I figure someone had to make a discussion about this. (We got one for the NES "Classic", although I suppose that's more relevant to this website.) For people who have happened to dodge YouTube for 24 hours, (#1 "trending" video) it's the NX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI (Damn that music sucks.)
The biggest reason I'm excited is that everyone else seems to be. While I was initially a little disappointed that this would not be a conventional home console (although I honestly wasn't expecting one), I realize that Nintendo has always excelled at portable consoles and, really, makes sense. I'm also glad it puts the BS power issue to rest, as people can't possibly expect this relatively tiny thing to be as powerful as the next VCR Microsoft makes.
I gladly embrace that they are using cartridges. From cost effectiveness to reliability to performance, they are better than discs. Man does that controller look uncomfortable though... Look at the "awesome" D-Pad. Whatever. At 2:46, my mind was set.
So, it's a tablet with gaming controls that uses cartridges. How innovative. (Sarcasm level: 100%)
Shut up and take my money.
Is it just me or was that trailer extremely cringeworthy? I'm surprised anyone could feel excited from watching that. Is the game footage for real? If so, what the heck is going on with the shading in those games?
Eh, console gaming has been dead to me for years now, it's not surprising that I'm completely disinterested in this.
tokumaru wrote:
Is it just me or was that trailer extremely cringeworthy?
It was. Stopping a basketball game to play a basketball video game? The fact that we need to know what it is called every 15 seconds? The song? ("I need you like bacon needs eggs"?) The larger-than-life Splatoon tournament? I'm honestly surprised how popular it is right now. I find it kind of incredible how well this was hidden until now, which I think has a lot to do with it. If Nintendo can keep this hype until March (My 18th birthday, oddly) is another deal.
tokumaru wrote:
Is the game footage for real?
Screen images are almost always simulated in commercials. As for the footage itself, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just rendered on the computer. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Skyrim and 2K game videos are recorded from another system. About the lighting, I personally didn't see anything particularly odd.
koitsu wrote:
So, it's a tablet with gaming controls that uses cartridges. How innovative. (Sarcasm level: 100%)
I don't know of one that uses cartridges, but yeah.
My Samsung Galaxy Tab A uses cartridges called microSD cards.
The innovation is actually putting some marketing effort into a tablet that ships with gaming input. Previous efforts at this (Xperia Play, Archos GamePad, Shield, and a bunch of JXD tablets) never had much of a promotional campaign stateside. Plus they were stuck with an operating system
known for audio latency so long it's distracting.
Word on the street (ie: Twitter and NeoGAF) is that it's likely to throw mobile-style power and thermal management out the window when docked. I imagine this would be to enable true 1080p on the TV without a performance sag (the handheld being 720).
93143 wrote:
likely to throw mobile-style power and thermal management out the window when docked
I wonder if the stand itself actually includes additional hardware to boost it. I'm not sure how possible that is though, or if it would even be needed.
Better heat management, possibly. Anything else will be tricky, even given hypothetical hot-pluggable PCIe lanes.
lidnariq wrote:
Better heat management, possibly. Anything else will be tricky, even given hypothetical hot-pluggable PCIe lanes.
Nintendo ought to know all about
hot-pluggable PCI Express lanes, seeing as
Thunderbolt has been in
Pikachu's learnset since
Pokemon Yellow Version.
But seriously: Back when it was still called NX, there were rumors that the stand contained a "performance module" with an extra GPU. And if that's really a Tegra in the Switch tablet, NVIDIA is also known for its
Optimus technology that switches between the integrated GPU and a separate discrete GPU depending on a power and cooling profile.
Espozo wrote:
tokumaru wrote:
Is the game footage for real?
Screen images are almost always simulated in commercials.
And I can actually verify it is here too. If you look at about 2:25 at 1/4 speed, it appears that the bottom right corner of the screen is going through her arm a little.
Yes, the gameplay videos are CLEARLY overlaid, but I was wondering whether it was actual game footage. The weird shading made me think it wasn't.
tokumaru wrote:
The weird shading made me think it wasn't.
I'm really not sure what you're finding weird. Both Mario Kart whatever and Splatoon (2?) look almost identical to how they are on the Wii U in terms of graphics (which includes shading). Skyrim looks normal, and NBA 2K always looks like everything is made of bright plastic:
I think it was the Zelda game that looked the weirdest to me.
The shading is odd in it, in that it's cell shaded about as much as Skyward Sword, but really only with the characters while the environment looks more realistic, I guess to pop out more. You can see it better in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPxiXXxftE (I'll tell you what's not more realistic though, and that's the ugly ass foliage on the trees) It kind of reminds me how just about every interactive thing in Metal Slug is outlined while the background isn't necessarily.
koitsu wrote:
So, it's a tablet with gaming controls that uses cartridges. How innovative. (Sarcasm level: 100%)
My biggest relief in all of this, was that it wasn't.
It gives me the same vibe as when I tried the Vita before launch at the Tokyo game show. It button seems small and the technology seems behind what smartphone was doing at the time. Right now it just a video but I have a bad feeling about it.
Nintendo mostly been targeting kids since the game cube and whatsoever but the video the have shown... No kids around. It shows situation that you should socialize instead of playing game. It make not much sense. I wouldn't buy that for my kids... They would destroy it in no time! The 3DS/2DS is still more kid proof than that.
Banshaku wrote:
the technology seems behind what smartphone was doing at the time.
Personally, with the Vita, I wasn't concerned about smartphones because all the games (except the ones by DotEmu
) suck. I don't care if a smartphone had as much power as the Tianhe 2, the games would still look bad because of the production values for mobile games. Similarly, I don't see the Switch as competing with tablets (Maybe other than a fairly small but powerful Surface Pro, in that we're talking about a PC now), but rather next generation home consoles. The Wii U was top for only like, a year. Because of Nintendo continuing their awkward release dates, this will also be able to compete with current consoles, but like I said, probably not Microsoft's next VCR. However, I hope people don't expect it to be considering it will be a fraction of the size. Taking into account that it's a portable, I think the hardware is perfectly adequate, more so than the Wii U was. It's also nice (for this) that graphics have really seem to plateaued out even if the hardware is getting better, although hardware hasn't. I guess that means the Switch could still be hurt, like how I really don't think games on the Xbox 360 before the Xbox One look much uglier at all than games on the Xbox One, despite the fact the Xbox One is something like 4x as powerful, but post Xbox One Xbox 360 games look like garbage, because they can't port over the exact same version and know that "people can't possibly expect the Xbox 360 to look as good as the Xbox One" and sloppily throw something together.
Banshaku wrote:
Nintendo mostly been targeting kids since the game cube
I thought it was more towards the Wii, because I don't see how the GameCube is any less "manly" than the N64, although I suppose the N64 wasn't purple and didn't have a handle. I tell you what though, Super Monkey Ball is no kids game!
Banshaku wrote:
the video the have shown... No kids around.
Nintendo has said that it's been trying to "redeem" itself from being too "kiddy" since the Wii (although the Wii U was a lame ass attempt). Basically, if they get 3rd party support, that's when it becomes less "kiddy". The Zelda game did seem a lot more like something that you'd find on the competing consoles though, not because of the violence, but because of the gameplay. If Nintendo is trying to push toward eSports as evidenced by the coliseum filled with people wanting to watch Splatoon (probably the most ridiculous part of the whole video) at the end of the video that would be another way they'd be trying to be more "hardcore". I think games are starting to go away from having everything be gray and brown (I'd say the peak was during the later half of the last console generation) in favor of more color.
R-Type II did it first.
Banshaku wrote:
It shows situation that you should socialize instead of playing game.
You mean you
wouldn't play a basket ball videogame around people actually playing basketball? (sarcasm)
Banshaku wrote:
I wouldn't buy that for my kids... They would destroy it in no time!
I mean, this thing is
obviously not for your kids, right? (sarcasm again)
I just noticed, wow, that video took a giant nosedive in popularity. Hopefully that's not reflective of how the thing will sell.
As long as it's still got a strong Nintendo backing, I'm interested in it. Does anyone even call Nintendo "kiddy" anymore? The "Nintendo is trying to be less kiddy" defense comes up a lot, but I haven't seen anyone actually making that claim for a while now. If anything, it's used as just a "I had the choice between Sony, MS, or Nintendo but I could only buy one so therefore the one I got is the best one" justification.
The funny thing is that I've argued over and over that putting games on SD cards is perfectly fine, considering the alternatives of trying to do UMD all over again. Google says the maximum capacity for a blu-ray disc is 25gb, 50gb for dual layer. The best selling SD card on Amazon is 32gb, which is on par with a typical blu-ray disc. Storage wise, a big budget PS4 game could fit on an SD card of 32gb or 64gb. The capacity is there and affordable.
Speed-wise, the PS4's optical drive is 6x = 27mb/s. The same best selling SD card is C4 = 4mb/s minimum. The same manufacturer offers an UHS-I SD card with 32gb and speed class C10 (= 10mb/s minimum), advertising a max speed of 80mb/s. Also mentioned was that write speeds are lower than read speeds, and speeds depend on interfaces, devices, and environmental factors. If the lower write speed is why this card is only rated C10 instead of U3 (= 30mb/s minimum), then the read speed would be enough to be comparable to the PS4. Though, a U3 rated card would 100% match and surpass the PS4's read speed.
Since SD cards are meant for both high speed reads and writes, dropping the writes from the equation would simplify the technology involved. Writes would only be necessary to save game data, allowing read speeds to be concentrated on.
Finally, discs can be scratched easily, all it takes is to set them down on any surface, to grab them wrong, to hold them wrong, or to have a dirty optical reader. SD cards aren't without faults, but they sure seem to be more durable.
Drag wrote:
considering the alternatives of trying to do UMD all over again.
Yeah, that was a really stupid idea.
This is what we need
In all seriousness though, do you have any clue how much of profit is made on SD cards? I can't imagine this thing would cost even close to $100. Obviously, we don't need anything near as powerful as this, I'm just being dumb.
Commodity products are almost always low margin. Even on bleeding-edge things like a UHS3 64GB card: the price is high because yield is low.
That and a lot of games would still fit on a dirt-cheap 16 GB card, for which I imagine yield is somewhat higher.
Espozo wrote:
the coliseum filled with people wanting to watch Splatoon (probably the most ridiculous part of the whole video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LUpgu7aCTI...
Also, I just realized that if there's an F-Zero for this thing (rumour has it the shoulder triggers are analogue), it could end up stomping on my nomenclature. I've got a bunch of ideas for an SA-1/MSU1-enhanced version on SNES, and I'd been assuming the name "F-Zero SX" was free...
Oh well... not like I was ever actually going to seriously tackle such an enormous (and copyright-infringing) project...
93143 wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LUpgu7aCTI
That event doesn't have
quite the same turnout.
(I mean damn, there were probably more people in the stadium than there are in North Dakota)
93143 wrote:
if there's an F-Zero for this thing
Pleeease be so! I want 30 person online multiplayer.
@Espozo
Maybe your view is from the US so you don't have the same opinion as I have. In Japan, the market for casual game was owned by nintendo until the arrival of smarphones. Now everyone have their phone so nobody see the use of such game. It quite obvious that they want to take back that market but I guess they don't understand the demographic at all.
People in Japan, casual gamer, they don't have time to play game so the only time they have left to do so it during the train ride to work. So the kind of game they are looking for are small time wasters while waiting for your station. Especially in Tokyo, trying to play portable games during rush hour is near impossible but a one handed smartphone game is still fine.
10 years ago you would see people with their DS or PSP playing monster hunter or whatever because it was the only thing available at the time. You could play games on your mobile phone but the game were awful because every manufacturers had their own ecosystem causing their own small walled garden with no compatibility between terminals. It was so fragmented that it was not worth publishing something on that. With the arrival of smartphone and F2P, this changed everything. The market in Japan for mobile game is now huge compared to other countries. These days except for kids with their parents, you don't see anybody with a 3DS/Vita/etc on the train: everybody plays on their phone. This is the path of least effort so people won't use anything else.
As for the WiiU... The sales in Japan are quite abysmal (better than xbone but this is another story..) and now the PS4 is gaining back a little bit shares compared to the 3DS but still the market is not that healthy. How does Nintendo make most of their profits? The 3DS with kids games. So by denigrating their main audience and trying to get back the older crowd that migrated to smarpthone and will not comeback their are shooting themselves in the foot.
In you keep in mind what I said about how the mobile game market is huge is japan, when Nintendo announced they would make mobile game on smartphone with DeNa (Mobile game company) their stock soared. People have being asking for Nintendo for a while to make games but they always refused to do so. Now with the Switch with something that seems fragile like hell they are targeting the people that won't come back and forgetting about their main audience,which are kids. I'm not saying that adults don't play wii/wiiu etc, I'm just telling that in Japan kids are their audience.
So for now with the current state of game in Japan, the Switch , a portable that nobody will use in the train anyway because of it size and everyone have a smarpthone... they will have a hard time in Japan to sell that. It may work in the US since people still remember Nintendo from the nes days but here... After the announcement, the stock dived for 2 days in a row.
TL DR:
Nintendo is targeting the wrong audience, the casual gamer in Japan won't come back from smartphone because mobile games in Japan are quite popular.
On the other hand, if they were to target the casual audience, the Switch would be a terrible product.
I don't care about Nintendo's stocks. I care about getting a great video game platform.
Sumez wrote:
I don't care about Nintendo's stocks. I care about getting a great video game platform.
Nintendo cares about its stocks. Nintendo doesn't care about what you care
All I'm saying is that whenever a company releases a new video game platform, people tend to be too busy trying to analyze what would be a good marketing strategy, rather than what they'd like to see for themselves. I don't see the point in arguing why it would be better for business to focus on making F2P casual mobile games, when we should be happy that they chose not to.
@Banshaku
I do not get your argument. You're saying that Nintendo should focus more on casual games, even though you're also saying that smartphones have dominated the casual video game market? Also, what Japan wants is not what Nintendo wants. Despite being a Japanese company, like any company, Nintendo is more focused on making money than anything, and Japan has far less potential customers than the U.S., both because of the larger population of the U.S. and the overall decline of video games over there. I mean, hell, the PS4 came out in the U.S. before it came out in Japan. This isn't exclusive to video games either; Japanese brand cars are made in the U.S. and brought to Japan because much more are sold here.
Actually, a good, old example I can think of where a Japanese company was more focused on its foreign markets than its home country were the 1942 and 1943 video games...
tokumaru wrote:
Nintendo cares about its stocks. Nintendo doesn't care about what you care
I think Nintendo cares more about what its potential customers (like him, and also I who share the same oppinion) care about than its stocks. Reception for this has been surprisingly positive, despite the drop in stocks.
Quote:
Nintendo cares about its stocks. Nintendo doesn't care about what you care
Not singling anyone out here, but this is too common of an argument. Yes, as a business, you have to make money or else you don't get to stay in the game. However, to say something like this implies that they're
only in it for the money. Let's not forget that Iwata was there until he
died, Miyamoto joined up there decades ago and is
still there. It just feels like a pot shot when so many people can so casually dismiss someone's efforts as being passionless.
And like I said, I don't think number of stocks is the number 1 indicator of how well a company is doing, although I'm no financialist so you can correct me if I'm wrong.
@Espozo
I'm not saying in any way that nintendo should jump on the f2p bandwagon crap with the switch, that was not my point of my argument. I'm not fond of such game which are often just a threadmill for selling more IAP. On the contrary, I hate them like the plague. What I said is:
- the mobile market in japan is huge and Nintendo didn't try up to now to target them with casual games on smartphone. Some game like Super Mario Run and a fire emblem are coming soon though
- the switch trailer seems to target the casual gamers which is already lost to smartphone and forget completely about their current market, the kids with games like pokemon which is their bread and butter now
- the stock market in Japan reacted to this for that reason
The switch should focus on gamers and have a good portion or their kids games promoted too. The mobile part is quite useless for outside BUT could be used at home when the kids want to play games but other people want to use the tv. What they shown in the trailer seems not the right market to target so the fault is on their marketing department.
Yes, the market in the Us is bigger for console but in Japan this is not the case anymore. It is normal that that companies in Japan would react that way with the current state of affair here. The stock seems to have stabilized now so the blow is not so bad.
@Drag
I don't think the stock market is everything and hate that gambling thing but it sometimes shows how investors feel confident about a product. For example, with pokemon go, nintendo stock literally doubled since people have been waiting for a while that they try to target mobile and reacted to it (even though we know that it's not Nintendo that did it but niantic..). There are a lot of talented individuals at the kyoto head office and I'm not saying anything about that. I'm just concerned about what the hell their marketing department is smoking because that trailer was awful
Let's not forget that rather than short sighted investments, one of the reasons Nintendo are what they are today (and no matter how poorly you think they are doing - they are still worth more than Sony) is because they have always been protecting their integrity and people KNOW that they can always expect quality games from them.
Giving in to sloppy casual games would cause a lot of people to lose their faith in them, and even though it might make a lot of money for them now, it may destroy their brand in the long run. There's no saying how long mobile games will keep bringing in money, or how easily they'll be able to compete with the random success stories like Flappy Bird and whatevs. I think the Wii was really on the edge in this regard, but at least they kept the usual high standard with their own games!
But now I'm just doing what I just criticized other people of doing, so as I started out saying, I'll just remain glad that they seem to be focusing on things that I like, rather than other things that may or may not sell more.
Maybe adding smartphone capatibilities to the new console could blast the sales.
Just an idea... maybe even a bad one, since the costs envolved could make the price skyrocket.
Fisher wrote:
Maybe adding smartphone capatibilities to the new console could blast the sales.
Just an idea... maybe even a bad one, since the costs envolved could make the price skyrocket.
Absolutely not. Making it a phone is not just a non-feature, it's an anti-feature. It's too big and heavy to carry with you in your pocket or hold up to your head. Then people would be tempted to buy it and use as their only phone, and you would inevitably get family conflicts where one person wants to play, and the other person needs to take a call. Making it have smartphone features would actively work against what it attempts to be.
Game consoles will probably die soon, companies really don't know where to go with them anymore. What Sony and MS have are just computers with controllers, the hardware doesn't matter at all as long as the graphics are pretty, and Nintendo is trying to come up with the next big hardware gimmick, but they're overdoing it and not really finding anything that captivates the masses. I'll be surprised if the Switch does any better than the WiiU. The Switch is kinda all over the place, it's a console, it's a portable, it's a tablet, it's a multiplayer portable... I mean, while it may seem like a wide range of options would have the potential to captivate a wider audience, it actually ends up showing a lack of focus and clear direction, and the chances of the different aspects of the console not being properly explored increases.
Anyway, what do I know? This is the opinion of someone whose latest console is a PlayStation 2, and has been completely out of the loop for over a decade when it comes to modern gaming in general. These are my impressions, though.
tokumaru wrote:
Game consoles will probably die soon, companies really don't know where to go with them anymore. What Sony and MS have are just computers with controllers
Computers that invite players to connect more than one controller. Computers that come with a living-room-friendly case from the factory. Computers that aren't bogged down with quite as many background tasks. Computers guaranteed to support particular shader and texture compression capabilities, allowing micro-optimizations to rendering paths that take those into account. Computers where all applications are certified by the operating system publisher, and end users don't have to worry about having to leave the safety of the official store to play a particular game. Computers where someone playing online multiplayer with strangers is far less likely to run into cheaters.
Which assumptions in my article "
Consoles are easy" no longer hold?
tepples wrote:
Which assumptions in my article "Consoles are easy" no longer hold?
Because you invited me...
tepples wrote:
Computers that invite players to connect more than one controller.
Not the case anymore...
tepples wrote:
Computers that come with a living-room-friendly case from the factory.
What does this even mean?
tepples wrote:
quite as many background tasks
I'd almost say debatable now.
tepples wrote:
allowing micro-optimizations to rendering paths that take those into account.
Like there's any kind of optimization in modern games.
tepples wrote:
users don't have to worry about having to leave the safety of the official store to play a particular game.
Aren't 99% of computer games now bought from Steam?
tepples wrote:
Computers where someone playing online multiplayer with strangers is far less likely to run into cheaters.
By that same note, you can't mod the games nearly as easily, which is something I enjoy.
Game consoles aren't going to die any time soon, for the same reason desktop computers aren't going to die.
Despite game consoles, mobile phones, and PCs all being capable of playing games, each device satisfies a slightly different market, and there will never be a device that can satisfy the needs of all three, because the device would need an unreasonable amount of features, and each user will only use the third of the functionality that pertains to them. That's a pretty big waste of resources and would have a greater cost than benefit.
I'm the type that likes gaming time to be a session of sitting on the couch with a big TV and a good adventure to tend to for hours. I prefer the luxury of ignorance, where I don't have to worry about hardware, compatibility, workarounds, hardware, upgrades, etc; I prefer the game to target the console, not my PC to target the game. This is pretty much the definition of a console gamer. Mobile gaming and PC gaming don't quite fit the bill.
Espozo wrote:
Like there's any kind of optimization in modern games.
Apparently
years worth of my professional life doing optimization work on modern games were some kind of hallucination.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
Computers that invite players to connect more than one controller.
Not the case anymore...
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U still encourages use of multiple controllers. In fact, Nintendo made available an adapter to plug in GameCube controllers.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
Computers that come with a living-room-friendly case from the factory.
What does this even mean?
So-called "wife acceptance factor". Gamers' significant others tend not to want a big, ugly, noisy tower in the living room.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
quite as many background tasks
I'd almost say debatable now.
Compare to Windows 10, with antivirus, Windows Update, application-specific update services, and all those other services running in the background, plus a bunch of minimized apps that the player has left open expecting to return to using them after the game is over. Modern consoles tend to dedicate a core to that stuff rather than letting a general-purpose scheduler steal CPU time from the game at inopportune moments.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
users don't have to worry about having to leave the safety of the official store to play a particular game.
Aren't 99% of computer games now bought from Steam?
Except those that say "Now available on Itch.io. Vote for us on Greenlight to help us get on Steam."
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
Computers where someone playing online multiplayer with strangers is far less likely to run into cheaters.
By that same note, you can't mod the games nearly as easily, which is something I enjoy.
There are points for both sides here. On the one hand, some publishers prefer platforms where they can sell two games to a customer to platforms where they can sell only one game whose replay value the user extends through modding. On the other hand, games that serve as a platform for mods see continued sales to people who buy the game just for the mods. But when I've tried to bring this up on other forums, some console fans accuse people who like mods of being cheapskates because they're Eastern European or otherwise in a country whose currency is undervalued.
rainwarrior wrote:
You say a lot of hella ignorant stuff, Espozo.
I saw this coming from a mile away.
tepples wrote:
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U still encourages use of multiple controllers.
When we were talking about consoles versus computers, I had automatically assumed we mean Xbone/PS4 vs PC. I definitely see the advantages of having a Nintendo console instead of a PC for first party games, like this one.
tepples wrote:
In fact, Nintendo made available an adapter to plug in GameCube controllers.
I know, because I own one. I couldn't get used to using the Wii U gamepad of pro controller to save my life (or Captain Falcon's, rather.)
tepples wrote:
Gamers' significant others tend not to want a big, ugly, noisy tower in the living room.
I guess they're out of luck if their husbands bought an Xbone.
tepples wrote:
Except those that say "Vote for us on Greenlight to help us get on Steam".
They're not going to be on consoles either.
tepples wrote:
when I've tried to bring this up on other forums, some console fans accuse people who like mods of being cheapskates because they're Eastern European or otherwise in a country whose currency is undervalued.
Wow, they're even bigger asses than I am!
Edit:
Quote:
Apparently years worth of my professional life doing optimization work on modern games were some kind of hallucination.
Why did you change your original statement?
Espozo wrote:
Why did you change your original statement?
It was insulting and written in anger, and I felt I shouldn't contribute anger to the conversation. I'm sorry.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
Gamers' significant others tend not to want a big, ugly, noisy tower in the living room.
I guess they're out of luck if their husbands bought an Xbone.
And I guess my perception of the PC vs. console debate is biased by my interactions with a fan of PlayStation consoles on this other forum, who takes jabs at Xbox 360/One platform policies just as easily as PC.
Espozo wrote:
tepples wrote:
Except those that say "Vote for us on Greenlight to help us get on Steam".
They're not going to be on consoles either.
Some people find value in these low-rent games made by wannabes with a dream living in mom's proverbial basement. Others find value in their remaining out-of-sight and out-of-mind, and they choose consoles specifically to avoid what they perceive as the same sort of crapflood that nearly killed the North American video game market in 1983 and 1984.
Espozo wrote:
rainwarrior wrote:
Apparently years worth of my professional life doing optimization work on modern games were some kind of hallucination.
Why did you change your original statement?
He probably thought of a better way to express what he meant without the put-down. Not everybody consistently phrases every statement with both accuracy and tact on the first try.
rainwarrior wrote:
I'm sorry.
No need to say sorry! (I appreciate it though) I will admit, I am pretty ignorant...
Anyway, to make this post not totally worthless, I found out something that's very mildly interesting and that's that the actors for the Nintendo Switch commercial (or at least one of them) were pretty much randomly selected off the street. Unsurprisingly, they never actually got to play any games, and apparently one of the Japanese people had to have their hair died blonde for the shoot. (yes, it's a Kotaku article, fight me.)
http://kotaku.com/what-it-was-like-to-m ... 1788202165
tepples wrote:
Which assumptions in my article "
Consoles are easy" no longer hold?
Your site shows "Internal error, cannot connect to database".
Click reload. Does it still fall?
I have no problems loading pineight.
I'm not having any problems either.
Works now. I did reload a few times back then.
I agree with Tepples. Although some games get out on physical media incomplete and need a multi gigabyte update from day 1, consoles are far more easier to use to play games than a PC, and have no background processes.
I'm almost like Tokumaru, just my last console was a Wii.
I bought mainly because my daughter just loved Mario and Kirby, but I end up playing Metroid Other M and RE Darkside Chronicles.
I have not played much on PS2 either... looks like I have more fun with games that I first played as a kid.
On new games I mostly end up impressed by the graphics and sound, but soon get bored by the gameplay.
Maybe I should visit a psychiatric...
Fisher wrote:
On new games I mostly end up impressed by the graphics and sound, but soon get bored by the gameplay.
Current-gen games in a nutshell. My newest system is a Wii, but I think of the GameCube as the last 'good' console. I enjoyed Melee and Double Dash much more than their sequels, for instance, and most of the games I liked on the Wii are ports from older consoles (Ookami, Pikmin, Metroid Prime, Twilight Princess...) anyway.
I'm thinking of getting a Wii U now that it's on its way out, if only to play Xenoblade Chronicles X (I'm a Xeno-series addict). Any other Wii U games that aren't a waste of money?
Rahsennor wrote:
I enjoyed Melee and Double Dash much more than their sequels, for instance
...and in the case of F-Zero GX, you're not going to find one.
Anything after Super Monkey Ball 2 might as well not exist.
Rahsennor wrote:
Any other Wii U games that aren't a waste of money?
Splatoon. Literally the only reason I got a Wii U, and I've played it easily 5x as much as any other Wii U game I own. Super Smash Bros 4 is good for multiplayer, but the single player is abysmal and you're honestly just better off playing Melee. Mario Kart 8 is okay, but I got F-Zero GX slightly after it and I never came back (much better game). If you've played New Super Mario Bros before, you've played them all, so there's little to no reason to get New Super Mario Bros. U, but Super Mario 3D world is actually pretty fun and I'd say the best Super Mario Bros game since Galaxy 2. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is like Donkey Kong Country Returns but actually feels like a different enough experience (unlike the New Super Mario Bros. games) to be enjoyable even if you've played the first, and forgetting about uniqueness, is a better game, although I haven't fully beaten it. (Any time I feel like playing my Wii U, which isn't often because I have my already fairly limited free time divided, I usually feel like playing Splatoon.) The last game I own is Nintendo Land (which came with it) and I kid you not, I probably only spent 3 hours with it total (compared to 500+ with Splatoon). I wanted to get Star Fox Zero, but I know I'd never get to playing it.
But yeah, Definitely Splatoon, and maybe Super Mario 3D World and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.
I love Mario 3D World. I think it's the first 3D Mario with good controls (along with 3D Land on the DS). It doesn't quite have the rich bizarreness of Mario 64, but it's very good 3D platforming, and does a lot to keep it fresh through to the end.
Mario Maker and Splatoon are the two big ones for the Wii U.
Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros are both very good for when you have friends around.
Yoshi's Woolly World is very pleasant, not too difficult. Bayonetta 2 is a good action game. The Wind Waker HD remake is a better version of Wind Waker (a good Zelda if you haven't played it before). DK Tropical Freeze is pretty good, gets quite challenging by the end.
I even liked Star Fox Zero a fair bit once I got past the awful controls.
I never had an N64 / GC / Wii so there's a big backlog of Wii and Virtual Console stuff I wanted to play on this, so that added a lot of value to it for me that probably a lot of people wouldn't get out of their Wii U.
(Similarly, the Switch doesn't seem very appealing to me on its own. The Wii U pad is the worst part of the Wii U, and it seems to double down on that without offering much else.)
I don't actually have a Wii U (my little brother has one, mainly for Smash 4 I expect), but I hear Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, Paper Mario: Color Splash, Rayman Legends, Super Mario Maker and FAST Racing NEO are good, in addition to the ones already mentioned above. There are more highly rated games than just these, of course; at some point it's a matter of what your tastes are.
Star Fox Zero got a lot of backlash for the dual-screen gyro scheme, but a lot of people seem to like it once it clicks (which seems to take on the order of ~40 minutes or so).
Rahsennor wrote:
only to play Xenoblade Chronicles X (I'm a Xeno-series addict). Any other Wii U games that aren't a waste of money?
Besides Xeno, I'm thinking of getting the new Paper Mario, I liked that series. Once I get a cheap WiiU, that is, may be after Switch's release.