Yeah, Nintendo is smoking unfiltered crack, lol. Who the hell has $80-90 to throw at every game in the midst of an unnecessary economic downturn and possible worldwide meltdown?
Oh no, just a USA meltdown. Trump isn't great for other economies, but we still have the rest of the world to trade with. The only thing he is achieving is making the usa less relevant by the day.
It will still cause other countries economies to shrink, as most economies are interlinked in the modern age; but even with the loss in GDP, removing US trade/tech/military reliance is definitely for the better imo. The USA positioning themselves alongside Russia has woke up the rest of the world to the fact that America isn't simply arrogant... It's also dangerous.
I don't see a way back for the US in all honesty. The problem isn't the rogue state behaviour, it's the virile support for such actions seen from many of their citizens. In the coming years we'll no doubt see American military bases being shutdown across the globe, in retaliation to their animosity, and it will only continue further until the US is a pariah state.
I suppose it's some solace that the democrats are able to somewhat slow the implosion of the US through the senate, but that won't be enough to stop them falling out of favour with the rest of the world, and thus losing a huge part of their power. And I have to wonder, is this the exact outcome Putin wanted (America surviving, but struggling... Allowing them to exist as the bad guy, Rather than complete desolation), or just a happy accident after getting Krasnov elected?.
I can't speak for every country, but I know that the UK (where I'm based) is looking at a GDP shrink of around 1%; though given our 'special relationship' with the US, and our FAFO era with Brexit, we're probably more dependant on American trade than your average long distance ally (or should I say former ally?), so I could definitely see other countries breaking even or even profiting from it.
As much? I don't think ever. Breath of the Wild is still it's release price despite it's sequel, in the same world but with more content, being out and the same price. They're insane.
Yeah, the company has gone full greed mode since Iwata's passing. I know the point of a business is to make money and all that but he at least kept things fair for the consumer.
Hopefully this system isn't the smashing success that the first Switch was and it humbles them a bit. Beyond the price gouging, the novelty of the concept has worn some and this system really doesn't do anything all that exciting beyond improved visuals (which doesn't excite me as somebody who already has a good PC).
I'm a really huge Nintendo fan who has owned every one of their systems besides the Virtual Boy and bought most of those at launch. I was almost certainly going to purchase a Switch 2 as soon as I could... yet yesterday's lackluster software reveals followed up by the outrageous pricing has me saying the scalpers can have this one and Nintendo can go to hell.
It's likely that you're right and people are going to line up to reward them for this and it will lead to price increases across the entire industry unfortunately.
Yeah, I think that's another huge factor that made the Switch so successful! It was priced at a point that households had multiple units and multiple copies of games like Kart and Smash. Only people doing really well are going to be able to swing that at these prices.
I've never been good at chemistry, so I'm probably misremembering...
My understanding was that the cocaine's chemical structure is what reacts with the baking soda (and heat), leaving the adulterants to burn off. I guess unless they share the same property that binds the cocaine with the baking soda. The baking soda isn't meant to increase weight, there is an actual chemistry-based reason that it's used.
It's why people stopped "free-basing" cocaine once crack came around. "Free-base" is a chemistry term, and the reaction with the baking soda is what makes it no longer "free-base."
It weighs more because of the baking soda, but that's just like a substrate to deliver the cocaine, not an adulterant meant to make it weigh more.
Again, could be wrong and don't feel like looking it up because I don't really care about crack or cocaine
I think the filter is to stop shards of burning crack from going into your mouth/throat.
Cooking usually refers to removing salts necessary for mucous absorption to make smoked crack more palatable and injected crack not lethal. I haven't done crack yet.
I get your point, but I'll probably end up paying that. The exclusives are pricey but I almost always end up playing them for 50-100+ hours each, so I can't really complain 🤷♂️
"it's $20 for a skin..... Eh I'll buy it." I have friends that do that. Meanwhile I almost never buy a game at launch because I'll just wait for a sale and for the game to be fixed post launch.
The trouble is, Nintendo games don't even go on sale, so you can't do that. Nintendo used to be the affordable accessible console. Now they're the opposite.
I haven't had a desire to play their games luckily, but the emulators are good. I tried Pokémon Arceus with one and it ran flawlessly. The game was boring as hell from what I played, but I wanted to see how it functioned compared to the older games I know.
At this point in the world I just want to reward one of the few companies that has yet to screw me over. Everything I've ever bought from Nintendo still works to this day, and I'm generally expecting it to work forever. No one else is making products like that, it's all short-term shareholder profits-- who cares about the customer? If you want to pay what garbage is priced at, you'll get garbage in the end.
Imagine simping for a soulless corporation who doesn't give of fuck if you exist. How is anything nintendo doing consumer friendly? You're definitely on that copium, champ.
I'm just speaking from personal experience, friend. I understand someone will probably have a list of like 10 links of counterexamples handy but I can say with fair confidence they probably haven't affected me. Hell, my original joycons actually still work, though I did buy my Switch a couple years after release. And I'm not simping for anything, I will 100% change my stance the day Nintendo starts screwing me over 🤷♂️
You do realize that video game prices haven't increased with inflation in years, right?
A $60 game in 2008 would be $88 today just from inflation. This isn't price gouging, it's inflation correction.
It doesn't matter if a $60 game in 2008 is worth $88 now if wages haven't gone up to match that. Did you know that (at least in the US) food prices usually aren't included in inflation calculations because they fluctuate too much? People have other things to pay for with their wages that aren't video games, and those costs aren't going down either.
Literally nothing ever has stayed in lockstep with wages, that's not even relevant to the discussion at hand. Not sure why you think video games would be special, especially video games by Nintendo, solijce they're literally the last ones on the "raise video game prices" train.
Entertainment is not a necessity, it's not like people need it to survive. When it doesn't move with wages people find ways to make it affordable (e.g. piracy, 2nd hand markets, or sharing physical copies with friends), or they find something else (steam, indie games, etc.). Wages are directly responsible for game prices in a lot of ways, and there are pretty good Steam statistics on this as well (which is why a lot of Steam games aren't priced with 1:1 conversions in different regions, because doing so would basically price entire regions out of buying games).
Pricing fans out of games is exactly how AAA studios go under. A big AAA game flopping is basically a death sentence for a studio in the current landscape, and if Microsoft isn't immune to that then Nintendo definitely isn't.
And in addition to what Zangoose said, your argument ignores the basic principle of technological progress: as industries mature, costs typically decrease, not increase. Economies of scale, automation, and digital distribution should all lower the cost of making and selling a game over time.
A $60 game in 2008 had to be printed on physical discs, boxed, shipped to stores, and supported with traditional advertising. Today, most games are sold digitally, cutting out huge portions of that overhead. Studios also reuse engines, assets, and development pipelines now more than ever.
Sure, inflation is real—but so are productivity gains. If your costs are going up despite all these efficiencies, that’s not just inflation—it’s mismanagement or greed. Consumers don’t owe companies an inflation-adjusted price just because they want to maintain record-breaking profits and raise prices.
Uh, video games have VERY famously not been decreasing in cost to create- AAA games cost VASTLY more to create now than in 2008. The teams are much, much larger, for one.
It's a trend I personally think is stupid and unnecessary, but productivity gains aren't really happening that way in game dev.
I'm just pointing out your naïveté. What happens in the US naturally affects the rest of the world. We're all dependent on each other. No one will be isolated from this.
Even if you think it's not worldwide, you do realise some countries and regions rely heavily upon trading with the US. And it will cause inflation, though how much depends on what will actually happen now.
As others pointed out, it's not only the US economy that will be hit, but also everyone that trades with them.
To illustrate some examples, Canadian aluminum might end up with 25% tariffs. That means anything made within the USA that uses said aluminum will get a price increase. Canadian companies might end up with a surplus, since their main customers won't be buying as much (instead of paying 100 dollars for a tonne, 'mericans will pay 125 dollars per tonne). That surplus will drive prices down if they can't find someone else to buy the aluminum.
Since the tariffs aren't only on Canadian aluminum, but a lot of stuff from a lot of countries, some of that stuff will end up with a significant surplus and no new buyers. For smaller countries that rely on USA exports, that's going to hurt a lot.
I also saw one analysis that suggested the increased cost of buying could decrease trade and therefore shrink the economies the US usually buys from, depressing the shrunken economies dollar values and effectively cancelling out the cost of the tarrif
Something tells me all new AAA games are going to be touching that price. I mean, they already do if you factor in the stupid elite wtf editions and deluxe pro plus editions. Hell, they're more like $130-$150 after DLC is all said and done.
Same, owned every console since the NES. This one's a pass for me. Maybe Nintendo will be humbled and bring their pricing back down to Earth in the future, but I doubt it.
Too young to have owned every console and don't care enough, but I am a fan of many games and the community. Nintendo the company hates its fans, that is widely known.
I'm not gonna buy it for that price. Especially not as a student. Especially not while ☠️ isn't a thing yet.
They have gotten greedy. There needs to be a Wii-U era again.
I agree, they need to be humbled, but I have no idea whether they will or not. While the economy is working against them, a LOT of people liked the Switch, and this is a more powerful one rather than a hard-to-understand mess like the Wii U. Genuinely curious to see how the Switch 2 does. My best guess is "modest success."
The other publishers were all eagerly waiting for gta6 to take the blame for the price increase. Nintendo just doesn't care about that and weren't gonna wait for a third party before announcing their new prices.
All it takes is for a major corporation to pull the trigger. Since Nintendo is willing to take that step, other companies are going to be observing to see if it's worth the temporary backlash.
I get the MSRP outrage, but I mean it's not an unusual cost for launch day titles, especially for physical media.
I don't think I've ever paid full retail for any game or console I've ever owned though. And I do like to own my games by buying physical media (or at least the installer files).
I know my work colleague is not. His Switch was cracked for I think 100+ eur which seems quite high, but since you can afterwards download pretty much any title from some pirate marketplace, that investment has been covered at least tenfold.
The funniest part is that the best selling video game of all time (Minecraft) currently has an MSRP of less than $30, which technically gets you 2 games because Microsoft/Mojang maintain 2 completely separate codebases for Minecraft (Java edition and bedrock edition) and has to design, program, test and debug everything twice, once for each codebase
Your question was a good one, but still rude. You're more likely to get a satisfying answer if you don't pose the premise that the person you're replying to must be dumb if they're not rich.
What games currently cost that much though, is my question really, I guess. The last expensive titles I can see right now for standard editions of games is like, 70Eur equivalent for AAA type titles.
Nice to see an adult reaction in this thread.
You have a good point and I'm very curious why Nintendo made these choices.
Maybe it could have to do with the current value of the Japanese yen? I'm not an economist though, so I'm just guessing right now.
For a digital copy, the devs may get between 50 and 90% of the game's retail price, depending on several conditions like what country they are from and what treaties they have with the country of who bought it. Less than that if they have a publisher to share the profits with.
For a physical copy, between packaging, shipping, storing and the margins of all the other companies involved in this process, the devs may end up with as little as 5% of the game's retail price.
Of course these numbers are higher for Nintendo as they are the platform owners as well.
Something tells me that the Deck will be compatible with "way more" than old games in the near future... Some times an emulator goes down, and two or more rise up.
Remember they got a patent for catching monsters using balls just to start a lawsuit against Palworld, and if my memory doesn't fail me, they tried to patent some stupidly base mechanic in Zelda TotK (like using local coordinates for constructs).
I'm not sure they wouldn't try to get a patent for the concept of "handheld gaming console" because they came up with the Game Boy.
I laughed when they showed their game chat mode as some accomplishment. They spent years just making discord...
Another funny moment was when the Civ VII dude said something like "if you already have Civ VII you will be able to play the enhanced switch 2 mode!... After purchasing the upgrade."
I have a steam deck oled and love it, but the SOC is slightly old now and was never the fastest. If you're playing slightly older games or are fine with slightly lower settings, than it's still great.
SteamOS is great, but I think you can install it on other handhelds as well. It sounds like current competition isn't great unless you're willing to pay a bit more and the steam deck 2 isn't rumored to come out soon, so the steam deck is probably still worth purchasing tho.
Honestly who cares about the power of hardware on a handheld, sadly this is something Ninendo used to understand better than anyone else.
Focus on making the games fun and the hardware capable enough, don't get lost in the hype of trying to out hardware competitors and pull in customers that way.
Well, they have clearly abandoned that strategy, but I think this was the worst possible situation to do this in because they are going to continue to get destabilized by the Steam Deck just being a Switch that doesn't try to obsessively control everything you can do on it. It is a waste of money to buy such a closed down device, even if it is more powerful than a Steam Deck.
How powerful is it? Just based on the graphics of what I'd seen I assumed it was around the same.
Anyways, I think the switch can get away with worse hardware as every game is specifically optimized for that exact soc, while the steam deck has to play games optimised for a PS5 or a midrange gaming PC for example.
Yeah, but the Steam Deck also can run indie games, it can run open source games like Beyond All Reason, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead and Xonotic, it can run Steel Panthers Winspww2 which is an absolutely horrendously old DOS game.
Why do I care if it can't run the newest AAA game? I know some people do, but to me I already have such a large pc library (of paid and opensource & free games) that the concept of the Steam Deck getting "left behind" by having too outdated hardware doesn't make sense to me.
Ok, so it has a hard ceiling of the games it can play, new games will continue to come out both above and below that ceiling, and I will continue not to really care about AAA games that don't bother to optimize well for lower end devices.
At the end of the day, the Steam Deck is a linux computer handheld, there are already people gaming on and using potato-ass linux computers to do useful things that are WAYYYYY shittier than the Steam Deck is, and they are happy. I don't see myself becoming unhappy with the hardware on the Steam Deck anytime soon.
On the one side, yeah they are over protective of their IPS
On the other, This is Nintendo, not Ubisoft LMAO 🤣
Ubisoft, who literally spends more money on lawyers to sue reviewers and anyone giving their opinion of their latest worst game than in their ACS game 🤣
On the one hand, with rising inflation and skyrocketing development costs, I can totally understand why game prices are getting dangerously close to the triple digits. Games rn are cheaper that they ever were yeet yet development is not.
However, that’s still a lot of money and I really wouldn’t wanna pay that.
Touché. But that’s a different problem. They don’t even need to raise the base price though, many of them are free to play anyways. And those that both have microtransactions and are full price should be avoided anyways.
They are not more greedy, but they think they got an opportunity now. Games industry is bigger than Film industry. They earn an amazing amount of money due to how many more are playing games now than in 2010 did. Revenue of 2024 was 10 times higher than of 2010....
It's absolutely incredible how big the gaming industry is now. Where 20 years ago it was extremely male, and mostly limited to 20-30 year olds now it's everyone! Children and retirees, men and women and everything inbetween or further out to the fringes! And I'm not just talking phone games (which is a gigantic market on its own) at the MSP I work at we've had retired folks bring in gaming computers for service or just drop off older gaming computers for recycling
This is greed, pure and simple. At $60, the industry was more profitable than Hollywood, and they raised the base price of games to $70 just a few years ago before immediately talking about raising prices again.
Not solely. If you paid $60 for a game in 2010, that‘d be almost $88 today, simply due to inflation. It’s a wonder the prices haven’t skyrocketed any sooner.
Not that I want that, I‘d prefer games being affordable but it was kinda inevitable considering the way the economy is going…
Also, I‘d personally rather pay $90 once than have a cheap game with a shitload of micro transactions. Of course, developers/publishers that ask $90 for a game and still include a bunch of micro transactions can fuck right of.
I would be a lot more willing to accept the inflation argument if salaries at these companies were going up at inflation rates too.
In this case though we all know they are not and additionally digital releases not needing to be physically transported and the lack of printed manuals in physical games, for instance, also cuts down on what it costs to make and ship a game today.
But the sale numbers are probably much higher nowadays, so it would be feasible to sell games for cheaper. But why would they? People are gonna buy them anyway. Those who won't will get them on a sale later.
I'll gladly wait 3-5 years to play a $90 retail game for $10-20. There are already too many games in my library to play, I don't need to piss away $100 on a game I'll be bored with in 2 months.
Oh absolutely, my heart bleeds for the selfless video game CEOs bravely sacrificing their third yacht to keep game prices only $70. Imagine the hardship of cutting executive bonuses down to just eight figures, all so we can enjoy our digital horse armor without paying $99.99.
These modern saints really are holding the line for the little guy. If only we could all aspire to such noble self-denial.
I never said the CEOs are saints. They’re just not worse than they were 15 years ago. At least for devs/publishers that don’t put micro transactions in full price games.
Fr. It'd be a forgettable bit of marketing, a tech demo no one really cares about if they'd included it free. With the price tag it turns from that into an anti consumer insult, a slap to the face to anyone who thinks they're in this for any reason other than extracting as much money out of their consumers as they can get away with
I bought the first switch thinking I'd play it way more. But those prices that basically never go down, and paying way more for games than I could get them on steam.
Nah. I have a deck and it feels better in my hands, looks better, and I don't get charged out the ass for games that have been out for near a decade.
Ive had a switch for a few years. I ended up buying a bunch of games I already had on steam, plus Pikmin, breath of the wild, and Mario Kart. I feel like I bought a huge tablet just to play Mario Kart occasionally. I have buyers remorse for sure.
Yea, my biggest reason for buying was hoping for couch coop games to play with my partner. Turns out there aren't a ton of them and the ones I could find my partner doesn't care for. sigh
I think expecting Nintendo do allow people to play their games without being customers is bizarre. I want emulator, I want to be able to pirate whatever I want, but I don't grt expecting Nintendo to be happy about that arrangement
Companies that recognize that and improve their products and services in order to compete, results in better products and services as well as an influx of happy customers. See valve and steam.
Companies that don't improve and instead seek to stiffle competition through dmca and litigation get their products pirated and services ignored. See how nintendo games are the most pirated on any site that shows stats for such things.
For example, Mario 3 is fucking ancient, how many times does nintendo expect me to buy it? They got my money several times over, and now in order to legally play it on a current platform, it's locked behind a subscription service. No thank you. Besides, I prefer to play platformers with a keyboard. I'd pay for nintendo games again if they let me download to my pc.
Except, what about all the games I bought online for my wiiu and 3ds? Those storefronts are gone, so anything I didn't already have downloaded is gone. If anything happens to those consoles, the few games I do have on them are gone. (i personally never actually had a 3ds or wiiu, but lots of people did and are in this exact boat). I cannot trust nintendo to preserve my purchases, like I can with any other modern digital storefront.
Because you're presupposing that copyright is right in the first place. Distribution of information has been made free - because of the internet it's the one thing so far where the Star Trek future has been made reality. But intellectual property laws are designed to create artificial scarcity so that one publisher can monopolize a creative work, to the detriment of everyone else.
Fans of various game franchises are not just consumers, but creators in their own right. You have to remember that this delegitimized practice of "piracy" also results in the entire romhacking community.
The bottom line is that free sharing of information benefits us all and produces a rich commons, but intellectual property plunders that commons and produces centralization of media ownership while stripping away our right to be co-creators.
This is probably the only time Nintendo has come out of the gate with superior hardware and I actually don't give a shit, why on earth would I want to buy a steam deck that is locked behind corporate control and price gouging?
I don't give a shit how fast the scrreen refreshes or how fancy some of the features, I want a computer that can play games, I don't want a toy that is purposefully broken so I can't use it for things I want to use it for, ESPECIALLY if I drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars on it.
The SNES and Genesis were comparable. You could argue one or the other, but it was a tighter race than the Playstation 3 curb-stomping the Wii.
N64 has much more raw power than my favorite system the PS1
Playstation had CD-ROM, and that's all that needs to be said about that battle.
GameCube was stronger than PS2 and Dreamcast
Comparing the GameCube with the PS2, it had less VRAM, less RAM, a faster CPU, roughly equiv video processor. I would say they were about equal, and that's with GameCube coming out two years later.
The PS2 was also the strongest console to ever fight in any sort of console war, with its ridiculously large library of games. PS2 punished Sega so hard they permanent removed themselves out of the race, and Nintendo had to completely change strategies to fill a different niche and audience, which worked with the Wii. However, that came with the dumbing down of hardware that everybody is talking about. They have been pushing shitty outdated hardware ever since.
I stand corrected, I guess I was comparing the gamecube to an xbox, but yeah agreed, I just bought a second steam deck OLED when I already had the LCD model because honestly I think the economy is going to crash hard and it is going to be a long road to affordably getting a gaming device in the US for the foreseeable future.
It is a shitty situation to be in, but I didn't even hesitate because the current calculus is a no brainer. I have Blender on my Steam Deck and I am using it to create cool visualizations of Lidar data for Geology, Nintendo would respond to a statement like this with something like "yeah, that is cool but it sounds very niche, people don't need that" and my response is "Fuck you, you haven't even let people try".
I heard of another Geologist bringing in their steam deck to present a talk off of it instead of a laptop too, these kinds of interesting unusual use cases aren't trivial and hyper individual, they represent people developing the future of handheld computers in real time, and Nintendo has completely lost the plot here. The Steam Deck really isn't a gaming device, it is a gaming device that Trojan Horses you into having an awesome handheld linux computer that can also play your favorite games.
If Nintendo thinks they can compete with the Steam Deck by just selling a better handheld gaming console, they are so fucked.... or at the very least they are walking away from what will actually be the next big growth area in computers (that people were SURE AI and VR would be).
Nintendo execs are likely sitting there being like "damn we are going to make so much money selling the best handheld gaming console and completely dominate the handheld gaming console market so we can charge $100 a game" while missing the MUCH LARGER profit opportunity of evolving their handheld console into a handheld computer.
Think about it, Nintendo is in the perfect position to evolve their Switch into more and more of a computer, and it would give them a MASSIVE new horizon of growth opportunities especially since countless kids grow up playing on Switches and already know how to use them inside out... it would help Nintendo protect itself from encroachment by other big tech, and do any number of other longterm things for Nintendo's growth and profit.
Instead the idiots want to gouge people for more money by squeezing ONLY the gaming potential out of the switch, it is pathetic and I wish legislation around the world didn't allow massive corporations to behave this foolishly in trying to close down their systems so they don't accidentally create the "wrong" kind of value or innovation.
This is exactly why I purchased a steam deck. My gaming PC died (RIP to a real one), and I needed something for general use more than I did for gaming.
I need to check the price of broken steam decks, there are so many fun project's I could do if I had the motherboard or daughter boards in the steam deck, and no I need my current steam deck intact to play on
A Steamdeck can emulate a Switch. The number of exclusive games for the Switch 2 will be so pitiful it would scarcely justify a purchase though I'm sure some people will buy it. I also think that a Steamdeck 2 can't be far off appearing.
We have a switch 1 and the game price has been the driving factor preventing us from investing more in the platform. The games are too expensive, go on sale too infrequently and not for low enough prices. Just not the ecosystem for my family right now
The display supports 1080p+120hz, games running at that res and fps will be rare I imagine. I mean, it would be amazing but Xbox also supports 4k 120 and it usually runs Up to 1440p upscaled 30fps so idk how much it will really differ from what we've already got.
Hell, at least I can use my steam deck as a mini PC and SSH into the thing, as well as use a mouse and full fuckin keyboard with my cheap off brand dock.
I've never found any. They're always similar in price to digital. Which is better than digital, imo, but still. The used market charges a lot because it can.
The nintendo switch, released 8 years ago now, was the first console to never have a price drop. PS5 and XBOX series did not need to be convinced to join that particular trend
Yeah, the Steam Deck has that. Its called dual touchpads, and unlike the Switch 2 you can easily switch from analog stick to touchpad (they also have more functionality and are actually utilized to their full potential with desktop mode).
I genuinely believe a primary driving factor for the switch 2 was to hinder emulation of new releases. I don't remember any of this but I think my friend said TOTK was available on bad websites a week before the official release. But I wouldn't know.
The new connection for the controllers also makes me think they didn't want to take a chance with a fumble like on the switch where you can ground a pin to hack your switch...
Whenever there's a multiplatform game I'm interested in I add it to my wishlist on the Switch, PS5 and Deck. I almost always end up buying it off Steam because it ends up being cheaper on it. So the Switch and PS5 have been reduced for exclusives only.
I dunno what y'all are talking about, the Deck chip (Van Gogh, 7nm, Zen 2 but with Rembrandt-era SoC features, RDNA2) is "newer" than the Ampere chip (circa 2020) in the Switch 2.
I think the last Nintendo game I payed for was animal crossing new horizons. Yea, I'll be alright with my back catalog and the occasional indie game that costs less than 20$. All I wanted was another punch-out but I played the "Big Boy Boxing" demo and it was pretty fun, so I will not be buying a switch 2 any time soon if at all.
1080p on such a small screen is pointless, but if you're into that by the price of one Nintendo game you can upgrade your steam deck screen https://www.deckhd.com/
120Hz is not that different from the decks 90Hz screen, although if you chose to do the upgrade above that downgrades you to 60.
Mouse mode, not sure what that is, but the deck has the best of it's kind mouse emulation so I think it will be hard for the switch to compete.
Plus I get to keep my games, and whenever the SD2 comes out I'll get to keep my games and not have to buy them again.
My initial response to this was "ehhh", but a quick look at the consoles I grew up with shows you're right. The only exception I saw was the PS3 thanks to it's pretty bonkers CPU.
The Sega Genesis used a Motorola 68000, which was popular for Unix computers. It also made it into a number of PCs like the Apple Lisa, Macintosh, and Amiga
Even the PS5, which is for the most part is just an x86 PC, still has a unique architecture that allows for loading and decompressing textures from disk into VRAM without putting any load on either the CPU or GPU.
It's not like they aren't trying to do new stuff, it's just hard to find new avenues to innovate when so much has already been figured out.
They always have used hardware closely related to existing workstation or PC hardware, but the difference is now they try so much less hard to hide it, through crossplay, lack of platform exclusives, and just less trying to innovate on how the games are played. Part of it is that game inputs have largely been standardized, part of it is that the more similar to a bog standard PC the console is, the easier it is for developers to port their existing games, and part of it might just be that platforms aren't feeling pushed to innovate as much
Well, between their incredibly abusive behaviour towards fans making content on YouTube even though that's free advertising, the mess with the smash tournaments and them breaking agreements to side with some new band of assholes -
their previous efforts to destroy companies by patent trolling and their current efforts to undo Palworld that have pretty much only been prevented by them teaming up with Sony -
and their very heavy-handed protectionist approach to ROM preservation even though they keep taking away people's access to their older catalogue, I certainly wouldn't consider them ABOVE board.
Before sony's completely ridiculous 2024 I would have firmly called them below-board, but enshittification really hit hard, jeez. (Dashes were for breathing pauses cus that was getting a little long. I was also going to mention an issue with them being a lot less transparent with whether or not they'd ethically sourced their rare earth metals vs the other big two, but I don't remember quite when that was, just that it was discussed during the switch era).
Edit: tbc I still upvoted cus physical games ARE still important, but I forgot to mention that they don't let you downpatch digital games so speed running, or even just wanting to play TotK with the dupe glitch, is forced to sometimes be way more expensive thanks to REQUIRING physical AND having to play offline forever cus I think it tries to force patches?
Physical games with a huge asterisk. Some switch 2 "physical" games will just be a piece of plastic you insert into your switch that tells a server somewhere you can play it and won't actually have the game itself installed. It'd be a digital only game with extra steps
I guess certain games maybe only hard copies exist, but when you can just grab a copy off the internet and store it, I don't see the need for a hard copy.
Plus, with the Steamdeck you have more games to play than just Nintendo games or old games you played years ago but have to pay more to play them again on worse hardware.
You all whine and say fuck this and that corporation, but you all will buy that new game for christmas or whatever, because you were conditioned into consumerism.
I don’t get all the hate for Nintendo. Sure they’re expensive but they’re an OG games company largely acting like one. None of that freemium always-online microtransaction bullshit. Look at the Mario Kart expansion pack, it doubles the number of courses you get. It literally doubles the size of the game, and it’s not even that expensive. Plus they still support physical cartridges which most companies are trying to get rid of (and user expandable storage).
Only some 3rd party cartridges have a download key on them, and they're significantly cheaper than the ones that don't.
Also where is the 90 price I keep seeing on here coming from? I've only seen 70-80 prices for first party titles. Bravely Default (which is a download key tho) is only 40 isn't it?
You'll have to give a source on that cause i can't find anything about those cards being cheaper. I looked up bravely default and it's a remaster of an old game, so it better not cost 90 bucks lmao. And the 90 price is coming from europe. Looks like the games will cost 90 euros in europe. Insanity.
and dread wasn't that good. Before that was nintendos metroid 2 remake, which also wasn't very good. Neither were bad, but the genre has moved on without nintendo and standards are higher now. I haven't been blown away by a metroid game since the fan game am2r, and that makes me sad.
Yeah, Nintendo is smoking unfiltered crack, lol. Who the hell has $80-90 to throw at every game in the midst of an unnecessary economic downturn and possible worldwide meltdown?
Oh no, just a USA meltdown. Trump isn't great for other economies, but we still have the rest of the world to trade with. The only thing he is achieving is making the usa less relevant by the day.
It will still cause other countries economies to shrink, as most economies are interlinked in the modern age; but even with the loss in GDP, removing US trade/tech/military reliance is definitely for the better imo. The USA positioning themselves alongside Russia has woke up the rest of the world to the fact that America isn't simply arrogant... It's also dangerous.
I don't see a way back for the US in all honesty. The problem isn't the rogue state behaviour, it's the virile support for such actions seen from many of their citizens. In the coming years we'll no doubt see American military bases being shutdown across the globe, in retaliation to their animosity, and it will only continue further until the US is a pariah state.
I suppose it's some solace that the democrats are able to somewhat slow the implosion of the US through the senate, but that won't be enough to stop them falling out of favour with the rest of the world, and thus losing a huge part of their power. And I have to wonder, is this the exact outcome Putin wanted (America surviving, but struggling... Allowing them to exist as the bad guy, Rather than complete desolation), or just a happy accident after getting Krasnov elected?.
It's because a significant portion of our population are complete dumbasses.
One third of the country are bigots believing every piece of propaganda.
One third of our country doesn't think politics affects them.
10-15% (ballparking) have good political intentions, but don't think voting will solve anything.
That leaves about 20-25% to actually contribute politically with critical thinking skills and understanding various social issues.
Yeah we're fucked.
Based on some economic models I've read about, the only countries whose GDP will be hurt by this are America, Canada and Mexico. In that order.
Most of the world is expected to break even or benefit because countries will act in their best interest and route around Trump's stupid.
I can't speak for every country, but I know that the UK (where I'm based) is looking at a GDP shrink of around 1%; though given our 'special relationship' with the US, and our FAFO era with Brexit, we're probably more dependant on American trade than your average long distance ally (or should I say former ally?), so I could definitely see other countries breaking even or even profiting from it.
Stocks are down all over the globe, not sure if you noticed.
Not to mention, Nintendo games usually don’t go down in price over time as much.
As much? I don't think ever. Breath of the Wild is still it's release price despite it's sequel, in the same world but with more content, being out and the same price. They're insane.
And Pokemon games only increase in price over time.
In the Switch era, they don't at all. Nintendo Selects isn't a thing any more.
Yeah, the company has gone full greed mode since Iwata's passing. I know the point of a business is to make money and all that but he at least kept things fair for the consumer.
This kinda feels like Sony's PS3 announcement, but Nintendo can get away with more than Sony could then.
Hopefully this system isn't the smashing success that the first Switch was and it humbles them a bit. Beyond the price gouging, the novelty of the concept has worn some and this system really doesn't do anything all that exciting beyond improved visuals (which doesn't excite me as somebody who already has a good PC).
I'm a really huge Nintendo fan who has owned every one of their systems besides the Virtual Boy and bought most of those at launch. I was almost certainly going to purchase a Switch 2 as soon as I could... yet yesterday's lackluster software reveals followed up by the outrageous pricing has me saying the scalpers can have this one and Nintendo can go to hell.
It's likely that you're right and people are going to line up to reward them for this and it will lead to price increases across the entire industry unfortunately.
I even had a Virtual Boy! Although I bought it for like $25 after it had already failed.
I guess we'll see just how much of Nintendo's market is made up of fans with lots of expendable income vs. parents buying stuff for their kids.
Yeah, I think that's another huge factor that made the Switch so successful! It was priced at a point that households had multiple units and multiple copies of games like Kart and Smash. Only people doing really well are going to be able to swing that at these prices.
How does one filter crack? I need to know for my pulmonary health.
They sell brillo used by crackheads as filters right next to the crack pipes at gas stations in the hood.
Gotta burn it before inhaleing to test it. Some of that shit is fake and just some steel wool with a coating. Remember to be safe while smoking crack!
I could be wrong, but doesn't the process of cooking the cocaine into crack kind of "filter" it so to speak?
Not in the slightest. It only cuts it so you can increase your yield at the cost of needing to sell a fundamentally different product.
I've never been good at chemistry, so I'm probably misremembering...
My understanding was that the cocaine's chemical structure is what reacts with the baking soda (and heat), leaving the adulterants to burn off. I guess unless they share the same property that binds the cocaine with the baking soda. The baking soda isn't meant to increase weight, there is an actual chemistry-based reason that it's used.
It's why people stopped "free-basing" cocaine once crack came around. "Free-base" is a chemistry term, and the reaction with the baking soda is what makes it no longer "free-base."
It weighs more because of the baking soda, but that's just like a substrate to deliver the cocaine, not an adulterant meant to make it weigh more.
Again, could be wrong and don't feel like looking it up because I don't really care about crack or cocaine
I think the filter is to stop shards of burning crack from going into your mouth/throat.
Cooking usually refers to removing salts necessary for mucous absorption to make smoked crack more palatable and injected crack not lethal. I haven't done crack yet.
I get your point, but I'll probably end up paying that. The exclusives are pricey but I almost always end up playing them for 50-100+ hours each, so I can't really complain 🤷♂️
This line of thinking is why we are being price gouged to begin with.
"it's $20 for a skin..... Eh I'll buy it." I have friends that do that. Meanwhile I almost never buy a game at launch because I'll just wait for a sale and for the game to be fixed post launch.
The trouble is, Nintendo games don't even go on sale, so you can't do that. Nintendo used to be the affordable accessible console. Now they're the opposite.
I haven't had a desire to play their games luckily, but the emulators are good. I tried Pokémon Arceus with one and it ran flawlessly. The game was boring as hell from what I played, but I wanted to see how it functioned compared to the older games I know.
Yeah. I was providing context and a small joke in relation to the comment about how we got here. I mostly play Steam games anyway.
A few years ago my wife bought a switch, we occasionally play it, but yes I saw the games were basically never on sale.
At this point in the world I just want to reward one of the few companies that has yet to screw me over. Everything I've ever bought from Nintendo still works to this day, and I'm generally expecting it to work forever. No one else is making products like that, it's all short-term shareholder profits-- who cares about the customer? If you want to pay what garbage is priced at, you'll get garbage in the end.
Imagine simping for a soulless corporation who doesn't give of fuck if you exist. How is anything nintendo doing consumer friendly? You're definitely on that copium, champ.
I'm just speaking from personal experience, friend. I understand someone will probably have a list of like 10 links of counterexamples handy but I can say with fair confidence they probably haven't affected me. Hell, my original joycons actually still work, though I did buy my Switch a couple years after release. And I'm not simping for anything, I will 100% change my stance the day Nintendo starts screwing me over 🤷♂️
You do realize that video game prices haven't increased with inflation in years, right? A $60 game in 2008 would be $88 today just from inflation. This isn't price gouging, it's inflation correction.
It doesn't matter if a $60 game in 2008 is worth $88 now if wages haven't gone up to match that. Did you know that (at least in the US) food prices usually aren't included in inflation calculations because they fluctuate too much? People have other things to pay for with their wages that aren't video games, and those costs aren't going down either.
Literally nothing ever has stayed in lockstep with wages, that's not even relevant to the discussion at hand. Not sure why you think video games would be special, especially video games by Nintendo, solijce they're literally the last ones on the "raise video game prices" train.
Entertainment is not a necessity, it's not like people need it to survive. When it doesn't move with wages people find ways to make it affordable (e.g. piracy, 2nd hand markets, or sharing physical copies with friends), or they find something else (steam, indie games, etc.). Wages are directly responsible for game prices in a lot of ways, and there are pretty good Steam statistics on this as well (which is why a lot of Steam games aren't priced with 1:1 conversions in different regions, because doing so would basically price entire regions out of buying games).
Pricing fans out of games is exactly how AAA studios go under. A big AAA game flopping is basically a death sentence for a studio in the current landscape, and if Microsoft isn't immune to that then Nintendo definitely isn't.
And in addition to what Zangoose said, your argument ignores the basic principle of technological progress: as industries mature, costs typically decrease, not increase. Economies of scale, automation, and digital distribution should all lower the cost of making and selling a game over time.
A $60 game in 2008 had to be printed on physical discs, boxed, shipped to stores, and supported with traditional advertising. Today, most games are sold digitally, cutting out huge portions of that overhead. Studios also reuse engines, assets, and development pipelines now more than ever.
Sure, inflation is real—but so are productivity gains. If your costs are going up despite all these efficiencies, that’s not just inflation—it’s mismanagement or greed. Consumers don’t owe companies an inflation-adjusted price just because they want to maintain record-breaking profits and raise prices.
Uh, video games have VERY famously not been decreasing in cost to create- AAA games cost VASTLY more to create now than in 2008. The teams are much, much larger, for one.
It's a trend I personally think is stupid and unnecessary, but productivity gains aren't really happening that way in game dev.
CEO pay has also increased VASTLY, something isn't quite adding up here. 🤔
Yeah, sales have also gone way up.
Worldwide? Trump is ruining the US economy only
Oh, my sweet summer child...
Lol another person that thinks he's smart by being rude. No wonder Lemmy isn't attracting more people
I'm just pointing out your naïveté. What happens in the US naturally affects the rest of the world. We're all dependent on each other. No one will be isolated from this.
Like the recession of 2008/2009. It was America that cause it and the whole worked suffered.
Leave Lemmy out of this! It’s innocent!
Point at the doll where you were touched by Lemmy
Remember 2008/2009 recession? This was cause by the USA economy, but affected the entire world.
Even if you think it's not worldwide, you do realise some countries and regions rely heavily upon trading with the US. And it will cause inflation, though how much depends on what will actually happen now.
As others pointed out, it's not only the US economy that will be hit, but also everyone that trades with them.
To illustrate some examples, Canadian aluminum might end up with 25% tariffs. That means anything made within the USA that uses said aluminum will get a price increase. Canadian companies might end up with a surplus, since their main customers won't be buying as much (instead of paying 100 dollars for a tonne, 'mericans will pay 125 dollars per tonne). That surplus will drive prices down if they can't find someone else to buy the aluminum.
Since the tariffs aren't only on Canadian aluminum, but a lot of stuff from a lot of countries, some of that stuff will end up with a significant surplus and no new buyers. For smaller countries that rely on USA exports, that's going to hurt a lot.
I also saw one analysis that suggested the increased cost of buying could decrease trade and therefore shrink the economies the US usually buys from, depressing the shrunken economies dollar values and effectively cancelling out the cost of the tarrif
ROFL you really have no idea how things work huh
The world economy is dependent on countries like the USA.
Lol
Who the hell is paying 90EUR for switch games?
Nintendo fanboys, they would jump off a cliff if asked.
I consider myself a Nintendo fanboy. I've owned every console.
Would not jump off a bridge.
However, these game prices are too high. I don't think third party games will be that price but first party games will be there.
Something tells me all new AAA games are going to be touching that price. I mean, they already do if you factor in the stupid elite wtf editions and deluxe pro plus editions. Hell, they're more like $130-$150 after DLC is all said and done.
Same, owned every console since the NES. This one's a pass for me. Maybe Nintendo will be humbled and bring their pricing back down to Earth in the future, but I doubt it.
Too young to have owned every console and don't care enough, but I am a fan of many games and the community. Nintendo the company hates its fans, that is widely known.
I'm not gonna buy it for that price. Especially not as a student. Especially not while ☠️ isn't a thing yet.
They have gotten greedy. There needs to be a Wii-U era again.
I agree, they need to be humbled, but I have no idea whether they will or not. While the economy is working against them, a LOT of people liked the Switch, and this is a more powerful one rather than a hard-to-understand mess like the Wii U. Genuinely curious to see how the Switch 2 does. My best guess is "modest success."
I crave for the earlier days of the 3DS to happen again, please Nintendo fan base, I have a bit of faith.
Let's not pretend every publisher isn't planning on doing this. Nintendo just happens to be the first here.
I genuinely thought GTA6 was gonna beat them to the punch.
The other publishers were all eagerly waiting for gta6 to take the blame for the price increase. Nintendo just doesn't care about that and weren't gonna wait for a third party before announcing their new prices.
All it takes is for a major corporation to pull the trigger. Since Nintendo is willing to take that step, other companies are going to be observing to see if it's worth the temporary backlash.
I get the MSRP outrage, but I mean it's not an unusual cost for launch day titles, especially for physical media.
I don't think I've ever paid full retail for any game or console I've ever owned though. And I do like to own my games by buying physical media (or at least the installer files).
Which game has been launched at 90 bucks before?
Thing is that they even do this shady thing now where retails is 10 bucks more than the digital version.
Usually because you actually own the retail/physical version but they can rescind access to a digital copy at any point.
But I usually buy old games or new ones second hand, so, I exist on a slightly different market place...
I know my work colleague is not. His Switch was cracked for I think 100+ eur which seems quite high, but since you can afterwards download pretty much any title from some pirate marketplace, that investment has been covered at least tenfold.
Well no one is paying that for PC games either so
The funniest part is that the best selling video game of all time (Minecraft) currently has an MSRP of less than $30, which technically gets you 2 games because Microsoft/Mojang maintain 2 completely separate codebases for Minecraft (Java edition and bedrock edition) and has to design, program, test and debug everything twice, once for each codebase
Me and millions of others. If you account for inflation, there has been higher prices in the past.
Being rude for no reason is a bad look
My question was genuine, and not rude at all, absolute majority of people can't afford to buy $90 game every month, nor should they.
Your question was a good one, but still rude. You're more likely to get a satisfying answer if you don't pose the premise that the person you're replying to must be dumb if they're not rich.
Because inflation applies to all products equally and there aren't ever relative adjustments /s
What games currently cost that much though, is my question really, I guess. The last expensive titles I can see right now for standard editions of games is like, 70Eur equivalent for AAA type titles.
Nice to see an adult reaction in this thread. You have a good point and I'm very curious why Nintendo made these choices. Maybe it could have to do with the current value of the Japanese yen? I'm not an economist though, so I'm just guessing right now.
Wild. Possibly market rates are different - don't know if the EUR is particularly weak right now? I don't follow the conversion rates...
I mean I own a switch, and I've never paid anything close to that for games... I've gone to maybe £45-50 for launch titles but what games cost £70?
But if you account for average wages, the prices are higher now.
$90?
Shit.
Metroid Prime 4 and The Duskbloods don't sound perfect after all
At least a regular Switch version of Metroid Prime 4 will also be available. Other options for playing those.
$80 for physical $70 for digital.
Oh wow, I didn't realize physical manufacturing, storage, transport and sale was only $10!
It might be even less than that, but it's there so just so they can say we still accept physical though we discourage it!
Gamedev here:
For a digital copy, the devs may get between 50 and 90% of the game's retail price, depending on several conditions like what country they are from and what treaties they have with the country of who bought it. Less than that if they have a publisher to share the profits with.
For a physical copy, between packaging, shipping, storing and the margins of all the other companies involved in this process, the devs may end up with as little as 5% of the game's retail price.
Of course these numbers are higher for Nintendo as they are the platform owners as well.
Oh wow! I can buy a digital game worth the same price as a physical game! What a deal! /s
Other way, I think. 80 for digital, 90 for physical. In USD anyways.
Don't forget tariffs if that's not factored in yet...
Pretty sure tariffs are part of the reason for the $80/90 price points
Jesus Christ, it's around $60 in Japan, so old prices
I'll be waiting for the Tinfoil discount.
"The future is Here!!!"
Steam deck is also backwards compatible with nearly all of Nintendo.
Something tells me that the Deck will be compatible with "way more" than old games in the near future... Some times an emulator goes down, and two or more rise up.
We're lucky Valve has fuck you money for when Nintendo inevitably come after them
Comes after them for what? Selling small computers?
Remember they got a patent for catching monsters using balls just to start a lawsuit against Palworld, and if my memory doesn't fail me, they tried to patent some stupidly base mechanic in Zelda TotK (like using local coordinates for constructs).
I'm not sure they wouldn't try to get a patent for the concept of "handheld gaming console" because they came up with the Game Boy.
I don't see how Nintendo could go after valve. Valve doesn't make or distribute the emulator, or the ROMs.
I agree. They could go after windows at that point.
Switch l2
Why'd you ommit the price of the layer 2 switch? curious
If we're talking home use, you can buy enterprise switches for less than $100 on the secondary market. I got a 1GB PoE 24 port managed switch for $35.
I believe I found the switch but can't find the price - IXR-G24044X-24PH
I think Cisco is working to remove the points about uptime and not having lags/crashes
That's why you don't buy Cisco
(For anyone who wasn’t alive in the late 90’s or 00’s this is a rapper named Sisqó, famous for his highly intellectual song called “Thong Song”)
We are currently moving away from cisco because they want 12k+ for a new switch. Juniper or HP for us i think.
That made me laugh way to hard.
I laughed when they showed their game chat mode as some accomplishment. They spent years just making discord...
Another funny moment was when the Civ VII dude said something like "if you already have Civ VII you will be able to play the enhanced switch 2 mode!... After purchasing the upgrade."
They're so unapologetically greedy.
All this has done is make me want a steam deck even harder.
I love it.
I saw Elden Ring worked for Steam Deck, and I either had to buy a new graphics card or get the Deck, and I chose wisely.
I have a steam deck oled and love it, but the SOC is slightly old now and was never the fastest. If you're playing slightly older games or are fine with slightly lower settings, than it's still great.
SteamOS is great, but I think you can install it on other handhelds as well. It sounds like current competition isn't great unless you're willing to pay a bit more and the steam deck 2 isn't rumored to come out soon, so the steam deck is probably still worth purchasing tho.
Honestly who cares about the power of hardware on a handheld, sadly this is something Ninendo used to understand better than anyone else.
Focus on making the games fun and the hardware capable enough, don't get lost in the hype of trying to out hardware competitors and pull in customers that way.
Well, they have clearly abandoned that strategy, but I think this was the worst possible situation to do this in because they are going to continue to get destabilized by the Steam Deck just being a Switch that doesn't try to obsessively control everything you can do on it. It is a waste of money to buy such a closed down device, even if it is more powerful than a Steam Deck.
How powerful is it? Just based on the graphics of what I'd seen I assumed it was around the same.
Anyways, I think the switch can get away with worse hardware as every game is specifically optimized for that exact soc, while the steam deck has to play games optimised for a PS5 or a midrange gaming PC for example.
Yeah, but the Steam Deck also can run indie games, it can run open source games like Beyond All Reason, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead and Xonotic, it can run Steel Panthers Winspww2 which is an absolutely horrendously old DOS game.
Why do I care if it can't run the newest AAA game? I know some people do, but to me I already have such a large pc library (of paid and opensource & free games) that the concept of the Steam Deck getting "left behind" by having too outdated hardware doesn't make sense to me.
Ok, so it has a hard ceiling of the games it can play, new games will continue to come out both above and below that ceiling, and I will continue not to really care about AAA games that don't bother to optimize well for lower end devices.
At the end of the day, the Steam Deck is a linux computer handheld, there are already people gaming on and using potato-ass linux computers to do useful things that are WAYYYYY shittier than the Steam Deck is, and they are happy. I don't see myself becoming unhappy with the hardware on the Steam Deck anytime soon.
Years and years? Idk
lol, I switched to a steam deck from using a linux-ified chromebook for travel gaming so I see what you mean
The fact that Nintendo is well known for not lowering their game prices this could very well price them out from competition.
Hopefully game reviewers will heighten their expectations to meet these inflated prices.
Have you met Nintendo fanboys? They're going to defend this shit like MAGAt republicans defend their Cheeto coloured Jesus.
Cursed cabbage patch bob ross
I find it more likely Nintendo will DMCA them for daring to speak about their games
On the one side, yeah they are over protective of their IPS
On the other, This is Nintendo, not Ubisoft LMAO 🤣
Ubisoft, who literally spends more money on lawyers to sue reviewers and anyone giving their opinion of their latest worst game than in their ACS game 🤣
"over protective" you mean they're pieces of shit.
Can confirm: Super Mario run on iOS is still the same price as it was at launch in 2016.
Excited for Switch 2 emulation on Steam Deck in a few years
Nintendo isn't getting another penny from me after what they did to the switch emulation projects.
You can still emulate everything. Newest version will work just fine for the indefinite future
Much to Nintendo's dismay
... what they "momentarily" did to "that" em project, you mean.
I love how the price goes up every time someone complains.
It’s over 9000 by now.
That's too high!
On the one hand, with rising inflation and skyrocketing development costs, I can totally understand why game prices are getting dangerously close to the triple digits. Games rn are cheaper that they ever were
yeetyet development is not.However, that’s still a lot of money and I really wouldn’t wanna pay that.
The money isn't going to developers, and these are billion dollar companies. It's not about development, but unadulterated greed.
Doesn’t change that $60 in 2010 are almost $90 today. Devs/publishers aren’t any more greedy than they were 15 years ago.
Looks at the dozens of live service games that have come out in the past decade, with their multiple currencies and premium battle passes
Touché. But that’s a different problem. They don’t even need to raise the base price though, many of them are free to play anyways. And those that both have microtransactions and are full price should be avoided anyways.
They are not more greedy, but they think they got an opportunity now. Games industry is bigger than Film industry. They earn an amazing amount of money due to how many more are playing games now than in 2010 did. Revenue of 2024 was 10 times higher than of 2010....
It's absolutely incredible how big the gaming industry is now. Where 20 years ago it was extremely male, and mostly limited to 20-30 year olds now it's everyone! Children and retirees, men and women and everything inbetween or further out to the fringes! And I'm not just talking phone games (which is a gigantic market on its own) at the MSP I work at we've had retired folks bring in gaming computers for service or just drop off older gaming computers for recycling
The do have an opportunity now. People will complain but they won’t stop buying games.
We will see. If they lose a big share of the Switch 1 owners without many new members buying the console, it is a loss for them.
Is that the same in Japan? I know Japan has a horrible work culture in general.
This is greed, pure and simple. At $60, the industry was more profitable than Hollywood, and they raised the base price of games to $70 just a few years ago before immediately talking about raising prices again.
Not solely. If you paid $60 for a game in 2010, that‘d be almost $88 today, simply due to inflation. It’s a wonder the prices haven’t skyrocketed any sooner.
Not that I want that, I‘d prefer games being affordable but it was kinda inevitable considering the way the economy is going…
Also, I‘d personally rather pay $90 once than have a cheap game with a shitload of micro transactions. Of course, developers/publishers that ask $90 for a game and still include a bunch of micro transactions can fuck right of.
Also, people seem to forget that we've been paying $60 for new games for like 40 years. NES games cost $60. That would be like $200 today.
"I rAtHeR pAy $420.69 once for an incomplete game then extra $69 for each DLC" - You. Seriously, go back to Nintendo you gooba
I don’t own a Nintendo console older than a Wii and I don’t plan on changing that.
I also don’t plan on playing games that try to make me pay for it tenfold by enticing me to buy various in-game currencies.
Yeah I would imagine yeeting the things you're developing could get expensive.
Or do you mean developing new kinds of yeets? Probably still expensive.
Exactly.
I would be a lot more willing to accept the inflation argument if salaries at these companies were going up at inflation rates too.
In this case though we all know they are not and additionally digital releases not needing to be physically transported and the lack of printed manuals in physical games, for instance, also cuts down on what it costs to make and ship a game today.
Not unless you're an executive, that is...
But the sale numbers are probably much higher nowadays, so it would be feasible to sell games for cheaper. But why would they? People are gonna buy them anyway. Those who won't will get them on a sale later.
/C/patientgamers represent!
I'll gladly wait 3-5 years to play a $90 retail game for $10-20. There are already too many games in my library to play, I don't need to piss away $100 on a game I'll be bored with in 2 months.
Except Nintendo first party titles never get close to that price.
You can't even buy first party Switch 1 games from 2017 at that price.
Oh absolutely, my heart bleeds for the selfless video game CEOs bravely sacrificing their third yacht to keep game prices only $70. Imagine the hardship of cutting executive bonuses down to just eight figures, all so we can enjoy our digital horse armor without paying $99.99.
These modern saints really are holding the line for the little guy. If only we could all aspire to such noble self-denial.
I never said the CEOs are saints. They’re just not worse than they were 15 years ago. At least for devs/publishers that don’t put micro transactions in full price games.
Current plan is to borrow a Switch 2 from a friend in a couple years, to play the games we're really excited for.
Seeing that the "explore the Switch 2” game wasn't included with the system just pissed me off. I'm not paying to play an interactive manual.
I'd be completely flabbergasted by anybody who wastes their money on that "game."
Satoru Iwata is rolling in his grave.
Fr. It'd be a forgettable bit of marketing, a tech demo no one really cares about if they'd included it free. With the price tag it turns from that into an anti consumer insult, a slap to the face to anyone who thinks they're in this for any reason other than extracting as much money out of their consumers as they can get away with
I wonder if it's gonna cost more than Deltarune
I wonder how much steam would charge if they did that? Oh they didn't deck job is free
And so is The Lab.
Even the PS5 did it for free, and that feels like a game more than a demo.
I bought the first switch thinking I'd play it way more. But those prices that basically never go down, and paying way more for games than I could get them on steam.
Nah. I have a deck and it feels better in my hands, looks better, and I don't get charged out the ass for games that have been out for near a decade.
Every game I've bought for myself on my switch I have instantly regretted not just buying it on PC and streaming to my phone with a controller
Ive had a switch for a few years. I ended up buying a bunch of games I already had on steam, plus Pikmin, breath of the wild, and Mario Kart. I feel like I bought a huge tablet just to play Mario Kart occasionally. I have buyers remorse for sure.
Yea, my biggest reason for buying was hoping for couch coop games to play with my partner. Turns out there aren't a ton of them and the ones I could find my partner doesn't care for. sigh
I think expecting Nintendo do allow people to play their games without being customers is bizarre. I want emulator, I want to be able to pirate whatever I want, but I don't grt expecting Nintendo to be happy about that arrangement
Piracy is the competition.
Companies that recognize that and improve their products and services in order to compete, results in better products and services as well as an influx of happy customers. See valve and steam.
Companies that don't improve and instead seek to stiffle competition through dmca and litigation get their products pirated and services ignored. See how nintendo games are the most pirated on any site that shows stats for such things.
For example, Mario 3 is fucking ancient, how many times does nintendo expect me to buy it? They got my money several times over, and now in order to legally play it on a current platform, it's locked behind a subscription service. No thank you. Besides, I prefer to play platformers with a keyboard. I'd pay for nintendo games again if they let me download to my pc.
Except, what about all the games I bought online for my wiiu and 3ds? Those storefronts are gone, so anything I didn't already have downloaded is gone. If anything happens to those consoles, the few games I do have on them are gone. (i personally never actually had a 3ds or wiiu, but lots of people did and are in this exact boat). I cannot trust nintendo to preserve my purchases, like I can with any other modern digital storefront.
yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
If they want those customers they can sell their game on a system that can actually handle it
Because you're presupposing that copyright is right in the first place. Distribution of information has been made free - because of the internet it's the one thing so far where the Star Trek future has been made reality. But intellectual property laws are designed to create artificial scarcity so that one publisher can monopolize a creative work, to the detriment of everyone else.
Fans of various game franchises are not just consumers, but creators in their own right. You have to remember that this delegitimized practice of "piracy" also results in the entire romhacking community.
The bottom line is that free sharing of information benefits us all and produces a rich commons, but intellectual property plunders that commons and produces centralization of media ownership while stripping away our right to be co-creators.
I'm done giving money to Nintendo. Their litigious behavior is inexcusable. Just ask the parrot on my shoulder. He's on the same side as my eye patch.
Nuck Findendo. They’re assholes who kick the ladder out from underneath them
You are allowed to swear here. No need to self-censor.
They could bust je passionate about spoonerisms
Yee I just thought it was funny
I think they know that.
Yeah you can say the N word
::: spoiler Because the only thing who interacted with it in 3 hours didn't get the joke Nintendo :::
Swear words and racist words are different
Nintendo games never come down in price either.
BotW is still going for what it did on day one. Even second hand copies go for nearly that.
Although it does mean you can basically rent them for as long as you want for a few dollars if you sell it again afterwards...
This is probably the only time Nintendo has come out of the gate with superior hardware and I actually don't give a shit, why on earth would I want to buy a steam deck that is locked behind corporate control and price gouging?
I don't give a shit how fast the scrreen refreshes or how fancy some of the features, I want a computer that can play games, I don't want a toy that is purposefully broken so I can't use it for things I want to use it for, ESPECIALLY if I drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars on it.
Nope.
I understand why you think this, but its kind of wrong. Because Nintendo has had the upper hand with hardware many times.
And yes, I'll just wait and use my steam deck until SD2, because I also just want a computer that I can play games on.
The SNES and Genesis were comparable. You could argue one or the other, but it was a tighter race than the Playstation 3 curb-stomping the Wii.
Playstation had CD-ROM, and that's all that needs to be said about that battle.
Comparing the GameCube with the PS2, it had less VRAM, less RAM, a faster CPU, roughly equiv video processor. I would say they were about equal, and that's with GameCube coming out two years later.
The PS2 was also the strongest console to ever fight in any sort of console war, with its ridiculously large library of games. PS2 punished Sega so hard they permanent removed themselves out of the race, and Nintendo had to completely change strategies to fill a different niche and audience, which worked with the Wii. However, that came with the dumbing down of hardware that everybody is talking about. They have been pushing shitty outdated hardware ever since.
I stand corrected, I guess I was comparing the gamecube to an xbox, but yeah agreed, I just bought a second steam deck OLED when I already had the LCD model because honestly I think the economy is going to crash hard and it is going to be a long road to affordably getting a gaming device in the US for the foreseeable future.
It is a shitty situation to be in, but I didn't even hesitate because the current calculus is a no brainer. I have Blender on my Steam Deck and I am using it to create cool visualizations of Lidar data for Geology, Nintendo would respond to a statement like this with something like "yeah, that is cool but it sounds very niche, people don't need that" and my response is "Fuck you, you haven't even let people try".
I heard of another Geologist bringing in their steam deck to present a talk off of it instead of a laptop too, these kinds of interesting unusual use cases aren't trivial and hyper individual, they represent people developing the future of handheld computers in real time, and Nintendo has completely lost the plot here. The Steam Deck really isn't a gaming device, it is a gaming device that Trojan Horses you into having an awesome handheld linux computer that can also play your favorite games.
If Nintendo thinks they can compete with the Steam Deck by just selling a better handheld gaming console, they are so fucked.... or at the very least they are walking away from what will actually be the next big growth area in computers (that people were SURE AI and VR would be).
Nintendo execs are likely sitting there being like "damn we are going to make so much money selling the best handheld gaming console and completely dominate the handheld gaming console market so we can charge $100 a game" while missing the MUCH LARGER profit opportunity of evolving their handheld console into a handheld computer.
Think about it, Nintendo is in the perfect position to evolve their Switch into more and more of a computer, and it would give them a MASSIVE new horizon of growth opportunities especially since countless kids grow up playing on Switches and already know how to use them inside out... it would help Nintendo protect itself from encroachment by other big tech, and do any number of other longterm things for Nintendo's growth and profit.
Instead the idiots want to gouge people for more money by squeezing ONLY the gaming potential out of the switch, it is pathetic and I wish legislation around the world didn't allow massive corporations to behave this foolishly in trying to close down their systems so they don't accidentally create the "wrong" kind of value or innovation.
This is exactly why I purchased a steam deck. My gaming PC died (RIP to a real one), and I needed something for general use more than I did for gaming.
I need to check the price of broken steam decks, there are so many fun project's I could do if I had the motherboard or daughter boards in the steam deck, and no I need my current steam deck intact to play on
Ah yes, console released over 30 years ago.
from context I think you wanted to write nintendo
Yeah, I was trying to say the switch can be thought of as a steam deck that is locked behind corporate control.
oh! I understand it now, sorry
don't forget mods, easy repair, easy piracy, and actually being a functional portable computer in a pinch if you have a docking station
A Steamdeck can emulate a Switch. The number of exclusive games for the Switch 2 will be so pitiful it would scarcely justify a purchase though I'm sure some people will buy it. I also think that a Steamdeck 2 can't be far off appearing.
Soon as I heard about the price of games I was out
We have a switch 1 and the game price has been the driving factor preventing us from investing more in the platform. The games are too expensive, go on sale too infrequently and not for low enough prices. Just not the ecosystem for my family right now
Yeah, I have a Switch too but it's not been turned on in maybe two years, getting a Steam Deck basically retired it
The display supports 1080p+120hz, games running at that res and fps will be rare I imagine. I mean, it would be amazing but Xbox also supports 4k 120 and it usually runs Up to 1440p upscaled 30fps so idk how much it will really differ from what we've already got.
I'm skeptical about 4 hour Elden Ring session.
Even the 729$ Legion Go looks like a good deal compared to the Switch 2.
Hell, at least I can use my steam deck as a mini PC and SSH into the thing, as well as use a mouse and full fuckin keyboard with my cheap off brand dock.
I'm always 2-3 years behind on new consoles for this very reason.
You say that like Nintendo ever puts their games on sale
I do the same, but not because of sales, but because it takes 2-3 years for the high seas to swell with jolly rogers.
Now that I can get behind
Used physical copies are usually cheap.
I've never found any. They're always similar in price to digital. Which is better than digital, imo, but still. The used market charges a lot because it can.
The nintendo switch, released 8 years ago now, was the first console to never have a price drop. PS5 and XBOX series did not need to be convinced to join that particular trend
It had one on the secondary market. 🤟
"Mouse mode"
Yeah, the Steam Deck has that. Its called dual touchpads, and unlike the Switch 2 you can easily switch from analog stick to touchpad (they also have more functionality and are actually utilized to their full potential with desktop mode).
PCs literally had "mouse mode" gaming since the 80s. The Amiga/ATARI ST already had them, too.
Consoles have been behind the times for decades.
Couldn't you just use Yuzu and pirate games - on the steamdeck?
It's Switch 2 games we're talking about here...
Switch 2: emulation boogaloo
I genuinely believe a primary driving factor for the switch 2 was to hinder emulation of new releases. I don't remember any of this but I think my friend said TOTK was available on bad websites a week before the official release. But I wouldn't know.
Two weeks if I'm not mistaken
The new connection for the controllers also makes me think they didn't want to take a chance with a fumble like on the switch where you can ground a pin to hack your switch...
Damn. Gotta start emulating that too.
We'll see how long it takes to get a working emulator going, but with power equivalent to a PS4 Pro it might not happen for a while...
So yeah after a year of a release.
How's PS4 emulation going these days? Because the hardware will be equivalent to a PS4 Pro so it will require quite the hardware to emulate.
It's going fine, the problem will be compatibility and not performance I think.
So in 10 years I'll be able to boot one game and it will run well enough.
No way the Steam Deck will be able to run emulated Switch 2 games. Maybe the Steam Deck 2.
Whenever there's a multiplatform game I'm interested in I add it to my wishlist on the Switch, PS5 and Deck. I almost always end up buying it off Steam because it ends up being cheaper on it. So the Switch and PS5 have been reduced for exclusives only.
I have a Steam Deck definitely felt no need to get either the Switch 1 or 2.
I dunno what y'all are talking about, the Deck chip (Van Gogh, 7nm, Zen 2 but with Rembrandt-era SoC features, RDNA2) is "newer" than the Ampere chip (circa 2020) in the Switch 2.
I think the last Nintendo game I payed for was animal crossing new horizons. Yea, I'll be alright with my back catalog and the occasional indie game that costs less than 20$. All I wanted was another punch-out but I played the "Big Boy Boxing" demo and it was pretty fun, so I will not be buying a switch 2 any time soon if at all.
I would just like to remind everyone that Nintendo was predatory when EA and Activision were the good(ish) guys.
Dont at me.
Eh, with the prices you could upgrade from steam deck to better specs, maybe switch will have better battery
1080p on such a small screen is pointless, but if you're into that by the price of one Nintendo game you can upgrade your steam deck screen https://www.deckhd.com/
120Hz is not that different from the decks 90Hz screen, although if you chose to do the upgrade above that downgrades you to 60.
Mouse mode, not sure what that is, but the deck has the best of it's kind mouse emulation so I think it will be hard for the switch to compete.
Plus I get to keep my games, and whenever the SD2 comes out I'll get to keep my games and not have to buy them again.
Guess I'm waiting till an emulator comes out. which sadly won't be for a while since ryujinx was killed.
Dink Smallwood's wood
Is every console a PC nowadsys?
I mean I'm not against it per se, even it might be kind of good I guess.
No, the Switch used ARM-based smartphone hardware.
They were always nerfed down PCs
My initial response to this was "ehhh", but a quick look at the consoles I grew up with shows you're right. The only exception I saw was the PS3 thanks to it's pretty bonkers CPU.
The Super Nintendo user a Ricoh 5A22, which was based on the W65C816S used in the Apple II.
The Sega Genesis used a Motorola 68000, which was popular for Unix computers. It also made it into a number of PCs like the Apple Lisa, Macintosh, and Amiga
The PS1 and PS2 both had a R3000A-compatible 32-bit RISC CPU that was used in a lot of workstations of the era, but none of those would be familiar to an x86 user.
The PS3's processor was the stuff of hype and legends. It bore no resemblance to PCs of the time
Even the PS5, which is for the most part is just an x86 PC, still has a unique architecture that allows for loading and decompressing textures from disk into VRAM without putting any load on either the CPU or GPU.
It's not like they aren't trying to do new stuff, it's just hard to find new avenues to innovate when so much has already been figured out.
I mean the military did buy up ps3s to make a supercomputer for this reason. Pretty cheap and performed well.
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
Nah, they were specialized hardware. IIRC the Xbox was the first "PC console".
Not sure if it’s enough to count but the Dreamcast had Windows CE
It sure did, I totally forgot about all that, nice catch!
The DirectX “box”
They always have used hardware closely related to existing workstation or PC hardware, but the difference is now they try so much less hard to hide it, through crossplay, lack of platform exclusives, and just less trying to innovate on how the games are played. Part of it is that game inputs have largely been standardized, part of it is that the more similar to a bog standard PC the console is, the easier it is for developers to port their existing games, and part of it might just be that platforms aren't feeling pushed to innovate as much
Well, between their incredibly abusive behaviour towards fans making content on YouTube even though that's free advertising, the mess with the smash tournaments and them breaking agreements to side with some new band of assholes -
their previous efforts to destroy companies by patent trolling and their current efforts to undo Palworld that have pretty much only been prevented by them teaming up with Sony -
and their very heavy-handed protectionist approach to ROM preservation even though they keep taking away people's access to their older catalogue, I certainly wouldn't consider them ABOVE board.
Before sony's completely ridiculous 2024 I would have firmly called them below-board, but enshittification really hit hard, jeez. (Dashes were for breathing pauses cus that was getting a little long. I was also going to mention an issue with them being a lot less transparent with whether or not they'd ethically sourced their rare earth metals vs the other big two, but I don't remember quite when that was, just that it was discussed during the switch era).
Edit: tbc I still upvoted cus physical games ARE still important, but I forgot to mention that they don't let you downpatch digital games so speed running, or even just wanting to play TotK with the dupe glitch, is forced to sometimes be way more expensive thanks to REQUIRING physical AND having to play offline forever cus I think it tries to force patches?
Physical games with a huge asterisk. Some switch 2 "physical" games will just be a piece of plastic you insert into your switch that tells a server somewhere you can play it and won't actually have the game itself installed. It'd be a digital only game with extra steps
I guess certain games maybe only hard copies exist, but when you can just grab a copy off the internet and store it, I don't see the need for a hard copy.
Plus, with the Steamdeck you have more games to play than just Nintendo games or old games you played years ago but have to pay more to play them again on worse hardware.
The price hike is coming to Steam soon, some corporations just waiting for the US tariffs to maybe go away, then comes regional pricing to the US.
At least games on Steam get discounted or reduced over time. Fuck Nintendo and their pricing.
Do you have any basis for that? Is it announced? Also, do you know that games on Steam are not priced by Steam, but individual publishers?
I don't thing tariffs include digital goods and services.
Why would the tariffs have any impact on game prices? The import prices, so they don't apply to digital goods.
You all whine and say fuck this and that corporation, but you all will buy that new game for christmas or whatever, because you were conditioned into consumerism.
I don’t get all the hate for Nintendo. Sure they’re expensive but they’re an OG games company largely acting like one. None of that freemium always-online microtransaction bullshit. Look at the Mario Kart expansion pack, it doubles the number of courses you get. It literally doubles the size of the game, and it’s not even that expensive. Plus they still support physical cartridges which most companies are trying to get rid of (and user expandable storage).
Yes BUT they almost never sell anything on sale while keeping prices high and only release on their platform (the switch)
If they had Sales (or lower base prices) and released on PC as well (both Xbox and Sony do this now) nobody would be complaining about price
Cartridges that only have a license on them. Nintendo is planning on killing off physical media just as much as any other company.
Only some 3rd party cartridges have a download key on them, and they're significantly cheaper than the ones that don't.
Also where is the 90 price I keep seeing on here coming from? I've only seen 70-80 prices for first party titles. Bravely Default (which is a download key tho) is only 40 isn't it?
You'll have to give a source on that cause i can't find anything about those cards being cheaper. I looked up bravely default and it's a remaster of an old game, so it better not cost 90 bucks lmao. And the 90 price is coming from europe. Looks like the games will cost 90 euros in europe. Insanity.
From the games listed.
And yes, now I see it's 80-90€ / 70-80$.
Although funny how for once Europe might get the cheaper game price vs the USA (ours has tax built in, US will vary by state)
My counter: Metroid Prime 4. I would sell everything I own. It's been almost 9 years
you really saw that trailer and said "i gotta overpay for that". yikes.
I mean, the Metroid Community is starving.
dread came out 4 years ago. it's not that long.
Yeah but what a out Metroid Prime.
But I'm conflicted as the Prime 4 announcement came with the cancellation of AM2r which is just the best Metroid FanGame ever.
Why is Nintendo so shite
because of your first reply. you're not a customer but a resource to be milked of every penny possible.
and dread wasn't that good. Before that was nintendos metroid 2 remake, which also wasn't very good. Neither were bad, but the genre has moved on without nintendo and standards are higher now. I haven't been blown away by a metroid game since the fan game am2r, and that makes me sad.
It will also be on the Switch 1, meaning it will probably be able to run emulated on a Steam Deck.
This basically makes having gone through the end of COVID-19 worth it