Platforms are an obstacle to customers, from the developer’s point of view. This has been obvious since the PS2-PS3 transition - and it’s why Sony is freaking out about PSN accounts. They don’t give a shit about your data. They desperately want to go back to when every game was made for one system and maybe got a conversion or two. The closest they can get is roping people into their ecosystem to justify the continued existence of their deliberately0incompatible AMD laptop opposite Microsoft’s deliberately-incompatible AMD laptop.
Same deal with Epic refusing to make Fortnite work on Steam Deck. It’s not a technical issue. They’re just having a slapfight with Valve. They want their store to stand up against (let’s face it) the de-facto monopoly source for major PC games, and the market says no.
Where this ends is the death of consoles.
There is no reason to release a game three or four separate times, with a private screening process for two or three of them, even if each release is goddamn near identical. All that’s really different is which middleman slices off an entire third of the publisher’s revenue. There are no technical reasons three of these platforms couldn’t just run the same executable with the same data. There’s differences - but not important differences. And even the ARM version could be served if games were published in .NET or SPIR-V or whatever. Slow startup time? Yeah, once, but games already take their sweet time installing. Even shaders need to compile and cache. That nonsense would be a lot more sensible if it let you buy whichever hardware was best from whoever the hell was selling it.
So really, where this ends is the death of platforms.
Nintendo are an anomaly though, they’re not struggling financially and when they do the higher ups take a cut so everything else stays business as normal for the most part and they just keep trucking along comfortably
I think they’re slowly losing the goodwill of its customers with the decline of their hardware (and to a lesser extent software) quality and refusal to have easy access to its catalog of older games. Their insistence on taking legal action against their fanbase ranging from pirates to Smash Bros Melee tournament enthusiasts, and YouTubers who like to feature their games has personally turned me off from their offerings. Sure they may have yet another amazing Zelda or Mario game in their next gen console but it’ll be a lot easier to ignore when I already have a huge backlog of games in PC.
The vast majority of Nintendo customers doesn’t care about graphics and will happily buy a new 80€ controller every year. They are pretty resistant to negative elements, as they are very depending on Nintendo for delivering that special feeling no other on the market gives them. I don’t even blame them on that, it sadly just is a self absorbing construct. Nintendo doesn’t have to improve if fans buy 20 years old emulator ports for 80 bucks and the fans won’t stop buying it because it’s Nintendo, their childhood. I have a Switch myself and love the innovative controls and also am guilty to pay for a year of NSO premium just to play that one game on emulator. Sure I could’ve hacked my switch, but on the other hand it’s time investment to do so and I can’t bother.
Yeah, big doubt. Doesn’t matter to me that I own 1000+ games on Steam and have countless games I can play, and want to buy from all sorts of genres and companies. Does not matter, at all. Upon Switch 2, or the next Mario/Zelda/Metroid/Smash/Kart/whatever. I’m buying. Instantly. Immediately. Hell I’m preordering. Don’t care. Nintendo games are like nothing else on the market. Sure there’s competitors trying to do what they do. But absolutely nobody, actually does it like they do.
I have zero concerns about digital ownership, or them not releasing their old catalog. Because it does not matter. They are the most emulatable game makers on the planet. I’ll always have access to my old games whenever I want. So all that matters is their newest games on their newest console. I get that’s a super unpopular take among hardcore gamers. But my whole life, Nintendo games have been the ones to deliver what is fun to me 99/100.
By allowing more people access to your games, more people have access to your games to purchase … with money … that goes to you and helps your business’s button line.
Never thought I’d see the day. This is quite a valid strategy when both your console and your content are able to stand on their own - something that Microsoft forgot after the XBox 360.
I think it’s just a temporary thing. Suits love nothing more than forcing people into their own wallet garden. Sony will notice less people pay for PS+ and then will turn back to exclusives. Maybe it’s also only temporary, to hook people on Sony games and then reach again. I’d love to see it a permanent thing though.
In the past there were games where you were given the option to install an optional HD texture pack. Can they simply do this here, too? Yes, they can. But no, gotta waste bandwidth…
so, you have gigabytesper second of disk io, and the game relies on the couple of megaBITS of internet bandwidth most people have to stream textures? As opposed to downloading and installing them once as an update…
How fast do they think internet connections are? If the higher quality assets were that big compared to the 300 GB install no way they’re going to finish loading or fit in the memory while you’re playing the game
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