The end quality entirely changes the target price. Quality control is very expensive. I'm sure you know this, if you really require evidence of this then I give up.
Skipping quality control is precicely how cheap alternatives present perceived better value. A joypad for example can cost anything from £2 upward.
You keep talking about factual evidence but all you've done is link to a couple of cheap systems.
It's not that I disagree with you entirely, I just feel that you're getting very carried away with a little side project of Nintendo's and I think you're too optimistic about the market. There are millions of Nintendo fans who'll buy a snes mini but how many of those would really buy modern snes games at a realistic price?
There already exists a small niche market and we're starting to see it catered for which is great. But most of this market would rather play with original hardware, as would I.
Alternatively, I assume you've heard of the Super NT. It's a reproduction of a snes which instead of software emulation it effectively uses hardware emulation with an FPGA chip. It's double the price of a snes mini, but a system that perfectly replicates the snes hardware would cost even more. There's a small market that's prepared to pay extra for this type of thing, with the scale of economics the price raises even more.
What's your vision? A modern revival of the snes? Mass produced physical releases? Not gonna happen, just let it go mate. 90% of snes mini buyers are just scratching a nostalgia itch or filling shelf space - the product evidently fits it's market very successfully. For those of us interested in proper hardware and a proper games library there always has and always will exist a small audience that buys old cartridges (they're not that expensive) and has recently been seeing a handful of new releases.
If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and buy an old snes or a Super NT and you can play classic snes carts and buy the occasional new release if you want to.
I have a Super Famicom. It's great using original cartridges.
However the Snes mini is a cheap arm-based emulation box using an off-the-shelf SOC. Most of the developmemt time was probably spent testing that those 21 games run properly.
I like the snes mini. It's cheap, cute, and comes with perfect control pads. It's a fun little side at an impulse-buy price.
A fantasy Snes resurrection with 100% compatibility and new releases would be just wonderful, but it'd be a huge expensive project for a niche audience. Productions such as R-Type returns are aimed at a small audience with deep pockets. There isn't a big market.
The Retron consoles aren't really tested at length and just rely on a huge amount of other people's work with a hodgepodge of stolen emulators and code. Fine for a hobbyist device but not for an official Nintendo product.
I don't specifically know about the Megadrive console you linked to but let's face it, Sega is a whore with its name. Past 3rd-party produced Retro Megadrive-alikes that licence Sega's name are poor quality with rubbish joypads and compatability is a case of "mostly works-ish" - even with built in games!
If you want something like that but better quality and tested properly it'll be more expensive ...and you'd still be dealing with emulation unless you want to pay a lot more.
I wouldn't waste time fooling myself there's a viable business for Nintendo to actually do it, not when you can buy a real Snes or SFC so cheaply. They output RGB by the way. No modding necessary.
Grape nuts are great, but you need to follow these serving suggestions.
Pour Grapenuts in a bowl, add a couple of teaspoons of sugar then pour on lots of milk so the grapenuts are submerged. Leave them for about 10 minutes and come back to see the grapenuts have absorbed most of the milk (maybe pour in a little more milk to taste). Add another spoon of sugar on top and enjoy the soft sugary sex nuts.
@Slaz Regarding the screens. Some N3DSs have TN, some have IPS, and many have one of each. The IPS looks better and clearly has a wider viewing angle but to be honest, I don't think it matters so much for a handheld device - especially one that only one person can view anyway, due to the 3D effect.
I don't think it's subjective, the smaller N3DS is the best.
It's clearly better built. I have an XL and to be honest it feels comparatively wobbly and cheap. This is my second XL as I sold a launch model and bought a Majora's Mask edition. They've both been exactly the same. Not awful, but doesn't compare well.
My kids have the smaller model and they are more solid and generally nicer quality. The cover plates and coloured buttons are excellent and the screen appears sharper.
I'll stick with the XL though just because it's bigger, but side-by-side it's not the better model.
@aesc Donating your Snes to a children's hospital games room is a great idea. Last time I went to one they had an old Xbox with a bunch of discs that didn't work. Cartridges still have a purpose. My kids love the snes, the Mario games are timeless.
You're right that using MyNintendo to distribute preorder tickets would work. Club Nintendo was full of limited edition items and club distribution would probably make people more accepting that it's a fun limited product for fans. It's surprising they didn't.
I still don't think we should expect much responsibility from retailers, they just want to shift product. The one per customer thing is more of a calculated move. They're going to sell out anyway so can afford to make a gesture to help raise customer satisfaction a little.
Ebay dont care whatsoever by the way. The pre-order thing is just a rule due to the fact that there's a set limited period after the sale date until ebay close avenues of contact and complaint. 90 days I think. Ebay just need sales completed well within that time frame. They're of course happy for members to resell whatever they legally want to.
To be honest I think this headline is intentionally misleading just to encourage this debate we're having.
Remember, with both these mini consoles, buyers have shown they want to pay £200 BEFORE the shortage has even started. What do you think that's going to do to the remaining stock?
Think of the number of Mini Snes units that would be enough to meet demand, triple it, add a million, and there'd still be morons over paying on ebay, and consequently people buying up the RRP stock.
@aesc There's great debate to be had over the negatives of capitalism, and the power it gives to money. Litigation? Pharmaceuticals? Diamond trade? But well, there's not many good alternatives so here we are.
This kind of scalping, enabled by the internet, isn't close to being the worst of capitalism. In fact I argue the opposite. A lot of these sellers truly need money. I know I certainly did back when I used a months wages and a loan to import 20 Japanese FW1.0 PSPs when there was a desperate rush to buy them. It was a gamble (I have kids, and needed a return asap), but a fairly sensible one (I figured worst case, if the value crashed, I'd recoup 80% of my money back, provided not too many had an awful amount of dead pixels). Do you think people who don't need money bother going to this trouble? I'm certain nearly every Mini NES sold on ebay has been bought by someone richer than the seller. That's the interesting thing about the reach provided by the internet - the financial shift - and this is about the smallest imaginable example.
Btw, @Shiryu "desperate parent who wanted to show their children what video games looked like when they were young". Haha! Brilliant!
Willingly paying three times rrp (before it's even released in many cases) is a disgusting use of money. Especially so for a parent. These buyers are spoilt privileged people who never learned to go without.
Desperate? What a joke. Show them a youtube video, or buy a VC game or a cheap old NES, or here's a really shocking thought, tell the kids, sorry - couldn't get one.
@datamonkey Right you are, but sadly I don't think they'll read this far. In many ways I envy the simple outlook, bless them.
The only thing that the market's really communicated to Nintendo is that they sold Limited Edition Mini Console 1 too cheaply and ironically, in this case Nintendo chose not to listen.
@CB85 Depends who you listen to. Didn't they sell about 10 million Amiibos in the first three months? Who could have predicted such extreme demand, honestly? They multiplied their manufacturing arrangements and they did well to keep up. Stories circulated of Disney criticising them for false scarcity... Disney! The company who famously created genuine false scarcity for videotapes and DVDs!
The first rule of business is don't overproduce. It's a quick road to bankruptcy. They need to pick a number which they predict will 'just' fill demand. They're doing an okay job with the Switch considering the unexpected numbers that's moving.
The NES mini is interesting. 1, because the resale prices are actually dropping now, which is a sign that perhaps they did make close to enough to fill most demand, but so many got bought up and held back by people, staff, and high street shops themselves when they saw the moronic prices customers were willing to pay.
And 2, because it's actually an item that Nintendo always said was going to be limited. Turns out many people can't accept that.
Westerners just don't like being told 'no, you can't have it'. It puts us into a money throwing rage. Look at some of the angry comments at the start of this thread alone. I guess Nintendo needs telling that Limited Edition is another thing that they're not allowed to do here. :-/
Again, the Famicom Minis didn't have near this problem. In fact you can still import them now for near RRP! Isn't that alone a pretty clear indicator?
It's not a high margin product. It's cool but a bit of a niche. I expect half the Western buyers don't even want it that much, they just got caught up in the weeing contest and haven't yet even switched it on. I think they genuinely didn't expect a cashnado and wanted a bit of fun with a limited edition special item, as they frequently have in the past.
And no business wants to overproduce something, ever. I simply think they completely underestimated Western idiocy when they picked a number.
For the record, I have one on pre-order but if it's value becomes pushed up by the same class of rich, greedy, impatient, gotta-have-it-all buyers as the NES mini then I won't be able to justify keeping something that I could sell for £200.
Many people make money by buying and selling on ebay. Some make a little extra to help with the bills, some make a living out of it. By the nature of the business they can only sell at what the market will pay and there's no shame in that. It's no different from any other reseller and you can hardly blame them for choosing not to ignore a profitable product.
Cases such as the NES mini are such a vulgur demonstration of idiot panic buying that I'm happy to see the buyers 'scalped' again. Though no one's forcing them - they're setting their own prices. It's an absolute disgrace imo, but at least the biggest losers are themselves.
If my snes mini becomes too valuable I'll go without, and sell it to one of the many people who seem to have lost the ability to do that.
Japan didn't have this much trouble with the Famicom mini btw. It's not like you can even blame Nintendo for this.
The whole scalpers = badguys / desperate buyers = goodguys vision is always amusing, but the idea of ebay trying but struggling to stop scalpers is downright hilarious.
I watched the ad with my son and half way through mentioned that they're not showing definite games but examples of "the sort of games you could be playing". He already knew that, it went without saying. I felt a bit embarrassed for mentioning it.
Video games are toys, toys that have depended entirely on gimmicks ever since Pong. Consoles have their own gimmicks and their games have their own gimmicks, and that's only a good thing. Short lived, wonderful new ways to waste time having fun. Good or bad for you, they serve little other purpose let's be honest.
People that use gimmick as criticism to a game take their playtime wayyyyy too seriously. Or perhaps they're training to save the president.
I don't think this game attempts to make anything seem normal. It is clearly an absurdly boob obsessed product aimed at a specific audience. Yes it's objectifying and gratuitous but neither of those things are truly offensive in their own right. All media is gratuitous in some way.
I consider everyday sexism to be sexism that's shoved in people's faces so much that it appears normal and passes under many people's radar - like my examples above. This game disguises nothing. It knows exactly what it is and I admire it for it.
Don't forget this is an adult rated game. If it's being pushed at unwilling eyes then that's a fault of the distributor or guardian responsible for supply, same as any other adult media.
As for it's visibility In Japan, yes it's easier to find this and many examples of far more extreme sexism, that's true. Like most of the West I find that unsettling, but my values are shaped by my culture, not the other way round. It'd be foolish to judge something I know little about.
No, it's not everyday sexism. It's specialist sexism. It's blatant sexism. They make the content abundantly obvious. They're not attempting to normalise anything and no one is under any delusion about what this is.
Everyday sexism isn't so self aware. It's when you watch Hollywood's latest family comedy and every female character is a beautiful, bland prop - and the movie stops for five minutes to make way for a slow motion pornstar-bends-over-in-a-tight-dress scene, accompanied by a saxophone backing track, and you're sitting with your family thinking 'this is a movie about funny animals! Who puts this in??!'.
Or when you're playing a Japanese RPG and it appears you have body customisation options until you look in the menu and find them reduced to only height and boob size.
Senran Kagura Burst is far less harmful. No one is confused about it's portrayal of values. Someone could be offended by the content but they'd have to intentionally go out of their way to find it first.
My lad wanted an N64 and I found a mint boxed bundle with an RGB console and a dozen great games for him last Christmas (he was 12 years old at the time).
Wrapping it all up on Christmas Eve was the best feeling ever.
Oh but wait, breasts are "nothing more than milk glands". It turns out all boob related sexualisation has actually been nothing but mere coincidence all along.
I can't believe people are still using the 'body type' line with a straight face.
They hadn't provided customisable body type, they provided customisable boob type.
If there was a list of customisable body parts (that's body parts, not facial features), I'm sure it would have made the western cut. As it stood, they avoided it.
Even if you don't agree, is it so hard to imagine that this might not be nanny-state censorship, but rather a product owner finding good enough reason to make an insignificant change according to market taste?
"How Tall are you? How big are your boobs? Done". It's clearly sexualisation. It's okay to like sexualisation. I like sexualisation. But I'd feel like an idiot to pretend it's not there.
@Yorumi
So you go to body size and there's one slider for 'boobs', and one slider for 'everything-else', and you think that's mature, inclusive customisation options?
The Sims has a multitude of body type and size options. XCX has only height and boobs. If Sims had the same narrow minded limitation on female body types it could appear sexist and immature, maybe not even to Pegi, but to some customers. Nintendo and/or Monolith Studios contemplated this.
Which just goes to show this is about context, as it should be - not rigid standards.
It was likely the publisher, Nintendo. If so, they are selling the product and they have that right.
If you work for McDonalds and you want to pour chocolate on the cheeseburgers, you would be told to stop. McDonalds would not be taking away your freedom to sell Chocburgers, they simply have the final say on the product they sell, because it is theirs to sell.
This is not imposed censorship. I doubt it's even an issue of age rating. It's about a publisher tailoring a product to an audience.
The cut content would be entirely passable to publish, but the company selling the product decided not to include it. They decided that defining a woman's body with two things - height and boobs might appear sexist to some of their target audience, just as they thought the skimpy 13 year-old might not be so well received.
It's an entirely reasonable point of view and they have every right to release what THEY WANT. Even if you don't like it. They fortunately have that freedom.
No rights have been suppressed. No freedom has been taken away, quite the opposite.
I don't think I can explain that any slower.
The shouts of "Oppression! Censorship enablers! Fight for freedom" are stupendously misplaced. At least it's amusing.
This does not let you control the size of various parts of the body beyond the size of 'body' and bust. There's a tits slider and an everything-else slider. It defines the female body as height and boobs.
It baffles me how anyone could not recognise the sexualisation.
I don't mind it, on it's own it's a fun customisation, I'm not saying anyone should hate it, but you'd have to be intentionally naive to pretend that this is actually an effort to represent body diversity.
As for the 'I don't need a company to tell me what's good for me' (@Sforzando) and similar Gamer freedom! chants. Erm, this is a videogame. By it's nature everything you see and do has been controlled by it's developers and publishers that decide on what makes the cut. They want to sell to the largest possible audience.
It's quite romantic that you want to stand up to censorship, but this is a commercial product. There's no surpression of speech, just sales targets.
Because, again, these are not body personalisation options. There is no hip, leg, bottom, waist or shoulder size. Only height and boobs.
Do you genuinely think that this is an attempt at body diversity?
It's not, it's sexualisation. It's mild sexualisation, it's far from the only sexualisation, there's nothing inherently wrong with sexualisation, but it's still sexualisation.
Given the context and the different audience, they decided to to draw the line on this almost irrelevant feature. I can't blame them.
@Ryu_Niiyama
"Women come in all shapes and sizes and a good character editor will reflect that."
Exactly. Women do come in all shapes and sizes. This however, was a bad character editor. It did not reflect that. It reduced the range of female body types to just boob size.
They don't bat an eyelid in Japan because they are accustomed to far stronger sexism in popular culture.
I don't think this is to do with age rating so much as it is to do with taste. The west is comparatively tolerant in it's own way, but with that comes respect.
The context of the sexualisation here is cheapening and inappropriate to a Westerner. If a product was aiming for cheap gratification in the first place, the West generally accepts it's right to exist.
The bust slider is already sexualised content. Like I've said a few times, it's not one of many personalised sliders, there is just body size and chest size, on female characters. It's obviously sexualised. I think it's silly to deny that.
It'd only cause minor offence (compared to the other removed content) but they simply decided to draw the line at a slightly different place to you. It's a completely reasonable change.
My point is just that this game has cut two separate forms of titilation. You're OK with one cut but not the other? Ok, most of us probably agree. But why get angry over their decision to cut both? I can see more people finding the tit slider immature than people finding it an essential feature. I think that ratio would definitely be more heavy in the West than it is in Japan.
By the way, the cut didn't sexualise the feature, and it wasn't just a body part. As I said before there is no shoulder, hips, legs, waist, bottom size sliders. Providing just 'body' and 'bust' is sexualisation. I'm not bothered by it but it simply is.
For what it's worth, I too am in the skimpy-13yo-thumbsdown-but-tit-slider-thumbsup camp.
But look at how absurd this debate is. Defending a personal stance on acceptable titilation for a game that has had both the above removed. You're ok with tit sliders but draw the line at 13 year olds? Great, but this isn't much of an issue is it. Is it really worth getting upset over both being removed?
"Nintendo's digging their own grave"
"RIP"
"it's the fact that we aren't given the choice."
etc
Haha! This is great. Fight for gamer freedom!
Or stand back a moment. The west enjoys it's titilation but is a touch more sensitive to skimpy 13 year olds and tit sliders than Japan is.
I only see body and chest size options. No hips, legs, shoulders, bottom. It has nothing to with diversity, it's simply a very slightly pervy and very slightly sexist feature of the type that Japanese are more accepting of. Westerners are slightly less so - most people wouldn't care, a few would find it distasteful, NO ONE would be excited about it. For a feature so extremely minor, it's really not worth the negative reaction that we all know it would receive.
He's very likely right though. It probably will head that way eventually. When Nintendo first muttered NX and said it'll be a new "platform" but not a console as we know it, I was curious if it'd be something along the lines of a gaming software environment - platform independent, like Steam. It'd explain the new tied in rewards scheme. Imagine the Wii U O.S with it's integrated e-shop, miiverse and various other channels was available as a future PC/set-top box download on registration or subscription. I love Nintendo consoles and I am extremely impressed with the Wii U's dashboard presentation. if focussing only on that software meant future-proofing the lovely Nintendo experience, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.
It might be a fair few years yet, but we're probably heading that way. I can't argue with wotsisname's vision here.
"On the Wii U, I think people downplay how many units they've sold."
This statement in particular interested me. The Wii U hasn't moved a whole lot of units, but I'm wondering if Spencer is implying that there is more to console success than sheer numbers (like overall profit, or revenue streams from games and other services).
He's saying that simply because Wii-U and XBone sales are very close.
Nintendo's fall in performance is gaining negative attention but Microsoft is certainly in no position to call their current numbers bad.
And they're not bad. Nintendo have had some extraordinary highs in the past. Criticism from drama press and weird advice from patronising experts always focuses on the downward slope, but peaks are unmaintainable. They, erm, peak. Phil Spencer isn't a bedroom CEO. He's looking at the numbers from a much more realistic and knowledgeable perspective.
There's nothing like that moment where your skills finally click together in a really difficult game. A moment that is now rare to me as I either don't have the time or patience any more - despite this, I'm still offended by the removal of penalties (to the detriment of gameplay) found in the action games that are tailored to my laziness. Since Half-Life set the bar, almost all "adult" "action" games are a passive trudge through a really long and awkward (and desperately cool) cgi movie.
An action game today that takes a few attempts to beat the first section. Fancy that! A little bit of preview time is never going to give justice to a difficult game.
Itagaki does make a good point. Perhaps Devil's Turd just looks a bit crap.
Comments 65
Re: Retro-Bit Announces R-Type Returns For Super Nintendo
@impurekind
The end quality entirely changes the target price. Quality control is very expensive. I'm sure you know this, if you really require evidence of this then I give up.
Skipping quality control is precicely how cheap alternatives present perceived better value. A joypad for example can cost anything from £2 upward.
You keep talking about factual evidence but all you've done is link to a couple of cheap systems.
It's not that I disagree with you entirely, I just feel that you're getting very carried away with a little side project of Nintendo's and I think you're too optimistic about the market. There are millions of Nintendo fans who'll buy a snes mini but how many of those would really buy modern snes games at a realistic price?
There already exists a small niche market and we're starting to see it catered for which is great. But most of this market would rather play with original hardware, as would I.
Alternatively, I assume you've heard of the Super NT. It's a reproduction of a snes which instead of software emulation it effectively uses hardware emulation with an FPGA chip. It's double the price of a snes mini, but a system that perfectly replicates the snes hardware would cost even more. There's a small market that's prepared to pay extra for this type of thing, with the scale of economics the price raises even more.
What's your vision? A modern revival of the snes? Mass produced physical releases? Not gonna happen, just let it go mate. 90% of snes mini buyers are just scratching a nostalgia itch or filling shelf space - the product evidently fits it's market very successfully. For those of us interested in proper hardware and a proper games library there always has and always will exist a small audience that buys old cartridges (they're not that expensive) and has recently been seeing a handful of new releases.
If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and buy an old snes or a Super NT and you can play classic snes carts and buy the occasional new release if you want to.
Re: Retro-Bit Announces R-Type Returns For Super Nintendo
@impurekind
I have a Super Famicom. It's great using original cartridges.
However the Snes mini is a cheap arm-based emulation box using an off-the-shelf SOC. Most of the developmemt time was probably spent testing that those 21 games run properly.
I like the snes mini. It's cheap, cute, and comes with perfect control pads. It's a fun little side at an impulse-buy price.
A fantasy Snes resurrection with 100% compatibility and new releases would be just wonderful, but it'd be a huge expensive project for a niche audience. Productions such as R-Type returns are aimed at a small audience with deep pockets. There isn't a big market.
The Retron consoles aren't really tested at length and just rely on a huge amount of other people's work with a hodgepodge of stolen emulators and code. Fine for a hobbyist device but not for an official Nintendo product.
I don't specifically know about the Megadrive console you linked to but let's face it, Sega is a whore with its name. Past 3rd-party produced Retro Megadrive-alikes that licence Sega's name are poor quality with rubbish joypads and compatability is a case of "mostly works-ish" - even with built in games!
If you want something like that but better quality and tested properly it'll be more expensive ...and you'd still be dealing with emulation unless you want to pay a lot more.
I wouldn't waste time fooling myself there's a viable business for Nintendo to actually do it, not when you can buy a real Snes or SFC so cheaply. They output RGB by the way. No modding necessary.
Re: Random: Enjoy A Nice Bowl Of Grape Nuts And You Could Win A Nintendo Switch
Grape nuts are great, but you need to follow these serving suggestions.
Pour Grapenuts in a bowl, add a couple of teaspoons of sugar then pour on lots of milk so the grapenuts are submerged. Leave them for about 10 minutes and come back to see the grapenuts have absorbed most of the milk (maybe pour in a little more milk to taste). Add another spoon of sugar on top and enjoy the soft sugary sex nuts.
Re: Wii U OS Version 5.5.2 Is Now Live
Strong, stable Liidership
Re: Editorial: In Praise of the Smaller New Nintendo 3DS - The Best 3DS*
@JubilifeRival
Christ
Re: Editorial: In Praise of the Smaller New Nintendo 3DS - The Best 3DS*
@Slaz Regarding the screens. Some N3DSs have TN, some have IPS, and many have one of each. The IPS looks better and clearly has a wider viewing angle but to be honest, I don't think it matters so much for a handheld device - especially one that only one person can view anyway, due to the 3D effect.
Re: Editorial: In Praise of the Smaller New Nintendo 3DS - The Best 3DS*
I don't think it's subjective, the smaller N3DS is the best.
It's clearly better built. I have an XL and to be honest it feels comparatively wobbly and cheap. This is my second XL as I sold a launch model and bought a Majora's Mask edition. They've both been exactly the same. Not awful, but doesn't compare well.
My kids have the smaller model and they are more solid and generally nicer quality. The cover plates and coloured buttons are excellent and the screen appears sharper.
I'll stick with the XL though just because it's bigger, but side-by-side it's not the better model.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
@aesc Donating your Snes to a children's hospital games room is a great idea. Last time I went to one they had an old Xbox with a bunch of discs that didn't work. Cartridges still have a purpose. My kids love the snes, the Mario games are timeless.
You're right that using MyNintendo to distribute preorder tickets would work. Club Nintendo was full of limited edition items and club distribution would probably make people more accepting that it's a fun limited product for fans. It's surprising they didn't.
I still don't think we should expect much responsibility from retailers, they just want to shift product. The one per customer thing is more of a calculated move. They're going to sell out anyway so can afford to make a gesture to help raise customer satisfaction a little.
Ebay dont care whatsoever by the way. The pre-order thing is just a rule due to the fact that there's a set limited period after the sale date until ebay close avenues of contact and complaint. 90 days I think. Ebay just need sales completed well within that time frame. They're of course happy for members to resell whatever they legally want to.
To be honest I think this headline is intentionally misleading just to encourage this debate we're having.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
Remember, with both these mini consoles, buyers have shown they want to pay £200 BEFORE the shortage has even started. What do you think that's going to do to the remaining stock?
Think of the number of Mini Snes units that would be enough to meet demand, triple it, add a million, and there'd still be morons over paying on ebay, and consequently people buying up the RRP stock.
It's entirely the buyers' doing.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
@aesc There's great debate to be had over the negatives of capitalism, and the power it gives to money. Litigation? Pharmaceuticals? Diamond trade? But well, there's not many good alternatives so here we are.
This kind of scalping, enabled by the internet, isn't close to being the worst of capitalism. In fact I argue the opposite. A lot of these sellers truly need money. I know I certainly did back when I used a months wages and a loan to import 20 Japanese FW1.0 PSPs when there was a desperate rush to buy them. It was a gamble (I have kids, and needed a return asap), but a fairly sensible one (I figured worst case, if the value crashed, I'd recoup 80% of my money back, provided not too many had an awful amount of dead pixels). Do you think people who don't need money bother going to this trouble? I'm certain nearly every Mini NES sold on ebay has been bought by someone richer than the seller. That's the interesting thing about the reach provided by the internet - the financial shift - and this is about the smallest imaginable example.
Btw, @Shiryu "desperate parent who wanted to show their children what video games looked like when they were young". Haha! Brilliant!
Willingly paying three times rrp (before it's even released in many cases) is a disgusting use of money. Especially so for a parent. These buyers are spoilt privileged people who never learned to go without.
Desperate? What a joke. Show them a youtube video, or buy a VC game or a cheap old NES, or here's a really shocking thought, tell the kids, sorry - couldn't get one.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
@datamonkey Right you are, but sadly I don't think they'll read this far. In many ways I envy the simple outlook, bless them.
The only thing that the market's really communicated to Nintendo is that they sold Limited Edition Mini Console 1 too cheaply and ironically, in this case Nintendo chose not to listen.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
@CB85 Depends who you listen to. Didn't they sell about 10 million Amiibos in the first three months? Who could have predicted such extreme demand, honestly? They multiplied their manufacturing arrangements and they did well to keep up. Stories circulated of Disney criticising them for false scarcity... Disney! The company who famously created genuine false scarcity for videotapes and DVDs!
The first rule of business is don't overproduce. It's a quick road to bankruptcy. They need to pick a number which they predict will 'just' fill demand. They're doing an okay job with the Switch considering the unexpected numbers that's moving.
The NES mini is interesting. 1, because the resale prices are actually dropping now, which is a sign that perhaps they did make close to enough to fill most demand, but so many got bought up and held back by people, staff, and high street shops themselves when they saw the moronic prices customers were willing to pay.
And 2, because it's actually an item that Nintendo always said was going to be limited. Turns out many people can't accept that.
Westerners just don't like being told 'no, you can't have it'. It puts us into a money throwing rage. Look at some of the angry comments at the start of this thread alone. I guess Nintendo needs telling that Limited Edition is another thing that they're not allowed to do here. :-/
Again, the Famicom Minis didn't have near this problem. In fact you can still import them now for near RRP! Isn't that alone a pretty clear indicator?
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
It's not a high margin product. It's cool but a bit of a niche. I expect half the Western buyers don't even want it that much, they just got caught up in the weeing contest and haven't yet even switched it on. I think they genuinely didn't expect a cashnado and wanted a bit of fun with a limited edition special item, as they frequently have in the past.
And no business wants to overproduce something, ever. I simply think they completely underestimated Western idiocy when they picked a number.
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
lol
Re: eBay Is Trying But Struggling To Stop The Onslaught Of SNES Mini Scalpers
@johnvboy and @Destron exactly!
For the record, I have one on pre-order but if it's value becomes pushed up by the same class of rich, greedy, impatient, gotta-have-it-all buyers as the NES mini then I won't be able to justify keeping something that I could sell for £200.
Many people make money by buying and selling on ebay. Some make a little extra to help with the bills, some make a living out of it. By the nature of the business they can only sell at what the market will pay and there's no shame in that. It's no different from any other reseller and you can hardly blame them for choosing not to ignore a profitable product.
Cases such as the NES mini are such a vulgur demonstration of idiot panic buying that I'm happy to see the buyers 'scalped' again. Though no one's forcing them - they're setting their own prices. It's an absolute disgrace imo, but at least the biggest losers are themselves.
If my snes mini becomes too valuable I'll go without, and sell it to one of the many people who seem to have lost the ability to do that.
Japan didn't have this much trouble with the Famicom mini btw. It's not like you can even blame Nintendo for this.
The whole scalpers = badguys / desperate buyers = goodguys vision is always amusing, but the idea of ebay trying but struggling to stop scalpers is downright hilarious.
Re: Random: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Patch Removes Offensive "Bras d'honneur" Gesture
Well said Maxz, you're a more patient man than I am.
@BornInNorway81 "I'd actually argue that if my feces somehow made it onto someone else's arm, the joke would not be on me, but on them!"
Yep, if someone shoved their forearm up your back passage then you would be the real winner.
Re: Video: How Well Does Virtual Reality Work On The Nintendo Switch?
Wow! He's so smart. He must have actually looked at the images. Did you look at them too?
Re: Video: How Well Does Virtual Reality Work On The Nintendo Switch?
@EternalDragonX, Really?! That's fascinating. Have you told Oculus?
Re: Fans "Shouldn't Assume" That The Nintendo Switch Reveal Trailer Features "Actual Game Footage"
I watched the ad with my son and half way through mentioned that they're not showing definite games but examples of "the sort of games you could be playing". He already knew that, it went without saying. I felt a bit embarrassed for mentioning it.
Re: Amazon Customers Have Their Say About Nintendo Switch
@0upshroom7
I love gimmicks.
Video games are toys, toys that have depended entirely on gimmicks ever since Pong. Consoles have their own gimmicks and their games have their own gimmicks, and that's only a good thing. Short lived, wonderful new ways to waste time having fun. Good or bad for you, they serve little other purpose let's be honest.
People that use gimmick as criticism to a game take their playtime wayyyyy too seriously. Or perhaps they're training to save the president.
Re: Bigley's Revenge Has Been Removed From the eShop
It's just a publicity stunt to get his crap all over the headlines again, and it's working.
Re: Ninterview: Retro Video Gaming's Heidi stopXwhispering On Building The Ultimate Game Room
Love that Blast City with Twinkle Star Sprites running.
Re: There'll Be More Senran Kagura Bursting Onto the Scene in 2016
@ZenTurtle
I don't think this game attempts to make anything seem normal. It is clearly an absurdly boob obsessed product aimed at a specific audience. Yes it's objectifying and gratuitous but neither of those things are truly offensive in their own right. All media is gratuitous in some way.
I consider everyday sexism to be sexism that's shoved in people's faces so much that it appears normal and passes under many people's radar - like my examples above. This game disguises nothing. It knows exactly what it is and I admire it for it.
Don't forget this is an adult rated game. If it's being pushed at unwilling eyes then that's a fault of the distributor or guardian responsible for supply, same as any other adult media.
As for it's visibility In Japan, yes it's easier to find this and many examples of far more extreme sexism, that's true. Like most of the West I find that unsettling, but my values are shaped by my culture, not the other way round. It'd be foolish to judge something I know little about.
Re: There'll Be More Senran Kagura Bursting Onto the Scene in 2016
@ZenTurtle (assuming you're not trolling)
No, it's not everyday sexism. It's specialist sexism. It's blatant sexism. They make the content abundantly obvious. They're not attempting to normalise anything and no one is under any delusion about what this is.
Everyday sexism isn't so self aware. It's when you watch Hollywood's latest family comedy and every female character is a beautiful, bland prop - and the movie stops for five minutes to make way for a slow motion pornstar-bends-over-in-a-tight-dress scene, accompanied by a saxophone backing track, and you're sitting with your family thinking 'this is a movie about funny animals! Who puts this in??!'.
Or when you're playing a Japanese RPG and it appears you have body customisation options until you look in the menu and find them reduced to only height and boob size.
Senran Kagura Burst is far less harmful. No one is confused about it's portrayal of values. Someone could be offended by the content but they'd have to intentionally go out of their way to find it first.
Re: Video: Your Washed-Up Parent Can't Handle Modern Games So Get Them A NES This Christmas, Says eBay
My lad wanted an N64 and I found a mint boxed bundle with an RGB console and a dozen great games for him last Christmas (he was 12 years old at the time).
Wrapping it all up on Christmas Eve was the best feeling ever.
Re: Random: Check Out the Latest Stage From Panga, Super Mario Maker Creator Extraordinaire
@TerrapinJess "but really unless I get some kind of badge or even a mystery costume what's really the incentive to push through it you know?"
Re: Acclaimed 3DS Shooter Steel Empire Finally Cleared For European Landing
"Many feared that this world be the destruction of mankind."
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
Oh but wait, breasts are "nothing more than milk glands". It turns out all boob related sexualisation has actually been nothing but mere coincidence all along.
Thanks TheRealThanos!
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
I can't believe people are still using the 'body type' line with a straight face.
They hadn't provided customisable body type, they provided customisable boob type.
If there was a list of customisable body parts (that's body parts, not facial features), I'm sure it would have made the western cut. As it stood, they avoided it.
Even if you don't agree, is it so hard to imagine that this might not be nanny-state censorship, but rather a product owner finding good enough reason to make an insignificant change according to market taste?
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
Haha!
Keep telling yourself that then.
"How Tall are you? How big are your boobs? Done". It's clearly sexualisation. It's okay to like sexualisation. I like sexualisation. But I'd feel like an idiot to pretend it's not there.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@Yorumi
So you go to body size and there's one slider for 'boobs', and one slider for 'everything-else', and you think that's mature, inclusive customisation options?
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@Yorumi
The body size options are 'height' and 'bust'.
I've repeated this point several times. If you can't see how such narrow variables are sexualisation then you're living in denial.
I'm not offended by the sexualisation. It's mild. But I accept it for what it is. And I happily accept the decision to cut it.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@Yorumi
The Sims has a multitude of body type and size options. XCX has only height and boobs. If Sims had the same narrow minded limitation on female body types it could appear sexist and immature, maybe not even to Pegi, but to some customers. Nintendo and/or Monolith Studios contemplated this.
Which just goes to show this is about context, as it should be - not rigid standards.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@PlywoodStick
It was likely the publisher, Nintendo. If so, they are selling the product and they have that right.
If you work for McDonalds and you want to pour chocolate on the cheeseburgers, you would be told to stop. McDonalds would not be taking away your freedom to sell Chocburgers, they simply have the final say on the product they sell, because it is theirs to sell.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
Sigh. One last try...
This is not imposed censorship. I doubt it's even an issue of age rating. It's about a publisher tailoring a product to an audience.
The cut content would be entirely passable to publish, but the company selling the product decided not to include it. They decided that defining a woman's body with two things - height and boobs might appear sexist to some of their target audience, just as they thought the skimpy 13 year-old might not be so well received.
It's an entirely reasonable point of view and they have every right to release what THEY WANT. Even if you don't like it. They fortunately have that freedom.
No rights have been suppressed. No freedom has been taken away, quite the opposite.
I don't think I can explain that any slower.
The shouts of "Oppression! Censorship enablers! Fight for freedom" are stupendously misplaced. At least it's amusing.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
Is this real life?
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@TurboTEF
"I will not stand for censorship on games I'm interested in."
Aw bless. Can I get that on a t-shirt?
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
Body Shaming! lol
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@crimsontadpoles
This does not let you control the size of various parts of the body beyond the size of 'body' and bust. There's a tits slider and an everything-else slider. It defines the female body as height and boobs.
It baffles me how anyone could not recognise the sexualisation.
I don't mind it, on it's own it's a fun customisation, I'm not saying anyone should hate it, but you'd have to be intentionally naive to pretend that this is actually an effort to represent body diversity.
As for the 'I don't need a company to tell me what's good for me' (@Sforzando) and similar Gamer freedom! chants. Erm, this is a videogame. By it's nature everything you see and do has been controlled by it's developers and publishers that decide on what makes the cut. They want to sell to the largest possible audience.
It's quite romantic that you want to stand up to censorship, but this is a commercial product. There's no surpression of speech, just sales targets.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@ikki5
Because, again, these are not body personalisation options. There is no hip, leg, bottom, waist or shoulder size. Only height and boobs.
Do you genuinely think that this is an attempt at body diversity?
It's not, it's sexualisation. It's mild sexualisation, it's far from the only sexualisation, there's nothing inherently wrong with sexualisation, but it's still sexualisation.
Given the context and the different audience, they decided to to draw the line on this almost irrelevant feature. I can't blame them.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@Ryu_Niiyama
"Women come in all shapes and sizes and a good character editor will reflect that."
Exactly. Women do come in all shapes and sizes. This however, was a bad character editor. It did not reflect that. It reduced the range of female body types to just boob size.
They don't bat an eyelid in Japan because they are accustomed to far stronger sexism in popular culture.
I don't think this is to do with age rating so much as it is to do with taste. The west is comparatively tolerant in it's own way, but with that comes respect.
The context of the sexualisation here is cheapening and inappropriate to a Westerner. If a product was aiming for cheap gratification in the first place, the West generally accepts it's right to exist.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@ikki5
The bust slider is already sexualised content. Like I've said a few times, it's not one of many personalised sliders, there is just body size and chest size, on female characters. It's obviously sexualised. I think it's silly to deny that.
It'd only cause minor offence (compared to the other removed content) but they simply decided to draw the line at a slightly different place to you. It's a completely reasonable change.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@DarkKirby
"As a gamer, I want to play Japanese games because they are different from American games."
Japanese version is still available.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
@ikki5
My point is just that this game has cut two separate forms of titilation. You're OK with one cut but not the other? Ok, most of us probably agree. But why get angry over their decision to cut both? I can see more people finding the tit slider immature than people finding it an essential feature. I think that ratio would definitely be more heavy in the West than it is in Japan.
By the way, the cut didn't sexualise the feature, and it wasn't just a body part. As I said before there is no shoulder, hips, legs, waist, bottom size sliders. Providing just 'body' and 'bust' is sexualisation. I'm not bothered by it but it simply is.
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
For what it's worth, I too am in the skimpy-13yo-thumbsdown-but-tit-slider-thumbsup camp.
But look at how absurd this debate is. Defending a personal stance on acceptable titilation for a game that has had both the above removed. You're ok with tit sliders but draw the line at 13 year olds? Great, but this isn't much of an issue is it. Is it really worth getting upset over both being removed?
Re: You Can't Alter The Chest Size Of Female Characters In The Western Version Of Xenoblade Chronicles X
"Nintendo's digging their own grave"
"RIP"
"it's the fact that we aren't given the choice."
etc
Haha! This is great. Fight for gamer freedom!
Or stand back a moment. The west enjoys it's titilation but is a touch more sensitive to skimpy 13 year olds and tit sliders than Japan is.
I only see body and chest size options. No hips, legs, shoulders, bottom. It has nothing to with diversity, it's simply a very slightly pervy and very slightly sexist feature of the type that Japanese are more accepting of. Westerners are slightly less so - most people wouldn't care, a few would find it distasteful, NO ONE would be excited about it. For a feature so extremely minor, it's really not worth the negative reaction that we all know it would receive.
Re: This Is The Last Real Console Cycle, Proclaims Industry Analyst Michael Pachter
He's very likely right though. It probably will head that way eventually. When Nintendo first muttered NX and said it'll be a new "platform" but not a console as we know it, I was curious if it'd be something along the lines of a gaming software environment - platform independent, like Steam. It'd explain the new tied in rewards scheme. Imagine the Wii U O.S with it's integrated e-shop, miiverse and various other channels was available as a future PC/set-top box download on registration or subscription. I love Nintendo consoles and I am extremely impressed with the Wii U's dashboard presentation. if focussing only on that software meant future-proofing the lovely Nintendo experience, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.
It might be a fair few years yet, but we're probably heading that way. I can't argue with wotsisname's vision here.
Re: Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Acknowledges Nintendo as a 'Beacon' for First-Party Games
@Kage_88
"On the Wii U, I think people downplay how many units they've sold."
This statement in particular interested me. The Wii U hasn't moved a whole lot of units, but I'm wondering if Spencer is implying that there is more to console success than sheer numbers (like overall profit, or revenue streams from games and other services).
He's saying that simply because Wii-U and XBone sales are very close.
Nintendo's fall in performance is gaining negative attention but Microsoft is certainly in no position to call their current numbers bad.
And they're not bad. Nintendo have had some extraordinary highs in the past. Criticism from drama press and weird advice from patronising experts always focuses on the downward slope, but peaks are unmaintainable. They, erm, peak. Phil Spencer isn't a bedroom CEO. He's looking at the numbers from a much more realistic and knowledgeable perspective.
Re: Industry Analysts Speculate On Nintendo's Future And Satoru Iwata's Possible Successor
"Reggie: American"...
Haha, plus the fact that he's little more than an amusingly overblown PR guy. Nintendo Japan (aka Nintendo) don't even tell him what they're doing.
Re: Negative Reception For Devil's Third Is Due To Poor Player Skill, Claims Tomonobu Itagaki
@gussie Well said.
There's nothing like that moment where your skills finally click together in a really difficult game. A moment that is now rare to me as I either don't have the time or patience any more - despite this, I'm still offended by the removal of penalties (to the detriment of gameplay) found in the action games that are tailored to my laziness. Since Half-Life set the bar, almost all "adult" "action" games are a passive trudge through a really long and awkward (and desperately cool) cgi movie.
An action game today that takes a few attempts to beat the first section. Fancy that! A little bit of preview time is never going to give justice to a difficult game.
Itagaki does make a good point. Perhaps Devil's Turd just looks a bit crap.