Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by fennecfoxy » Fri, May 19, 2023, 9:35 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #346

mrguyorama wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with your general point but I don't think Tears of the Kingdom is a good example of it. They have clearly poured a mountain of design and engineering effort into squeezing every last drop of graphic fidelity and art out of the Switch. It looks really really good. Some of that is having the wisdom to choose an art style that works well on the Switch—a little cel-shaded, not a ton of texture detail. But, also,…

But that's literally just the lifecycle of every console pretty much ever. Gets released and devs don't focus on optimising since it has more power than previous generation. Then by the end of the gen, devs know the console inside out and are using all sorts of crazy tricks to improve performance. Devs build on top of what we've built before.

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

#512

Post by fennecfoxy » Fri, May 19, 2023, 9:38 AM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #464

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo is a deeply Japanese company, and in Japanese animation, frame rate can be heavily deprioritized. If they have a limited budget, and have to choose between better art/design, or better frame rate, they'll choose the art every time. Nintendo also clings closely to its roots as a toy manufacturer - their primary goal is to build games that are fun to play. It shouldn't be surprising that their focus on creatin…

The sales agree with you, but none of the art or design choices get worse by having hardware that won't drop frames to that degree. I realize they do this every console generation, but since they're no longer passing along the savings to the consumer, I'm not going to keep apologizing for them.

Sales are probably because they've sold so many switches and people don't have a choice. What could be considered a AAA game come out rarely on the switch Nintendo's biggest win was allowing indie games on the platform, without them people would realise how few games Nintendo actually makes.

They sold so many switches because of nostalgia and convenience/form factor reasons - switch is the only console in that form factor

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

#513

Post by orloffm » Fri, May 19, 2023, 9:39 AM UTC

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #434

ianlevesque wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah honestly they’ve exceeded what the Switch can do at this point and areas of the game drop to 20 fps. The game wouldn’t be worse at 60. 30 is widely viewed as the bare minimum.

Nintendo is a deeply Japanese company, and in Japanese animation, frame rate can be heavily deprioritized. If they have a limited budget, and have to choose between better art/design, or better frame rate, they'll choose the art every time. Nintendo also clings closely to its roots as a toy manufacturer - their primary goal is to build games that are fun to play. It shouldn't be surprising that their focus on creatin…

No. Mario Kart, Splatoon, Yoshi, Smash, Metroid Dread etc. are optimized for 60FPS. It's just they can't do the same with an open world game, so it stops becoming a priority.

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

#514

Post by fennecfoxy » Fri, May 19, 2023, 10:14 AM UTC

datpiff wrote: post #258

hammyhavoc wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and every subsequent generation. I still play, I've even IPS-modded the display on my DMG-01 to appreciate what the console could actually draw in terms of frames.

> even IPS-modded the display on my DMG-01 Haha, me too.

Same, although my collection is a GBC/GBA and PSP all clear shelled and with IPS screens. Gadgets don't have clear shells anymore :( hopefully it'll come back, was kinda cyberpunky

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

#515

Post by moffkalast » Fri, May 19, 2023, 10:17 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #230

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don't think anybody is undermining the effort/ingenuity some of these technical artists/engineers have. Its moreso the overwhelming focus of AAA game studios on this over gameplay. These artists/engineers have accomplished absolutely amazing things and really pushed the limits. But somewhat ironically... gameplay/story is still king when it comes to 'games. I will say, when a game does blend the two, th…

You're not being fair, you're making excuses. I was responding to a post that literally said "better graphics make a game worse." Bad writing and bad mechanics can absolutely ruin a game far beyond the ability of art to compensate -- but it's both absurd and cruel to blame this on art.

I think you're forgetting what actually makes a game at its core. What separates the medium from others are roughly these things: interaction, objectives, mechanics, feedback, challenge.

The art department can make the feedback better, the objectives clearer, the interaction easier, but fundamentally you can have a game without any art at all (see dwarf fortress, zork, etc.) and have it be a game, whereas a bunch of art assets by themselves don't a game make.

Nowadays it's all about marketing material and lying to people, so having good game art is prerequisite for great prerendered trailers that will drive preorders. But when you allocate all your budget to art, you don't end up with a game, you end up with false promises.

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

#516

Post by deskamess » Fri, May 19, 2023, 11:02 AM UTC

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 this the longest comment thread ever?

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

#517

Post by pallas_athena » Fri, May 19, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

ndesaulniers wrote: post #289

Here are some fun things people are building in TotK that got a rise out of me: Orbital strike laser canon: https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/13iwr0g/... Attack helicopter: https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/13hjd4p/... Mech/Gundam: https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/13gk3a6/...

These spawned a whole new subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HyruleEngineering/

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

#518

Post by Closi » Fri, May 19, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

tempoponet wrote: post #392

Closi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was launched in 2017 with a SoC from 2015, and the SoC contained a CPU that launched in 2012. Contrast this with the PS5, which launched in 2020 with an AMD Zen 2 CPU which launched in 2019.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the X1 CPU seems remarkably different from the 2012 Tegras like we saw in the Nexus 7 tablet. Here's a comparison I found https://gadgetversus.com/processor/nvidia-tegra-3-t30l-vs-nv... In what sense did the X1 cpu launch in 2012?

Despite what that site says, the Tegra X1 isn't a CPU or Processor - it is a SoC.

i.e. The X1 is a chip which contains lots of stuff including some processors from 2012.

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

#519

Post by likeclockwork » Fri, May 19, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #445

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Zelda's motion controls are great for what they're used for — but that's kind of my point. Even without using a first party controller, you're still enjoying controls that were designed for their own hardware. If TotK was released for the "Big 3" consoles + PC, motion controls couldn't be relied on, as not all platforms have the hardware for it. I'm not saying that they couldn't make it work without motion contr…

Wow. TIL that the Xbox One controller doesn’t have motion controls. I thought that was just standard these days. Even the PS3 had them. So in conclusion we have found a way to blame this all on Microsoft. :)

The Xbox controller is completely stagnant. It's also the standard controller for PC gaming.

It's the IE6 of controllers.

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

#520

Post by FractalHQ » Fri, May 19, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

I just wish Nintendo would sell the rights to Zelda, one of the most iconic franchises in gaming history, to a modern game company that won’t cripple it by forcing studios to cram it onto god damn potato. It’s fun, sure… but it’s so much worse than it could be.