Metazoxan

@Misima it's not rigged. Nintendo views game cards as an alternative to digital.

So despite the narrative that key cards represent the death of physical media that's not really how Nintendo is advertising them. It's been stated game keycards are so digital games can have a presence in physical stores.

Of course what Nintendo intends and what third parties actually do are two separate matters. So there is cause for concern.

But it's not simply raging against keycards, but making it clear physical releases are desired.

@Mocznik "Buying used game is not a crime, then why is Nintendo punishing wrong people?" are you just pretending to be clueless or do you really not have basic reasonign ability?

It even explained in the article that Nintendo saw the game card's unique ID on multiple systems which triggered the ban. In theory that would only happen if you hacked and copied the data.

So from a system standpoint it saw piracy and flagged all systems involved.

The person who bought the game was innocent but the system has no way of knowing this. But they were also unbanned once they proved to Nintendo they simply purchased the game and didn't make a copy themselves.

So Nintendo didn't "Punish the wrong people", someone just got flagged for unknowingly using a game illegally copied and the situation was explained and cleared up.

for someone claiming to support reasonable conversation you sure seem to ignore everything that doens't support your rant.

BTW forcibly comparing a store front that doesn't produce or publish most of the games sold on it with a company that does ... is incredibly short sighted.

@TwinFami You know that mantra loses all meaning when you just apply it to everything and NOT when a company like Ubisoft specifically states you don't own your games right?

It's not as if this site was currating what it pirated to only those games.

@KingMike see that I agree with. But if you want to play ethical pirate you have to not cross the line.

The problem with ROM sites like this is they spread around new and even not yet released games.

You can't do that and then pretend your fight for game preservation. Far too many are using that as a mere excuse.

That's not to say ethical pirates who stay away from recent releases don't exist. But they don't vindicate all of piracy.

@NorrinRadd What gets me are the many people acting like this somehow has litterally anything to do with Island guy's list. "This is all a smoke screen to hide the List" ... why the hell would anyone that cares about the list forget about it because the FBI busted some piracy ROM site?

It's sometimes easy to forget when you frequent gaming sites but not everyone actually plays games. and only some that do would at all care about some ROM site getting busted. This has F all to do with the list, because no one talking about it is going to suddenly stop because of this.

I mean ... if you WERE willing to completely ignore a big trafficking scandal because of some videogame pirates getting busted then I really question your priorities.

@Dee123 exactly. I can understand emulating and gather roms for games not on current hardware. But then people will go and get defensive when someone openly sharing ROMs of games that just came out.

I"ve seen some people trying to make arguments like "But what if I lose the physical game?" or "I can't afford it" ... if you lose what you buy that's your fault, you don't get to just pirate extra copies because you're clumsy and if you can't afford it ... I mean that sucks but to a certain degree you just have to deal with that.

unless you're wealthy or naturally live a cheap lifestyle you can't afford EVERYTHING you want to buy. that's just life and part of being an adult is controlling yourself and choosing what to buy.

Now if the situation gets bad enough that you can't afford any games ... that's an issue. But people make these kinds of arguments no matter the situation.

Game preservation is an issue that we need to work on but that's not an excuse for just outright stealing and distributing games people are fully able to buy normally.

Well that's good. Not the biggest fan of everything these devs make but be a shame if they went under.

@ShieldHero Well if it's at all like Air Ride then it's not REALLY comparable to Mario Kart.

The race mode was fun but the city Trial game mode was what REALLY sold the game and that wasn't race focused.

What I'm hoping is that Air Riders both expands CityTrial and adds online multiplayer. That's all I really want.

What I want to know is did they unbutcher the story from the first game?

What killed this series for me was how the devs stupidly reversed litterally all of the cahracter development from the first game so that you could play the first or second game in any order.

Sure they had a "Spoiler mode" but all that did was add some dialogue that aknowledged the first game as passing remarks.

The first game ended with the main character ... well I won't spoil for those interested in playing the first game. But all you have to know is he very much ended in a completely different state from how he began. Second game undoes all of this and even have him wear a mask to look like he did before "because it was familiar" which is the most nonsense excuse ever.

The problem is it compeltely kills any investment I have in the story if the devs plan to just reverse any progress because some idiot thinks they need to make the games playable in any order but also isn't willing to write the story in a properly episodic manner.

I'm STILL not actually clear on how this game takes the prior ones into account. So I'm still tentative with this game.

I'll only consider getting it if it fixes that nonsense. Story is a big part of why I take an interest in games so what they did was a massive blow to my interest.

Honestly wish they'd build out the gunvolt universe more. There is still potential there. They just need to actually iron out a good vision and not do what feels like repeat retcons.

That or just hire someone else to help with the writing.

@GEKGanon exactly. The problem is people seem to completely treat the word product as synonymous with mass production.

But hand made goods are still products. Small scale sure but product isn't purely a dirty word about profit. Companies that make products purely to make profit make it about that.

@Jeyl oh I agree. Something can be a product and art.

My point was what it meant to view your creation as a product vs art. A game can be both but there is a meaning to what you view it as primarily.

@Jeyl you specifically picked minimal products that served a basic function.

But a TV is also a product. Toys are products. Board games are products.

Products are not simply made for the moment and then forgotten, or at least not all of them are.

In miyamoto's case he is viewing it more in the sense that as a product it must satisfy the customer.

If you don't like a product you'll get a refund or not buy it again. So customer satisfaction is also part of being a product.

Miyamoto is not perfect but his view point isn't wrong either. Rather it's more he just doesn't understand what some customers define as satisfied.

Not everyone wants the same things after all.

And think about the reverse. Think about "Games" made as art without thought put into making the game fun or satisfying. Even if they are pretty and artsy ... Did you actually enjoy the game? Would it have been better as a movie or book?

I'm not saying videogames can't also have art in them. But some games would absolutely benefit from more focus put on making the game actually satisfying to play.

@Orwellian87 if you think for even a second THAT is what Miyamoto meant then you are clueless.

An seriously you have the most distorted view of product I've ever seen.

A product is simply something made by a person, the result of production. Sure on the LOW END products are disposable and mass produced. But even custom made or hand crafted things are "products".

To say something is a product doesn't mean it's meaningless. He makes it pretty clear what he's saying is that he makes games with the customer in mind. He's making games people would enjoy and want to buy. Not just some "fancy artsy" junk that acts out the creators self expression but is a slog to actually play.

Art isn't made to be fun, art is made to express. Express the artist themselves, their beliefs, their past, or their perception of the world. Art is made as an extension of the artist themselves more than anything. It can still be beautiful and appreciated by others, but art is often creator focused. But that's fine, part of what people love about art is how it reflects the creator and such.

But games need to be more that some emotional mirror. They can certainly have those qualities as well, but the game needs to be fun. In this sense you could say videogames can contain art but should be focused on being a satisfying product first.

@Danrenfroe2016 exactly I think what miyamoto means is that he views games as something made for customers to enjoy.

While people can enjoy art, art itself is often made primarily with the artists views and desires in mind.

In a way you could say art reflects the artist more than anything and is made by them for themselves. They just sell their creations afterwards to anyone interested.

Videogames, on the other hand, should not purely be a reflection of the developer or made by them for themselves or their own expression. A Videogame should be made primarily to be enjoyed by the player.

The lead developer might imprint some of themselves into the game, but that should be secondary to making a satisfying game for the players.

Honestly if you peel away all of the pro-corpo and anti-Corpi BS the answer to all of this is simply people need to understand what they are buying when they buy a game that requires servers.
You aren't buying the server and your one time purchase is certainly not paying it's upkeep. So you can't really tell a company they HAVE to pay for those servers.

HOWEVER at the same time this shows how the over reliance on server based gaming has its downsides.

Forcing companies to maintain servers will absolutely turn such games into risky ventures... But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe having less games shackled to servers and those that are made with no choice but to commit long term is what we need.

So the real issue is less "Consumer rights" and more people have ignored the issues with server based gaming for too long.

@fpcreator2000 Hell I'd take just Megaman Legends 1 and 2 with the Tron Bonne game at this point. Especially because if it sells well that will help convince them to actually make Megaman Legends 3.

@Mr_Zurkon Keycards are largely a third party issue. Despite some trying to heap hate on Nintendo they only provided the option. The idea of it was to allow developers have SOMETHING to put on store shelves even if they couldn't do a normal physical run given the cost of game carts going up.

However what's actually happening, at least to some degree, is any major studio that wants to bump their profit margins will just go key-card and pocket the saved cash.

I don't actually think Nintendo was in the wrong to create the option ... but I feel they should have tried to put some limits or conditions so that big studios that can absolutely afford physical can't just exploit it.

Also as far as price it's not like competition is actually any cheaper. In fact Sony and MIcrosoft are raising prices.

@huroma because it's not about giving up ownership. It's about not breaking the rules. You can lose the rights to things if you abuse those rights. It's not distopian unless it's applied to an extreme. But that's true for any rule.

Just because you own the console doesn't mean your now free to just hack it, steal their code, and then use that to steal their games.

If Nintendo or any company bricked a console for reasons besides something potentially related to piracy that would be one thing.

It's like a car. Just because you bought a car doesn't mean you don't lose that car if you do something illegal with it. You own the car, but if you insist on breaking the law with it they will take it away.

That's true for any company. It's just a matter of what they deem an important enough violation to act on.

@huroma the problem is authorities won't do ***** against most people pirating games. Unless they're stealing thousands of dollars worth of games alone or selling stolen goods it isn't worth their time.

And banning accounts just keeps them out of the store, plus making a new account isn't hard.

To a certain degree this is the only way they can even try to stop piracy. Now I'm not saying Nintendo is faultless either ... This approach of theirs needs some work. Especially with bricked consoles getting resold.

Really if nothing else Nintendo should probably allow stores to unbrick them and if that gets abused sue the store. Easier than trying to send the authorities after everyone that does it.

@LuigiBlood because piracy tools are getting better and more prevelent. And unlike in the past where a new console was a fresh slate immune to piracy for a while ... It's happening right away.

I'm on Nintendo's side with the ban. Using piracy capable stuff like that is in violation I of user agreements first.

However what I don't approve of is not being able to unban a console you purchase. Nintendo needs to make it so showing proof of purchase after ban gets it unbanned. Meaning you didn't get it banned, someone else did.

@Cikajovazmaj it's not that early adopters should expect it. But you accept that risk and issues pop up with I initial batches all the time. Steam deck had a few lemons, like a screen issue. Several iPhones had some defects at first. It's just a fact that you take the risk of that if you buy early. That is EXPLICITLY why some people wait to buy.

Your also acting like the product is purely defective. Again mine works just fine and so do others. I'm not saying this to dismiss the existence of an issue but there is a world of difference between a bad product that doesn't work and a fault tolerance issue that causes only some to fail. Again it's reasonable to assume that would only be noticed after mass production. Yes they made a mistake but it's overall a pretty missable one.

Your also being disingenuous at the end. If the switch 2 fits into the dock.with a case it would be extra thin, this less effective. Don't pretend like that's a design flaws. At best that's just a difference of if you are willing to sacrifice fitting in the dock for better armor.

As for the grips they designed them to avoid needing adhesive. Most of the others require adhesive to stay on.

Now if you don't mind less armor (BTW even less armor still increases risk of screen damage by making the fit tighter) and don't mind adhesive then you're free to buy whatever. But I wanted to avoid adhesive and chose better armor over fitting in the dock. So your criticism is extremely misinformed.

It's certainly unfortunate that in an effort to avoid using adhesive a problem with reliability happened. But I'll take that over needing a bunch of adhesives to keep it on.

@ChronoTimeEgg my bad if I misread..what I meant was the way they designed the case wasn't fundemenally flawed. As in it's not that the case is completely defective and unable to work. My issue is some people act like no cases work.

I've seen people insisting that so I thought you were saying that. Again my bad.

@Rentaro their attude is a bit ... Annoying. But that is kind of their brand. Not a big fan of it either. But their customer support outside of that is actually pretty good and I care about that more.
As for "Blaming customers" people exaggerated that like they often do.

The fact is it's not a great idea to hold the entire switch by a single joycon. It still shouldn't immediately fail and they did admit that.

But even if the switch 2 magnets are good enough you are still putting excessive strain on the joycon connection by putting the entire weight on it like that.

Again I'm not defending the defect as it shouldn't fail as easily as some models are failing. But I am saying Dbrand wasn't ENTIRELY wrong that you shouldn't hold the console that way. Chances are your console will break eventually if you do that regularly. It's just pointing that out wasn't a good response to reports of a defect.

But they offered free replacements pretty fast so I'll ignore a bit of PR stumble.

@Cikajovazmaj this isn't a case of unfinished and broken. You are projecting frustration with videogames on products in general.

The fact is early adopters of new tech always run the risk of early production defects. This has ALWAYS been the case. That's why not everyone likes to be an early adopter. Some issues only become apparent when mass produced.

The fact this was largely designed before Dbrand even had a proper switch 2 also makes the presence of a defect vulnerable spot somewhat more understandable.

Now could Dbrand have done better? Yes. In hindsight they should have done more testing with the actual switch 2 and made sure to test mass produced models in detail. But that's more an issue of rushing to market which companies do all the time.

The fact they are giving free replacements and not even ask for proof of defect is honestly pretty good customer service overall.

The car example is a bad example. Because something related to personal safety has a much lower defect tolerance than a typical case would.

The fact is we expect some levels of defects.in mass produced products. Normally we don't notice them. This is just a case where one defect ended up causing more issues than expected.
Again not saying this is great ... But they are fixing it so it's acceptable.

people need to remember companies are made of people. We can't expect them to be perfect. We can only demand they be reliable enough and make up for any mistakes they do make.

@ChronoTimeEgg that's not accurate at all. The information your reference is that apparently the joycons are designed with a flex in them to prevent disconnect. People then just immediately assumed this meant the Killswitch 2's design was defective. However this isn't true either because some, me included, have working cases.

If it was as you said no case should work. But they do.

@Aphonic the case does work. Did you not figure that out from the review?

You need to learn to not take mob outrage too literally. People take even rare issues and act like they happen all the time.

Now we don't have numbers on the actual failure rate. But mine worked perfectly and reddit has a fair few people reporting the same.

The defect rate does need to be addressed but they announced free replacements so th company did that ... After an initial poor PR response. But as long as all customers get what they payed for in the end it's ... Fine.

It was an early launch product and a lot of companies switch 2 cases have just as bad or worse defects. So some minor issues were kind of expected.

@Cikajovazmaj actually looking at the reddit the number of reports saying their cases work is at least equal if not higher, and keep in mind people are more likely to post about problems than everything being fine.

So overall the number of effected cases seems smaller than the outrage implied.which is pretty typical really.

Also, poor initial response aside they have announced free replacements and reported willingness to fix the issues with decent transparency.
Really their only major mistake overall was not enough testing with mass produced models before shipping.
Which is a mistake, but this is a case designed without the proper console in hand. So a small defect due to a slight gap related issue isn't all that strange. I feel people are forgetting that you take a risk with buying products early.
I'm not saying this to absolve them of fault, but it's not as big a fault as some are trying to make it to be. We can call it out without going on a campaign against Dbrand.

@RareFan exactly. Look Mario is great but we don't need EVERYTHING to be Mario or Zelda.

Let Mario take a little bit of a break and some other IPs a chance to see the light of day.

If fact I'm kind of tired of Mario. I don't hate him but I just want to try more other stuff

@MrGawain Or at the very least sell a 3rd party game most people don't already have.

@mariomaster96 fun fact ... Zebras are basically donkeys.

Interesting Pauline is being made into a DK character. It's better than having her be a random Cameo or being Mario's old girlfriend or something.

It makes sense given her debut in OG Donkey Kong.

But what's also interesting is she has a more wild look.

@Athropos Yeah. Even without a patch the Xenoblade games run a lot better. But the caps they put to keep performance stable are holding it back. Just a free update to tweek the caps would do wonders.

Makes sense. If they DIDN'T do this switch 1 players would be getting pissed at getting outplayed by switch 2 players due to better frame rate and such.

It's fine to sacrifice a bit of performance for visuals if everyone is the same. But create a platform with better performance and that difference can become game changing in a competitive scene.

The only other solution would have been to lock it's performance on switch 2 so it didn't out perform the switch 1. But they want to encourage sales, not throttle the switch 2.

The thing is they didn't even actually "enter the market" they just slapped their name on the Rog Ally. A copy cat mobile PC trying to ride the Steam Deck's success.

Seriously Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to develop their own handheld and just took one running windows and called it a day.

This is as low effort as it gets and if anything this makes it even more likely Xbox is leaving the console market. They're clearly phoning it in and are reducing Xbox to a brand to slap on stuff rather than a console they put their weight behind.

@AllBLK oh don't get me wrong. Some are taking it more personally than needed. I'm just saying why we are not happy with genki in general.

Although I will say ....it feels more that a little shameless to just casually sell accessories to the console your getting sued for violating NDA over.

So while I won't go so far as to pray for their demise ... I can't say their current behavior doesn't rub me the wrong way. It just feels unprofessional and I'd rather not do business with them.

for me that's all it is.

@The_Nintend_Pedant people were only disappointed because it was all spoiled and everyone convinced themselves Nintendo still had secrets to show

Everyone acted like the leaks were official info so expected the reveal to have new information. The fact it just confirmed the leaks was treated as a disappointment.

People would have been less disappointed if they didn't already know everything.

@AllBLK imo it was just grosely unprofessional.

A rank and file employee or hacker leaking things is one thing.

But for a company under contract to just go " You know what? We're too good for an NDA, let's just break the rules so we can reveal our stuff before everyone that actually followed the contract" sets a bad precedent.

Imagine if other accessory companies started to break NDA to be first to announce. Game companies would just stop giving out any kind of advanced units or specs to anyone and we'd have to wait a long time to get them.

So we're critical of genki because this behavior is not okay for a company.

It's like when Kotaku told people how to pirate Tears of the kingdom. Yes plenty of people shared similar info. But for someone in a business relationship with Nintendo to not only endorse but enable piracy was not acceptable.

Companies as a whole can't just do whatever they want and ignore obligations.

@Spider-Kev the wording implies a line of code in switch 2 itself. Not the games. But even if it was game side a.patxh will fix it.

I know people are bitter about that kind of thing but it won't mean much overall.

There is always that one line of code effing everything up. Good on LRG for finding it.

IMO making it free for online members would have been a good enough compromise. Everyone getting the console through Nintendo's invite system needs it anyway.

They gave away the Zelda upgrades for free with the expansion. So just make this humble little software free for standard online.

That should cover it. The problem with charging for it is that even if it's worth $10 few people will actively go out and buy this.

Nintendo would have moved several times the software if they packed it in with something. And once everyone with online subscriptions has it and enjoyed it. Everyone else is more likely to buy it so they don't miss out.

Overall it would have at least gotten people talking about the console more and helped feed the hype.

@KingMike Yeah an SD card would work. But I'm thinking more ... actually game cards. Maybe you could even print out a sticker to put on it.

My thought is that if those cards are really so expensive then maybe have a service to take a key-card game and have it put into a card you purchase yourself. Obviously you'd loose access to the keycard and if you somehow lost if you'd have to buy another like if you lost a physical game.

But since that's exactly what some people want I think that's fine.

The big issue here would be making the game even more expensive overall. But if it's a seperate charge you can deal with later and if it's your choice then it's fine.

Plus you could even have resellers who could do this in bulk and then resell the physical game on actual cards in stores. You could make a whole market out of it with the right set up and it would go a long way to game preservation.

Even if Nintendo doesn't do it themselves a company like "limited run games" could probably offer a service where you trade in key-card games and recieved physical versions with all the data on it. Again there is potential for people to make a merket out of this. It might be a tad premium but it can still work.

@JumpingJackson cheap chips for storing keys cost basically nothing so your wrong on that.

The reason for small publishers has already been stated. But everyone prefers to complain so they don't spread the information.

The true value of key cards from a publisher perspective is to put the game on physical shelves without paying for actually good storage carts.

There is still a significant portion of the market that purchases or becomes aware of games through presence in physical stores. It's also more popular to send people something physical as a gift so your can hand them something.

Keycards are actually VERY pro indie and pro small publisher because production costs is one of the reasons most indie games, even good ones, don't appear outside of online stores.

I'm not saying game key cards don't have issues. But they aren't scams like the rage mob is shouting and they aren't simply for big publishers.

Also just to quickly reiterate another post I made but gamekey cards aren't the death nail to game preservation people think it is ... Not unless people stop even trying.

@AllBLK it's not bending the knee it's about actually thinking about it instead of just picking up the pitchfork and joining the angry mob because your first thought was anger.

Keycards are not really a replacement for physical releases, they are more to allow digital releases a way to be put on store shelves without investing in more expensive physical game carts.

Do we all want physical releases? yes. But even if keycards didn't exist a lot of these games would probably NOT get physical releases and just opt for digital storefront.

THis is due to Nintendo not offering variable cartridges so smaller games aren't overpaying for big cartridges, and this is an issue. But the keycards themselves are not to blame.

@Smithicus The reason for game cards is because there is marketing value to having your game on store shelves.

A significant portion of customers still at least occasionally purchase by just wandering the game section and seeing what's on the shelf. Being on a digital storefront only hides your product in the digital sea and can weaken sales if other methonds don't alert peole enough.

Game key cards are actually pretty brilliant solution for publishers as it allows them to get their game on store shelves without investing in expensive chips. THose keycards are like ... the cheapest of the cheap. Their cost is probably near zero so they can be produced and sent out without any loss in production.

BTW as far as "taking game preservation serious" ... I don't know how to break this to people but physical releases aren't actually a promise towards game preservation. Physical media fails eventually. CHips and even CDs will degrade even if you keep them in box after a few decades.

We're starting to see this occur with some GBA games where the internal battery died, but the problem's only going to get worse.

Now I'm not saying I don't want proper physical releases. But there is a point to the key cards and if you're reason for hating keycards is game preservation a physical chip wouldn't be a gurantee.

For the time being the best way to preserve games is to make sure to back up any game released on a good external drive and be ready to transfer it to other mediums.

Honestly what I'm relaly hoping for is that fans, or maybe even Nintendo, release blank cartridges made for storing singular Switch 2 games on. Meaning since it wasn't sold physically you just put it on physical yourself. It should be possible in theory so I'd like to see people really step up and create their own solution.

Cow: Takes a bit "I'm delicious" Takes another bite "No one should be this delicious!"

@Ichiban everyone in the stream I was in pretty much said it looked like a cheap mobile game.

They should have put a little more effort into giveing it a more interesting look.

Something kinda like "don't starve" but with the original game box art's style.

@HammerGalladeBro I wonder if people will steal them.

@Jack_Goetz that doesn't even seem to be the issue here. They prepped a lot apparently. But because the switch 2 is both a new console and a straight forward upgrade. Just about every switch owner wants one even if only to play switch 1 games better.

There was no real way they'd be able to meet that kind of demand.

Now I'm not saying Nintendo never did that. But they seem to have actually tried to not be intentionally scarce.

@MamaSymphonia that's good. Doesn't really feel like your child if it's just some generic kid NPC.