It is important to question what you think a boycott will do.

Do you think you are going to make a giant movement that changes the world? If so… you should stop eating those lead paint chips. Consumers, historically, will only engage in a boycott if there are alternatives. Shop at Walmart instead of Target. VERY short term you might get someone to boycott Amazon for a few days but… just check “leftist” forums like resetera for everyone immediately losing their shit over how a few older activision games they will never play are on sale.

Video games, contrary to what people will say, don’t really have alternatives. We’ll joke that The Last Descendent was “waifu frame” but the people who love Warframe very much have reasons for not wanting to play TLD and vice versa. Let alone games like Call of Duty where there really is nothing close to an alternative.

So “boycott to fix the world” (and I am gonna expand on what THAT would be shortly…) ain’t a thing.

So… now it is up to why? Personally, I “boycott” Ubisoft and have for the better part of a decade at this point. I think the last game I bought “from them” was GR Breakpoint and I got that years after the game was basically dead and on a hefty discount (see: lack of alternatives). I am under no illusion that my wallet is going to lead to yves et al leaving their own company out of shame for their role in enabling a culture of sexual harassment (and allegedly more). But I do know that I feel a lot better when I look at myself in the mirror and most games I am interested in DO have alternatives.

So do you think you are going to change the world? Cue Nelson Muntz. Do you just not want to contribute to the culture of loot boxes personally? Go for it. And it doesn’t matter what people on not-reddit tell you.

As for what you think will happen: I think we can all agree that Nintendo upping the… Err, let me rephrase that. I think we can all agree that any company other than Nintendo upping the base price of a game to 80 USD (pre-tariffs…) is REALLY bad for the industry. But… inflation IS a thing and while game sales have skyrocketed… game dev has too. Money has to come from somewhere. And RMTs (lootboxes, cosmetics, etc) and constant flows of DLC have actually been great for the industry. It, for two decades or so, stopped the endless “ramp up, ramp down” model where people would be hired to work on a game, fired when it went gold, and then hired again 6 months down the line if it got green lit for an expansion. Get rid of RMTs and we go back to that for all but the largest studios because you don’t need artists when you are fixing a bug in Batman’s cape and so forth.

So, personally? I buy and play games that I like. And a lot of that does have to do with the monetization model. Something like Warframe is RMT based and has some sketchy purchases but also is (mostly) playable as a free game and is built around “free” content. Whereas something like Genshin Impact is marketed as “you never have to spend a dime” but… yeah. So the games that “do it wrong”? I am… kind of already “boycotting” them because I am just not interested in them.

I and many people with a Cool PS2 can attest that AMD hardware has no problems running Switch games.

nVidia genuinely does not care about gaming. It is just a way to have a few extra bins to increase effective yields for their datacenter/AI chips. If Nintendo wants to buy in bulk they’ll sell in bulk. And if Nintendo doesn’t like nVidia’s prices they can talk to AMD… like the other consoles did. Jensen will just sell those chips as mobile devices or cars or whatever.

Most speculation was around 400 USD for the switch itself for the given specs, tooling, etc. The Steam Deck is a different process but their LCD model is pretty indicative. 450 was a bump that would account for economic uncertainty and give them room to drop back down for regular discounts and the like.

Then trump trumped the bed and the previously expected buffer zone just isn’t enough. Which is why we are seeing the massive price hike.

Been more than a minute since I touched my PSP but I remember the stick on that (and the Vita?) being pretty dogshit. Less of an tilting analog stick and more of a weird slidey one. It is Nintendo so whatever they do is amazing and perfect but they probably wanted to use the same parts on both the pro controller and the joycons.

Unless they change away from using cheap potentiometers, it will.

For those not aware: A potentiometer (“pot” from here on out) is effectively a resistor where you move a contact back and forth. When it is at one end, the resistance is very low because electricity barely moves through the resistive material (often graphite). When it is at the other end, the electricity needs to move throughout the entire stretch of graphite. With very basic math you can figure out what percentage X and Y you are at which translated to analog movement.

Designed well? The contact moves across the resistive material in a way where there is no damage (scraping). Given infinite time it will eventually become a problem but that is well beyond the lifecycle of the console.

So why do analog sticks wear out so fast? Because they aren’t enclosed systems. Dirt and dust WILL get into the chamber and then it gets caught between the contact and the material and scrapes up said material. This leads to drift in the sense that dirt causes the contact to stick and loss of precision as material is scraped off. That is why electric contact cleaner was a great stopgap but couldn’t actually repair any damage.

So why is the switch in particular so shit at this? Because an xbox or playstation controller has a big rigid plastic cover that more or less seals the pot off from the environment. It isn’t perfect but you are getting very little dirt and dust into the controller and up that dome.

The switch? It is a rubber flap over the joycon that you can lift up with your finger. Great for cleaning, horrible for keeping clean.

I haven’t looked too close at the new joycons but I would be shocked if they changed that design. So they will almost definitely still suffer from excessive drift REAL fast.

If anything, Duskbloods further confirms this is a B game. They took a mode of Elden Ring/Dark/Demon Souls that people have historically loved (jolly coop) and built a game around that. It is no different than building a game around dodging (Bloodborne), blocking/parrying and traversal (Sekiro), or even just one off arena fights (… MANY of the Armored Core expandalones).

They built it for Nightreign. They did a much scaled down version for Duskbloods as a way to get a sack of cash from Nintendo and to pressure Sony into letting them go back to an IP they like (Bloodborne).

It really IS fun to watch reactions from people who have never had any experience with From outside of as “The Dark Souls company”. They have ALWAYS done this kind of shit (hell, they even did it recently with the VR game nobody played). They have their A team work on their flagship IP whether that is Dark Souls or Armored Core or King’s Field. They have their B team(s) work on more experimental games. Sometimes it is something nobody ever remembers (was it Decirine?) and sometimes it is a cult favorite like Shadow Tower Abyss or Bloodborne. But the existence of Master of the Arena didn’t mean an AC2 wasn’t coming just like AC2 Another Age being weird barely connected missions on a pseudo-tactical map didn’t mean we weren’t getting AC3 and so forth.

The reason the switch 1 was emulated so fast was a hardware vulnerability on nvidia’s part. Presumably we won’t see that again.

Also: While switch games DO run better on a steam deck, they don’t run great. And I think estimates put the switch 2 at closer to a PS4 than PS3 in terms of power? But even PS3/360 games don’t run gerat on a Steam Deck.

Not to mention nintendo’s lawyers putting the fear of mario into the emulation community.

So in a few years? I could see MAYBE some proof of concepts. But I doubt we’ll actually be able to properly emulate switch 2 games until at least 2030.

Its almost like those “politics” are related to why the pricing is weird?

But hey, fuck em. This is hype train time, right? We should be thankful it is only eighty bucks for Mario Kart because REAL fans would give them a hundred bucks for the greatest game ever made or whatever asinine bullshit.

You DO realize that a port is not just as simple as picking the dropdown in your editor to compile for switch versus xbox versus PC, right?

There is a substantial amount of effort to do any kind of port. And for one where the default experience is a 1080p handheld display? The kinds of games that only have M+KB support (because people are also forgetting the “KB” part…) are not the ones that run the best on tiny screens. And where the default use case is having both joycons still connected to the device.

Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely corner cases. But we literally went through this with the Steam Controller a decade or so ago (15 years?). Consoles are a giant part of the market and targeting xinput gets you an interface that works on all of those AND improves the experience for a lot of users on PC. Versus finding a way to downscale your input to just a mouse and 8-10 buttons?

The number of third parties that meaningfully benefit from the switch-mouse are going to be very small. And most, if not all, of them will also have gamepad support for people who don’t want to have to sit at at a table with a surface that is compatible with said switch mouse.

OH! If studios were really going to specifically target switch ports for RTSes and Grand Strategy games, we would have seen a lot more that took advantage of the motion controls of the Switch 1. That shit was wild.

Eh?

Conceptually I like the idea.

But even if it isn’t uncomfortable to use and has decent DPI? It is going to have the same problem the OG steam controller or even the PS5 adaptive triggers have. If only one platform is going to use an input type then it is not going to be used by any third parties.

Yes, in this case it is two platforms: Switch and PC. But the number of developers who will say “I can make a switch port and only a switch port of my game” are few and far between. They’ll once again focus on how to make gamepad work because that gives them ALL the consoles, the Steam Deck, and even helps us olds with RSI.

I assume it will be on basically every subscription IGC.

Big lump sum to start with and guarantee they have a successful launch for any investors. And then people will buy it when it leaves the IGC in 6-12 months because they put it off or were waiting for a DLC or whatever. And then they’ll buy it on every single platform because Hollow Knight is that damned good.

But the actual price to get something in an IGC is not as high as people think it is.

Its hard to tell what exactly their MS deal is and it would be surprising if MS had much influence beyond “We are part of the first release date”

But 2025 is actually pretty plausible. Pure speculation, but if Silksong was in the polishing/padding stage in even late 2023 and Team Cherry are financially stable? Waiting for a new console release makes a lot of sense. ESPECIALLY the Switch 2 since…

Look. The Switch 1’s launch year was a fucking shitshow. Yeah yeah yeah, they had the greatest wii u of all time and blah blahblah. But the first party releases were pretty jacked up. It was “the Nindies” that carried the Switch 1. And it was ridiculously good for those indie studios who basically were the only games available for the latest Nintendo gameboy.

And Switch 2 is looking the same. That sizzle reel was almost all “We have a small DLC for the Switch 1 game!” and “This will be available in 2026”. So you can bet plenty of indie devs and publishers were in talks with Nintendo about when the release window was so they could decide if they wanted to wait or not.

… The entire hour long show IS an ad.

I think Switch 2 is more likely. Which run their sizzle reel in April?

I obviously don’t know their financials, but I am going to assume a month or two isn’t going to change things all that much for Team Cherry.

So they can either launch for Switch 1 (and everything else) and be “just another game”. Or they can launch for Switch 2 (and everything else) and be the ONLY game. Plenty of “nindie” games did exactly that during the, quite frankly disastrous, first year or so of the Switch 1 and it was amazing for their studios.

Launching as part of the XBOX Boy or whatever MS calls their handheld is also an option. But MS is almost definitely going to take advantage of the albatross that was the Series S to have significant cross compatibility.

Yeah, taht is more or less where I come down. “AI” upscaling is spectacular. Frame gen is much more hit or miss

The main problem is that, as with most things, people are stupid. They don’t understand that an outlet like Digital Foundry or even Gamers Nexus are going to be harsh on upscaling/frame gen because it actively makes it hard for them to give you guidance on what performance you can expect. So “This is horrible for benchmarking” becomes “This is horrible”

Painkiller. A franchise where I like every game considerably less than the previous one.

Still, OG Painkiller and its (first) expansion was REAL good. I also loved that you were just some nebulous dude who was murdering the generals of Hell to be reunited with his wife in Heaven rather than a rogue demon/angel or a CIA wet works agent or whatever we are up to now.

That comes up every time there is a re-release or a remaster.

If you are content with your setup, cool.

But this is Nightdive. They cook. It is already confirmed to have a subset of the community patch as well as improved visuals and hands and controls. So in terms of “worth it”… it probably is for the vast majority of people even slightly interested in SS2.

System shock 2 is still a spectacular game

Considering what a shitshow tourists are in Japan? I completely get why they would comment on this rather than just say “It is a video game, who cares? Next question”.

Last time I was in Kyoto I swear a local priest/monk was about to throw some 'bows when a German tourist an his family just walked straight across a zen garden.

Still, the endless chud culture war is always incredibly tiring. And here I am playing Rise of the Ronin instead (the PC port is ass but it is functional ass!). Chuds hate it because women exist. They SHOULD hate it because you can totally gay seckz Sakamoto Ryoma but that would involve knowing anything about the game that isn’t in a launch trailer. Sort of like how Nioh “got away with” acknowledging the existence of Yasuke because all the chuds tuckered themselves out before finding out he was in that.

You’ve kind of keyed in on one of the things I was hesitant to say:

There are two big uses for an “offline” media library.

Some people just use it for all the stuff they grabbed off the pirate bay (probably avoid TPB in 2025 but…). You don’t really care about quality and just want to consume media.

Others, like myself, primarily use it to rip/back up their blu rays and UHDs and the like. If I am watching on my TV in the living room? I want that to be the highest quality I have available and I want to revel in every shadow gradient and so forth. If I am watching it on my computer? I don’t need anywhere near that much detail. And on a tablet? Compress that shit like an exec at netflix just saw the storage arrays.

That is the benefit of transcoding and offline caching. It means you, as a “server”, just focus on backing up your library/finding the best quality rips or whatever. And you, as a “user”, don’t have to worry about figuring out how many different versions to keep so that you always have an appropriate version for whatever your use case is that week.