Richnj

@Ashunera84 You're going to unironically say they are playing the long game and don't care about quarterly reports as we discuss a limited time product that ends, not coincedentally, at the end of the fiscal year?.

This release is aimed at pushing the earning reports up. And doing so in that limited time fashion creates FOMO, and will drive more people to purachse the game, during a pandemic, recession, and Mass job losses, when they would otherwise put off buying the game until later.

It's a cynical, and frankly nigh abusive, business tactic for quarterly profits. Devaluation is the not a concern here.

@holygeez03 But how dare they mess with the original's speed and camera. They should respect the original design.

@nessisonett It's amazing how they've managed to add wide screen support to a game that was originally designed with 4:3, and didn't need to charge £50. And they aren't limited availability. After yesterday, you'd believe this would be impossible.

Bethesda have messed a lot things lately, but these Doom ports are no longer one of them.

@Ashunera84 No. Just no.

The reason most games get price drops is continued revenue. A dev isn't concerned about their product being cheap, they are concerned about turning a profit. It doesn't matter if you sell 100k copies at £50 or 1m at £5. And normally games are priced to maximise sales, not keep a product's value high. And once initial sales have been made, and the sales drop, they drop the price to boost sales and maintain revenue again. You can't really argue that game prices shouldn't drop, unless you are also going to argue that every game should maintain its original launch price. Like having all the RE games on Switch be £50-&60 each.

The problems you highlighted of exposure and product value are nearly exclusively a Nintendo problem.

The reason you see sale wars on eShop is because Nintendo are just god awful at curation on the store. That means that the best way to promote your game and be seen is to drop those prices to be included in the most played sections. Which then promotes further sales, even after the sale price has ended.

And Nintendo keeping their game prices high actually over inflates their perceived worth. That's why Nintendo, and pretty much only Nintendo, can sell you almost straight ports of Wii U, Wii, GC, and even N64 games for £50, where every body else sells their remasters for a lower price.

@holygeez03 video games are not comparable to films and TV shows when talking about aspect ratio. Simply because the scene on a video game is framed by the player, not the director.

You look at games like Halo 1 and 2, that absolutely did improve with wide-screen support. Or Resident Evil 1 or 0, that added wide screen with an option. Or Sypro or Crash that are remade with wide screen. All have no problem with wide screen being added to games originally designed with 4:3. At the very least, they could have done a RE and just gave players the option.

Since I am listing off better collections, I'd like to add Borderlands and Bioshock here. All these have given more game, with more effort, and usually for less money. The 3D all stars is just a poor effort, and only Nintendo fans would praise such crap.

I got really excited seeing the 3D games being announced for Switch. Then they exclude Galaxy 2. Then they announce it being limit time. Then they show full price for, not remakes, not remasters, but just ports.

They somehow turned something I was really excited about in to something I'm on the fence about.

@Cosats

1) Not really a reason, and a poor one too. You could still buy the game at launch. Preordering wasn't needed still, and there weren't any benefits from doing so.

2) Not all games offer preorder discounts, especially not the big ones.

3) On a £50 game, double coins turns out to be a £2.50 reward, or an extra 5%. You get the game on sale or physically, and you'll probably save a lot more money. And money that can be spent on anything, rather than just more digital games on Switch.

4) Again, not all games do this, and it's hardly a bug incentive. Preorder bonuses are just another issue with preorder culture.

5) Most games don't allow preloading until right before launch, maybe a few days. It's still not really a defense for being able to preorder a game months before it launches. Again, like I said earlier, you could offer preorders just a week before launch and still get the best benefits from such a system without all the negatives.

@NEStalgia This gen has really opened my eyes to how scummy companies will be. Starting with Destiny and MCC. Preordered both. Paid £90 for Destiny, and got royally shafted with the DLC content. Paid £50 (I think) for MCC and it was just utterly broken for years. And neither company much cared for the state of the product they released. They just moved on to the next profitable release.

I preordered Halo Wars 2 as well, and then MS decided to launch DLC outside of the season pass. I fought MS tooth and nail to get a refund on that. I've only just rebought the game, with all DLC, years after launch and for a fraction of the price (a practice that is now standard for me).

Then we could talk about probably a hundred games launching broken and extremely content lite since then.

They really have taken a customer who was almost always buying on launch for games and such, and just beat the positive out of me. It's such a shame too. I had a work friend text me today because he's excited for the new avengers game, and I'm torn between ranting about why he shouldn't be excited for the game, and just leaving him to his bliss (I responded with a type of cautionary optism).

I think for me, the weirdest part is how people can still be optimistic or positive after such a anti-consumer generation.

Personally I'd argue preorder culture as a whole needs to be reassessed. Maybe even legal limitations placed. There's no need as far as I can tell for a digital item to be preorder-able anything longer than (at most) a week before launch. Allow time for preloading to help out those with limits in their download speed, and to allow companies to absorb the high bandwidth demand.

I mean, look at Sony right now vetting consumers to ensure a positive launch for their PS5. The whole idea is ripe for abuse, and if the video game industry has proven anything, it's that if they can abuse something, they will.

@MarsOne The Switch is a home console, and a portable console. That's why it's called a hybrid console.

The Vita and DS docks didn't come with the consoles, and didn't contain TV outputs. They also didn't support mulitple connected controllers.

The Switch can very much be used as a home console, and does appeal to both markets. I think I've used it 90% docked, and used it much more than I ever used my Vita as a result. Last I saw, 20% used it mostly docked, 30% used it mostly handheld. Meaning half of users used both modes equally. That means that around 70% of Switch owners use the docked (home) mode regularly.

It's hard to claim it's just a portable console when functioning as a home console is so important to its design and value.

I had been keeping an eye on the Xbox Series S, but the latest rumours of that seem to say it's discless, which instantly kills my interest.

So I'm just looking at keeping my current gen set up, but a beefed up Switch to sit besides a X1X and PS4 Pro would see me set for the next five years.

Master system was my first (hand-me-down) console, and Sonic was the first game I ever completed. Next was the SNES, followed by Super Mario World and Super Metroid. Then I eventually got my first brand new console, an N64.

There was no jealousy. I just loved it all, the way I do now.

I'm all for giving apple a beating, but if this was a group of gamers talking like this, they'd get berated and called entitled.

Fun is better than different.

When I have Borderlands and Bioshock collections launching at £40 for three games plus a fair amount of DLC, or Dragon's Dogma, or the now reasonably price RE ports, £50 for one Wii U port doesn't sound tempting. Hell, even Crysis seemed a bit too much.

The only publisher currently charging more than their ports are worth on Switch, other than Nintendo, is Bethesda, and they at least charged reasonable prices for the old Doom ports, and have at least 50% off sales on the rest.

I'm also fortunate enough to have the Wii U versions of the Pikmin games. So I'll continue not overpaying.

@sixrings More or less like the MCC versions I'd assume.

I'd love a spiritual successor on Switch. Switch needs more co-op and solid MP FPSes.

The Switch sold more in Japan in 3 years, than the PS4 did in 7, that's really impressive.

And from what I can tell, it's outpacing PS4 sales globally too. If it can keep pace another 4 years it should easily outsell the PS4.

I personally find discounts more convincing.

Not enough teeth.

@TG16_IS_BAE Can't speak for others, but my Fiancee is from Glasgow, and we would regularly do the train journey up, and now we do that journey with our son who has just turned 4.

It's a 3 and half hour train ride.

@LavaTwilight Damn right.

There's no shame losing to a game as high a quality as Ghost of Tsushima, especially given its available to a console with a large user base.

@Guybrush20X6 I think there's a place for 'simp'. To me it's more akin to 'incel' and 'nice guy'. If you are a guy who is throwing money, time, and praise at a woman you don't really know, and doing so in hope of something more, there's a problem with you, and the way you view and interact with women, and that problem will spill over and negatively affect yours and other's (including women's) lives.

@Cool_Squirtle I don't think it's anything this game has done in particular. I think the fact that online harrasment, especially towards public figures, has become such a big problem, that this is a game that on the surface puts you directly in the role of voyeur with a direct line to and some control over the victim comes far too close to reality, and that in turn promotes toxic online sexist behaviours.

Whether or not that is what the game intends (it doesn't seem so based on the press release) or whether or not that's what it achieves (couldn't say since it's unreleased), but that seems to be the fear I guess.

@GVIL I've always had better results with two.

I think this looks great. It just should be a bit cheaper. When talking about last gen ports, Borderlands and Bioshock nailed the pricing.

@HappyMaskedGuy

Moderate a streamer's chat in 'Gamer Girl', coming to Switch this September.

@JR150 I joked on the PS site that this is a "Simpulator".

I was just thinking I'd like an old school pokemon clone. I'll keep an eye on this.

@Wavey84 Why are you even bothering with PS4 pro if you want the best? . Stick with PC, or at least get an XB1X.

No Metro or Borderlands? What even is this list?

@CalTonTheRobot They'd better.

@TG16_IS_BAE It was a joke about modern games getting leaks and the fallout that follows. Don't worry about it.

I eagerly await the upcoming review bombing and culture war surrounding this game.

The fact that they just released a mainline title completely undoes any anger.

At least with Diablo, fans paid for an event, got hyped up for a mainline game announcement, and was bait and switched with a crappy mobile title, with no sign of a mainline title coming. Were people already waiting to drop S&S and its DLC for S&S2 or something?. I see a lot of angry voices, but none that are specific in what they are actually angry about.

Like the tencent thing, yeah, be angry about that. Don't support it. Be vocally against it. But that's not how many of these comments are coming across. They come across more in the way of "this isn't something I'm interested in and therefore it's bad". And quite frankly, I don't see a difference between 'Unite' and the 'Ranger', 'Mystery Dungeon', 'Snap', or 'Detective Pikachu' games I've never played.

There's zero market for sexualised animals...

5% discount. That's what this is. Which is like £2.50 off of a £50 game.

And in ten years we'll hear about how they would have loved to have made a third game but that the game was so niche that nobody bought it and the sequel was canned.

RE:Gaiden would be a great game to be remade as a 2.5D/Fixed camera RE game. Something closer to the originals than anything else. And could be a spin off series that keeps the classic gameplay alive.

If you wanted to see a RE2 style remake set on a boat, I'd go with Dead Aim.

@AlexSora89 Russian bots and manbabies?

@dewokkel @the_beaver There has been mixed results when it comes to 3rd party support on the Switch, and while I can understand people not picking up something like The Outer Worlds, ports of Borderlands, Bioshock, and Duke Nukem have been excellently handled, and reasonably priced (i.e as cheap as the xbox and PS versions).

I understand this is just a digital list (though you might as well buy digital with these games anyway) but if Publishers turn round and say that their games don't sell enough on Nintendo platforms to continue to support the Switch as next gen comes round, Switch owners won't even be able to argue otherwise.

I'm on the Internet, so I'm obviously looking to waste time, but Jesus.

"you can now double-under"

And here was me thinking I was just too fat to get this to work.

"The lockdown has actually caused an industry-wide sales spike across the region"

As a furloughed father, I do not judge those that have been sitting their kids in front of a computer or Netflix in the last few months.

@TG16_IS_BAE Slightly more power would still leave the system underpowered compared to the xbox one and PS4, and then we get someone else complaining the system is underpowered.

And when we have PS4 specs packed in to a mobile device, that will be underpowered too. Because the other companies are chasing high specs above all else, and that's one of the reasons those console are having to get so large and expensive, to overcome the diminishing returns on power.

My point was that if Sony and MS slowed down their graphical arms race, a system like the Switch would not appear to be as underpowered as it seems, since underpowered is really a relative term more than it is an objective one.

You look at games like Borderlands and Bioshock and their performance is fantastic on Switch. Throwing more power at a console doesn't automatically equal better performance. That's just not how that works. Better performance comes from better optimisation. Outer Worlds was clearly never designed for Switch, its target was higher spec systems, and the dev team who ported the game were hit hard by the Covid outbreak during a crucial time.

And really, it's hard to be mad at a console's tech, when its tech was known long before release.

And just to get a head of this because I see you throwing it out there. I'm no Fanboy. I mean, I am, but not to the extent you see others, and certainly not to one company. Oddly enough I've been talking about the effects of brand loyalty all week. And I most definitely am critical of all companies when I see something wrong. With Nintendo it's mostly been their completely miserable online service and features. I just don't currently see the power of the Switch to be one of them. I've long asked for a Switch Pro/home edition, but even with that, new games would still have to run on a base Switch, and in my research I don't think I found any chipset that would be a considerable improvement to warrant a brand new system.

As it stands, it's just best to enjoy what the system offers until the Switch 2 is released in all its underpowered glory.

@TG16_IS_BAE I'd much prefer all console makers ease off the power chasing. The PS3 and Xbone already pushed what was acceptable sizes for consoles, and the new ones are even larger.

I'd take underpowered and more efficient over doesnt-fit-in-my-tv-unit anyday.

@ncb1397 There's a couple of factors here that muddle that list. The biggest of course being all the children sat at home driving parents crazy. Even then, a lot of those Switch games are 1st party titles, and when checking the top selling Switch games, the "adult" games appear on the bottom half of the list. All of which just re-enforces the "Nintendo gamers only buy Nintendo or childish games".

To be clear. I'm not saying that Switch games don't sell, just that the games EA makes sell more on a platform like the PS4, and then it's an cheap and easy port to xbox given the power similarities.

@elpardo1984 It would be, I agree, but EA is the company that cancelled a franchise that was selling 5 million copies because that wasn't enough units for them. EA is pure greed. If they aren't making stupid money on each and every release, then it's not worth their money as far as they are concerned.

EA aren't worried about the Switch not being a big enough market, or Switch gamers not supporting 3rd party games. Neither of this is true. The issue for EA is that Nintendo platforms aren't as big of a ROI as the xbox and PS.

So this isn't even laziness. This is EA looking at their money pot and going "where would this money bring back the most money?". So even if they released HD ports and Switch ports of modern games, and those games would easily be profitable, EA is just allocating more money elsewhere as that is a bigger money maker.

@Wraggadam1 I couldn't tell you the number of times I was unfamiliar with a generic game title and the headline for an article made absolutely zero sense to me.

@sanderev You knew that you'd have to buy two unannounced DLCs for games that have never had paid DLC before?

The way these games were going to handle DLC was not known. No other game has multiple versions, and as you pointed out with the ultra games, previously, updates were handled through new releases.

Nintendo had the chance here to offer a customer friendly option to handling DLCs for their Pokemon games, and chose not to. This could have been an easy win. Nintendo reward players who buy both versions, and actually encourage players to pay more. As it stands, Nintendo are actually punishing players who bought both versions.

It's the sort of thing that can actually cost a company more money in the long run as customers feel it's not good value.

@sanderev For the people who just bought two games for £100. Yeah..

Put it this way. A regular gamer will spend £77 on one game and one DLC. Those who buy both versions have already paid £100 for what is more or less the same content. Those who bought both versions have already supported Nintendo more than those who bought one version and the DLC. Asking for another £54 (the price of a full game) on top of the £100, is too much.

If these were entirely different games, it would make sense to charge for each DLC. But these are versions of the same game. It's not unreasonable to expect a universal DLC pack.