Comments 234

Re: Feature: 40 Games We'd Love To See On Switch 2

metaphysician

Sadly, I wouldn't hold out hope for Baldur's Gate 3. Not because it couldn't release on the Switch 2, and not because it shouldn't: it absolutely could and would sell like hotcakes. The problem is Hasbro- they basically hate Larian and have burned all bridges with them, and probably resent the hell out of BG3 for being an extraordinary success that wasn't part of their "plan". Larian basically admitted in an interview that they have zero prospect of making a port, and I highly doubt Hasbro is going to contract anyone else to make a port ( assuming they even could without Larian's involvement ).

Re: Talking Point: Metroid Prime 4 And The Burden Of Being 'Good Enough'

metaphysician

@Psycho-Werekitsune

Going to have to fundamentally disagree with. . . everything here. I probably have one or two boss fights left, but in my experience of the game every single boss forces you to engage with its particular mechanics. If you simply try to "tank" a boss, without finding out how to dodge its attacks, where and when to attack to hit or expose a weak point, and what stuff to blast to spawn some recovery items? You will die, every time. Because boss attacks do a relative ton of damage, and they are typically immune to damage entirely without some kind of special targeting or setup. They aren't necessarily super hard to beat ( because those high damage attacks are typically not that difficult to dodge, once you've figured out the proper response, for example ), but they absolutely require engagement.

Re: Japanese Charts: Nintendo's Dominance Continues As Switch 2 Flies Past 4 Million Units Sold

metaphysician

Something people need to realize is how disconnected stock valuations are from the actual success of a company. In theory how much a stock costs should be tied to the success or failure of the company, how much profits its bringing in or is likely to bring in. In practice? Since the vast majority of investor profit comes from the resale of stock, not from dividends, the only thing that really matters to investors is the valuation. Thus you get the paradox of stock pricing going down despite revenue going up, because they didn't go up as much as someone had predicted. To say nothing of stock swings based in fads and hype that have nothing to do with actual business behavior at all.

Re: Opinion: I'm Happy amiibo Survived The Console Jump, But These Unlocks Are Getting Silly

metaphysician

@the9000

Yeah, the general reaction to Amiibo's feels very lose/lose. When they don't offer anything meaningful or at all, they get condemned for not doing anything despite costing money. When they do offer something even slightly unique or meaningful, they get condemned for locking content behind a separate purchase.

I feel like the best solution would be to remove the digital function entirely, and just force the fanbase to admit that they are first and foremost decorative toys. Treat the digital bonus aspect as a failed experiment.

Re: GameStop Kicks Off 2026 By Reportedly Shutting "Hundreds" Of Stores

metaphysician

@Locopath

That depends on whether your actually making the company ten times as valuable ( by increasing revenue, profit, and assets ). . . or whether you are instead simply making the stock prices ten times as high. They are not the same thing, and its very easy to do the latter in ways that produce nothing and contribute nothing.

Re: Persona's 30th Anniversary Website Teases "The Next Chapter For The Series"

metaphysician

@Kalcheus

Unicorn Overlord isn't really a relevant example, because its not a game developed by Atlus. Its developed by VanillaWare, a studio that can and has worked with other publishers before. Their attitudes on what to do with their games don't really reflect meaningfully on what Atlus does with their own work.

( And yes, it is annoying that "publisher" can mean two very different things. I wish there were two separate terms for "Funder of the creation of a game" and "Distributor and marketer of a game". )

Re: Larian "Would Have Loved" Baldur's Gate 3 On Switch 2, Will "Certainly Consider" Divinity

metaphysician

@Darknyht

Not just player revolts, and arguably the player revolts are by far the least important. Industry scale rejection and retaliation. The OGL stunt in particular basically pissed off every major media company in the business, because everyone from Microsoft to Disney to Nintendo had IP and business ventures that Hasbro's rewrite effectively meant they were trying to yoink.

Re: Ubisoft Starts The New Year With A Studio Closure, 71 Jobs Affected

metaphysician

@White_oyster

Yeah. Its not completely impossible. . . but I'd only believe it if there were unambiguous documentation proving it. Email chains putting the studio on the chopping block long predating any particular hint that the studio was going to unionize, that kind of thing. And with enough detail and verifiability to confirm that they weren't concocted after the fact.

Re: Nintendo Switch's Hulu App Will Be Discontinued Next Month

metaphysician

@countzero

Why would it be weird? From Nintendo's perspective, they are not making a streaming device, or a multipurpose computer. They are making a video game console. Which, not coincidentally, is how they make money: selling video games to play on said console.

Support for streaming would literally go against their own financial interests.

Re: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Has Surpassed One Million Sales Worldwide

metaphysician

@Porky

That depends on the game, from what I've observed. Or perhaps more accurately, on the studio and lead developer. For instance, if its a AAA FF or KH title from BD1, no matter how many copies it sells its "meeting expectations". OTOH, a Tomb Raider game by Eidos could sell 5M+ at launch, over 14M lifetime, and become the best selling game in the franchise by a long margin. . . and still somehow "fail to meet expectations".

Re: Shovel Knight Dig Gets Limited Switch Physical Edition From Super Rare Games

metaphysician

I wonder when the people here screaming about the evils of limited production runs, will realize that their choice for most of these games is "limited production of physical copies" or "no production of physical copies at all". The whole reason they are even available for companies like LRG in the first place, is because the actual owner does not judge them worth a conventional retail production run.

Re: Capcom Arcade Stadium Physical Features Five Cover Options, But Which Is Your Favourite?

metaphysician

@Tempestryke

For better or worse, its a simple case of "Capcom doesn't necessarily want to publish a physical copy for everything". Not if they don't think it will sell enough to be worth it. A third party offering to publish it doesn't necessarily change their mind, since that third party is shouldering the risks rather than Capcom. Plus, that third party might have room in their production schedule where Capcom does not ( without Capcom displacing other items that they view as more important ).

Re: One Of 2025's Standout Switch Releases Could Get A Switch 2 Edition Upgrade

metaphysician

@ShadowRJ @Lizuka

Its a good rule of thumb to assume that, when someone starts ranting about the evils of localization and sinister plots by translators best replaced with AI? They are dogwhistling so loud that any actual dogs nearby are getting hearing damage. Don't make the mistake of thinking they are speaking from ignorance about the realities of how translation works; they know exactly what they are trying not to say out loud.

Re: Atlus Opens Persona 30th Anniversary Website

metaphysician

@MirrorFate2

Yeah, at the very least they should port the earlier games to modern platforms.

( Cynical theory: they keep using the earlier characters in series promo art, to disguise the fact that they've only actually made three games that they care about. . . )

Re: Dragon Quest 40th Anniversary Logo Revealed, Expect "Various Announcements"

metaphysician

@RumandCohibas

I don't know, its just a gut feeling, but I don't think the issue with DQ12 is a "AAA development time running long" issue. My instinct is that its a "argument over the fundamental nature and direction of the series" issue. Or basically, DQ12 development has run absurdly long, because people inside S-E are fighting over what Dragon Quest should actually be, and where it should be it. Because, side issue: there is absolutely zero excuse for S-E not releasing a new DQ game on the Switch, what with it being the most successful thing in Japan ever. That they went the entire life of the Switch 1 without a new DQ game on it was an error in itself.

Re: Konami Appears To Have A New Switch Game In The Works

metaphysician

@Mana_Knight

See, the thing is that they do still make Japan-centric games, like Momotaro Dentetsu and their various sports titles. If there is a "must be worldwide" sensibility, it must operate at a slightly more nuanced level than "all of Konami". Maybe M2, or the execs it reports to, have a "Must Be Worldwide" mandate, for example. Either directly, or as a side effect of a shoestring budget.

Re: Konami Appears To Have A New Switch Game In The Works

metaphysician

My most wanted Castlevania wish? Would be "Symphony of the Night 2". By which I don't mean an actual direct sequel to the game, but a game that follows in its basic design principles: "Just make a big metroidvania style Castlevania game, taking advantage of console power to have better graphics and music than the handheld efforts". It doesn't need weird gimmicks, it just needs a big ass 2D castle to explore with pretty high res 2D artwork and a gorgeous OST.

Re: Konami Appears To Have A New Switch Game In The Works

metaphysician

@Mana_Knight

My initial guess would be "They are only interested in stuff with global sales potential", but they actively make a bunch of stuff like Momotaro Dentetsu that they don't even try to release abroad. So, I don't know. Its probably something complicated involving separate departments with separate purviews.

Re: Nintendo Comments On Metroid Prime 4's Placement In The Metroid Timeline

metaphysician

@BrianJL

The real problem, IMO, isn't the sandwiching per se, but the length of time. The sequence of games works perfectly fine, as long as you granted that its more than one Earth Year between Metroid 1 and Metroid 2. If you instead say that its something like about five years between those games? Everything fits nicely.

It would be a retcon, but it would be a really really easy retcon, since "one year gap" basically only comes from the very earliest material about those games, long before Metroid Prime or any of the later sequels. There's otherwise nothing in the games that actually requires Metroid 2 to occur right after Metroid 1 ( not like how, say. . . Other M makes no sense if you don't have it immediately after Super Metroid ).

Re: More Switch Games Have Received Compatibility Updates For Switch 2

metaphysician

@Thomystic

Actually, yes: on the XBox One, which involved essentially doing backward compatibility on an almost game-by-game basis for the 360.

The reason you might be used to the idea of BC as "effortless", is that historically most systems achieved BC by literally including the prior console's hardware in the new console. When a DS played GBA games, it did so by literally running them on the chips of a GBA contained within the DS. Likewise, the original model PS3 had an entire PS2 stuck inside it. This makes the BC simple. . . the problem is its increasingly difficult to actually do at an affordable price. Nintendo certainly was never going to be able to put a Switch 1 SoC inside the Switch 2.

Re: Opinion: Who Needs Link? This Top-Down Metroidvania Is The Best Zelda Game Of 2025

metaphysician

While conceptually I don't have a problem with the idea of a "top down metroidvania", I would agree its silly to use such to try to describe what is otherwise a bog standard Zelda clone.

That said, I would advise against falling into the trap of assuming that a game can only be part of a genre after that genre is "invented". . . because genres aren't invented in the first place. Genre labels are created, when there are enough similar games to bring about the need to create a label to describe them. That means basically every genre label is only created well after the games that form that genre have existed for some time.

TLDR: Yes, Metroid 1 is part of the metroidvania genre, just like Doom 1 is part of the FPS genre despite predating the name for many years, too.

Re: "A Really Good Experience" - Digital Foundry Dives Into Switch 2's Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo

metaphysician

@Nonchu

While demos are a 100% good thing for consumers, and really should be pushed as an expected standard. . . be aware of the flipside: yes, in this case a demo sells you on buying a game. However, a demo can just as easily unsell someone on buying a game. Not even just because it reveals a game to be bad, but because it can accurately reveal to the potential customer that what the game offers isn't for them.

From the developer/publisher perspective, demos are a comparatively risky and expensive form of marketing. Which is why, if you want more demos? You need to embrace and encourage skepticism about all other forms of marketing, that don't involve playable copies of the game in user hands.

Re: Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition Updates Planned For Switch Platforms

metaphysician

@Oppal21

Please explain how to make the Switch 2 better, without:

1. Causing the price to skyrocket to the point that no one buys it

2. Causing it to grow too big to be in any way portable

3. Causing its battery life to plummet until it is useless

Because if your going to claim that "Switch 2 is bad hardware", you really should be able to offer a practical alternative. Otherwise your just pushing lies.