Quoting: Pengling[...]And then the Switch hardware was incredibly poorly-built and I got sick of having to repair carefully-handled in-warranty gear [...]. It was a love/hate thing for years, and I already found there to be an ever-decreasing number of games I wanted to buy even before all of that, so it was inevitable that I'd end up taking my entertainment-money elsewhere eventually.

On the switch hardware note, the first time I held a Switch I noticed how tiny all the buttons and joysticks are. I'm sure it's okay for kids, women, asians, and people with smaller hands -- but it seemed like the joysticks had poor resistance, the material seemed like it would degrade easy, and I could see medium or big hands cramping up on that.

For me the Steam Deck felt lightyears ahead in terms of comfort.

And then when the Steam Deck OLED came along it felt like the reduction in weight made it even more comfortable.

All in all -- I think the perfect Steam Deck could shink 10-15% and stay the same weight and reduce the border, but that would be a optimization, I can't think of any above minor criticism I have against SD.

--

I hope you didn't have to buy that warranty only to be screwed by it later, this was part of my experience many years ago. I'm so thankful for PC and the ability to play my 1998 StarCraft and other games nearly 30 years later.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: ElectricPrismI get the sense Nintendo is in financial trouble again due to them lashing out.

I totally agree with all of your other points, but on this one, I think that it's something else. Reason being, the Switch is the world's third-best-selling console of all time (and is the all-time number one in France and Japan ) and is still selling gangbusters - their financials are rosy.

However, if current reports are to be believed, its successor isn't likely to do something new. We all know how the follow-ups to the best-selling consoles of all time pretty much never do as well. I think that it's more likely they're lashing out in advance of this, personally!

On that opinion and note, yes you are correct I am speculating using the big picture and available information.

The reason I have that opinion is because [1] The Sony Layoffs [2] Microsoft Layoffs [3] Other game studio merger layoffs -- Activision (and I forgot a few others)

And not only that -- if you follow the Japanese Yen and economy and global ecconomy of the west it's not doing particularly well, so I'm being a little preemptive (which I believe is required in making predictions.)

Anyone who rolls big money around knows that the bigger they are the harder they fall.

Rich people and poor people are exactly the same, they each carry debt except instead of maybe a few thousand dollars, a rich person has a "credit card payment" of several hundred thousand or million dollars.

So while these companies appear to be making it in the short term -- it doesn't take more than 6 or 12 months of mismanagement for a house of cards to come down hard.

Honestly, it's pretty sad -- I drive around and see lots of little guy businesses gone out of business. No bailouts for poor or families trying to make it.

GDP appears to have contracted in the US by 30% if I'm reading the quarterly reports correctly. I would love to root for Nintendo but they need to make some changes for me to vote with my dollar. Anti-consumerism shouldn't be rewarded in my opinion.

In any case, I take your opinion, we'll have to wait and see. I think the list of IP's that bit the dust 20 years ago are a good argument in favor of Game Preservation -- Rareware, 3D0, 7th Level to name a few.

If we let content be controlled and deleted the last 20 years won't be known as The Great Enlightenment, but "The Lost Age".

One reason as a consumer I could never get behind Google Stadia, and now -- I'm glad, I didn't get invested in any of their franchises, some of which I thought I heard are gone and done.

Thinking upon other franchies that are DOA that showed real promise, Storm United comes to mind -- if they only had a LAN feature then it wouldn't be avandonware, and the copies I bought useless.

Anyways, again I take your point -- time will tell, we shall see, this will be a interesting year for sure.

Edit: Also this may seem odd, but thank you for having contrary opinion, it's only through discussion and scrutiny that we can add contrast to what we believe is true and learn anything at all.

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I think we will see what I call "The Napster Effect".

An effect where [[[ Second Order Of Consequences ]]] are dismissed.

In the early 2000's the Music Industry resisted Inevitable Change. They lost control of dictating entertainment content to the masses. They attacked the middle man.

There is a inherit [[ secondary order of effect ]] where [[ piracy actually makes a thing more popular than it would have been otherwise thereby having the secondary effect of creating more sales ]]

Napster, Limewire and others sent some artists to Platinum Status. Eminem is pretty good example of "riding the wave" to success.

Counter-examples might be Metallica and Nickleback.

So the lesson here is the same one Social Media and Social News Blogs live by -- All Press is Good Press, or Controversy is Good For Business.

In Nintendo's case, what's worse than people pirating Nintendo games? Nobody pirating Nintendo games.

Why? Because nobody will remember their name or care.

By god I wish I could end all piracy of ALL Adobe products, think about the massive influx of money it would mean for open source free alternatives and other tools like Affinity and others.

This is how second order of consequences works -- and unfortunately the majority of the worlds population can't comprehend it -- which is why we keep shooting our balls off as a species.

A -> B -> C

Most people only understand A -> B

Eg: If I steal this from the store, I get it for free ( -> Possibly jail, market instability, being attacked by citizens who legitimately pay for products and patron the store)

Eg 2: I go to the store to get the food --> the store gets the food from the distribution --> the distribution gets the food from the farmer. If the farmer can't make the food -- I can't eat the food because there isn't enough food to distribute at low prices.

Common sense isn't so common anymore.

--

I get the sense Nintendo is in financial trouble again due to them lashing out. There's only so many games left before Shigeru Miyamoto (71) drops dead.

That guy literally is Nintendo's only asset -- like if Linus Tech Tips dropped dead LTT wouldn't be the same thing.

Switch was Nintendo's only thing, like how iPhone became Apple's only thing generating the majority of their revenue. And now Switch no longer has cornered the market and like 5 others have come in, Valve, ASUS, Lenovo, AyaNeo, GDP WIN and we will probably see others too.

And then the global recession is hitting now. Nintendo is probably screwed. They still think they are a hardware company too -- and just like Disney their only income is milking old IP.

They're circling the drain and won't be missed by me. Make way for more worthy gaming companies who don't assault their fans and deny them future preservation of their fan's beloved stories.

Just like the 1990s music industry lashed out, they are in for a serious reckoning. They should have made allies, not enemies.

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FINALLY Now I can buy Hunie Pop, Shakira whats-it, and College Bachelor Sex Party Deluxe without crippling embarrassment /s



I can finally have the college experience without the crippling debt or leaving the comfort of my sofa. /s

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I've been shitting on Nintendo for almost 2 decades now after they stole > $500 of my digital purchases.

Out of spite for Nintendo, when I was asked for a Switch by someone I bought them a Steam Deck (even though it costed more).

In my case, the saying comes to mind:

QuoteWhen people reveal who they really are, believe them the first time.

Nintendo is Asshoe, Nintendo will always be Asshoe until they get collapsed like SEGA, may they burn and be reborn like a Phoenix -- like SEGA was and actually produce sales on Steam (Look how successful Sonic on Steam has been).

This is basic common sense -- sell where the people are.

In the words of Gabe Newell:

QuotePiracy is a SERVICE problem

Steam, Netflix, and Spotify are all examples of piracy reduction by providing convenience.

Make sure everyone knows what Nintendo has done here. Make their face & reputation feel shame. Make them pay, the Zelda leak was entirely due to Their: __INCOMPETENCE__ and Their's Alone. And did they file the suit against the leaker? No. Instead they saw the Patreon income and projected the blame on engineers practicing a hobby that couldn't fight back.

Like a bully beating up a weak kid who just wants to be left alone to do his nerd shit.

Fuck Nintendo. May they burn.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRumI've always found this "Wine causes cheating" to be a bit of an excuse. The majority of cheat software is made specifically for Windows and in-turn windows games. They make these claims, but never back it up with anything other than saying "we just know".

It really feels like a false reason. I mean, don't you find it ironic devs will turn around and say "We won't provide a Linux build because the Linux market is too small!" followed by "We are blocking Linux because there are too many people on Linux cheating!". Well, make up your mind because both sets of the OS's cheaters are a small subset of that OS's users.

It's pretty funny when you think about it yeah

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When you're reich you're reich.

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Quoting: elmapulif companies like Nintendo succeed, we will lose access to more and more media over time, it might sound impossible now, but we saw that happening with many MMOS, we have some lost media in old games, and cloud is a big menace on our future (eg: cloud exclusive games)

Exactly, eg: Google Stadia Exclusives

Anyone remember The Sega Channel (back in the 1990s?) ... Gone....

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Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThe major way Wine differs from Yuzu is that Wine does not circumvent technological protection measures.

I 100% agree with you it __SHOULD__ but the world we live in "money talks, bullshit walks".

Assuming this is this American legal system we are talking about, I'm not particularly confident that a jury of "average peers" or citizens have the technical intellectual framework necessary to understand the difference between Wine & Emulation.

The name wine even is a bit of a acknowledgement of this conflation -- W.ine I.s N.ot a E.mulator.

I would love to be optimistic, but considering the levels* of idiocracy and incompetence in the modern age, I can't help but consider this to be a very real and serious possibility.

I can't see the slope any other way than slippery if they succeed.

(Final thoughts, most people don't know the difference between a JPEG and a GIF, we can't even get past annunciation.)

At least for the moment, Microsoft's Xbox division is interested in selling games and game services (GamePass). They have no interest in restricting games to the Windows ecosystem. That's why their games are on Steam. If they wanted to be petty, they could just only sell their games in the Windows Store. They aren't even restricting their first-party console games to Xbox.

If Proton means more people will play their games, I think they're all for it. In fact, I don't think Microsoft even wants to be in the OS business anymore. It's not their big money maker. Restricting games just doesn't benefit them financially.

So, yes, it's a possibility as much as anything is a possibility. But is it "very real and serious?" I doubt it. Not for now, at least.

I think you did a good job making a counter argument and while I could find myself agreeing with much of what you wrote I only disagree with:

QuoteThey have no interest in restricting games to the Windows ecosystem.

Before Halo 1 was owned by Microsoft Studios it was available on MacOS/OSX -- and after Microsoft bought it they pulled the plug on that.

We could probably discuss whether or not that is presently true of Microsoft. Come to think of it when they bought Minecraft I don't remember seeing a non-windows version.

Other relevant context may be the Microsoft 10 year plan leak where it was discovered Microsoft intends to get rid of all Xbox Discs by the next generation.

Historically with Windows 8 S IIRC they intended to lock all software to the Windows Store and in the future had a version of Windows that did just that again IIRC.

The saying comes to mind

"When people show you who they really are, believe them the first time."

I hope the backlash for Nintendo attacking customers is as effective as Unity trying to monetize each install and pretend that install-fraud couldn't happen.

If I've learned anything it's that public outcry and backlash seem to be the only thing that pushes the Iron Fist back.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThe major way Wine differs from Yuzu is that Wine does not circumvent technological protection measures.

I 100% agree with you it __SHOULD__ but the world we live in "money talks, bullshit walks".

Assuming this is this American legal system we are talking about, I'm not particularly confident that a jury of "average peers" or citizens have the technical intellectual framework necessary to understand the difference between Wine & Emulation.

The name wine even is a bit of a acknowledgement of this conflation -- W.ine I.s N.ot a E.mulator.

I would love to be optimistic, but considering the levels* of idiocracy and incompetence in the modern age, I can't help but consider this to be a very real and serious possibility.

I can't see the slope any other way than slippery if they succeed.

(Final thoughts, most people don't know the difference between a JPEG and a GIF, we can't even get past annunciation.)

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