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Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

pretendo.network

151–160 of 217 posts

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if you're playing on Linux a lot of those older games run perfectly through WINE, better than they run on modern Windows.

wine is rolled into proton.

Please excuse me while I become 'that guy', but Proton is a distribution of Wine with a bunch of patches and extra components like DXVK. The vast majority of proton is unmodified wine.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 10 runs on anything that will emit a clock signal It runs extremely poorly on low power hardware. Poorly enough that I consider it unusable. Windows 7 ran fine on the same hardware previously.

Seeing as we're talking about games, low power hardware isn't necessarily relevant.

We’re talking about games still being playable years later though, so there is an argument that older hardware is relevant (relatively speaking, anyway).

Games built for Windows 95 not being playable because your hardware can’t efficiently run Windows 10 is a relevant discussion.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still have an Xbox 360, and as I'm not a regular gamer it's still my go-to. We maybe bought in in '06-'08. if they would shut down only services (and I could still play offline), that's totally ok for me. 15 years for a console is a long time.

Nothing approached the Kinect, Just Dance of that era just owns.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#154
post #117

I wonder why people keep on giving money to this very toxic company. Vote with your wallet, people.

I do because I think of my gaming as a service. I see money out, and good time in. If I judge that the good time is worth the money, then I'll use the service, however they deliver it.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#155
I don't understand this thing about shutting everything down. I have a VPS that costs me £1.20 per month, so at the very base level if it is a service that nobody is using, then its maintenance cost can be extraordinarily small. And if people are using it, and you have a significant cost because of that, then that's a clear indication that it's too early to shut it down. Seriously, internet server bandwidth is cheap these days, especially compared to when these services were first put in place.

The only logical reason I can think of to shut these services down is to try to drive people towards new kit.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#156

I don't understand this thing about shutting everything down. I have a VPS that costs me £1.20 per month, so at the very base level if it is a service that nobody is using, then its maintenance cost can be extraordinarily small. And if people are using it, and you have a significant cost because of that, then that's a clear indication that it's too early to shut it down. Seriously, internet server bandwidth is cheap…

It's the security aspect. Nothing runs on an island, so there's the entire OS layer, libraries, and everything else. These require regular security upgrades, as vulnerabilities are discovered. Eventually, things are deprecated. Python, php and so on, have versions that are end of life. And so, you have to upgrade to an entire new stack. Often that requires upgrade to frameworks, and therefore code.

And beyond that, there's uptime monitoring. Security alerts. Logs to be read.

Bandwidth and bare metal costs are trivial, compared to labour to keep such things operational.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of two things happened. Some piece is now obsolete, and that requires a large amount of work to upgrade. Maybe a partial code rewrite.

Or someone key left. And training isn't seen as worth the effort, when #1 is close on the horizon.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#157

I don't understand this thing about shutting everything down. I have a VPS that costs me £1.20 per month, so at the very base level if it is a service that nobody is using, then its maintenance cost can be extraordinarily small. And if people are using it, and you have a significant cost because of that, then that's a clear indication that it's too early to shut it down. Seriously, internet server bandwidth is cheap…

I believe it’s actually quite expensive to keep a service in a working condition. You can’t just leave a system connected to the internet running for years with no oversight.

But ultimately, your last sentence points out the most important reason - the companies want gamers to spend time and money on new games.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#159

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…

I was about to buy the new Zelda game online, you are right though it’s hard to imagine how they can ever stop supporting it without everyone who bought a digital game coming to them with a bill. I wonder what the terms and conditions say?

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#160
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

It depends on what you think of as perfect. Microsoft stopped supporting XP in like 2009 and Windows 8 in 2016. I run all my windows games on my Deck using proton. Games that ran on Windows 95 usually aren’t supported by the companies that made them decades ago but fans patch them. I got Vampire the Masquerade running on my Deck with little effort. So “perfect”? No. But functional? Absolutely.

Yeah, I played Descent (1995) yesterday on my deck without needing to do anything but invert the y-axis on the keypad (which is non-standard). Aside from that the game ran flawlessly. I’ve played a number of my childhood games on the deck and been incredibly impressed.
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