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Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

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Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#121

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

solardev wrote: post #101
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a petition that would require publishers to leave games in a playable state at end-of-life ( https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home ), but it doesn't look like it will reach the threshold that would require the parliament to respond. It is one of the bigger petitions though, so it might still trigger some action.

Wait, in the EU you can just petition the government and they have to respond after some threshold?

"Some threshold" is doing a lot of work here, since the requirement is a million signatures (which also need to be from multiple countries).

I made a small mistake, the response will be from the Commission, not Parliament, because only the Commission can propose laws anyways - but you do get a hearing in parliament.

But essentially, even crossing the million signature threshold doesn't win you anything but a slightly bigger soap box and the promise of the Commission giving you a "no" in writing rather than just ignoring you. There is no requirement to actually act on it, and no way to force it (unlike e.g. in Switzerland where actual binding popular votes can be initiated with enough signatures).

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#122

Post by delfinom »

altairprime wrote: post #48
jsheard wrote: post #16

I get that Switch 2 games need faster storage, and that makes the traditional model of running games directly from the cart prohibitively expensive, but they could have just copied the Xbox/Playstation model of shipping physical games on slow media (Blurays in their case) and then having a mandatory installation step which copies the data to the fast internal SSD before you start playing. That way you're not entirely…

It’s to prevent warez rips as well, though. Performance of the SD card can be easily worked around; blocking the non-preservation segment community that just wants to download and play Switch games without paying for them — the majority of which don’t care about historical preservation or speedrunning — is made much easier by simply not loading new games from SD cards at all.

Not to mention there is an alternative to SD cards, which is what modern mirrorless cameras have been moving to.

CFexpress cards. Basically M2 nvme cards in a external pluggable form factor.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#123

Post by wodenokoto »

lelag wrote: post #35
mysteria wrote: post #6

In the computer games industry pretty much everything has been download only for some time as the assets are too large for DVD and BD never caught on for PC. Places like GOG provide unrestricted offline installers but the majority are provided via a storefront like Epic or Steam. The worst case scenario for preservationists is for games to become a streaming service via cloud gaming, which publishers may like since i…

Interesting point about PC going digital-only as Nintendo is a fascinating counter-example. While they offer digital downloads on the eShop, their pricing actively discourages it. Case in point: I just bought my kid a new first-party Switch game. Physical copy on Amazon was ~25% cheaper than the identical digital version on Nintendo's own eShop. Even my 9-year-old noted how illogical it seems, the physical version re…

I believe it’s to ensure retailers want to sell the games.

When I go to virgin mega store, there’s a large section of Nintendo games, but nothing for any PC games.

If it was cheaper to buy online, why would I buy physically, unless I was really into it physical media.

And that segment isn’t big enough to cause retailers to put up a section in the mall, which not only works as a point of sale but also as a giant advertising banner.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#124

Post by rincebrain »

musicale wrote: post #118

It's a shame. The beautiful thing about Switch game cards is that you can just pop them in and play. Compare that to PS5 where you have a lengthy installation followed by a 40GB download...

As other people have observed, some Switch games did this too, in part or whole, it just wasn't branded as a distinct feature like this, the games just said "you need to download a day 1 update", like in your example.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#125

Post by rincebrain »

kcb wrote: post #116
ferguess_k wrote: post #40

I think Switch is just following the other consoles eventually. This lead me think, is there any 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit native handheld (not Pi emulation) market? I guess the primary difficulty is to make games for them, so most likely just a small hobbyist market. I still think kids don't really care about graphics though, at least when they are young.

There's this, https://play.date/ . Haven't heard much news about it lately though. Feel like any handheld built around a relatively cheap microcontroller should be shooting for a much lower price point.

Economy of scale only saves you so much at small batch sizes, plus I assume the unique input setup drives up the BOM price a fair bit.

I think they did a few blogposts about having initial teething troubles getting consistent manufacturing, so they might have a significant upfront expense cost to subsidize (which probably explains why they're raising the price again...)

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#126

Post by nly »

solardev wrote: post #101
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a petition that would require publishers to leave games in a playable state at end-of-life ( https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home ), but it doesn't look like it will reach the threshold that would require the parliament to respond. It is one of the bigger petitions though, so it might still trigger some action.

Wait, in the EU you can just petition the government and they have to respond after some threshold?

We have this in the UK too,but it's a waste of time.

You just get a stock/automated response to most petitions.

That said, they are required to set aside some parliamentary time for it and for petitions to be "debated".

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#128

Post by MoonGhost »

Why don't we just keep as much of high-resolution gameplay videos as possible. This makes reconstruction possible at least in theory. Not now, but with the time it should be possible to reconstruct similar experience even for multiplayer online games. Not the code, of course.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#130

Post by dmwilcox »

whitehexagon wrote: post #76
dmwilcox wrote: post #70

I guess I'm the odd duck with a switch that has never been online. It sounds like the switch2 isn't for me. Sad but I don't want another device that wants to be more than it is, I basically want an updated version of my gameboy from the 90s and that's it. No downloads, no network, no social, just a game you can quietly play anywhere when you have a bit of time, no nonsense

Hah, I thought it was just me. Mine was the same, never online, and this key based card thing makes me think that my next, and probably final console purchase, will be a replacement Switch 1. Although I saw the prices just went up, and I didnt even know about the oled version. The main thing that holds me back is the dof blurr in Links Awakening. I imagine that Nintendo want a slice of this subscription based gaming…

That's amazing! Thanks for the tip!
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