@Specters "This is clearly a new engine which means models aren't 1-1" Yes, they are the same models! There's no such thing as a '240p model' and in fact the models used in the 3DS games were far too detailed for the system they were on, precisely because they were futureproofed so that they wouldn't have to make new models for the next two decades. You have no idea what you're talking about and you refuse to ignore all evidence proving to you black and white that it is exactly as @Yorumi and many others are showing you. What is your goal?
@WoolooSweater "well GF confirmed 1000 Pokémon in the national dex" No, they didn't. They mentioned 1000 models, and we already have nearly 1000 unique models for all different Pokémon formes. Don't expect them to make more than 80 new Pokémon because you will be sorely disappointed. Advice from a long time fan and connoisseur of Game Freak's communication strategies.
@RazorWind Once more this isn't how Black and White worked. In those games, you exclusively had access to the new Pokémon until you beat the game, at which point you gained full access to all Pokémon. In Sword and Shield, this is not the case. Instead, you exclusively have access to the Pokémon in the regional dex, including the excruciatingly boring Pikachus and Charizards and probably all of the first generation, and you never get access to the rest of the Pokémon in existence, not even after beating the game. Even more, you will never even be allowed to send over your old Pokémon to the new games because their data will simply not exist. Black and White's way of doing things was superb and refreshing, Sword and Shield, and every Pokémon game from now on's way of doing things is nothing short of lazy and insulting. Expect to be forced to catch Pikachus and Charizards in every Pokémon game from now until the end of time.
@KBuckley27 What are you talking about? There was no gap year in 2011, only in 2015. Besides, of course people are going to be asking when the next game in the single largest media franchise in human history is going to be released - especially when it's set in a new region with new creatures to collect - this does not mean that people want another rushed game every other week.
@KBuckley27 On the contrary, I believe most 'real' fans would prefer to have only one game every two-three years. There are way too many mainline Pokémon games way too fast, and as a result they're always rushed. No one wants a rushed game.
@Aslanmagic It's fine if you enjoy it, but the problem is that by culling the Pokémon, the long-time fans thanks to whom the series has made so much money are now also being culled in favour of an audience that's only just gotten to know the series. Instead of catering to their supporters, they've told those supporters to go to hell and look for a different monster collecting series. Well, don't mind if I do. I will never purchase another Pokémon game because the sheer lack of disrespect by Game Freak towards Pokémon fans has reached its peak, and it's simply disgusting.
Congratulations on writing an article filled with poorly researched nonsense to gather as many ad views as possible. Good thing I'm using an adblocker!
@impurekind Very interesting, you cite Wikipedia numbers which essentially only indicate that some games were still released for those consoles in later years (and not that any of those were important or worthwhile releases), and that you're talking without having anything to say. By the same logic the Wii is still going strong thirteen years later with its yearly releases of Just Dance. Come on, dude.
Once a company releases a new console, they'll still release whichever games they were still working on for the old one (even if it takes two more years), but all new projects will be for the new console. The same goes for most third-party developers. The only games that still get released for previous generation consoles are made by developers who think that their games would, for any reason, fit better on the previous console than on the new one, or who think that they'll make more money by (also) releasing it for the older one. Nintendo isn't developing any more games for the 3DS because after 8 years, the market is nearly saturated and they won't be selling any more 3DS's. They want to sell more Switches to everyone, even if they already had a 3DS and especially if they didn't, so they create all of their new games for the Switch in order to sell as much as possible to as many as possible.
@impurekind The 3DS was released eight years ago. I'm also quite curious which games on the PS3 or Xbox 360 you're referring to with "solid support for systems like ten years into their existence".
@WoolooSweater Perhaps you're unaware, but Crash Team Racing is a remake of a game that was released almost twenty years ago. The original still holds up as a truly excellent kart racer with great mechanics, memorable tracks and racers, music and sound effects that will always stay somewhere in your head, and so on, which is something that can't be said of many others. Not to mention CTR has a story mode and a really great battle mode. If you've never played CTR and don't have a PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP or Vita to play it on, you may want to take a look at the remake. There were also two more Crash kart racers, so it wasn't just a one-off.
Too bad Bloodstained isn't out for another week yet in Europe. Why do they do this stuff? Surely there aren't any technical hurdles?
@Sakura I would say unfortunately no. The puzzles are fine but not that interesting (none of them are very difficult) and the performance is still dreadful, so much so that it takes you out of the game. If it had just had an unstable framerate, it would be okay, but if you're running around and all of a sudden the framerate goes into the single digits (and stays there) because you're near a tiny stream and the game becomes a stop-motion film, you quickly start to wonder why you'd even bother when there are many more games out there. This is after the latest patch and playing in docked mode. Also, eventually you do get a bit tired of all the pastel-coloured 'stylish' games. It's become the modern day equivalent of the muddy brown of the late 2000s.
@Knuckles-Fajita What's your point? 'Shifted their attention' means nothing other than them now (exclusively) making games for the Switch instead of the 3DS. It doesn't mean that they've released anything yet, only that they're working on it. They've even announced that they are working on those games - multiple times, even. I don't know why you're trying to make those words mean something they don't, and then try to do a "gotcha" on the writer.
@Trajan Well, it always depends on what you consider 'unhackable'. With enough time, effort, interested hackers and modern tools, everything can eventually be hacked. The DSi of all things only recently got hacked, and from what I understand it's not because it was highly encrypted, but because there weren't enough people interested in it. Another example, the Sega Mega CD actually had no protection whatsoever, but at the time it released, no one owned a CD burner, so it wasn't technically 'hacked' until long after it was discontinued.
@GimpySpaceman I believe you completely misunderstood what I was talking about, and I don't think you've read all of what I wrote. I didn't complain about the WiFi speed (or Hulu or HBO or smart TVs, absolutely no idea why you mentioned those), I complained about the range (which is documentedly terrible, both the chip and antenna are of very poor quality) and most importantly, the broken logic in which access point it decides to stay connected to. If you're sitting right next to your router and your network only has one access point, it works just fine and the download speeds are indeed great (a huge improvement over the original 3DS's 0,5MB/s), but again, what I was talking about was not the speed, but the dearth of problems it encounters in a multi-AP network, and the awful range which doesn't help the situation. These are documented problems, no need to try to 'prove me wrong'. If your house is small and/or made of wood, you won't ever notice them because 1. the range will be sufficient and as such, 2. you don't need a multi-AP network, but that doesn't mean the problems don't exist. The range is a hardware problem which they can only solve with a new revision (hopefully they will), but the connection logic is purely software-based and can be fixed, and I'm disappointed as it looks like they aren't planning on fixing it.
@NintendoKirbo It is year three, but it isn't three years old. The Switch was released in March of 2017. The 'first year' is everything that happens until it turns 1 year old. As soon as it's 1 year old, the 'second year' starts, and so on. Just like humans.
@Heavyarms55 I'm not sure where you live but in Europe, things like mesh networking or regular powerline networks (or even WiFi repeaters, but they're actually counterproductive) are very common because wireless signals can barely pass through thick stone walls, let alone the reinforced concrete found in the floors and walls of any building built since 1980, so more or less every other room needs its own (usually wireless) access points. If you have a long house (or a tall one, or both), you basically need at least two APs. The use case is simple: say you're playing a game online in the living room, which is in the front of your house, and for any reason you want to go to a different room to continue playing the game, it won't work. The Switch doesn't hand off the WiFi signal from one AP to the other until the connection times out (at least I presume that that's what's going on). Note that this works perfectly fine on the 3DS, DSi, Vita, phones, tablets, laptops and other WiFi-enabled devices, just not on the Switch. Another use case is that you're watching something on YouTube on the Switch in the living room, but you're feeling hungry so you head to the kitchen and take the Switch out of its dock and along with you to continue watching the video, but alas, by the time the Switch decides to connect to the correct AP, you've already finished eating, and when you head back to the living room, the Switch now remains fixated on the kitchen's AP and you have to wait another eternity until it lets go of that one and reconnects to the living room's AP. I could accept if the problem was simply that the automatic stuff got stuck and you had to manually reconnect (because that's just a couple of clicks), but it doesn't even work if you manually tell it to disconnect and reconnect. Multi-AP networks are also very common at universities (not necessarily eduroam) or large companies, not just houses. Of course, in those cases playing games all over the place is probably not a priority.
@Moroboshi876 I agree, I'd like to have one of them but it's extremely expensive considering it's just a controller shaped like a Slime. They've made Slime controllers like those before, and they were always cheaper than that, too. The PS4 version linked in the article costs £78, the Switch version costs £97. That's nearly 25% markup! Why is Nintendo tax still a thing? And forget about buying one secondhand at a better price, it was released for a Nintendo console so the price is only ever going up.
@X68000 "if they catch it" If the price is indicated correctly, they will (unfortunately).
@Heavyarms55 It isn't, it's a problem on all Switches because the connection logic is all wrong. I'm not talking about switching from "Wifi-123" to "Wifi-456", that always works fine. The problem is when you want to switch from "Wifi-123" to "Wifi-123" when both access points are in range (one close by and the other at the edge of being out of range). The Switch stays connected to whichever access point it was first connected to until the connection times out - even worse, turning it off and on again doesn't reset the connection timer! The frustrating thing is that you can tell that it actually sees the new access point, because it shows full bars, but it stays connected to the old access point, which is nearly out of range and as such is too far to establish a proper connection.
For the record, regarding exploits, all Switch models released before the summer of 2018 will always be exploitable, because there's an unpatchable hardware exploit accidentally left in by Nvidia. They really messed up on that one, and I wonder if Nintendo's demanded some kind of compensation for that colossal mistake.
@Heavyarms55 There is a website called Switchbrew which details precisely which components have been updated, in case you're interested. In this case, it seems like it was just an update to block some possible future exploits. I wonder if they'll ever bother fixing the exceptionally poor way their WiFi connectivity works. It takes at least 15 minutes for it to finally disconnect from an access point that's nearly out of range and reconnect to the access point that's close by (both on the same network, with the same name). The fact that a dirt cheap Chinese knockoff phone from 10 years ago could already do this flawlessly and a modern, expensive piece of hardware has immense troubles doing such a simple task is embarrassing, and of course also highly annoying if you want to go online and your Switch simply refuses to connect to the correct access point even if you tell it to do so. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the WiFi hardware itself wasn't also extremely poor and unable to even find anything farther than 5m away.
@jly1987 (#46) I can't believe you've been replying to comments talking about 'modes' with comments talking about 'mods'. You do realise that a modus and a modification are two very different things?
Also, stop trying to shift the blame to a game. Kids haven't been paying attention anywhere since forever because their imagination runs wild, not because a game or media franchise has eaten their brains. With Pokémon, they were (and still are) not just trading Pokémon, but also pretending to be Pokémon masters all the time. When Call of Duty and the like were at their peak, kids were pretending to pew-pew everyone all the time.
The article, and especially the title, paint a completely different picture to what actually went down. The guy, who commented on this very article but most people seem to have skipped that post because TOO LONG DIDN'T READ, just like they skipped the video because TOO LONG DIDN'T WATCH, explained (again) that he wasn't trying to get his game published (yet), he just wanted access to the developer tools - which, might I add, is quite useful if you want to create a game. 95% of all comments are talking about how of course the game shouldn't be published, but it was never about that.
@Brutchie-bear (#150) Black and White were like that, with over 150 new Pokémon, only letting you find Pokémon from previous generations after you already beat the game. They were great games precisely because they forced you to use the new Pokémon. However, that's not how it works in Sword and Shield. Now, there will be a few new Pokémon - going by previous generations, probably about 70 - and a bunch of old Pokémon still running around, but even when you beat the game, you will never be able to import a bunch of your older favourites just to see them on the big screen.
@MasterJay Believe it or not, but those already existed in Sun and Moon, they were in the game's code, including stuff like running animations and dual standing/flying animations for flying types, they were simply never used anywhere in the games. They future-proofed the games long ago, and now they're pretending they didn't as a really strange excuse. As for Game Freak's comments about 'balance', that's also rubbish, because Pokémon games have never been balanced. There are a few extremely powerful Pokémon, and everything else is, battle-wise, filler.
@Fezzy_lord It seems to me like you're the one who doesn't really understand how programming works. "hundreds of moves millions of stat strings thousands and thousands and thousands of calculations", that is just not how it works. In a battle, the only moves and stats that matter are those of the (at most, and only in a few games) six Pokémon active in that battle, only those stats are (read: should be) loaded into memory. If Pokémon Showdown can do it, which is basically made by one single dude, why wouldn't the company in charge of developing the video games for the highest-grossing media franchise in human history be able to do so? On the other hand, you're absolutely right that Pokémon games are horribly programmed (massively duplicated code and loads of unnecessary calls, for example), but that's simply another aspect of what people are upset about. Instead of firing their woefully incompetent staff and hiring some people who passed at least their first programming exam, they keep on releasing horribly programmed games and tell straight up lies instead of admitting they can't even program a Hello World script without duplicating a bunch of code and causing the entire system to crash.
@HipsterInkling "They reuse so much." I don't really mind that actually, it would be insane if they had to create new models and animations for each game, especially at the rate they're churning them out. The problem, in my eyes, lies in the fact that they make excuses for all kinds of nonsense by claiming to have to spend enormous amounts of time on creating new models and animations, when it's obvious that they don't, never have and never will. They only create new models and animations when it's absolutely necessary for a new Pokémon or a new move. You're absolutely right about the animations being lazy in general, instead of being a move from one side to the other, they're always just moves that simply 'occur' in the void between the areas where the Pokémon are standing.
@MasterJay I said "no cheating with new Pokémon or new moves". The only thing that's been updated for all of the models and animations that have been there since X and Y, which is what the other user was talking about, is the resolution of the textures and of the game itself.
I don't know what the graphic effect is called to make everything look like miniatures, but it reminds me of 3D Dot Game Heroes, which is cool. I wonder if that game will ever be ported to the Switch.
@Damo Surprise! This month, we've included Mario Bros. to the lineup. It's been there since the start, but you didn't know that it would still be there this month, so you're surprised!
Game Freak, the developers of Pokémon, by far the highest-grossing media franchise in the history of humankind, don't have enough resources to allow people to transfer their old Pokémon to the new games? Seems legit.
@Yorumi There is a pretty long grace period, at least. You don't instantly lose them once you stop paying your subscription fee.
Comments 385
Re: The Wii U Just Received Its First Firmware Update For 2019
@Ventilator This new firmware doesn't block any exploits, it's just a GDPR compliance update.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@Specters "This is clearly a new engine which means models aren't 1-1" Yes, they are the same models! There's no such thing as a '240p model' and in fact the models used in the 3DS games were far too detailed for the system they were on, precisely because they were futureproofed so that they wouldn't have to make new models for the next two decades. You have no idea what you're talking about and you refuse to ignore all evidence proving to you black and white that it is exactly as @Yorumi and many others are showing you. What is your goal?
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@WoolooSweater Stop the whataboutism and stop sucking up to big companies that aren't even paying you to shill for them.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@WoolooSweater "well GF confirmed 1000 Pokémon in the national dex" No, they didn't. They mentioned 1000 models, and we already have nearly 1000 unique models for all different Pokémon formes. Don't expect them to make more than 80 new Pokémon because you will be sorely disappointed. Advice from a long time fan and connoisseur of Game Freak's communication strategies.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@RazorWind Once more this isn't how Black and White worked. In those games, you exclusively had access to the new Pokémon until you beat the game, at which point you gained full access to all Pokémon. In Sword and Shield, this is not the case. Instead, you exclusively have access to the Pokémon in the regional dex, including the excruciatingly boring Pikachus and Charizards and probably all of the first generation, and you never get access to the rest of the Pokémon in existence, not even after beating the game. Even more, you will never even be allowed to send over your old Pokémon to the new games because their data will simply not exist. Black and White's way of doing things was superb and refreshing, Sword and Shield, and every Pokémon game from now on's way of doing things is nothing short of lazy and insulting. Expect to be forced to catch Pikachus and Charizards in every Pokémon game from now until the end of time.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@Ashunera84 It takes great courage to side with one of the richest companies in the world pulling anti-consumer stunts.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@KBuckley27 What are you talking about? There was no gap year in 2011, only in 2015. Besides, of course people are going to be asking when the next game in the single largest media franchise in human history is going to be released - especially when it's set in a new region with new creatures to collect - this does not mean that people want another rushed game every other week.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
@KBuckley27 On the contrary, I believe most 'real' fans would prefer to have only one game every two-three years. There are way too many mainline Pokémon games way too fast, and as a result they're always rushed. No one wants a rushed game.
@Aslanmagic It's fine if you enjoy it, but the problem is that by culling the Pokémon, the long-time fans thanks to whom the series has made so much money are now also being culled in favour of an audience that's only just gotten to know the series. Instead of catering to their supporters, they've told those supporters to go to hell and look for a different monster collecting series. Well, don't mind if I do. I will never purchase another Pokémon game because the sheer lack of disrespect by Game Freak towards Pokémon fans has reached its peak, and it's simply disgusting.
Re: Soapbox: Why Sword And Shield's Pokémon Purge Will Benefit Everyone
Congratulations on writing an article filled with poorly researched nonsense to gather as many ad views as possible. Good thing I'm using an adblocker!
Re: Ubisoft Is Still Releasing Just Dance On Wii Because The "Audience Wants It"
@HumanDog "with very few effort" Unless you take into account the completely different architecture.
Re: It Looks Like The Final Japanese 3DS Title Has Been Canned
@impurekind Very interesting, you cite Wikipedia numbers which essentially only indicate that some games were still released for those consoles in later years (and not that any of those were important or worthwhile releases), and that you're talking without having anything to say. By the same logic the Wii is still going strong thirteen years later with its yearly releases of Just Dance. Come on, dude.
Once a company releases a new console, they'll still release whichever games they were still working on for the old one (even if it takes two more years), but all new projects will be for the new console. The same goes for most third-party developers. The only games that still get released for previous generation consoles are made by developers who think that their games would, for any reason, fit better on the previous console than on the new one, or who think that they'll make more money by (also) releasing it for the older one. Nintendo isn't developing any more games for the 3DS because after 8 years, the market is nearly saturated and they won't be selling any more 3DS's. They want to sell more Switches to everyone, even if they already had a 3DS and especially if they didn't, so they create all of their new games for the Switch in order to sell as much as possible to as many as possible.
Re: It Looks Like The Final Japanese 3DS Title Has Been Canned
@impurekind The 3DS was released eight years ago. I'm also quite curious which games on the PS3 or Xbox 360 you're referring to with "solid support for systems like ten years into their existence".
Re: Nintendo Download: 20th June (Europe)
@WoolooSweater Perhaps you're unaware, but Crash Team Racing is a remake of a game that was released almost twenty years ago. The original still holds up as a truly excellent kart racer with great mechanics, memorable tracks and racers, music and sound effects that will always stay somewhere in your head, and so on, which is something that can't be said of many others. Not to mention CTR has a story mode and a really great battle mode. If you've never played CTR and don't have a PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP or Vita to play it on, you may want to take a look at the remake. There were also two more Crash kart racers, so it wasn't just a one-off.
Re: Nintendo Download: 20th June (Europe)
Too bad Bloodstained isn't out for another week yet in Europe. Why do they do this stuff? Surely there aren't any technical hurdles?
@Sakura I would say unfortunately no. The puzzles are fine but not that interesting (none of them are very difficult) and the performance is still dreadful, so much so that it takes you out of the game. If it had just had an unstable framerate, it would be okay, but if you're running around and all of a sudden the framerate goes into the single digits (and stays there) because you're near a tiny stream and the game becomes a stop-motion film, you quickly start to wonder why you'd even bother when there are many more games out there. This is after the latest patch and playing in docked mode. Also, eventually you do get a bit tired of all the pastel-coloured 'stylish' games. It's become the modern day equivalent of the muddy brown of the late 2000s.
Re: It Looks Like The Final Japanese 3DS Title Has Been Canned
@Knuckles-Fajita What's your point? 'Shifted their attention' means nothing other than them now (exclusively) making games for the Switch instead of the 3DS. It doesn't mean that they've released anything yet, only that they're working on it. They've even announced that they are working on those games - multiple times, even. I don't know why you're trying to make those words mean something they don't, and then try to do a "gotcha" on the writer.
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@Trajan Well, it always depends on what you consider 'unhackable'. With enough time, effort, interested hackers and modern tools, everything can eventually be hacked. The DSi of all things only recently got hacked, and from what I understand it's not because it was highly encrypted, but because there weren't enough people interested in it. Another example, the Sega Mega CD actually had no protection whatsoever, but at the time it released, no one owned a CD burner, so it wasn't technically 'hacked' until long after it was discontinued.
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@GimpySpaceman I believe you completely misunderstood what I was talking about, and I don't think you've read all of what I wrote. I didn't complain about the WiFi speed (or Hulu or HBO or smart TVs, absolutely no idea why you mentioned those), I complained about the range (which is documentedly terrible, both the chip and antenna are of very poor quality) and most importantly, the broken logic in which access point it decides to stay connected to. If you're sitting right next to your router and your network only has one access point, it works just fine and the download speeds are indeed great (a huge improvement over the original 3DS's 0,5MB/s), but again, what I was talking about was not the speed, but the dearth of problems it encounters in a multi-AP network, and the awful range which doesn't help the situation. These are documented problems, no need to try to 'prove me wrong'. If your house is small and/or made of wood, you won't ever notice them because 1. the range will be sufficient and as such, 2. you don't need a multi-AP network, but that doesn't mean the problems don't exist. The range is a hardware problem which they can only solve with a new revision (hopefully they will), but the connection logic is purely software-based and can be fixed, and I'm disappointed as it looks like they aren't planning on fixing it.
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@NintendoKirbo It is year three, but it isn't three years old. The Switch was released in March of 2017. The 'first year' is everything that happens until it turns 1 year old. As soon as it's 1 year old, the 'second year' starts, and so on. Just like humans.
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@Heavyarms55 I'm not sure where you live but in Europe, things like mesh networking or regular powerline networks (or even WiFi repeaters, but they're actually counterproductive) are very common because wireless signals can barely pass through thick stone walls, let alone the reinforced concrete found in the floors and walls of any building built since 1980, so more or less every other room needs its own (usually wireless) access points. If you have a long house (or a tall one, or both), you basically need at least two APs. The use case is simple: say you're playing a game online in the living room, which is in the front of your house, and for any reason you want to go to a different room to continue playing the game, it won't work. The Switch doesn't hand off the WiFi signal from one AP to the other until the connection times out (at least I presume that that's what's going on). Note that this works perfectly fine on the 3DS, DSi, Vita, phones, tablets, laptops and other WiFi-enabled devices, just not on the Switch.
Another use case is that you're watching something on YouTube on the Switch in the living room, but you're feeling hungry so you head to the kitchen and take the Switch out of its dock and along with you to continue watching the video, but alas, by the time the Switch decides to connect to the correct AP, you've already finished eating, and when you head back to the living room, the Switch now remains fixated on the kitchen's AP and you have to wait another eternity until it lets go of that one and reconnects to the living room's AP. I could accept if the problem was simply that the automatic stuff got stuck and you had to manually reconnect (because that's just a couple of clicks), but it doesn't even work if you manually tell it to disconnect and reconnect.
Multi-AP networks are also very common at universities (not necessarily eduroam) or large companies, not just houses. Of course, in those cases playing games all over the place is probably not a priority.
Re: Pre-Orders Now Live For Hori's Dragon Quest Slime And Daemon X Machina Switch Controllers
@Moroboshi876 I agree, I'd like to have one of them but it's extremely expensive considering it's just a controller shaped like a Slime. They've made Slime controllers like those before, and they were always cheaper than that, too. The PS4 version linked in the article costs £78, the Switch version costs £97. That's nearly 25% markup! Why is Nintendo tax still a thing? And forget about buying one secondhand at a better price, it was released for a Nintendo console so the price is only ever going up.
@X68000 "if they catch it" If the price is indicated correctly, they will (unfortunately).
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@Heavyarms55 It isn't, it's a problem on all Switches because the connection logic is all wrong. I'm not talking about switching from "Wifi-123" to "Wifi-456", that always works fine. The problem is when you want to switch from "Wifi-123" to "Wifi-123" when both access points are in range (one close by and the other at the edge of being out of range). The Switch stays connected to whichever access point it was first connected to until the connection times out - even worse, turning it off and on again doesn't reset the connection timer! The frustrating thing is that you can tell that it actually sees the new access point, because it shows full bars, but it stays connected to the old access point, which is nearly out of range and as such is too far to establish a proper connection.
For the record, regarding exploits, all Switch models released before the summer of 2018 will always be exploitable, because there's an unpatchable hardware exploit accidentally left in by Nvidia. They really messed up on that one, and I wonder if Nintendo's demanded some kind of compensation for that colossal mistake.
Re: Nintendo Switch System Update 8.1.0 Is Now Live
@Heavyarms55 There is a website called Switchbrew which details precisely which components have been updated, in case you're interested. In this case, it seems like it was just an update to block some possible future exploits. I wonder if they'll ever bother fixing the exceptionally poor way their WiFi connectivity works. It takes at least 15 minutes for it to finally disconnect from an access point that's nearly out of range and reconnect to the access point that's close by (both on the same network, with the same name). The fact that a dirt cheap Chinese knockoff phone from 10 years ago could already do this flawlessly and a modern, expensive piece of hardware has immense troubles doing such a simple task is embarrassing, and of course also highly annoying if you want to go online and your Switch simply refuses to connect to the correct access point even if you tell it to do so. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the WiFi hardware itself wasn't also extremely poor and unable to even find anything farther than 5m away.
Re: Former Epic Games Director Says He Tried To Axe Fortnite
@jly1987 (#46) I can't believe you've been replying to comments talking about 'modes' with comments talking about 'mods'. You do realise that a modus and a modification are two very different things?
Also, stop trying to shift the blame to a game. Kids haven't been paying attention anywhere since forever because their imagination runs wild, not because a game or media franchise has eaten their brains. With Pokémon, they were (and still are) not just trading Pokémon, but also pretending to be Pokémon masters all the time. When Call of Duty and the like were at their peak, kids were pretending to pew-pew everyone all the time.
Re: Review: Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth - The Last Picture Show
"it still would’ve been nice to have the option to hear the lines delivered in one’s native tongue."
I think the amount of people whose native language is not English vastly outclasses those whose it is. It's a less foreign tongue, at least.
Re: Indie Developer Shares "Bad News" About Publishing On Switch, After Pitching His Game To Nintendo
The article, and especially the title, paint a completely different picture to what actually went down. The guy, who commented on this very article but most people seem to have skipped that post because TOO LONG DIDN'T READ, just like they skipped the video because TOO LONG DIDN'T WATCH, explained (again) that he wasn't trying to get his game published (yet), he just wanted access to the developer tools - which, might I add, is quite useful if you want to create a game. 95% of all comments are talking about how of course the game shouldn't be published, but it was never about that.
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
@Brutchie-bear (#150) Black and White were like that, with over 150 new Pokémon, only letting you find Pokémon from previous generations after you already beat the game. They were great games precisely because they forced you to use the new Pokémon. However, that's not how it works in Sword and Shield. Now, there will be a few new Pokémon - going by previous generations, probably about 70 - and a bunch of old Pokémon still running around, but even when you beat the game, you will never be able to import a bunch of your older favourites just to see them on the big screen.
Re: Hands On: Zelda: Link's Awakening On Switch Treads A Fine Line Between Remake And Reimagining
@Antraxx777 Thanks for the explanation!
Re: Hands On: Zelda: Link's Awakening On Switch Treads A Fine Line Between Remake And Reimagining
@The_Pixel_King 600 Switch games? Six hundred? What the hell, dude. Surely 90% of those are mobile shovelware?
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
@MasterJay Believe it or not, but those already existed in Sun and Moon, they were in the game's code, including stuff like running animations and dual standing/flying animations for flying types, they were simply never used anywhere in the games. They future-proofed the games long ago, and now they're pretending they didn't as a really strange excuse. As for Game Freak's comments about 'balance', that's also rubbish, because Pokémon games have never been balanced. There are a few extremely powerful Pokémon, and everything else is, battle-wise, filler.
@Fezzy_lord It seems to me like you're the one who doesn't really understand how programming works. "hundreds of moves millions of stat strings thousands and thousands and thousands of calculations", that is just not how it works. In a battle, the only moves and stats that matter are those of the (at most, and only in a few games) six Pokémon active in that battle, only those stats are (read: should be) loaded into memory. If Pokémon Showdown can do it, which is basically made by one single dude, why wouldn't the company in charge of developing the video games for the highest-grossing media franchise in human history be able to do so? On the other hand, you're absolutely right that Pokémon games are horribly programmed (massively duplicated code and loads of unnecessary calls, for example), but that's simply another aspect of what people are upset about. Instead of firing their woefully incompetent staff and hiring some people who passed at least their first programming exam, they keep on releasing horribly programmed games and tell straight up lies instead of admitting they can't even program a Hello World script without duplicating a bunch of code and causing the entire system to crash.
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
@HipsterInkling "They reuse so much." I don't really mind that actually, it would be insane if they had to create new models and animations for each game, especially at the rate they're churning them out. The problem, in my eyes, lies in the fact that they make excuses for all kinds of nonsense by claiming to have to spend enormous amounts of time on creating new models and animations, when it's obvious that they don't, never have and never will. They only create new models and animations when it's absolutely necessary for a new Pokémon or a new move. You're absolutely right about the animations being lazy in general, instead of being a move from one side to the other, they're always just moves that simply 'occur' in the void between the areas where the Pokémon are standing.
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
@MasterJay I said "no cheating with new Pokémon or new moves". The only thing that's been updated for all of the models and animations that have been there since X and Y, which is what the other user was talking about, is the resolution of the textures and of the game itself.
Re: Hands On: Zelda: Link's Awakening On Switch Treads A Fine Line Between Remake And Reimagining
I don't know what the graphic effect is called to make everything look like miniatures, but it reminds me of 3D Dot Game Heroes, which is cool. I wonder if that game will ever be ported to the Switch.
Re: Nintendo Throws In A Surprise NES Game With This Week's Switch Online Update
@Damo Surprise! This month, we've included Mario Bros. to the lineup. It's been there since the start, but you didn't know that it would still be there this month, so you're surprised!
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
@MasterJay Can you link to one (1) example of an animation that wasn't already there on the 3DS? No cheating with new Pokémon or new moves.
Re: Pokémon's Junichi Masuda Explains The Decision To Limit Sword And Shield's Pokédex
Game Freak, the developers of Pokémon, by far the highest-grossing media franchise in the history of humankind, don't have enough resources to allow people to transfer their old Pokémon to the new games? Seems legit.
@Yorumi There is a pretty long grace period, at least. You don't instantly lose them once you stop paying your subscription fee.