81–90 of 217 posts
This is one reason I'm over and done with proprietary consoles. So tired of shitty company's like Nintendo being able to call any kind of shot. They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that they are an objectionable and ass-backward company on so many levels. I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.
For context, the Wii used GameSpy under-the-hood. You weren't necessarily required to use it (as evidenced by EA shipping their own system) but most developers did. The reason why Wii online was shut down was specifically because GameSpy got bought out and started massively increasing their server hosting costs.
Of course, that's a little different from the Rendez-Vous situation, because presumably Nintendo is hosting the servers and just put someone else's software on them. Still, it's strange that they built two different account systems - and I suspect part of the reason why they're shutting down the Wii U and 3DS systems is purely so that they don't have to support what sounds like a nightmare, anymore.
Here's to hoping they built the Switch's online somewhat sort of correctly...
Distributing games via physical copies is already a profit loss compared to distributing them via an online store, and distributing different cartridges per-game means even more supply issues for that specific game. Allowing players to do a one-time burn of the game they purchased to a blank cartridge would mean game companies could sell the game at full price digitally, make an extra sale on the cartridge, and gamers get the security of knowing that if servers were going to be shut down, they'd have the ability to burn the games they care about to physical media and be able to keep playing them. Win win for everyone.
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Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…
Looks like the Xbox 360 will get more than 18 years of online store support. That's a really long time considering it launched in 2005. I would take 18 total years online support for the Switch. It's been out for 6 so far, so even if I "only" got 12 years out of my unit (I just bought one recently) that would be pretty good... ...but not excellent. I bought a Wii in 2008 and after a long time in storage I pulled it o…
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Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…
WiiU and 3DS eShops are already closed: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/... but to your point, you can still download owned games and DLC "for the foreseeable future", just purchases have been removed. You still have the option currently to migrate any leftover funds to a newer Nintendo account.
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This is why I don't buy a console that doesn't have a functional jailbreak/softmod. You can't count on these companies to care about the consumer past the initial purchase. If you can jailbreak your console there are plenty of sites that preserve the released games that you can install after the online services are shut down.
We've moved so far into the "you won't own anything" lane that it got me thinking back to how we deal with the rest of the world. For instance we actively dissuade people from taking photos during foreign trips or at the restaurant because they're supposed to be enjoying the experience, instead of viewing it trough a viewfinder. We haven't reached a point yet where people are arguing they should have a copy of the ti…
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I bought physical copies of my Switch games for that exact reason. I can dump the carts somehow and play the games legally using an emulator if/when they pull the plug on it.
This was my tactic as well. Seeing Xbox and Playstaion making console versions without optical drives has me worried about what the future may look like.
Games are routinely coming out with ~60-100GB day-one updates.
I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've moved so far into the "you won't own anything" lane that it got me thinking back to how we deal with the rest of the world. For instance we actively dissuade people from taking photos during foreign trips or at the restaurant because they're supposed to be enjoying the experience, instead of viewing it trough a viewfinder. We haven't reached a point yet where people are arguing they should have a copy of the ti…
I agree that we should think about whether or not it's better to let the past go and just enjoy experiences during their time rather than expecting them to be around forever, but I think your tiramisu example actually makes the opposite point - recipes like that are in the public domain and there will always be kitchens if you want to make one, whereas an online game server is a closed system that disappears if it's…
Now to get back to the tiramisu part, I think what makes it delicious in some restaurant is either obfuscated (e.g. the chef has a specific way to process some of the steps, or use some benign undisclosed ingredient). Or it's based on a specific ingredient that won't be available to anyone seeking it. For instance the coffee they use come from the chef's own farm, or they grind it a specific way that only works with their machinery as they haven't gone public about it.
In many ways I think the generic recipe of most games is widely available: if we gave you a team and a few billion dollars, you could probably make a generic Fortnite clone in less than a year. But would it be as good as what Epic's team is providing right now ? probably not ? (no offence)