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Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

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Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#421

Post by bluefirebrand »

giobox wrote: post #414
bluefirebrand wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found this to be the least impressive of all Link's new abilities personally, and fail to see it in terms of being some unreal technical breakthrough? It's literally just a jump through the surface directly above the player's head. Implementing Jumping through one-way platforms is easy. Implementing Jumping through anything , no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as havi…

> Implementing Jumping through anything, no matter how deep, and detecting the first safe place for him to stand, as well as having the ability to back out at any time to return to your original position, especially in a huge open world game like this? I'd say it's pretty technically impressive. Especially how fast it loads when showing the little upwards swimming animation. Its 2023, if this blows you away wait unti…

> Its 2023, if this blows you away wait until you see what else even 8 year old computers can do...

Like what? Another generic Sony open world game? If this sort of thing was so easy, why don't other AAA studios make anything remotely as interesting?

> which this feature doesn't really do, its a very ancillary feature to the game

This is honestly not even close to true. I'm not even sure you're playing the same game as me.

You can't solve 90% of the puzzles in this game without engaging heavily with the new mechanic. Hell, there's honestly large parts of the world you cannot traverse without it either. You can't reach large parts of the Sky without it for instance.

I genuinely don't know how you could play this game and come away thinking it doesn't do anything very interesting mechanically or technically.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#422

Post by yamtaddle »

byby wrote: post #229
mrguyorama wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are proving their point. Nintendo switched to the "don't care about tech" strategy because they had been pushing tech for 2 generations and only doing worse as a business. People preferred the Playstation 2 over the Gamecube because it had more and better games, and Nintendo spent the n64 and Gamecube console generations losing their third party support. That's also why the doubled down on their first party games…

The main selling point of Nintendo was always their ip. They're better at making games then making consoles. The only reason I have a switch is Nintendo ip otherwise everything else beats it hands down. With aging Nintendo hardware now all of it can be emulated in a pc. I barely use it anymore.

> The main selling point of Nintendo was always their ip. They're better at making games then making consoles.

I'd have to think about it, but I might defend the NES, SNES, and Gamecube as the best consoles of their generations, if we're just looking at the consoles themselves. The first two do even better if we consider the games, too (though the GC is plainly not its generation's frontrunner, if you add that—the lack of 3rd party interest really hurt it, its library is tiny, and consists mostly of few great Nintendo games and a bunch of terrible shovelware).

I'd put the N64 at a tie with the Playstation. The N64 looked better and had four-player support out of the box, which made a big difference in how many games supported four players. The analog stick on the controllers was a real problem, though, as was the storage size. Then again, the Playstation launched without any analog sticks. Call it a draw.

It's only really with the Wii that they stopped credibly trying to keep up (and IMO the Wii's various gimmicks don't make up for its deficiencies, among which I count some of those same gimmicks)

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#423

Post by erellsworth »

hospitalJail wrote: post #5

The marketing was insane as usual. Nintendo performed excellent. Multiple front page reddit posts, multiple 10/10 reviews from big name outlets. Nintendo rivals Apple as the best company in marketing. Nintendo has done some sort of mass psychology that allows them to have sub 30fps with no complaints, I was born too early to see this reviewed in business schools, but we are starting to see a bit of the innerworkings…

I'm not a mega gamer, but I've been playing console games since the original NES and I have never, not once, known or given a shit what a game's fps was. Maybe I just don't play the kind of games where it matters, but my guess is that most Switch users are in the same boat. People who care about FPS are more likely to go with Playstation or Xbox anyway.

BOTW was the first Zelda game I've played since the SNES days. I've never been a big fan of the franchise, but I still love these two games because they are fun to play. Everything else is window dressing.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#424

Post by hendersoon »

mrguyorama wrote: post #143
arnaudsm wrote: post #8

It is impressive that a game running on an 8-year-old phone GPU will likely be game of the year. Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.

Is it really that impressive that focusing on game design results in a better game than spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k? Better graphics rarely actually IMPROVE a game, and can do nothing to fix a game that was designed poorly. AAA studios whine and cry about how expensive games are to make (completely glossing over th…

Graphics don't impact gameplay, but this game really does look flat-out bad on a full-sized TV or monitor. Using FSR1 upscaling the realtime shadows (required for dynamic time of day) all "crawl", like a constant flicker in any motion, and it's really distracting. Level of detail "clicks" in when you're 20 feet away from objects, also extremely noticeable. And beyond the visual issues, it also suffers from a poor framerate in many areas. It can't even hit 30fps all the time.

It's true that gameplay trumps all, and it definitely didn't push me off the (excellent) game, but the Switch hardware really _substantially_ impacts the experience.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#425

Post by yamtaddle »

turbo_fart wrote: post #204
htag wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Switch actually came out as an advanced handheld. The appeal was that it was a handheld advanced enough to play on a TV. It's just that (especially handheld) technology have advanced in the last 8 years. On the Switch, Nintendo is simply extending it's console's life. I think a Switch 2 is likely from Nintendo, but they are also likely to release some other idea. Nintendo console releases are highly variable. The…

We just need a much more powerful switch that is 100% backwards compatible

This'd be a day-one purchase for us.

Emphasis on the backwards compatibility. I'll wait 2-3 years if that's not there.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#426

Post by za3faran »

dzonga wrote: post #85
arnaudsm wrote: post #8

It is impressive that a game running on an 8-year-old phone GPU will likely be game of the year. Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.

nintendo's playbook: bet on withered technologies. which means their focus is only on gameplay mechanics, story and art direction. not focusing on bugs that are well not known cz of using something too new, expensive etc. not fancy graphics, or other modern fancy things - that don't really add anything to the game. wish the software industry would learn to bet on old technologies and develop novel experiences on thos…

Not so dissimilar from Toyota then eh? :)

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#427

Post by alec_irl »

The big story with this new Zelda game, and why it is able to include so many deep and interlocking systems on top of a staggering amount of content, comes down to institutional knowledge at Nintendo. Many of the people working on or giving input on this game have been making Zelda games for decades. Eiji Aonuma, the current producer of the Zelda series, directed every mainline Zelda from Ocarina to Twilight Princess. Hidemaro Fujibayashi was at Capcom when he directed Oracle of Ages/Seasons, Four Swords, and the Minish Cap in the late 90s and early 2000s. Skyward Sword was the first Zelda he directed and he went on to direct Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. While Western games studios crush their developers with crunchtime and pursue flashy graphics over deep systems, Nintendo nurtures and retains its internal talent and as a result they do far more with technically inferior hardware. Contrast Tears of the Kingdom's smooth launch with the ongoing debacle of Overwatch 2 from Blizzard, whose devs just announced they won't be delivering one of the core promised features of the sequel. Obviously not every Western studio is as bad as Activision/Blizzard, but Nintendo running circles around everyone on 7 year old mobile phone hardware should prompt some serious soul searching for Western games execs.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#428

Post by bitwize »

toyg wrote: post #242
bitwize wrote: post #225

Based on the complaints about framerate, pop-in, etc. I'm strongly reminded of Shadow of the Colossus (2005) which had these same issues on its original PS2 release. It was truly a seventh-gen game running on sixth-gen hardware, revolutionary for the time but the available hardware struggled to keep up. Looks like time is nearly up for the Switch. Awesome run, though.

I think the Switch form factor will remain, it just needs a chipset refresh. It clearly hit a sweet spot that would be silly to abandon, I would expect Nintendo to have learned that lesson with the Wii U.

Nintendo would be fools to abandon the Switch form factor. And with the Steam Deck and Asus Ally delivering AAA-tier gaming in a similar form factor, doubtless some executives at Nintendo are stroking their chins, pondering how to evolve the Switch concept to take back the lead -- with airtight DRM this time, of course.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#429

Post by udkl »

timeimp wrote: post #9

For those out of the loop: think Garrys Mod (GMod) meets the Zelda series and yes, it was made by Nintendo themselves. The entire game is a fantastic example of well-designed map, gameplay, storyline / plot advancement, AND sandboxing all in one. Incredible to think that its also running on seven year old hardware. The emulation videos of the game running at 4K 60FPS on YouTube are astounding to watch.

For those not in the nintendo ecosystem, 'Immortals Fenyx rising' is a Zelda esque game to try. It's on game pass and is the best game ubisoft has made in some time.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#430

Post by dkersten »

pb7 wrote: post #378
dkersten wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > more detail doesn't make a game better > Have you played red dead redemption 2? The detail elevates the game to one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. Absolutely. Graphics do have their place, but most games don’t need to be that extreme level of detail. For one, I played RDR2 on a stock PS4 and the level of detail and immersion was incredible, despite the hardware already being underpowered by the time RD…

As someone that first played it on a PS4 and then again recently on a maxed out PC, I can confidently say the immersion was superior on the better machine. In fact, I was salty that I first experienced it on such a gimped device.

Superior, sure. I’m not saying that better graphics aren’t, well, better.

But I am saying that it’s unnecessary for a deep immersive experience. I was equally immersed 20 years ago playing Gothic and Oblivion as I am playing recent games, graphically speaking. IMHO the differences only become apparent if you play the same game with different visuals, as you did playing RDR2 on PS4 and again on PC.

It’s also worth remembering that the vast majority of players also don’t have access to a maxed out PC.

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