WhiteUmbrella

Nvidia and AMD are about to receive cease and desist notices, it seems.

@Vyacheslav333 I'm glad you agree with me. A natural extension of your argument is that Switch isn't a "hybrid", it's just a handheld.

The most ludicrous thing about this product isn't mentioned in the review. Alarmo requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, which means that, if you're not already subscribed or don't own a Switch or have interest in playing online, Alarmo is the first alarm clock ever to require an online subscription to function. Alarm clocks as a service. **** off, Nintendo.

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game deserves to be consigned to the fires of Mount Doom, forever."
-Shigeru Miyamoto

I like museums, and I'd visit a Nintendo museum if I had the opportunity, but I have no interest in watching a video tour of one. It would spoil the experience of an actual visit ... and why make it a "Direct"? That's just asking for trouble.

@Corvus96 What "hybrid market" are you referring to? Who are Nintendo's competitors in this "hybrid market"? The Nintendo Switch isn't a "hybrid device", it's a handheld console that can output to an exterior display, dressed up as a home console, in order to capture a larger market share.
Convergence is what naturally occurs within the technology sphere. The first computers required more than one room, then they became small enough to fit in one room, and now pretty much everyone carries one around in their pocket, combined with a display, a camera, a telephone. Do you just call yours your phone, or do you go around telling everyone it's a hybrid device?
Did Nintendo Switch need a dock? Why didn't it just have a tv out cable? The answer is obvious. The dock exists, purely, too subsume the device and give it the appearance of a vertically mounted Wii or Wii U. It's a marketing ploy. The dock scratched the screen of numerous customers. It also created a heated dissipation problem, arguably contributing to the number of Switch consoles with warped and cracked rear shells.
The detachable controllers have a compromised design, leading to early failure of the sticks, and connection problems, all in the name of them being detachable. The design created reliability issues that Nintendo didn't have a problem with previously.
Why would Nintendo be "fools" to not continue with the same design? If power doesn't matter, when Nintendo puts out weaker hardware, why would the same fanbase clamour to buy more of the same, just with a power increase? Think about it.

@-wc- It's clear that I don't actually validate the concept of a "hybrid console". To me, it literally doesn't exist. It's just a marketing concept. This argument is made in my very first post, which you were also free not to reply to, and yet you chose to anyway, and then you have proceeded to use points (marketing) to prove that the Nintendo Switch complies with its own marketing. Well done.

@-wc- None of the things you are listing are essential components of a home console. You're just proving my point. No one needs to "dock" a PS5. I guess the PS5 could have come with controllers that attach to the main body of the console, but then being able to detach them from it, wouldn't make it a handheld, would it?... and isn't necessary for it to qualify as a home console either. Even without a hdmi cable, a home console is still a home console. Did you even think about what you were writing before posting it? Maybe read it back to yourself first before posting next time, to make sure it makes sense.

@-wc- The "hybrid" term is just marketing. It's clear that a home only console would have fielded much more power than the Switch has. If Switch had launched when it did, as a home-only console, at that level of power, it wouldn't have sold. Modern phones can display on external displays. It doesn't mean that all modern phones are "hybrid" devices, and even if you make an argument that they are, no-one refers to them as such, and they aren't marketed that way (outside of dex). Face it, the Switch is a handheld device that can output to an exterior display (like PSP). It's not a home console that you can take anywhere. Too many compromises were made in the design to qualify. Sony put out a PS1 with an LCD screen way back in time. If it had been given detachable controllers, would it have been a handheld? No.

@batmanbud2 Yes. If it didn't require the screen and battery, it could be manufactured and sold at a lower price. Improved cooling could allow it to run at a higher clock speed. External ssd storage would also be a practical option. I'd buy at least two.

If the new series bombs in comparison to those with Ash, he will surely return.

@WhyYouLie The article doesn't make the physical releases entirely clear. Is it individual releases only, the double pack, or both? Even then, will everything bar the pre-order bonuses be on the discs or carts? You don't know, and neither does anyone else here, so for physical collectors, there's still a reason to hope, and also a reason for everyone (myself included) not to bog the comment section down with pedantry. Everyone should chill out, clearly.

Many commenters are asking the question "why now?" and for many, the immediate answer is the Tears of the Kingdom paywall on Patreon, but another possible reason for Nintendo redoubling their efforts against emulation now, could be that the Switch's successor will be launching into a very different competitive landscape to its predecessor. Since 2017, the portable, handheld PC category has exploded. There are so many, far more powerful devices than Switch, that are capable of running Switch titles at far better frame rates and resolutions than Nintendo's own hardware, a situation that may also affect their new console.
I'm with Lord Gaben on this; piracy is a service problem. Nintendo can either respond by putting their titles on PC themselves, or even better, fielding hardware that doesn't have such crappy framerates and sub hd resolutions that the reasons to emulate are reduced or eliminated entirely. Maybe the Ayaneo Flip DS was part of their tipping point, but really, eliminating emulation is not a viable solution, regardless of what the old guard at Nintendo thinks.

@HeadPirate I am already aware of the concept of weighing another person's experiences against my own, in order to determine if our opinions of the same experience are comparable, and I have read PJ's reviews before, being a long-time reader of this site.
What I am pointing out, and that you seem to want to be disingenuous about, is that in this review, he seems to be focusing only on an impression, and actively avoiding describing any gameplay mechanics. Descriptions of what you'll be doing in any game are a pretty standard aspect of any game review, and to imply that PJ always writes like this would be to do him a disservice. That said, I would long have stopped reading the reviews of anyone who failed to describe gameplay mechanics on a consistent basis. I am pointing it out, not as a general criticism, but in the case of this specific review only, that this is lacking. It seems likely that the reason for a lack of details about the gameplay is that there isn't any to describe, which would seem odd in such a positive review, and yet the absence of any is glaring.

The review doesn't mention gameplay much, yet it has such a high score. Are there challenging puzzles? This seems more like a visual novel, but the review focuses on the art style and presentation so much, it leaves the reader wondering how a game can be awarded such a high score without many actual ... gameplay mechanics.

If Nintendo wants to avoid "stock shortages and resales", the only really viable ways to do that are to either produce so many units that scalpers collectively don't have enough purchasing power to control the supply (and thus dictate the price), or for major economies to pass legislation that somehow prevents the parasitic market that has been plaguing consumer goods for years now. I'm not at all optimistic.

Hopefully, this news will result in a physical edition that's complete on release. A rare thing, these days.

Where's the Los Pollos Hermanos controller?

The only "appropriate measures" The Pokemon Company need to take is to put more effort into improving the quality and breadth of their own games. They've become complacent, and Palworld is what happens when you get caught napping.

There's no valid excuse for removing the option of online play, on 3DS and Wii U, from the portion of your 120 million+ modern customers that are now paying you for the privelege of playing online. Absolutely none.

Gamers: The games industry putting out unfinished games and overly focusing on games as a service will bring about another industry-wide crash.

Games industry sees massive layoffs across the board, with publishers all chasing the same pot of gold.

Publishers: Let's focus on future content drops and roadmaps.

You reap what you sow.

As we all know, there are already A.I. tools that can perform QA work, however the main problem is that, in a world where a game can be released in a broken and incomplete state, who needs QA testers? They're just not going to be as important as they were back in the 80's and 90's, because back then, a game that was released broken wasn't going to get fixed, it was going to landfill, and your studio would likely go with it.
I'm with @Kiyata on this, and I call BS on anyone trying to pretend that games were just as buggy. There were some games that were bad, some with bugs, but nowhere near in the numbers we see today, and why not, when there seems to be no shortage of people ready to gaslight others into believing that things have somehow changed for the better?
Being able to patch a game after release didn't lead to higher quality, it led to a constant "release it now, patch it later" mentality.
There are so many examples, but just to take one, I give you the much lauded Polyphony Digital, who back in the late 90's gave us Gran Turismo, with a sequel following on PS1 and a third and fourth game on PS2. Every release was highly lauded. Suddenly we reach PS3, and we have GT5, released onto a new generation of consoles, pressed to disc with a bug that made saving your progress in the game impossible. The very first generation that patching was possible, the developer didn't even bother to finish the game before release. Fast forward to today, and we have GT7, an experience that is nothing short of sublime in PSVR2, especially when combined with a sim rig, and yet it is a game I can't stand playing because, while it was sold as a full price title, it is stuffed to the gills with microtransactions and an in-game economy that once was only barely justifiable in a free-to-play title. The game industry is rotting from the inside out, and pretending it's not happening isn't helping anyone, least of all the developers themselves. Anyone defending this garbage would have also, presumably, defended Atari's notorious E.T. release back in the day. Gaming isn't better, it's worse now than ever.

My guess, from the title alone, is that this game is either going to be about or feature pandas, or it will be the most diverse and inclusive game ever made.

@Serpenterror Sea of Thieves is a live service game. This doesn't mean that Xbox is going third party. All the most successful live service games are multiplatform, and if anything, this is likely a response to PlayStation's push into live services (which has been a disaster so far). That said, the most successful live service games on PlayStation are likely as big as they are on the system, because they have a mindshare that stems from being everywhere, and while Sony have to be careful of the reactions of their most ardent fans, I would lay money that their push into live services is/was always intended to be a multiplatform endeavour ... they just didn't announce that part yet.

@SBandy1 25 million Gamepass subscriptions doesn't equal 25 million lost sales. Comment sections are full of people saying they are going to "double dip" when a physical release has been announced, when they have already purchased the digital version. It's illogical to suggest, in light of this, that having an active subscription that allows access to a game (but costs less per title) is likely to discourage players from buying the game.
To be clear, I'm not interested in buying a Series console and mainly play on PS5 and my retro collection, so I'm not invested in the Xbox platform, but the narrative you are pushing just makes you seem like a fanboy.
Microsoft makes the biggest investment gaming has ever seen (69 billion dollars), and you think the logical conclusion is that Microsoft is about to give up? I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

@SBandy1 25 million Gamepass subscribers doesn't equal 25 million lost sales per title. Gamepass allows gamers to play titles without first purchasing, which they then subsequently may buy. It also means that players are more likely to play in genres that are outside of their normal range. Starfield launched into Gamepass but was also the best selling title in September. Are you suggesting they would have sold an additional 25 million copies?
Going third party? Microsoft is a multi trillion dollar company.
Try to ease up on the fanboy rhetoric just a little.

As soon as I read the words "season pass roadmap", my interest entirely dissipated.

I don't care how unfashionable the Wii may be now, it's my favourite console, and probably always will be. I would love for Nintendo to return to it, just with stronger hardware (isn't that what most of the Switch fanbase seems to want, the same hardware, just more power?).
The memories of time spent together with my family, at my first introduction to the Wii (at my mum's house), I will treasure forever. The motion controls in RE4 made the Wii version the definitive version of the game, absolutely sublime. The last game i completed was RE4 remake, with PSVR2, arguably at the cutting edge of console gaming. I played through the entire game, standing, with no comfort settings and it was glorious. Naturally, there was motion involved, such as swinging the knife 1:1, reloading the weapons. Nintendo, if they wanted to, could leverage the technology they developed for Wii, and incorporate it into their own VR offering. I'm not saying they should, but if they did, it would be beautiful.
The much maligned Wii U and its gamepad provided an incredibly engineered lag-free experience, something PS5 can't do in 2023, with their PlayStation Portal. Nintendo have always been ahead of their time, ahead of the curve. They certainly were with the Wii motions controls ... not so much with internet play.

Nintendo online is now a paid service. This means that the opportunity to play online on Wii U and 3DS is being taken away, by Nintendo, from customers that are still paying them for the privelege of playing online. The fact that the paid online service is not specifically connected to those consoles is, to me, irrelevant.
Xbox 360/Xbox One still have online play, as does PS4. Nintendo wants paid online too, then they should earn it just the same. If your customers are still paying you for online, don't reduce their service.

@Snatcher I'm old enough to remember a time when games were developed, completed, and then sold, back when all games came on a physical format. The point about Fall Guys not making enough money to sustain it, doesn't apply to a game that is sold, or at least it shouldn't. This phenomenon of needing "engagement" only exists because publishers want to continue to make money from a game after it has been sold, beyond the original sale price. That development time costs money, but that time and money could just as easily be spent on a new title or a sequel, as it could be on dlc or microtransactions. The only reason that developers would rather spend time creating dlc for a game that has already released is that they can make more money for less development time, that way. Logically, if this were not the case, there would be no reason not to just shift development to a new title, just as it used to be.
Multiplayer titles existed long before the efforts to monetise them, and there is a long list of highly regarded titles, that people played pretty much for as many years as those titles were available, just because they were great and enjoyable games. Nobody stopped playing Goldeneye, Timesplitters or Mario Kart just because there wasn't a season pass or microtransactions. This is back when games would allow you to unlock skins just by playing the game, before developers and publishers decided that should be stripped out of the game and then sold back to the players. There's a rot in the industry, and it's out of control, that's how I see it.

@Greatluigi I appreciate that there are free-to-play games that are more or less fair to their playerbase, but the argument that the microtransactions are needed doesn't really hold up. If you are making a product, it's necessary for it to be of sufficient quality and value for people to want to buy it. If the only way you can get people to engage with your product is to give it away, that is an argument for it not to exist, since if no-one is prepared to pay for it, why make it ... and if it is of sufficient quality, why not just sell it for a fixed fee?

All the usual defences of free-to-play games are being wheeled out, yet again. "It's only cosmetic". This doesn't hold up, because everybody knows that the fact that the items are "only cosmetic" doesn't stop people being subject to the manipulation that results in them paying. A claim, directly quoting from the makers of the game, that the game doesn't include any predatory aspects in its design isn't worth giving the time of day. Also, anyone playing this garbage should take a step back and think just how easily manipulated they are, if someone stating valid objections to a morally bankrupt business model is enough to make you not only want to play it more, but encourage others to do so.
There are no benign free-to-play games. That's a myth. The whole enterprise is a pall on gaming. You can't have the "good" aspects of free-to-play without getting all of the worst aspects along with them. The more profit these games make, the further the bar is pushed. A games failure isn't evidence that it wasn't predatory. Destiny 2 is predicted to miss its targets by 45%, likely because the developers have pushed the monetisation and grind so far that the playerbase has revolted. The more money they make, the more money they want, and it's never enough money. There's no such thing as enough. They don't want some of the money, they want all of it. If a games balance has people playing and enough retention, the designers will shift the balance to squeeze even more money from the same group of players. This garbage has spread through the industry so rampantly that its now in full-priced games that are being sold for $70. Gran Turismo 7 is a good example of this. That game is horrible to play, specifically because it is designed for daily retention, with daily bonuses, microtransactions, gacha mechanics, and a progression system designed to push the vulnerable to purchase credits in an in game store. If you think that a game that follows this model and has huge success won't mean it spreads throughout the industry you're kidding yourself. How will the board justify not polluting the game design with this crap, to earn even more money, if no-one ever pushes back? Maybe you don't care about GT7 or other games that include this, but if people don't speak up against these practices, they'll soon be in a game you do care about.

@Peach64 Kojima oversaw the development of The Twin Snakes, and personally selected Ryuhei Kitamura to direct the cutscenes, so perhaps what you're really claiming is that Kojima himself failed to understand his own game.

@BLD Firstly, the majority of Nintendo's audience are, according to their own research, in the 28 - 35 year age range. Secondly, selling a product for a fair price is not necessarily exploitative, but free-to-play mechanics certainly are. They're designed that way.

@BLD Good call. If the game had been designed, from the ground up, to be sold for $60, it may well have been a success... but then, it would have been a different game. Let's not reach the point where we're suggesting that designing a product and then selling it for a single, fair price has somehow become an unworkable business model.

@Samalik "you gotta make money somehow". Would you say the same about drug cartels or armed robbery? Not that I would directly compare the two, but free to play is predicated on manipulation of people with tendencies toward compulsion, those that feel compelled to complete a collection, and those who are so compelled to complete, that they will spend vast amounts of money to circumnavigate the systems that have been designed to manipulate the player into feeling a need to get around them. These systems, designed with the assistance of psychologists, are frequently combined with gacha mechanics, and use the same tactics that gambling has used for decades, to the detriment of adults ... on children. The rise of these mobile styled games and the burgeoning epidemic of gambling among children are not a coincidence. You want to defend the exploitation of children, that's on you, but hey ... gotta make that money somehow, right?

As a counter to all this commiseration that's going on, I'm going to say I feel quite differently. I don't feel sorry for the studio, the developers, or any of the people involved in creating this predatory garbage. Let's not forget, the whole idea of the free-to-play model is to create and distribute a game which can be accessed for free, but to design the games systems in such a way that they encourage players with compulsive tendencies to grind away on a daily basis, and to manipulate as many of those players as possible, through these in-game systems, to plough excessive amounts of money into the game, via predatory microtransactions, season passes, battle passes etc.
I don't feel sorry that they failed in this aim. What they were doing was not some form of philanthropy that everyone else should admire. I'm glad they failed. Glad. Another one bites the dust.

I wrote, back in September, that I hoped they might find each other again. It seems I may get my wish.

@Olliemar28 @Alckemy I find the idea that no new dialogue would be recorded for the new game strange. For perspective, look at the dispute between Guy Cihi and Konami over the re-release of the PS2 game Silent Hill 2, in the HD Collection. A new voice actor was used for the role of James Sunderland, which would be an odd thing for Konami to do, if they could have just used the original performance, and that was just a remaster. Legally speaking, Metal Gear Delta will be a brand new game, which will need to go through certification again, and I doubt that Konami could just use the original performances without the agreement of all the original actors. They tend to want to get paid for their work.

David Hayter needs to be voicing Big Boss in the MGS3 remake. I hope this is a sign that he is.

Serve a meal when you're "only at the beginning" of making it, and you should expect a less than enthusiastic reception.The same applies to games.

The amount of commenters here, arguing in favour of game companies being allowed to rip them off is simply astounding.

From the quote, it seems to me that Capcom wouldn't object to being acquired, as long as they retain their autonomy.

@Snatcher Despite not owning an Xbox myself, the obvious choice is for Microsoft to acquire Capcom, since if Nintendo or Sony acquired them, Capcom's catalogue would become exclusive to their respective platforms.

It was Hideki Kamiya and Shinji Mikami working together as director and producer, that resulted in the original Resident Evil 2, an absolute masterpiece. Now that they're both free agents, I hope they'll find each other again.

There's no need to boycott Switch games made with Unity, if there's a physical version. Has anyone else thought that this change of policy might be a reaction to pending strike action? Unions have been pushing for residual payments linked to every time movies or episodes of series are streamed, and it's not hard to envisage a similar push in regards to gaming. Please note, I'm not defending this policy at all. Physical titles are one very real and possible way around this. Cult of the Lamb and Slay the Spire certainly exist physically, for Switch.

There's never been a better reason to stick to physical releases on Switch. They play right from the cart, no install required.

@Yalloo Spot on. Mario is a more valuable IP, with more brand recognition than everything else Disney has, put together. Disney may yet learn this the hard way, if they don't right their ship.

The new voice actor for Mario should probably be Italian, and maybe even an actual plumber.