Spyke

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Nintendo pulls Switch 2 pre-orders in US over Trump tariffs

In the Australian market the base model is:

  • selling for au$700
  • if we remove GST we get au$635..45
  • and convert to USD for us$383.91

If we compare the listed US price:

  • 450 ÷ 383.91 = 1.172

So the US price was already about 17% higher than our local price, a position that may have been taken in anticipation of the US tariffs.

How do the other international pre sales tax prices compare to the US? Is this pattern across the board or is Australia an anomaly?

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Nintendo Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility issues update

Its a pretty good outcome but the games with "resolved" issues are not all good news.

Some examples (all from different games):

  • Remaining on the title screen for 30 seconds will cause an error to trigger and the game will close. Please navigate away from the title screen before the error occurs.
  • Inputting a particular sequence of controls in a stage may on rare occasion cause the game to close.
  • Slowdown may occur in some parts of the game
  • Screen distortion may occur in some parts of the game
  • When Nintendo Switch 2 players battle Nintendo Switch players online, Nintendo Switch players' character models will have distorted textures.

Still, if they have identified these issues it says a fair bit about how though their testing was.

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A Mysterious PS3 Emulator Has Arrived On Android | Retro Dodo

I understand proprietary licenses and the business models they support, I also understand open source licenses and the business models they support.

If they they published paid binaries and free source code I would support them (morally), or if they published free binaries and free source code and ran a patreon I would support them (morally).

But to fork GPL code and hold the derived source ransom? Not cool.

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Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'

So what I really want is a game that gives me a sense of achievement, and with the vaguest possibility that I actually might finish it. And so it'd be really interesting to know how many games are actually finished, and how many games are just abandoned by what proportion of people. 

It can be fun to go to an achievement/trophy tracker and compare the numbers for the awards for first and last story missions.

For GTA5 some numbers are:

For Assassins Creed Odyssey:

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Epic Games is delisting Dark and Darker due to an ongoing legal dispute

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This is going to vary from case to case.

In a situation where sales are legal and the publisher or platform later choose to remove it from sale then it usually remains available in your library for download.

But in a situation where the publisher never had a legal right to sell the product then they were never legally able to grant distribution rights to the platform? In that case the license offered to the purchaser is invalid and it may be pulled from libraries.

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Valve "followed" 1.7 million Steam users for over a year, and now reports those gamers spent $20 million on microtransactions and another $73 million on games and DLC

The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release

This wording is a bit strange, are they tracking the new steam accounts that signed up to buy a specific 2023 title (like Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Starfield)?

If so it says more about the specific demographic attracted to that unknown title than it does about Steam in general.

Edit:

The methodology is explained here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/751641001553035271

To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users.

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First-party Switch 2 games—including re-releases—all run either $70 or $80

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These are the top 5 sellers on Switch:

These links take you to a price tracker with a chart showing historical prices. The RRP of each of these has been static, and discounts are short and infrequent.

In a break from form Nintendo hasn't released a budget "Selects" label for older titles this generation.

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Nintendo Switch 2 Launches on June 5th Worldwide; 1080p Screen With 120 FPS and HDR Support, Docked Mode 4K Resolution Support Confirmed

So this thing only takes microSD Express cards?

Are there any larger than 256GB on the market?

I have a 1TB card in my Switch 1 and I would rather not downgrade the capacity if there are any options.

Edit: all good, lexar is offering 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB cards.

https://americas.lexar.com/product/lexar-play-pro-microsdxc-express-card/

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The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst

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the console install base isn't what it was when GTA V came out at the end of a generation.

I had a look to check the figures.

From the PlayStation perspective February 2025 estimates put the PS5 at 74.9m, while January 2013 estimates put the PS3 at 77m.

However Xbox is really letting their numbers lag with 28.3m Series consoles sold by September 2024 vs 77.2m 360 consoles by April 2013.

If we were just talking PlayStation I would say 97% is near enough to make no difference but if we compare both platforms together its only 67% and that is enough to influence strategy. A console only release in 2025 is unlikely to eclipse GTA5's position as "fastest-selling entertainment product in history".

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Open source maintenance fee

Q: What if I don’t want to pay the Maintenance Fee?

That’s fine. You can download the project’s source code and follow the Open Source license for the software.

Do not open issues. Do not ask questions. Do not download releases. Do not reference packages via a package manager. Do not use anything other than the source code released under the Open Source license.

Also, if you choose to not pay the Maintenance Fee, but find yourself returning to check on the status of issues or review answers to questions others ask, you are still using the project and need to pay the Maintenance Fee.

I disagree vehemently! The community adds value and is a form of contribution.