Ralek85

I can respect this: Gamefreak hypothesis was that customers would just eat up whatever ... and eat up whatever they did.

Lesson to be learned here? Being Gamefreak is just the best!

@inenai That is unfortunately, very likely indeed.

This and Tokon: Fighting Souls ... both games just look on-point right to me and really Marvel content bringing its' A-Game.

I say this as neither a big beat'em'ups nor fighting game fan. Still, both look just absolutely dope.

Darn, this almost gave me a mini stroke. Good thing, I know that free updates are over and we are not full-on into the "drip-feed Switch 2 edition"-phase of the Switch 2. It's gonna happen, it's just gonna be a while and it ain't gonna be cheap.

@LightSpirit Boggles the mind to this day, also remember the Phantom Dust reboot and Fable Legends.

Well, I guess that means that Metroid Prime will have to largely rely on word of mouth then, as I doubt they'll want to draw attention away from this with a 2nd "Direct" this same week. Kinda bummed out by that tbh. That trailer better be world ... eh galaxy changing!

@LightSpirit I keep reading this and I wonder, whether it really is that much harder than Hollow Knight then?

I don't remember struggling all that much in Hollow Knight outside of the White Palace, but that was designed for frustration and also basically pure platforming, which isn't really my wheelhouse.

@DangoTown Oh yeah, that's absolutely fair. Not sure how representative these maps are, and it's really just short segments and it still matters how you drive into said waterfall, but I'd definitely feel this was not built to compete with MK in terms of skill ceiling or even skill expression really.

Thinking about it now, crazy as it might sound, it feels like a playable episode of Boss Ross, you know: just a serious of happy little accidents happening, but it is the journey that counts! Actually not a small feat for a game to evoke that association

At the same time for in part that reason, it does have a good shot at attracting a different audience. Before trying it myself, I could not see why they would release two such 1st-party games within a couple of months of launch. Seemed bonkers tbh.

Now I can see that the overlap is not really an issue - outside of both kinda being racing games, but given that many folks seem focused on City Trials, even that is a bit of stretch.

I guess, I am just looking for something else from MK8D and unfortunately MKW - to me - felt like a downgrade (or should I rather say dilution) of the formula. Maybe it was just perfected with MK8D ... who knows, I should probably also try Sonic Racing Crossworlds ^^

I do expect my DekuDeals notifications to go kinda wild around Nov. 20th.

@DangoTown I don't use TikTok, but if TikTok is as soothing as KAR, maybe I should change that!

To be fair, as someone who never played the og I found the City Trials to be chaotic nonsense as well, the races however, I found super charming, as unlike Mario Kart, everything is about forward momentum. You are not about slowing others down, but using them and the environment to boost yourself, including while breaking and tailgating.

I also beat the CPUs easily, but given those were Lvl. 3 CPUs and not Lvl. 9 CPUs and certainly not human players, I would say that is absolutely meaningless for any conclusion about the final game.

I think the game has limited input complexity, but the track design and all the different combinations, abilities as well track interactions (just alone the option to fly vs drive for relevant chunks of the map) is enough complexity for me personally.

More importantly, I really enjoyed that it did not play like a Kart Racer. That was what I was worried for, because I do simply not need another Kart Racer, no matter how well made. Thankfully, I do not think it does play much like anything in recent memory.

I think online will demand that you have expert control over your setup, that you exploit the map in a way that matches your setup, that you nail your boosts and your abilities, including the tailgating mechanic.

I guess, it is going to be a polarizing game. It's also a really interesting first Kirby ever game to play, I have to say!

@Kilroy Correct me, if I'm wrong, but if I'm reading you correctly, you are saying, that games should not be judged (and then obviously also not compared, I guess, as that is a relative judgement) based on what other games are doing (the industry at large, so to speak), but what the individual developer in question has done in the past?

That is not my view, but I would grant that as a subjective perspective, however, that is not what is actually happening -right? Like Metacritic or OpenCritic (or Nintendolife for that matter) is not sorting reviews into "developer buckets" and present them like that?

It's basically also a mindset that at least implicitly argues, that devs are not learning from one another, but only from their own past. I think as the trends we see in the industry (Heroshooter, Roguelites, Escapeshooter and so on) suggest, that is patently not what is happening.

I'm just saying, this sounds to me like the logic that was indeed explicitly at display for Pokemon Z-A: "it's kinda good ... for a Pokemon/Gamefreak game" (but in fact unacceptable by any and all other conceiveable standards) ... so in that sense, yeah, that does happen, but not for the industry at large, just for Nintendo apparently and even there only kinda selectively.

I could lay out why I find that unreasonable as well as unfair (to say the least), but I am confident, that this is well understood. More than that, I find it incredibly harmful to effectively craft an outlook that does not allow for a frame of reference.

PS: I wasn't aware that Radahn was such an issue. Played at launch and did not think he was particularly ... anything really, but that is certainly subjective. I will say that I don't think the comparison matters, because the "World" of MKW has no balancing issues, it lacks any kind of mechanical or narrative purpose, thus it will be near impossible to fix. At least I would be stunned, if there was anything new to be said there two or three years from now, but I would love to be proven wrong!

PPS: Armored Core is niche but it was also John's (from DF) GotY for 2023 and it is a long standing and somewhat popular franchise (3 Mio+ Sales for AC6 apparently), it's certainly what I remember From Software for from back in the PSX era, long before Souls made them a household name.

@Kilroy Fair enough.

To your point though: From Software does definitely NOT "just develop soulslike games". Armored Core, Gundam and Steel Battalion Games - all within the aforementioned time-frame - beg to differ.

Also, as far as I am aware Nintendo EPD has several production groups with one group pretty much reponsible for Mario Kart as well as some odd one outs like Arms apparently. That is not the same group that does e. g. Zelda or Pikmin.

Hence, yeah, I do think we can make such comparisons and I for one find them illuminating. At least, I am yet to see some kind of convincing argument, why a comparably small outfit like From could make such impressive strides in just over a decade, while Nintendo EPD kinda ... just went big and empty.

Elden Ring released like that. It did not take 3 years of further DLC, patches or otherwise tinkering with it to get there - to your point about points of comparison at launch versus post-patch period.

It was their prerogative to make it a "World" game. It seems really odd to argue, that one needs to grant them a couple of years post-launch to figure out how to make it work. Like ... I would say: bug fixing, fine tuning, content enlargement ... yeah to all of that. Figuring a core gameplay loop for the actual World? A Reason for it to be there? That is a hard no. Again, the other way round is how it works.

Cheers!

A write-up like this would be more interesting, once we have some actual context for the Slide in MP4, which right now we decidedly lack. Not a criticism, just an observation.

I think like any meme really, the Akira Slide carries an implied cultural information, that is at the same time highly subjective though. To me personally for instance, it just signals that probably some in project also misses the good-old "rule of cool" ... simple as that.

@Elektrogeist1287 I'm with you on that. I'm worried that they might force us to ride through some vast empty spaces and have reptitive "bike battles", which not much elsen going on. At the same time, I keep an open mind and I cannot imagine, that it will be so prevalent and poorly executed that it ruins the game.

Still hope they might ramp up the PR and show us at least what the game is like in some uninterrupted gameplay within the open-ish-world with the bike. Just to get a sense what we are going to do.

If it is going to happen, it is going to happen next week though. Still excited for MP4. It has been a long time coming!

@Kilroy They had time - whether they used it for this or that is entirely their prerogative and we simply don't know. Maybe I am making myself not clear: there was plenty of temporal ressource to account for industry innovation and give it their best shot. In other words, they were not pressed for time as a development ressource.

I don't know if you noticed, but lack of proper development time is a constant and growing issue with AAA games (staring dead-eyed at Pokemon here) now taking at least 5 years to both, properly draw up and then actual develop.

I don't know what happend at From Software internally during those 11 years. You don't either. We can only look at what was then and what is now. Same goes for Nintendo's internal studios.

Tours was a free-2-play mobile game?

From Software developed several AAA games between 2011 und 2022, including Souls games like Dark Sould 2&3, Sekiro and Bloodborne ...

As for what companies do to improve formulas, we can only guess for the most part. There are definitely instances that come out of companies toying with ideas for years. Souls is - funnily enough - an example of just with what Miyazki said in interviews about Demon Souls. Not to mention, that Elden Ring went into production around 2017. Production is not conceptualization though, that happened earlier.

Not sure how you would describe what happened then there Seemed to me they improved their formula pretty much in a straight line from Demon Souls in '09 to Dark Souls as well as Bloodborne to Sekiro to then, Elden Ring. It's not entirely linear, fine, sure, whatever, but it is the same old formula, enhanced, refined and improved.

To some degree, the same is entirely true for 3D Mario Kart ... kinda my point.

@Kilroy Mario Kart 8 released in 2014. So yeah, the last time Nintendo went to the drawing board and conceptualized a new entry int the franchise was indeed well over a decade ago. Porting said concept to the next console or adding tracks ... I fail to see how that related to anything really. I also do not share your sentiment, that we should compare World to Mario Kart 8 at launch - why?

Because logically, that is akin to argueing that Nintendo learned no lessons whatsoever over the last 11 years for Mario Kart and therefore had to start from scratch. That is factually untrue and also businesswise insanity!

We could talk about this, if I had gripes with bugs or balancing or anything that a game can only really nail after a large-N population exposure over a given time, but ... I did not do that.

I was not saying that Mario Kart 9/World was in any stage of active development for 11 years. But we know it started as Switch game, so it has been a while and Nintendo certainly had well over - said - decade to conceptualize their next big thing for one of their biggest IP.

Did they use that time? No. I don't why and I do not claim that I do. But - to bring it back in my open-world comparison example - this is also true:
Dark Souls came out in 2011 and 11 years later, yes, we got Elden Ring form the same studio.

So as far as the timeframes go and the results within said timeframe, I don't see any objective space for arguement. FromSoftware established a formula, somewhere in those 11 years decided to move tha concept to open-world, and executed on that decision in an epic fashion.

Nintendo EAD/EPD made the same decision, had the benefit of knowing what FormSoftware and dozens of other studios did, and failed to execute on it in any meaningful fashion.

I'm happy you enjoy it a great deal, but does that extend to the actual "World" of MK World? What is your personal frame of reference?

To me, at maybe that is my problem, the frame of reference is what I personally played and I think for Nintendo themselves the reference point should be the industry wide gold standard, as it stands (and actually trying to go beyond that).

All of that is in fact ignoring, that Rare had already enhanced the formula beyond what we got in 2025 back in 1997, which does kinda court disbelief, I feel

@dazzleshell I'm glad you liked it, genuninely, as I very much wanted to like or even love it as well.

Diddy Kong Racing is my favourite out of Nintendo's stable, even to this day (though I did love MK64, particularly the battle mode, as well). In fact, I felt sooo certain, that World would be like the modern Deluxe version of DKR ... it just seemed to make all the sense of the world to me.

Probably the reason, I bounced so hard off MK World - it was just so absolutely at odds with both, that which was objectively possible and also my own expectations.

That said, I don't want more content in the future. I want depth added to the content. I brought up Elden Ring intentionally, as I found the exploration there to be one of the best experiences I had in gaming in about 30 years. But Elden Ring hid it's secret well, it always gave you a reward that either impacted how you thought and felt about the world and its inhabitants or how you actually played the game (or at least, something that allowed you to adjust your playstyle and approach, you obviously did not have to use it).

MKW is going to be one of the biggest videogames of all time commercially. The fact that I for one cannot in good conscience even put into the same conversation about "exploration" as the likes of Elden Ring is just really a bit heartrbeaking as a child of the 90s and the aforementioned DKR and MK64.

It absolutely should have been so much more deeper, not necessarily more (or less), just more engaging, more meaningful - or at all. I hate that the game made me feel that it did not respect my time right out of the gate.

Longer, slower races and all that I pointed about the "World" ... yeah, I am a bit bitter on it and yeah, I should have tempered my expecations, but MK is one of their biggest of big IPs and it has been 11 years - 11! since MK8 launched. I do feel we had the right to expect something at least on the scale of BotW, if not beyond that given the commercial stakes, timespan and yes, also price.

To me, it failed as epically as it could at delivering on this. I didn't need a single P-Switch or Question Mark Block or Sticker. THat is just window dressing that you CAN put into your world, once you fully build and it crafted the mechanics for exploration and interaction. They got it all backwards, despite having BotW under their Belt and 20 years of open-world design in the industry to examine.

It's ... it should not have happened this way

@marandahir Just want to second what you set about Calamo, really good job there.

I found it quite jarring when the game moved from in-game scenes with voice acting to text boxes. Not a fan of that constant inconsistency. Also, particular in battle reading text boxes is just structurally at odds with the game's design, as you have so much input to deal with visually that a great deal is bound to get lost.

If anything I would have liked it to be the other way round, talking battle when I have no time to read and text boxes in cut scenes when I have nothing but time to read. I'm used to cutscens with little to no talking in Zelda games.

That is on Nintendo so, not the Voice Actors of course

@dazzleshell I tried to, but frankly, I found there was nothing to explore. You said it yourself, there are hundreds of tasks to be found, but they all struck me as inane. Subjective opinion aside, they were all mechanically meaningless as they did not told your anything about the world or changed how you interacted with the game. Any progression system would have been better than nothing, but nothing is what we got. I'm just saying because I did not expect actual "world building" in a Mario Kart Game - though it would have been unique opportunity to shift gears for the franchise in that respect as well.

No, best I can tell, and I have to find someone who can contradict this, is that it was busy work, that was not in any way shape or form new, unique or particular inspired, that has zero impact on the world itself or the way you interact with it.

If I want to explore an open-world by any reasonable measure one's time is better spend in any number of games, including but not limited to Elden Ring (BotW/TotW, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk and dozens of others).

I feel it is incredibly unfair to call that which MKW world offers "exploration". Yes, you can drive through it at will, but it was never designed to explored, but only to be visited. Those are not the same things in my book.

Creating a long list of menial tasks in a videogame is what I mean by bloated and pointless. Ubisoft has been doing it for decades and people bemoan it. If Nintendo does a worse version of that 18 years later in an arcade racing game, I am supposed to eat it up? No, that is insane. The standard in 2025 is Elden Ring, not Assassins Creed 1.

As for MK8D: I stand by what I said, the racing was a much more tighter and focused experience, that felt (maybe subjectively) faster with more agency. They also failed to fix any of the problems of Deluxe, like how you still have no agency in defending against certain attacks for instance.

That is particular painful, because Sonic across found ways to address this and World did not. Frankly, everything I've seen of Sonic tells me that is an embarrasement to Nintendo, including the aforementioned progression and customization - even if it were the exact same price point, which it is not).

I didn't have buyers remorse for MK8 despite having already bought and played it to death on WiiU. I absolutely got remose for getting MK8 world. It may very well change over the coming years with patches and DLC ... I certainly hope it will allow me to enjoy it one day. It's all up to Nintendo though!

@Nintendo4Sonic That's what I thought, too, and what made we question why Nintendo would pack two 1st party Kart Racers into the launch window. Having played it, I don't think that is a mayor concern as they all three go into the same "genre-label-box", if you will, but KAR's playstile doesn't feel like MK to me at all, in fact, if anything it feels more l ike Fast Fusion and F-Zero (X), but also not quite.

I'd say - judging purely from my short time with the Demo - it is very much it's own thing within the "arcade racing/battling"-genre.

Sonic on the other hand is clearly trying (not having played it, still from the looks of it successfully) trying to mostly outdo Mario Kart World, that is beating it on it's own turf in terms of ambition and mechanics.

Personally, I found MKW the best produced 1st-party Nintendo game I grew incredibly tired of & bored with in less than a day. The game felt to me like a step back from MK8D in most every regard: more bloated with the really pointless open-world, the low octance intermission races, the lack of 200c and traditional three lap races.

I dunno, it never excited me in any way and I am stunned how little they did with the "World". How is there no Story/Adventure mode? How is there no progression or meaningful custominzation systems? Both Kirby and Sonic are doing SO much in that regard, but MK has only stickers, that you can even barely see once aquired. Both KAR and Sonic are also cheaper. Nintendo knew that MKW had that captured audience and they ran with it

Its one of the most baffling major 1st Nintendo releases I've seen and that is saying something: and odd mix between perfect polish and inexistent ambition. It's like they spend all their energy on creating the "World", and then running out of steam in figuring out what to actually do with and how to craft a compelling videogame on-top of it.

Long story short, seems to me Nintendo themselves were well aware that MKW would leave plenty of open fields to graze on for arcade racing fans. The fact they decided to go with F-Zero X on top of that (knowing Fast Fusion was there as well), plus packing in KAR (knowing Sonic was scheduled as well) ... I can't see how all of that is some gigantic coincidence where everyone in charge happened to have their brains turned off. At least, that is not a plausible explanation to me.

Interesting tidbit! I must say, never having played a Kirby game before in my life and certainly not Air Riders on the og Gamecube, I tried the Global Test on a whim and ... that racing mode is just unlike everything I've ever seen.

The forms and shapes, the bold colors, the animation and motion blur, the contrast and brightness, the sound effects and music, all the particle and alpha effects ... I swear, I did not understand what was going on those first rounds but somehow it was like some kind of light-therapy coming from my OLED TV, it just flooded my brain with endorphins: I sat there smiling like an idiot and feeling warm & fuzzy.

It feld genuinely surreal (it could not point to a specific mechanic, plot point or anything as a source) and as such it was a pleasant, but strange experience. I think it looked fantastic in motion and ran super smooth. I would be very curious to see how much this engine might have hsaped Sakurai's design process here, because he certainly created something unique with this game.

A sort of zero-calories sugar rush with motion blur ... I might have to buy my first Kirby Game now.

PS: If there is only a 1% chance we could get a Kid Icarus remake that looks and plays even a fraction as smoothly ... I might have to buy Air Riders just to feed that dream a bit!!!

Playing some Age of Imprisonment as well as Three Houses on Switch 2. I've also played the tutorials for Kirby Air Riders last night on a whim, liked what I saw, and decided to give it a go today.

Also, probably finishing up my playthrough (and apparently Platinum trophy judging from my progress) on Diofield Chronicles on PS5, which turned out to be quite a fun game after the ver.1.20 patch a while ago introducing the "Very Hard" diffculty mode that actually turns it into ... would you believe? ... a bit of a proper tactics game! Highly recommended actually (now).

@FishyS Yeah, that was actually my experience just now. Never played the OG Air Riders and felt like City Trial was just ... random, as I certainly could not keep track of what was happening all-around me. Did not feel like I had all that much agency and it was also funny how the two matches I played went: in one we went Bossmode (after battling each other before ^^) and lost. In the second 3/4 players ended up on 1st place with one kill each. Apparently, we were all clueless!

I had actually hoped it would be more like the vehicle battlers of old (like Vigilante 8 for instance), but it's not really unfortunate.

That said, I did really enjoy the actual racing mode: more than I thought and frankly more than I ever enjoyed Mario Kart World. I love the game's energy, the music, the colors, the map design, the animations, the announcer's voice, the variety (different drivers and vehicles not only having different stats, but abilities and actual driving behavior). It's really quite something.

I was not a fan of the controls with everything being mapped to the B button and sticks basically. The one thing that really bugged me, was how I couldn't really get to grips with spinning while drifting ... it being on the same stick and such. Threw me a bit off and wish spinning was just a dedicated button. Dunno, mabye I could get used to it.

Anyways, just reminded me how much of a disappointment MKW was for me personally. How come we get co-op boss battles in Kirby Air Riders, but not in Mario Kart World!? That world was screaming for some actual interactivity. Would have loved a co-op campagin of some sort ... sigh

Depending on what the reviews say, I might actually get Air Riders for the racing, if not for the Arena. We will see.

@Indielink I agree, it looks fine - even in motion on a 55" OLED.

Tom pointed out the existing LOD issues, some texture pop-in, low-res shadows and such, but I think none are anywhere near dealbreakers and from a player perspective it is good enough and a big upgrade over AoC.

Most importantly, AoC just plays noticebly more sluggish which is a big no-no for a game like this.

At the same time, this is definitely hardly the best technically possible result for the game given this fidelity in terms of image quality.

PS: my bigger gripe with the game is the lack of proper Co-Op, so that coop takes you back to the sluggish 30fps, and the real downgrade in terms of map and mission design. That last part I felt immediately as the contrast to the battle around hyrule caslte in AoC could not have been more sharp. I dunno what their thinking was with this, but that is a real bummer, as outside of some combat twists, the mission and map design is everything in a Musou game. I mean, sure, progression okay, but that is hardly a difficult task.

@electrolite77 The thing is that this basic mercantile logic was always true, but at the same time for most of gamings' history the actual result was not the then to be expected multiplatform-is-the-rule-everything-else-the-exception outcome. I think the picture is significanlty more complex, even though you are of course pointing out a major driver.

Just to lay out the obvious: the logic you describe is a simple business logic. It's not a business first, creative second logic, but a pure business logic. So if you decisions are made by somone who acts only on business interest, that makes sense. That was not the universal way the industry operated though. You had producers in the marketplace who wanted to make a game and needed it to break even. That is decidely not the same logic.

However, games got more expensive, the business went mainstream, more and more developer share went to corporations, which exist for shareholder value ... the mid-size studio went basically away for a bit there and now you have a completely different landscape from anything with hypersuccesfull single devs/household-sized indie devs to studios with hundred of folks who are just ad hoc support teams for this or that blockbuster. The latter devs obviously have little to no commercial or creative stake in their own daily work, while the former often have near absolute stake.

It's not really all that shocking because we've seen it happen to other industries, too. You cannot have a flood of venture capital for instance going into an industry without it's logic being severly disturbed (just look at sports).

So you are not wrong, but a lot of - I think ultimately unfortunate - stuff shifted over the last 20 years that lead to the place we find ourselves in. Some for the better, some for worse. It was however not a foregone conclusion dictated by economic necessity.

As for the WiiU: just for the record, I hated the console as such, as piece of hardware, it's absolutely my least favourite, but as far as the software goes, I felt it was a breath of fresh air that in many ways shaped what would come after. I don't miss that overpriced Fisher Price toy, but I might miss the desperate spirit it engendered!

@electrolite77 You think so? I mean, that the numbers don't add up? I dunno, I doubt they lost money on Rise? I think the issue is just, that they did not make all the money the possibly could with it, so they'd rather to a smallest-common-denominator release across as much an audience as possible.

I don't blame them, it's just unfortunate that AAA becomes more and more synonymous with this. But yeah, in the end you are probably right. In that sense, I hope Nintendo will consider more partnerships like during the WiiU era. That brought forth some interesting ideas, some of which paid of handsomely (Hyrule Warriors to name a currently relevant one 😋).

It's really one of the things I liked most about the WiiU: there were a bunch of games that had a level of Nintendo polish and beloved characters, but a different kind of flavour. Of course, we also got that from within Nintendo with freh emerging talent (Splatoon).

Hopefully Nintendo does not become to comfortable then ... I honestly like them best, when they are struggling 😅

@PushMyGran86 😁 yeah, let's see where this generation will take us. If nothing else, it promises to be interesting, and despite my complatins, I wouldn't deny that in many ways that matter we do live in a golden age of videogames.

If you look at Steam, you see that there are like 18,000 games or so newly added each year. Sure, some of it is crap and shovelware, but there is also a really insanely broad spectrum of decent and great little to big games there - certainly more than I can play in a lifetime!

In that sense, I'm just an old man yelling at clouds! ^^

@TimeGuy No doubt, there are upsides and downsides to be had here, no least convenience and price. I'm just saying, that this idea of handheld console, that is operating - more or less - on the level of a stationary console (for a limited time) is not the draw it used to be. At least not for me, but of course that is often highly situational as well. I just don't have nearly as many opportunities to play away from home as I used to.

But that doesn't really change the fact, that I really wish some more developers would look as the Switch 2 as something beyond a revenue stream for existing projects. That's fine and dandy and makes sense for anyone involved, but it also is kinda boring. No one expect Microsoft would market their machine as ... the place to play the stuff you already played (and bought) elsewhere or never cared to do before.

At least we got Fast Fusion and we're going to have a unique From Software Experience with Duskbloods. I hope more stuff will follow eventually beyond Nintendo's fare (which is great obviously, but can also be a bit samey at times!).

@PushMyGran86 I don't mind any of these multiplatform releases coming to Switch. I think it's great that these games are becoming more wildly available as most of them were never target at any one platform to begin with.

At the same time, I stand by what I said: I'd rather have unique games on the Switch developed by 3rd-parties than ports of a number of games, I either already played, at least already own and never got to or had no interest in getting or playing for a number of years.

There is just more value in that for my taste and we got some pretty interesting games for Nintendo consoles by third parties over the years. Sadly, it feels a bit like a dying breed these days. It's either first party exclusives or ... ports. Bespoke third party software is getting rarer.

With that comes that fewer games really take full advantage of the Switches (or any other platform's) feature set. I get that this is just wishful thinking at this point: games have become expensive projects, by major corps looking for maximum ROI. It's no longer about making profit and securing the funds for the next project. Exclusives don't make much sense in that world.

It's just a shame, because these games were often crafter with a narrower vision to begin with, not necessating the kind of universal appeal many multiplatform games (not all of course, there is still niche content) basically strive for by necessity.

Well, not all hope is lost, we still get some releases (eventually) like the upcoming Duskbloods. Pretty sure that this is going to be a great example of unique experiences craft only for the Switch by 3rd parties. Exclusives yet a different flavour to what Nintendo tends to deliver. Variety is the spice of life after all, as they say

I dunno if that is a hot take, but I am not a one system player, so 99% of these ports are of little to no interest to me personally, since they are still - for the most part - by far the worst options on the market, which offer but one benefit: portability.

However, with more PC Handhelds on the market now than anyone can hope to count, I feel that is only a fraction as compelling as it used to be, particularly with Nintendo being Nintendo when it comes to updating existing games, whereas on PC, you just get the benefit of the beefed up hardware you just paid for no matter what the "platform holder" (that is Steam is doing or not doing).

I really wish we could get some tailor-made 3rd-party experience for the Switch 2 - you know, what we used to call EXCLUSIVES That is something I really miss, because these games - few as they were - actually were new and interesting.

I take another Tokyo Mirage Session, Mario + Rabbids or Marvel Ultimate Alliance of a 100 ports.

Also: I just wish Nintendo would straight up start to sell us game patches at this point. How long do we have to wait for the likes of Xenoblade(s) and Three Houses to be unshackled from their like 720p prisons? A year? Two? Forever?

I really don't need any half-baked "Switch 2 Editions" additions to these games, just dial up the image quality and, if possible, give us a locked 60 fps. Make it $5 a pop and nickle and dime us ... you know you want to and many of us want you to take advantage.

Cheers!

Gaming journalism has become equally as fascinating as the games they cover

I mean, if we are talking about mechanical limitations of a combat system and certainly its' repetitive nature, then we should be able to acknowledge that the bar set by BotW - a game, I feel, is fairly summarised as "when actually met with resistance, just do the flurry rush and make sure to bring enough food for virtually unlimited healing!" - is incredibly low. That is compared to previous LoZ games like Twilight princess.

We all know how BotW scored though, which is to say borderline perfect across the board. I acknowledge that there was also stuff like environmental takedowns of course (though these did not matter for when actually fighting something that could conceiveably kill you like Lynels) and there was less of an overall focus in combat on BotW than in any given musou game, but given the the fact, that the combat in AoC and AoI is actually superior and that is an integral part of both games, it seems the stark (like an 18 point spread on opencritic where almost all games cluster between 70-85 is monumental) difference in scores should best be attributed to the fact, that AoC/AoI is a 2nd party musou game, thus creating a permission structure for a greater spread in ratings - greater relative to a first-party mainline Zelda game.

@SurprisedRobinChu Space Jam anyone?

No, I think that is another good point. Any attempt at a Smash Bros. Movie is going to get really messy, really quick.

Furthermore, I don't think there is a great appetite for this kind of endeavour after the DCU and with the ongoing MCU.

On the flipside: nobody really tried this at scale with animation. I just think people give themselves more psychological leeway with animated fare in terms of suspension of disbelief and just overall quirkiness.

All of that should make for a really strong case for animation. To be clear, and to paraphrase Brad Bird here, animation is not a genre. I am not advocating only making kids movies. I am advocating for the artform as a better fit for Nintendo's properties. So the added upside of the aforementioned leeway is just a nice "sidebenefit".

Nothing should stop Nintendo from doing a mature Zelda animated movie aimed at fans, who grew up playing OoT for instance: nothing at all. Would I necessarily make that the first Zelda movie? Probably not, but it is an option and down the road ... ? For sure!

@N00BiSH Fair enough, though by the same token one could argue, it would have made even more sense to use a proven approach rather than a failed one (no nostalgia here for Super Mario Bros.! ^^)

I just can't see how it's going to work out. Bringing videogames to live-action is at the best of times a dicey proposition, that fails (hard) way more often than it does result in something watchable. Even if it is watchable, it is often rather unrecognizeable compare to the source material. I doubt, that Nintendo would go for such a sweeping "artistic license". Doesn't make sense for them.

In that case, it seems to be long shot at the best of times and we are not talking Peter Jackson here in terms of talent and dedication, but Wes Ball of Maze Runner fame.

Everything can be a curve ball in Hollywood, but it seems to me the deck is stacked against them.

I could see it as good play back in the day, where Animation basically meant Disney or Pixar fair tales of one sort of another. But looking at the box office ever since the pandemic and it becomes pretty clear that audiences (even in the U.S.) have had their horizons expanded significantly.

Credit Netflix or Crunchy Role or whatever you will, but the numbers speak for themselves.

Is anyone really thinking live-action is a more natural fit for Zelda than Animation? I mean, even in the games they steered away from any kind of realistic style of TP and such.

The best thing I can say is ... that is a weird decision, I cannot relate to and in that sense it feels authentically Nintendo. It's still not sitting right by me, as the Super Mario movie was such a safe play and not at all weird.

Final thought: it is not just that we have opened the door to all kinds of genre for animations at the box office, we've also opened the door for all kinds of animations besides the ubiqutous Pixar housestyle (Spider-Verse, Mutant Mayhem, Bad Guys 2, Puss in Boots 2 ...).

They could have taken a page from Sony (which just did gangbuster business with KPop Demon Hunters for Netflix) and really go for it: giving Zelda a unique visual identity not just in the games, but also in the movies.

I just think it is a HUGE missed opportunity and strangely at odds with the Zeitgeist.

The fact that they went for Live-Action with Zelda has dampened my excitement a great deal: we are edging into the golden age of mature animation - be it eastern or western - and Nintendo of all companies decides to make a live-action movie again ... why.

This looks just super dope! Absolutely love the cast as well: reminds me of when I first read Annihilation and Annihilation Conquest almost 20 years ago ... the nostalgia is strong with this one for sure, but I also think it will be an absolute class act and blast for anyone new to the characters. Not to mention that there are enough "staples" here as well!

I'm just curous about the technical aspects on Switch 2. Would love to see this take full advantage of the systems capabilities given that it is not a heavy game.

A Day 1 for sure - but undecided on the platform yet

I like what I see. The combat seems a bit less "locked-in" this time. The game is definitely a looker for a portable system as well. But the small glimpse riding on the bike in the desert still looked super empty. I hope I'm wrong there or that they found a way to still meaningfully utilize that empty space.

Holding out hope for MP2+3 Releases as well. I mean if they didn't plan to do that, why not put MP2 on NSO at least?

The technical state of the game definitely makes me exicted for the next Fire Emblem Warriors following Fortune's Weave

But am I reading this right? There is only local co-op and gameshare ... no proper online co-op in 2025? That's a bummer to say the least. I love that Nintendo is keeping local co-op alive, truely, but why has it to be either or?

That was weird but somewhat okay when online was free, but now it is not with NSO. Is it too much to ask for first or second party games with multiplayer to ... well support it online as well? I don't get it at all and I don't like it.

@Spider-Kev Are you talking about digital preorders?
If so, I really don't mean to be rude, but those are plain stupid. It's not a limited "good" (no good at all really). I general think preordering is a terrible idea unless you are 100% sure and it is some limited edition of one variety or another. I never understood the point and with digital there is just none.

Just my two cents on this

As for Prime: I think it is confirmed that Mouse Controls are optional, which I think is perfect as it would be insane for there to be no mouse controls and impossible for there to be only mouse controls (gotta be playable in handheld afterall, plus it is a Switch 1 release as well). But yeah, like I said, I am also worried that they might force Metroid into the same mold they "discovered" with BotW.

I will keep an open mind until we know what the game is like. If they went that route, it might still work out, but it is definitely not a given seeing how a big part of the Metroidvania-formula is the opposite of "freedom", not to mention that classic claustrophic atmosphere the games thrived on.

Interested in Age of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4, but need to see more. The latest reveal for MP4 and the bike turned me off somewhat.

I will not play through another semi-ugly and mostly-barren shoe-horned in "open-world". If that was their pivot during those 8 years, it either needs to really land or I am at least hesitant to endorse it by buying. I certainly never asked for any open-world in my Metroid Prime.

The brutal reality is that the standard for a fantastical open-world has been set and it is - to my taste - Elden Ring. If it can capture (even a scaled down) a version of that sense of purposeful discovery and endless wonder, then great ... if not, then I don't have the willpower to power through any more such barren virtual lands anymore. I find it increasingly exhausting rather than joyful.

I might also check out the Kirby Air Riders trials. I never played the OG and I am at least somewhat curious, but unless it plays vastly different, I don't need more arcade racing right now.

Seems fair and makes sense: it's always good to remind people that physical stores do still exist. It's easy to forget and you can't easily tell anymore from walking through the inner city either.

That said, I don't know of any store in my area that ever had Switch demo station and I'd would like to try the game for sure. Hence I hope there'll be a demo on the eshop eventually. Even a short one would be fine as long as we get some representative content so we can have a feel for the game and the technical side of things.

Did not really pay attention to the game and only saw the new trailer for it today by chance. I have to say, as a non-MH-fan (played a bit of several games, but never really got into it) it actually looks like a very gorgeous and compelling RPG. Beating a dead horse at this point, but it kinda looks what I would expect a Next-Gen Pokemon gane to look like.

It gave me some BotW vibes actually, just with a more traditional narrative structure apparently. Not sure yet, if they combat system will be for me, but I'll keep an open mind. I'm rather interested now, but the fact that I am not a franchise fan, that price tag and the announcement of DLC make me think this is a wishlist game. Not to mention that the last MH apparently did not launch in a pristine state to say the least

@BenAV Price aside, I think that is a totally reasonable approach every since the PS3 era basically. Each generation has become more prone for games being significantly improved and expanded upon after launch to the point where for most releases buying Day 1 is a shorthand for voluntary beta testing basically.

Not every game is as dramatic as Cyberpunk of course. For example, I played Three houses for a dozen chapters on Hard/Classic when it launched before I stopped because without any challenge whatsoever it simply did not feel like Fire Emblem.
Only by chance did it realize that they later patched in Maddening (plus some other stuff + DLC of course), that did alleviate at least this major issue of mine. I started from scratch then, including all the tedious running around in the monastry.

I would have been better served of waiting a year or so before picking the game up: wasted time and money.

Thing is though, I wanted to play and love the game Day 1. I was okay paying a premium for that. I was not okay with coming up short with the actual experience though.

As a consumer, it feels bad to basically being punished for supporting a product there Day 1. I don't want to argue against developers taking care of their products after launch and it is great that we can fix stuff that slipped past QA, as it always does, and it is also great that user feedback can make a game better even long after launch, but still ... I wish everything essential were just there Day 1, that includes stuff like balanced difficulty modes and such.

@Don I don't know, if or what plans they have.

All I know is that the track record so far strongly indicates that there are in fact not given to planning ahead to the next generation: both Xbox and Sony managed to carry their online ecosystems forward more or less seamlessly (though I do have some gripes there as well, but that is neither here nor there), while Nintendo basically does a hard reset every other generation.

This is remarkable because conventional wisedom is that you lock users into your ecosystem and then keep them there no matter what. Kinda hard to imagine Apple going like ... remember all the stuff you bought on iTunes folks? Too bad, that shiny new $4.000 XYZ device ... well, you cannot access that content anymore. But you we will drip-feed it back to you over the next 8 years, well some of it that is, not at your digression and only for a subscription fee!

Other than that, with the Switch 2 generation my interest is only that of a fascinated spectator. I have most of my OG discs and the hardware, plus a decent PC. I'm kinda done really caring what Nintendo does with 20 or 30 year old ROMs.

All of this was somewhat interesting and quirky in the Wii era, but all of this seems a really cynical way to milk a legacy. I would be okay with subscription, if the emulation was state of the art and catalogue comprehensive or - like I said - if it was at a really fair cost (I bought most of these games at least once before after all) and À-la-carte like on the WiiU.

This current approach ... I appreciate the way they are trying to revive multiplayer, that is pretty cool, but it feels too little too late.

Like ... I might want the convenice of replaying Path of Radiance on my Switch 2. I'm not gonna until I know that they I can also play Radiant Dawn and my saves will carry over. To me, given that we are talking about first party content and Nintendo's own platform, seems a totally reasonable, even obvious thing to consider.

This is not a 3rd party ******** on Android, that might run the former, but not the latter game or has simply has no option to import a save or whatever. This is Nintendo who should have every incentive to make sure they put their very best foot forward with bringing these games, that build their very brand over the decades, to a new generation as well as an old one.

I say all this knowing that the past decades should have taught me to expect nothing from Nintendo when I comes to this and that which we got thus already feels like a major win. Past failure is not a justification for current shortcomings though, hence ... I just accepted that they simply do not care - well, not all that much anyways.

Short answer: do not expect them to have a plan for a world after NSO. They might, but they are more likely to just break what was and then see what can be done.

Glad they made it available and I'll be even happier for the release of Path of Radiance, as that is truly a brilliant game far too few people got their hands on back in the day.

That said personally I am not interested in supporting a mediocre emulation service with an artificially restricted library, savegames that'll eventually get deleted and all of that at premium prices - straight from the source no less, who you would expect to provide the best emulation on the market and the most comprehensive catalogue of titles.

If they'd allow for an À-la-carte approach, I'd buy select releases as I've done on the WiiU, but alas ... another subscription with a weak value proposition is a complete no-go.

I've went straight to 1TB, so I think I'll be fine for a while.

I genuinely hope that this means we well get some high resolution texture* work for once. I mean, AoC was and still is a blurry mess visually speaking. It's a shame because I presume there is a decent looking game somewhere in there, but unfortunately it was denied the chance to come out and play with us

@bransby The games industry is like Hollywood: once they found something that even remotely works, they redo it until it is undeniably run into ground, then they still keep at it for 2-3 years until the next thing that remotely works has finally come around. Given we are talking FF here, there is a decent chance yet they'll make it happen before the current cycle has run out for 2D-HD.

Looks cozy and I for one still like the 2D-HD style. Is it getting increasingly overused? Yeah, but I think on it's own merit, it still holds up well, and it makes sense for these projects.

Unfortunately, there is just no way I can cope with vanilla turn-based combat of this fashion anymore. It's fine of course, it's the way these games were/are. I'm not hating on that.

It's just not something I can get into anymore, as we've seen such great strides in progrssing these at core turn-based system ... that I can't stomach a vanilla version of it anymore.

In a way it is a shame, but it is what it is. I'm not gonna waste time and money on barebones system I fundamentally feel are mind-numbingly tedious.

I kinda wish they had went the extra mile and made a classic combat system as well as something else and let you pick which one you want ... but, yeah, it is what it is and that is fine. I hope people who likes these system still, get to have a lot of fun with these games!

I hope there is a lot more and hopefully, they have left themselves open a backdoor for some legacy characters - maybe in an adventure mode or something? A big part of the charm of these games is the beloved characters and their varied playstyles after all.

HW but also FEW did a really amazing job, with more fan favourites than anyone could ever reaonsably find time to level. The bar is pretty damn high in that regard and neither AoC nor Three Hopes were slouches either.

That said, I love that Zelda is the focus here.

On a related note: I hope we can move on from the BotW-Zelda-Universe after this.

I started playing AoC a couple of days ago for a bit and I can't help but be torn: it is easily the most glamorous Musou game I've played with the cutscnes, the menus, the polish around most stuff and the first battle around Hyrule castle shows a pretty densely packed and detailed world, where you can even break some stuff with bombs and such. It is also rather mechanically dense in it's combat compared to some other Musou games.

At the same, I also played DW:Origins on PC and the fact is, that AoC very obviously runs at 30fps which feels sluggish, the resolution is super low turning much of the detailed world into a pixelated mess, the draw distance is terrible, so much of the battle has to play out in your imagination then, and the enemy density (the visible part) is alright, but it is nothing compared to sense of seeing entire armies crash in DW:Origins.

At the same time, Origins setting just does not interest me at all and the color palette and designs are suffocatingly drab for the most past compared to Zelda.

If AoI can deliver a solid 60fps with high enemy density and draw distance to really give you that in-the-midst-of-a-giant battle feel, then I think I'll pick it up and only play only through the Story for AoC.

It would have been really great if they could have done an AoC Switch 2 patch since the whole game seems wasted in it's current state, just dialing up the performance to a 1080p60 like Hyrule Warriors and adjusting the draw distance to be best the Switch 2 can handle, would totally have turned that game into a banger. But obviously they want to sell AoI and so they won't do that. Makes sense, but it's still a shame.

@BTB20 Yeah, I was just saying it just came out and it is already turning a huge profit (and yeah, I am aware that revenue does not equal profit for the developer, but at this kind of sales it does not matter). I was just trying to illustrate that the kind of budget Legends Z-A received has zero to do with risk mitigation and all to do with running up their margins.

Pokemon - for some reason - seems to be a very inelastic product, more like a captive product really. There is a huge built-in audience, that is not motivated by cost or quality. Or maybe it is more like Cigarettes in feeding a legal addiction?

I don't know, but there is no point in looking at it like any other games franchise. It very obviously does not operate on the same terms. As I said before, that would be like Activision doing FEWER CoD games, because they are worried about quality or even losses. It would be insane and shareholders would riot: more games is better for profits, not better games is better for profit. If you can do both, great, if you cannot, do the former not the latter.

@h3s That's fair, the last time Nintendo was the top-ranked publishers on metacritic for example (not that this is necessarily a be all and end all metric) was 2015 afaik. Something definitely shifted in the years after. To be fair though, the WiiU must have been a big system shock to them.

@Dr_Lugae I was totally agreeing with you.

I was just pointing out, that the record shows that this is not true for Pokemon games. It's about as true for Pokemon games in fact as it is for Call of Duty games for example (where the pertinent questio is, whether the game will be the best seller of it's respective release year, but not if it will turn a significant profit), even though these operate at a completely different budget level. Just goes to show that talking about any business risk involved for Gamefreak by e.g. tenfolding the budget of something like Legends Z-A is simply not borne out by any available facts.

Again, it's just funny to me, because I definitely feel something like FE would carry a relevant risk, given the series was on it's last leg with Awakenking. Yet, Fire Emblem does get a fully modelled Garreg Mach with fully voiced no-name Monks. Not sure what else one could say on this, as all of this strikes me as super obvious: Legends was not a safety play to mitigate risk, it was margins play 🤑

How is that not a substaniated and fair assessment? Oo

@Dr_Lugae That doesn't really sound right for a game that was apparently developed (not marketed) in the sub $ 20 Million range and is part of a $ 100+ Billion franchise with already about 5,6 Million units sold. Just ballparking this means: with a median $ 60 a pop that gives us about $ 360 Million revenue in about a week? On what? Like maybe a $ 40 Million budget including marketing? If that is poor performance (other Pokemon games selling faster that is), then we are talking a supremely low-risk environment in my humble opinion, that allows for any kind of risk and thus experimentation really, that they feel like.

Also, by that logic neither Palworld nor Hogwarts Legacy should not really exist at all?

Yeah, the industry is generally risk averse, true, the bigger the project, the more risk averse it generally gets, also true, but then again we need to understand what the risk really looks like.

I don't think they are running any risk of not turning a profit. Does not matter whether the game costs $ 13 Million or $ 130 Million to make. In other words, the risk is not profitability, certainly not viability as a commercial entity, but simply margins.

I lack the imagination to think of anything they could do with Pokemon that would qualify as a risk under these circumstances. Maybe ... turning it into a one billion dollar production for an arena-based Pokemon shooter, that is R-rated, would qualify?

No, the point is, that it would be creatively sound to unshakle their developers with proper budgets and development time, but it would be terrible business. They can and will produce even cheaper in the future and run up their margins. Anything else would be silly, as their business does not rely on quality, but quantity.

The more they can pump up, the faster their line will go up. Qualtiy is not a consideration that can and should enter into their development strategy at this point. They are just doing what the data tells them. They can sell whatever they make, even if it is downright broken and needs a next-gen machine to make it resemble a working product. People will still pay $ 60 and play a thousand hours of it.

I don't even fault the creatvies for that as it is certainly not the creatives calling the shots here, though that is not something unique to Gamefreak. I imagine it must be highly frustrating to work on these projects. Nobody goes into visual design to create a city of ugly 2D blocks all day long.

The only weird thing is that Nintendo used to be a publisher that really believed in quality first, because they were protective of their brand, mores o than anyone else in the industry. But even that consideration is out the window for Pokemon since the jump to the Switch.

Any business on the planet would kill for a product that just sells, no matter what you do with it.