Maybe see what player counts look like in a few months before making great and grand plans? People want a fresh take on The Sims, but maybe without the backlog of a hundred DLCs and other EA shittery. But, inZOI may not be it. Apart from the pervasive and distasteful use of generative AI, it may just not have that special something.
So give it a while, lads. Maybe it really will be a hit, but sales in the first week mostly just say that people wanted a fresh swing at The Sims, not that they really want what inZOI is.
Given how many features use generative AI to build user-generated content I would say mark this moment. There is a future of slop-centric Roblox stuff everywhere and this may well be where it starts.
I'm not as mad about that as most will be, but... yeah, I've mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
I appreciate it more because it’s generative AI based off of user created content and their own content. I respect that more than using outside sources that got their training data from god knows where and just slap that shit in there and call it a day.
How is it based on UGC if the game wasn't out when they implemented the GenAI? As far as I can tell they're using a whole bunch of ML-based tools built on Unreal tech for animation and model creation and what seems to be run of the mill Gen AI for textures. I could be wrong, but hey, I'll hold you to that being cool when EA or Ubisoft show up with their version of the same thing.
You can enter a text prompt and they spit out a texture based on it, which sure seems to just be a good old image generation model. They do generate mesh from images, which probably has some ML involved, although it's harder to tell how much is just good old photogrammetry, and they do face and body animation from video source. I think that's all part of the Unreal Engine 5 metahuman package, which I'm pretty sure does use some machine learning. Oh, and I am pretty sure a bunch of the writing and character AI has been machine-created, be it in real time or baked offline.
Part of the problem is that people aren't super clear on what "AI" is supposed to mean, so it's hard to know what they're supposed to be angry about. The texture generation thing at least is clearly in the GenAI danger zone.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
How many people are actually playing the game to find out though? I’m always strongly suspicious every time some new game explodes onto social media. Why couldn’t they use AI to generate user reviews and comments also?
There’s a lot of suspiciously crap games that manage to explode to the top of the steam trending list. I’ve been bitten before.
This one has art that looks so generic I can’t even tell if they’re screenshots or promo pics unrelated to the game. It suddenly makes sense now I know it’s genai. It’s not trying to communicate anything to a user it’s just vibes man.
I’m not a huge fan honestly. I think the stylized graphics are a better fit for the genre, and you get into uncanny valley a lot faster with realistic graphics.
But I mean, that’s just MY taste, I’m not going to tell anyone else what to think.
Higher fidelity for sure, as one would expect when comparing games released 10 years apart, but idk if it’s “better” per se. Of course this is totally subjective, but I feel like there’s no style to inZoi, unless we define “generic AI output” as a style.
They might have from me if the Steam Deck didn’t exist, but their advantage in the past was always being cheaper than the competition. I’m not interested in paying $400 $450 for a locked portable console.
I loved my switch. I spent a lot of time with it. But since getting the steam deck… All the things I can do with it, and the cheap games, and even the high end games that I can play, it’s just too good. I beat hollow knight on my PC. I bought a switch after that, bought hollow knight collectors and never played it. Was fully planning on buying silk song on the switch but now I think I’ll go for the steam version.
Even though I know lemmy is the minority of minority consumer sentiment, it gives me hope that this comment has a decent amount of upvotes in a nintendo post.
Seriously, fuck nintendo’s anti consumer bullshit.
I’m curious what other people’s main gripe is (likely emulation fights?) For my own, it’s when they enacted an assault on Garry’s Mod assets.
That domain never did anything to harm their brand and was a source for tons of fan content. Emulation has its murky arguments about capitalism, but going after GMod was just litigation and harm for its own sake.
Not sure how an animated series would work with Soma (the OG game has a clear beginning, middle and end), but I will agree with the subject of the article that Soma is a top 5 / top 10 best game of all time type experience.
You mean the live action web series? Yea I don’t understand how that series had better visuals than many blockbuster scifi movies rofl. It was extremely well done.
I have a confession to make, in the early parts of the game (before things got all psychedelic) I was almost a little bit disappointed due to my expectations from the web series, just a bit, the intro is also great.
There was something really unnerving about the web series. Even though there was nothing explicitly, it created a sense of dread, like something really wrong was going to happen.
Yea. It was really well done. I think it could totally be a TV show or a game. Idk if you feel this way but literally no game or movie or anything has ever made me feel as fucked up (in a good way) as SOMA did the first time I played it. I mean horror, philosophy, anger, sadness, denial. It had it all. I even made the same mistake that Simon makes where I totally didn’t want to believe that he would never really make it to the Ark (because copy paste, not cut paste.) It was just so good. Omg also the part where the guy is talking about killing yourself right after getting the scan…to obtain “continuity.” Absolutely crazy, even if the theory doesn’t make sense lol. I can see how in a moment of desperation that it could make sense to you.
I am right with you, Soma is easily a top 10 if not a top 5 gaming experience for me. And my top also includes games that I enjoy from a pure gameplay perspective (e.g. SimCity 4) which IMO aren’t comparable to Soma.
It was really well done, in the late game once I started figuring out what was going on I was like " Oh no, no, no! This can’t be happening!". A real sense of existential dread.
The ending was great too, a measure of positivity and hope, but very very far from a happy ending. A depressing ending with a possible ray of hope, depending on how one looks at it.
I just wish more people who aren’t into video games could experience Soma.
And the cool thing is that what Soma delivers cannot be done through a different medium. It has to be a video game, a book or even a movie wouldn’t really work in the same way. You have to be in control of your character.
Idk how much you dove into the lore, but have you ever read about the Carthage theory? There were some hints that Cathage Industries (who owned Pathos 2) were still around (they had other underwater facilities) and responsible for creating Simon and were monitoring the situation, sort of like Resident Evil Umbrella Corp style. Personally I’m not a huge fan of that theory as it takes away from the mood of the game, but it’s interesting and has a lot of merit.
Lemme know your thoughts. I see how it has merit and is possible but yeah, it totally kills the vibe. Maybe it was something the devs put in but ultimately abandoned, but kinda didn’t scrub it all out prior to release.
There’s audio logs in theta of someone trying to reach carthage for instructions. It’s obvious. What’s unclear is if she’s doing it out psychosis or actually knows they’re still around.
It’s the successor to one of the most successful consoles ever, and word is Nintendo’s had a lot of games that were done for some time now, but they’ve been holding them back to better position this launch. An hour-long Direct is about twice the usual length, and basically the entire industry is basing its plans around the Switch 2 and GTA6 right now.
I’m honestly curious is the Switch 2 will follow in that success.
Credit where credit is due; lots of kickstarters and small private companies have tried making something like the Switch for years, but very few people knew or cared about them. Then Nintendo pulls it off, which leads to the Steam Deck, which then compells a whole market to spring up for similar format devices.
Now there is a market, with competition from all sides, and Valve seems to be the one most are talking about for this format. Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
I was talking about this with some friends. Anecdotally, almost everyone we know who plays games has a Switch, but very few of them seem to care about a Switch 2, for one reason or another. What will undoubtedly still move units are their marquis franchises, not the least of which is expected to be a new 3D Super Mario game. Mario Kart does extremely well for them, but I’ll bet some amount of its success is tied to very cheap console hardware, which the Switch 2 will not be out of the gate, so that parents can buy each of their kids a handheld to play with each other in the car, at the laundromat, at their siblings’ soccer practice, etc., and as the hardware gets cheaper, that probably contributes to its “long tail” of sales.
But yeah, for people who live and breathe video games, consoles have lost their luster. Games take longer to make now, which means there are fewer first party titles, which means we have fewer reasons to buy another machine that plays the same games as some other piece of hardware we already own. That will be especially true for the Switch 2, since they don’t have a Wii U library to plunder for titles that they can port cheaply for people who’ve never played them.
All that to say, my expectations as an armchair analyst whose word isn’t worth anything on the matter and whose predictions may as well be a dice roll are that the Switch 2 will do very well, but I’d be surprised if it did better than the first Switch, and I don’t know that we’ll ever see a console do as well as the Switch, or the PS2 for that matter, ever again.
That first part really resonates because I experienced the DS lite. I didn’t see many phat NDS consoles, but kids everywhere had a DS lite. Mariokart did insanely well on that console, but not just because it was Mariokart, but also because of the download play feature.
It seems like Nintendo wants to replicate something like that through it’s virtual game card sharing feature. But it also seems like it’s a feature on the original Switch, so I wonder what new things they’ve planned.
I too will be surprised if the Switch 2 does better than the Switch. The 3DS, arguably the real sequel to the NDS, as opposed to the DSi, didn’t really touch the same highs that the DS lite did.
Agreed. It will hurt not being able to play the new Marios and Zeldas (Maybe emulators will pop up able to do so, but it’s not nearly as likely as it was in the past - at least, not until well after the console is no longer sold), but $400 $450 for what’s essentially a walled garden Steam Deck that plays Nintendo games just ain’t worth it to me. The original Switch was worth it to me at $300 in 2017, but times have changed.
Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
The same way they have been for a while, by making charming, accessible, and fun games. The average consumer doesn’t care about how litigious they are, unfortunately.
For the past 20 years that also included fun gimmicks. They sometimes fail, as with the Wii U, or were good but… Kinda just a gimmick, like the 3DS. But Nintendo has been making their consoles pretty unique from every other console. The DS format and the Wii are still very unique consoles. The Switch 2… Not so much…
I don’t doubt the Switch 2 will see success, but how it’ll stand out from everything else like the Switch originally did is still a question.
I dunno why people are so downvote heavy in this comm…
Yeah I agree that Nintendo has seen the most success when they have a compelling gimmick; time will tell if the same gimmick with more power will do the trick. I doubt the mouse gimmick will be more than a novelty, but we’ll see what they show tomorrow.
For me it’s not fanboyism more like vibing on nostalgia, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokemon (RGBXYZ whatever), top down rpgs, Mario Party - Kart. And probably some crossovers like Metal Gear Solid. But gonna wait at least a year untill considering buying. The Steamdeck is comparable but much of it never going to use although still interested
It also included being considerably cheaper than other consoles because they use outdated tech. $400 $450 is a hefty price tag for a Nintendo console. I’m sure it will do well, since it’s just “Switch but more powerful,” which is what people were asking for. But for me, it’s too pricey for what it is.
And AND it’s not as though we can expect another mainline Zelda game on launch day. Maybe Metroid Prime 4, sure, but that series has never moved units the way Zelda does (as much as I wish it did).
I agree with your assessment. That’s where I fall too. I’ve got a launch day Switch and an OLED Steam Deck. My Switch mostly gathers dust since I got the Deck.
Metroid Prime 4 will be on the OG Switch, so no worry about missing out there. It will probably leak like most Nintendo games have been lately and I’ll get to play it early on my modded Switch, even. I think a new 3D Mario is what I’ll be missing out on, which will hurt, but not enough that I’ll be willing to pay almost over $500 to play it.
They do love their shadow drops, but I’m guessing no. Maybe they’ll do it for the Switch 2, though - they’ve pretty much run out of Wii U games to port and will have to re-release older stuff now!
if you guys have any interest in context, theres a great ‘history of nintendo’ on the ‘Acquired’ podcast, starting with gambling cards for the Yakuza in the like 1800s.
that would have been so cool, but I don’t really know how it coulda worked out, like an isolated horror-scape wouldnt allow for char development or anything.
I disagree about Soma being an isolated setting, there are actually lots of characters, it’s just that they’re all insane cyborgs who mostly happen to have their own personal reasons for attacking you.
I can’t seem to find them, but before the game came out there was a series of live action video shorts made in association with it to help establish the concept and setting, I’d imagine a show being along the lines of those but fleshed out more.
Look up Soma Transmissions. There was also a bunch of short stories about the game. The one about climbing the big orbital gun to the top really stuck with me.
And there was more characters than just the scary proxy things.
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Aktywne