buyers snapping up ‘cheap’ Japanese consoles, while also ensuring that Japanese consumers don’t have to pay a significantly higher markup over the Switch 1 compared to other countries.
As someone planning to get a ‘language unlocked’ version, I’m not particularly happy about having to pay ~40% more for the privilege, but I can’t deny there’s a degree of logic.
Re: Switch 2 Game-Key Cards Won't Make It Easy For Physical Collectors In Japan
@FishyS But still a downgrade from full-fat physical, right?
Re: Switch 2 Game-Key Cards Won't Make It Easy For Physical Collectors In Japan
Oh dear…
This is… this is quite bad, isn’t it?
Like, you don’t have the advantages of full physical (functioning game on the card, low memory footprint) or full digital (ease of switching games without replacing carts)?
Re: Major French Retailer Says Switch 2 Pre-Orders At "Historic Level"
@BaronLaw Lots and lots of Mario Kart. And consequently, lots of blue shells, too.
Re: Major French Retailer Says Switch 2 Pre-Orders At "Historic Level"
“Boycott” and its cousin “hard pass” are very dramatic terms for something entirely unremarkable: continuing to not own something you currently don’t own.
“Boycotting” is not an action: it is an inaction. And generally, doing nothing doesn’t make much of a statement (with some exceptions).
Consider me going to a supermarket to get some orange juice. Needless to say, nearly everything in the supermarket remains unbought — everything except the OJ. Would I be “boycotting” practically the entire contents of the supermarket in this case? Not in my head, but in effect, yes.
The packet on Salt ‘n’ Vinegar crisps near the checkout? Unbought. Wild watermelon flavoured mouthwash? Unbought. XXL incontinence pants? Hard unbought. That fluid which I think has something to do with dentures but I’m not really sure? Super hard unbought. And as for all the supermarkets I didn’t go to? Well, not even the orange juice got bought there. That’s gotta be the hardest of hard passes.
Did the message get through to these companies? No. Firstly because there was never a message. But even if there was, it wouldn’t make much difference.
I’m not saying that Nintendo’s pricing will have no effect on sales, nor that I particularly like it.
The console itself I can stomach: not cheap, but more technically impressive than I was expecting. Given that it’ll get a lot of use over a long time, I’ll take that over a cheaper console that doesn’t feel like much of a step-up from the Switch 1.
The game pricing I’m less comfortable with…
Will I be “boycotting” games because of it? No, but I’ll be buying fewer games, more selectively, as each purchase feels like more of a financial hit. Realistically, I’ll probably pay stupid money for Mario Kart because I really like and want Mario Kart.
…But that’s less money to spend on something like Metroid, which I might have considered if the games in general were priced lower. I would never consider myself “boycotting” Metroid. If anything, Mario Kart would be a worthier target for “boycotting”. But I want Mario Kart a lot and Metroid only a little, so it’s the latter that will remain unbought.
Metroid fans might be irritated because my lack of purchase means the series won’t get prioritised going forwards; meanwhile buying Mario Kart only encourages Nintendo to push game prices higher.
…And they’d be right.
But I don’t buy games for Metroid fans.
I buy them for me.
Children are senselessly burning alive in Gaza and Ukraine and the world’s most powerful man has teamed up with the world’s richest man to accelerate the breakdown of the systems that sustain all life on Earth. I’m not going to lose sleep because user @SamusIsHot3627 is annoyed that I didn’t buy Prime 4. They wouldn’t otherwise know because I wouldn’t usually announce it.
“Boycott” is a satisfyingly simple label; it allows one to feel that one’s inaction isn’t entirely impotent. There are patterns to people’s purchases which are naturally influenced by pricing, but these are best thought as interconnected gradients — not as a simple ON-OFF switch.
Personally, the pricing has definitely influenced what I will buy and when, but ultimately I am only a single pixel in a much larger picture, and the difference between what I “boycott” and simply “don’t buy” broadly doesn’t matter.
Re: You Can Finally Repair Weapons In Zelda: BOTW And TOTK On Switch 2 (Sort Of)
Never really understood the campaign against weapon degradation. All weapons are just variations on a theme, and no one is so unique or precious that you can’t find another just like it with little effort.
Weapons are ultimately consumables just like arrows and even food. One of the core elements of survival games (a genre the Switch Zelda games heavily draw from) is using one’s resources wisely.
If I pick up a farmer’s rake and immediately chuck it at an enemy, it will shatter instantly. If I want another I’ll have to go find one, or use a different weapon (hopefully more wisely) instead.
I can’t have my rake and yeet it, too.
EDIT: Turns out I was thinking of the Farming Hoe and/or Pitchfork. There is no rake.
…Fork’s sake…
Re: Japanese Retailer Is Asking The Public How To Combat Switch 2 Scalpers
@DwaynesGames @Wisestfool Thanks for the responses, guys. I suppose most retailers already know they’re going to sell through their stocks in the early days, so creating some goodwill along the way is an added bonus!
Re: Japanese Retailer Is Asking The Public How To Combat Switch 2 Scalpers
Very naive question here, but what financial incentive do retailers have to combat scalping? If the only thing retailers want to do is sell consoles, then does it matter who they sell to?
Re: Nintendo Of America President Says Tariffs "Not Factored" Into Switch 2 Price
@Baker1000 The Japanese Switch 2 is just over 50% (49,980÷32,978=1.5155…) more expensive than the Japanese Switch 1. The US Switch 2 is almost exactly 50% more than the US Switch 1 (449.99÷299.99=1.50002).
The yen is weak compared to the dollar, so pretty everything in Japan is currently cheap to Americans. Japanese consumers are paying almost exactly the same markup for the Switch 2 as Americans.
Re: Elden Ring's Switch 2 Physical Version Seemingly Tarnished By 'Game-Key Card' Release
@Skunkfish @Mana_Knight The same pun is also in the title of the article!
Re: Elden Ring's Switch 2 Physical Version Seemingly Tarnished By 'Game-Key Card' Release
@Zuljaras Thank you for taking the effort to inquire about this.
Re: Nvidia: Switch 2 Has "10x The Graphics Performance Of The Nintendo Switch"
How much of that 10x more graphics is graph and how much is ics? Coz if it’s 5x more graph and 5x more ics then that’s actually 5x5=25x more graph-ics in total but if it’s all just ics and no graph then what’s even the point?
These are the questions Digital Flandery should be anskwering.
Re: Hands On: Rock Surfing And Boulder Bashing - 'Donkey Kong Bananza' Is Brilliantly Bonkers
This looks to have all the big, dumb, beefy, joyously cartoonish physically of Jungle Beat and I couldn’t be happier.
Smashing! Just smashing!
If I’m not mistaken, that game was made by the team that went on to make Galaxy. I wonder if some of the same staff are working on this…