ryan_nil

@Ulysses Yeah, the use of AI in game development in this way is way less ethically problematic to me than using a general AI tool. Especially so if they use it more to cut down on repetitive tasks or get inspiration from past games (it would be especially cool if they trained it on released games as well as assets that were never used). I think older companies, like Nintendo, will have an advantage here, given the enormous amount of input they can feed it using only their own assets.

In general, I'm wary of the use of AI in creative endeavors. I am a software engineer myself (it's more creative than you might think) and was using it for about a year and turned all the programmer copilots off after getting the ethical "ick" for various reasons. The benefits are just not worth it at this point.

*Edited for clarity and grammar.

@RupeeClock If they ever do start using AI in any meaningful way, I would fully expect them to have model(s) trained on their own, internal resources. I would cringe if it ever got out that a character designer went to a general purpose image generator and asked for ideas on how to design the incarnation of Ganon or whatever.

I would also fully expect them to call their internal AI either Mother Brain or be a reference to R.O.B. =)

I was under the assumption (or delusion, if you will) that these would be S2 carts with the game and upgrade baked in. If so, I would have purchased them in order to have everything on the cart, even if it meant double dipping, in order to save space. Oh well. It saves me money, I guess.

I was a little disappointed when I didn't see any mention of VRR in the Direct but am very happy to hear that the hardware supports it. I'm really hoping that more games will be taking advantage of it and we just haven't heard those details yet. It would be really nice if Switch 2 had an option to apply it to games that don't explicitly support it (like PS5 has).

@KITG_GROUP This is brilliant and since it looks like the Switch 2 cases aren't transparent, there's no reason not to (other than cost, I guess).

They did not show nearly enough of this to convince me to spend my money. If I'm ever curious, I'll watch the inevitable gameplay videos on Youtube.

This does not bother me in the least. I'll be a bit more judicious with my game purchases (which I have been lately anyway), but for as much time as I'd spend on a new Mario Kart, is going to get? $80 is fine. If games in general are at the $70 price point, then whatever. Prices were going up across the board and Nintendo is not immune from the same factors that other game developers have to deal with.

I was a little surprised that Elden Ring made it to Switch 2 but I did not have "From Software exclusive" on my bingo card. I'm so excited!

Like others, this seems to point to cross-gen releases more than Switch (1) games getting an upgrade. I certainly wouldn't mind if certain games got a Switch 2 Edition with graphics/framerate boost. Hopefully, it wouldn't require a full repurchase to get those benefits.

I'm currently doing this with Elden Ring. My goal is to get every collectible item in the game and every ending. I'm currently on NG+5, working toward the last ending and only missing one item that I stupidly locked myself out of this NG cycle, so I'll have to do NG+6 for a little bit to get that last thing. However, I'm taking my time on this because I love the game so much. I could have blown through the last three NG cycles, but still do all the optional content, DLC, etc. Thankfully, you can re-spec very easily, so I could bump up my luck for the harder-to-get items.

Getting the platinum for Dark Souls 3 was a challenge, particularly the collectibles that are tough to come by if you don't play online (I'm looking at you, Proof of a Concord Kept!).

I generally buy physical on Switch, but on the rare occasions where I buy a digital title, the gold points were always a nice little discount. I'm old enough to have seen this kind of thing so many times that I'm never surprised when a company decides to remove something that its customers enjoy. I can either get angry at its removal or shrug and move on. The latter is much better for my soul.

I actually wouldn't have minded this for two reasons: 1. Berkshire Hathaway buys companies that are already successful and (if I remember right), doesn't really meddle in their business, so I doubt much would have changed and 2. It might have meant there was a Nintendo presence in my hometown. I live not far from Mr. Buffett and he will sometimes encourage the companies Berkshire owns to have a presence here.

@Milk_ I had no idea the first one was so small! Even at 8x11, that seems too small to be usable or even enjoyable to look through. These should be the size of the Future Press strategy guides, though I imagine the cost to make (and buy) them would be significantly higher.

I usually prefer to support the physical versions of these kinds of projects, but with this series being basically all maps, I prefer the digital so I can zoom in. I enjoyed the NES/Famicom maps book and first SNES volume and will grab the digital of this one when it's available.