yttrium13

For whether the DLC was done before release: working on DLC before release is common in the game industry. Every software product has a point where you say “no more new content/features, we’re going to polish for release” and you shift to bug fixes, balance, performance, maybe voice acting. For an incremental business software update it might be a month or two before, for a AAA game this period will be much longer.

If you have a large team a subgroup can start working on DLC after you make the content cutoff while the rest of the team is getting the main game properly polished. This happens often and is not the same as just chopping a piece of the main game off. It’s not exploitative.

That said, it probably is overpriced. $10 maybe.

@Kingy With the way game development works, new feature/content development will be finished well before release as you work on bugs and other polishing. It is unlikely Nintendo fully developed this at the same time as the base game, more likely it started with a subteam when the base game was already feature-complete and being polished. This is common practice for DLC in the industry and isn't predatory.

That said, the cost is a separate matter and I am more sympathetic to the argument it's too expensive.

Yeah this was an RPG mechanic well before Pokemon. Even storing specific monsters inside an object to summon later existed, such as the 1996 PC RPG Exile 2: Crystal Souls. And that’s just one example.

@shgamer it’s very likely for Nintendo to assist third parties in porting games to their own system.

Yeah I actually think this direct being mostly a nothingburger with the only major release a year+ off is a good thing. Gamefreak might finally be learning to slow things down. After the way the last one was received announcing another mainline game already would be bad news.

Marketing gimmicks aside, the Genesis had a faster processor and it did make a difference in some ways. It could handle more fast-paced action with large numbers of sprites without slowdown, which is why it's generally better at shmups and sports and run-and-gun games for example. Multiplatform games often ran better on Genesis too, though not always of course.

The SNES had more advanced capabilities with graphics and sound, but the Genesis was not without its own advantages too. (Before anyone calls me a Sega fanboy, I grew up with Nintendo, I can just appreciate the Genesis's strengths now as an adult).

I'm a huge GX fan (like X too) and would love to see another one.

The problem is that F-Zero doesn't sell. GX was a really big-budget game and it flopped saleswise, and then the next couple GBA games sold badly enough to kill the series or at least put it into hibernate. And the futuristic racing subgenre is basically dead (even Wipeout is gone) - while F-Zero would have no competition in the field, it also means people aren't very interested in that type of game.

That is why Miyamoto says "we need to do something new" while they're content making iterative Mario Kart games - F-Zero sells badly and would need something new to attract more fans, and it would need to be something that wouldn't betray the basic feel of F-Zero.

So l want F-Zero to continue, but I understand why Nintendo is hesitant about risking it. If we ever see a new F-Zero game, it will probably be smaller budget than GX. Don't expect FMVs and voice acting, for example (that stuff was probably bad for the long-term health of the series - gave the game big sales burdens).

First of all, Steam does not generally deep-discount games at launch. In fact, major retail games generally start at the same price as the physical version. Discounts come later.

Second, Steam has other download services competing with it. Services like GoG aren't as big, but they still matter. There are many ways to get a game digitally on PC, and they drive each other's prices down. This is part of the reason Steam's sales are so big. Any console platform has only one digital shop and does not have as much outside pressure to lower prices - the only competing digital services are on other platforms, which obviously isn't the same thing.

I do agree that Nintendo should do more sales with all their digital content (not just retail) though.

"... PC Gamers have been playing largely digital-only for years though, and all we get is sale after sale. Seeing as you can get 75% off most games on Steam during the Summer sale, I'm kind of just waiting for console gaming to move past the awkward digital-only introduction so we can get to the actual benefits."

Steam has other digital services to compete with such as GOG and GamersGate. None of them are as big, but they still get a lot of customers. This is one of the things that drives the big sales - Valve (and GOG or the others, they do sales too) want people to buy from their platform instead of a competitor's.

For the forseeable future, consoles would only have one digital shop, so it is unlikely the prices for console games would go anywhere near as low if they went digital-only. Sales would be smaller and less frequent.

@tanookisuit You are misinformed about copyright laws. Buying a copy of a game does not give you a license to download ROMs and emulate it whenever you want. ROMs are only legal if you obtain them from a direct dump of your own legally purchased copy. Almost no one does this, so the number of ROMs being used legally out there is very small indeed.

Honestly, with classic games on every platform getting digital releases for low prices, the number of justifications for emulation (or "abandonware" on PC) has grown pretty thin. Maybe you could argue that rare games with no digital release or localization are okay because there's no other way to play it (I'm not sure though - my thinking has shifted). But it's still illegal regardless.

That doesn't mean Nintendo has handled its VC service well, but that's a separate issue from the legality of ROMs.